Choose Your Own Adventure #52: Ghost Hunter

A long time ago I solved the mysterious murder of Harlowe Thrombey, overcoming pistol-whipping, crushing existential dread and a broken system that seemed more concerned with covering its own rear than actually solving the case. I had no idea then that there was a sequel. You can imagine my excitement. Throw in the fact that ghosts are going to be involved and this one sounds like it can't possibly fail.

Spooky stuff is going down.

Like a Rocky film, we start by quickly recapping the previous installment. After my heartless refusal to act as a pint-sized body guard for a one-percenter named Harlowe Thrombey he got murdered. I was able to redeem my appalling apathy toward my fellow human unit somewhat by solving the crime. Since then my detective skills have been in demand, but the crushing boredom and lack of purpose that comes from b.s. like "helping others" proved inescapable.

Like I predicted, the mystery game lost its luster. My other prediction, about becoming a drug-abusing human derelict, was less accurate. I'm not even mad, because something even more righteous than the "peaked as a child death spiral" occurred. I read an article in some magazine that was all "there might be ghosts, bro!" and this was enough to convince me that this would be a good use of my time and resources. 

Besides, the "Institute of Occult Studies" a.k.a. the "We don't know what happened to your dog, cat, or virgin daughter so stop asking building" is just down the street. I decide to roll up and get equipped for some serious paranormal investigating. Suffice it to say the lame "skeptics" are ignored. Harlowe's ghost is out there and since I helped put him into that state with my cowardly and selfish refusal to help I'm just the one to find him.

Blaming bad football seasons on supernatural evil since 1922.

I go to see a Professor Zieback and he conforms to pretty much every academic stereotype there is. Books everywhere, tweed jacket, pipe smoking...all that's missing is sexual misconduct. Surprisingly, he's less than enthusiastic to mentor me, but on the other hand is quick to point out "ghosts exist!" but quickly qualifies that with some "are we really here" philosophical self-abuse. When called out he says it's "complicated." Something tells me this guy gets lots of "very poors" on those student evaluations.

He then explains that ghosts can't physically hurt you, but you might get injured running away like a little sissy bitch or the like. I don't know, that strategy served me pretty well at Chimney Rock. Before I can get any more evasive half-answers and useless theoretical navel-gazing he's out the door, leaving me to consider the merits of the kind of idiocy that only someone with an advanced degree can produce.

    "I'd love to talk more, but I've got to give another award-winning lecture."

It turns out the entire choice to go to the Satan School was just a blind alley that takes you to the same page you'd go to if you just skip it. Worthless tutorial sections in a Choose Your Own Adventure Book? Yeah, almost. It didn't quite reach the level of "The pages have numbers, which you will use to navigate the story! Try turning to page 7 now! No, try again! Almost. Go back to the top of the page to reread these instructions" ridiculousness, but still seemed like a waste of time.

The girl that caused me to waste a ton of time exploring the absurdity of mortality last time wants to come with me. How about "no."

I'm so stoked to start holding out an electronic device of some sort and saying things like "If you're a ghost, now is the time to say stuff," but instead get drawn into some lame human drama where some niece who was related to the decedent just shows up at my door. See, this is why I got out of the Mystery Industry for the greener pastures of pseudo-science. I get some dreadful "woe is me" tale about wills and diamond investments and oh, by the way there's a huge diamond in the mansion that I have a quasi-legal right to even though some other guy owns the house and the rule of law doesn't really work like that so go find it using your ghost hunting as a cover to commit grand theft and give it to me instead of, say, following the law.   

To make it even more ridiculous, she implies that the new owner of the property is a drug-dealer, arms smuggler and/or bomb maker for terrorists (!!!!). Yeah, really. Give up your promising career in corpse-bothering to steal blood diamonds from the American Taliban. There needs to be a stronger word than "no" for this nonsense.

Can't wait to see where the Bush family ranks!

The book has the balls to over-rule both decisions I've made. Yeah, no kidding. I'm told that I change my mind and decide that stealing something that some stranger that randomly materialized at my house and has the most tenuous of claims on is actually a really good idea. I mean, I'm sure she didn't vilify the rightful owner just to make her position more sympathetic or anything.

Then I decide I need Little Miss "Maybe he committed suicide to prove God doesn't exist" on my side. Here I'm given a choice between "asking Jenny for help" and "offering to help her" and I decide to rage quit.

"They got a real nice gym, cable teevee, a toilet right next to your bed..."

