The House on Warrior Street
An interactive story by Brad Foster, 2023 ©
Can you save your friend — and yourself — from the long-ago abandoned house on the corner of Warrior Street?
Baseball Field
At the crack of the bat, Drake’s treasured baseball sails out into the outfield. He watches it streak towards the abandoned house on the corner of Warrior Avenue, and sighs in relief when little Jimmy Conners catches it. Drake wanted to show his friends the baseball his father caught for him last summer, and now he regrets bringing it to their game. As his best friend, you know how important this baseball is to Drake.
As the sun begins to sink and give way to darkness, you all see Grayden Pollinksi and his cadre of teenaged punks saunter over to your group. Before you all can scatter, Grayden snatches the baseball from Drake’s hand. He grabs a bat and tosses the ball high into the air. He swings and the ball hurtles far over the outfield and seems to hover over the abandoned house, that no kid would ever dare enter, and then drops into the dilapitaded chimney.
“Hey, tough break, kid!”, Grayden sneers and flings the bat towards you, where you barely duck in time.
You see the terror take over your friend’s face, and he rushes towards the house. You want to holler at him to stop, but he’s gone before you can utter any words.
Minutes go by as you wait for Drake to emerge. Before an hour elapses, every other kid peels off towards their safe, warm homes.
Alone you stand in the twilight, with only your Louisville Slugger as company, deciding what you should do: Inventory: Baseball bat Actions:
Go Home
You hop on your bicycle and book all the way to your cozy home on Emerson Avenue. Despite your frantic calls to the police which leads to many organized searches for him, Drake is never again found. He becomes one of the mysteriously vanished children, an unsolved mystery featured on a late 1980s TV series episode.
The End
Approach the abandoned house
You stride across the baseball field, and then your courage wavers. The abandoned house on Warrior Street looms before you, as if threatening to consume you.
In the middle of the street lies the remnants of a popsicle. The ice cream truck that delivered this may have driven away from this neighborhood in a frenzied terror.
Inventory: Baseball bat
Actions:
Pick up the popsicle
Most of the popsicle sloughs off and plops back onto the asphalt into a multi-colored mess. The remaining sticky residue has hardened, grafting the twin popsicle sticks into a lopsided X.
Inventory: Baseball bat, Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Cross the lawn to the abandoned house
The abandoned white house, which has stood at the corner of Warrior Street since your parents were your age, awaits across a well-kept lawn.
Inventory: Baseball bat, Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Front Door
The front door is closed and the windows have a thick layer of grime and dead flies splayed along the inside sills. Muddy shoe prints lead from the steps and under the door.
Inventory: Baseball bat, Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Knock on the door
You knock on the door, which appears swollen in its frame. After no answer, you hammer on the door and it’s like pounding your small fists against a mighty oak.
A faint “tap-tap-tap” draws your attention to the window to the left of the door. The curtain moves as if something sped past it.
Inventory: Baseball bat, Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Break the right window
The window breaks in a pattern reminiscent of a gaping maw. You start to climb through it but you notice it’s rapidly closing. You scramble to get out but it’s too late…
Years later, people still talk about the two kids who disappeared in 1976 and were never found again.
The End
Break the left window
The window panes are tough but eventually shatter under your repeated blows. Glass lacerates the antique curtains and they fall in tatters into blackness beyond. The wood frame is broken and can easily be pushed aside. Unfortunately, the bat sustained critical damage and is now splintered in several places, bent at a bad angle from the handle. Regretfully, you drop it on the ground.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
- Last chance to Go Home!
- Climb in through the window
Climb in through the window
In this small room, only a set of broken doors lead into a darkened hallway. Looking behind you, you notice that the window is intact again, and the panes are the color of deep amber that blur and distort the outside. You can barely see the lawn, and the baseball field appears miles away.
Above you, the ceiling sags and groans. Viscous purple globs hang from the rafters.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Search the small room
As you search the small room for anything of use, you see the peeling ceiling begin to sink towards the floor. Something is ripping through to get at you. As the rotted wood and plaster splits open, merciful darkness overcomes you before you see whatever it is jump down on you.
