The Understudy

There is a name on the callboard, and it is yours. The Understudy opens on a theatre that has been rehearsing without you, the house lights warm and the front row full, and a role the Company has already cut to your measure. All you have to do is step into the light and read the line as written. All you have to do is become who they cast.

The Understudy is Book Three of ENCORE, a choose-your-path horror. The same Curator runs the show; the same company of the dead is recast into a new production. Bring the character you built in The Haunt and The Vigil, and the stage remembers what you carried, who you are, and what you have already proven you will and will not do.

You read by deciding. Take the applause or drop the cue. Wear the mask or hold up the true glass. Your choices decide which of the book’s endings the house gives you, and the way out, the true one, asks whether you can walk off that stage as yourself, and not as the part they wrote.

▶ Play it free in your browser, then keep the ebook or paperback. 174 numbered sections, 38 endings. The interactive audiobook follows.