Even in the darkness, however, you hear the distant and fading sounds of slurping and munching.
The End
Enter the darkened hallway
The floorboards creak and shift as you enter the darkened hallway. To the left, you see a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. To the right, the front door is covered with bricks, many of them crumbling from age. In front of you, the hallway stretches into deeper darkness.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Take the stairs
A set of narrow steps lead up to the second floor. The light switch is painted over, although it might not be needed as there is natural light at the top of the staircase.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Climb the Stairs
At the top of the stairs, only one room has a door that slowly creaks open upon your approach. The rest of the doors down this hallway are boarded up or bricked over. From where you stand, you see the corner of a soiled mattress with part of a leg lying on it. Could it be Drake?!?
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Enter the second floor bedroom
You enter the room, where you see a sturdy wooden door in the corner — perhaps a closet. It has deep gouges in it, and glistens with purple slime. Aside from the leg poking out, an ancient duvet covers a misshapen lump.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Inspect the Closet Door
You approach the closet and hear a muffled, whimpered cry.
“Drake?” you whisper.
The doors creak open and you see your best friend huddled in the corner, looking up at you with wide eyes.
“You … you came… “ his eyes shift and his mouth contorts into a scream. “LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!”
From the corner of your eye, the duvet rises and falls away to reveal a rotted corpse sitting up in the bed. Its stink fills the room and it grins with yellowed, elongated fangs as it lurches towards you and Drake.
Inventory: Popsicle sticks (stuck together)
Actions:
Grab Drake and run out of the room
You grab Drake and turn to find the stinking, rotting creature already before you.
How could it be so fast? is your final thought as it laughs in guttural rasp, and slices open your neck with its dirty, gnarled nails.
You collapse amongst the blood spewing from your mortal wound, and you fade into darkness as you hear Drake screaming in the dark.
The End
Thrust the Popsicle sticks toward the rotting creature
Before you can blink, the creature is upon you, however in the instant that you thrust the popsicle sticks in front of you — the rotted thing runs into it and screams in high-pitched guttural rage.
The make-shift cross burns and sinks into its forehead and it stumbles back. Pieces of it begin falling off, plopping to the floor and sizzling onto the floor. It collapses into a stinking mass and the house rumbles and shakes.
You hear shattering as the windows explode. Flying glass slashes you but you grab Drake and escape out of the bedroom window.
Once again on the ground, you see the abandoned house on Warrior Street twist and crumple into itself.
You both hobble away from the house on Warrior Street, having sprained your ankles escaping from the second story, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.
Years later, you and Drake remain friends and your children become best friends like you were in 1976. But you never speak of that house on Warrior Street for as long as you both live.
The End
Throw back the covers on the bed
You can’t stop yourself from approaching the bed, because it might be your friend under the covers.
It’s not — it turns out to be a nightmarish creature, your worst nightmares of a vampire and a rotting zombie mashed together into something more awful than you could ever imagine. It can’t be possible.
You freeze as the thing leaps onto you and starts munching away…
The End
Walk into the deeper darkness
You feel your way in the dark hallway and come to a room with light spilling from the bottom of the door. It is unlocked and you open it to find a quaint room with swept wooden floors and antique furniture.
A cold fireplace dominates the back of this room. You see a white orb sitting atop a stack of old firewood. It’s Drake’s treasured baseball.
At that moment, you hear a horrific scream upstairs. You stand frozen as you hear a crash and the death screams of your friend.
Then something is plodding down the stairs. You find whatever vestiges of energy and burst out of this room, the baseball clutched in your hand. The front door is now unblocked, and you throw open the door in your panic.
It slams behind you as if to mock you.
You survived, but all your have left of your friend is the baseball that you couldn’t bear to let go.
The End
Credits:
All images have been sourced from MorgueFile (https://morguefile.com/)
Special thanks to artists: Lazyfrau, diannehope, Sgarton, rikahi and many others whose fantastic photos allowed me to create this interactive story.