Yup, didn't even finish this one. This may be the worst Choose Your Own Adventure book ever, certainly the worst one I've reviewed so far. First the meaningless bit with the professor, then two choices that are promptly nullified by a "but thou must!" The whole point of these books, again, is to allow you some limited agency to direct what happens. As bad as coin tosses and "if the name of the current day ends in 'day'" are, this was the bottom. Getting railroaded by a book written in 1985. No thanks.

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Twistaplot #6 Crash Landing

After leaving my wimpy personal submarine for no good reason and promptly being turned into a beautiful corpse by a sea snake I've decided to go back to Twistaplot, where I won't have to worry about issues like "high expectations" or "I remember this being better." Although in fairness both of those would have applied at one point, but after revisiting several books in this series I've come to the conclusion that my younger self might have actually been less than discerning in regards to free time activity. Well, expect for those thousands of hours of Ms. Pac Man. That still goes on the top of every resume, right next my Super Mario high scores. Anyways, let's just accept that this probably isn't going to be very good and dive right in.

"Hi kids, we're home early!"

Having unquestionably the worst cover ever certainly doesn't help matters. I mean, look at this shit. There's a lot not to like, but what puts this over the top is the positioning and facial expression of the couple at the bottom, both of which suggest the parents walking in just as they were starting to "get busy" more than the aftermath of plane crash. I could also mention the lame fire, the poorly drawn plane that is conveniently labelled as a "747" the fact that the "crash landing" apparently caused no damage whatsoever to the forest and so on, but I want to keep this review under the 100k word limit.

I'm flying home from Argentina. In keeping with the Twistaplot theme of amateur athletics gone horribly wrong I'm told I won the trip to South America in a balance beam competition. My thoughts are focused on my family and school and getting back to them and we actually get a fair amount of throwaway details about my alleged connections to other human units that I won't bore you with. Still, I'm philosophical about the whole experience, noting that my "Spanish is improved, at least." See kids, Spanish is the official language of Argentina. These books are educational and not at all overly snarky, mind-rotting garbage.

Everything else I know about Argentina. Not pictured: Evita, soccer.

Suddenly the plane starts bouncing around and flying erratically. Either it just fell in love or we've got some mechanical issues.We then get a long exposition dump delivered by a guy name "Wayne" that goes on for much longer than necessary and boils down to "plane crashing, jump y/n." For a normal person this might be a tough call, but with my extensive sugar glider background it's a snap. Make the jump, float harmlessly into inhospitable territory, maybe survive longer by eating Wayne's corpse, no problem.

Suicide is preferable to participating in a Democracy.

Things go well and I float my way down, eventually deciding to land in a nice hospitable jungle. Before it can bring me down (huh) I find some of the other jumpers, including Wayne and two other people that are described as "young people" on a rocky shelf overlooking the jungle. I get a choice between trying some mountain climbing with the punk kids or following Wayne into almost certain death on an "ice field." Better stick with Wayne, since he got more than two words of description and actually seems semi-competent. Yeah, we'll be fine.

Only a few hundred more miles of this and we'll be safe.

Wayne more than vindicates my trust by promptly plunging to what I assume to be his horrible death. Jeff, the male half of the young couple, displays his heartless pragmatism by declaring "he's had it!" but I've got to go check out what happened. And get the knife back. Altruism and basic decency were left back on the crashing plane. So sorry.

I come up with this convoluted mountain-climbing rig that I hope can rescue Wayne's ruined mortal shell while keeping that very useful blade. Incredibly, it works. Even more amazingly, Wayne is remarkably uninjured and is mostly concerned about how I unbuttoned his shirt while he was out, becoming pretty accusatory for a guy that just cheated death. "It was for medical reasons, Wayne! I didn't do anything to your unconscious body, honest!" 

With the whole "serious injury groper" issue settled, it's revealed that Wayne can't walk, so he actually is hurt pretty bad. Well, at least when I get back to school, somehow, I can reflect on how my paramedic skills improved...just a little. We decide to stay the night together, no weird stuff honest, and hope we're spotted by a rescue plane.

I then have to make a choice based only on if I "saw or heard an airplane today." Yeah, never thought I'd be happy about that airport expansion, but there it is. Midway through a night of camping where nothing out of propriety happened, I swear, we hear a plane. Next morning we lay down cloth strips in a giant "H" to symbolize "help." This touches off some of the most painful wackiness imaginable as we get a plane communicating with us via skywriting who then thinks we've fallen in love with him and honestly I can feel the interior of my head being damaged recapping this.

Everything just totally falls apart. We meet the other survivors, get this story about a "diamond smuggler," realize that this explains Wayne's bizarre reaction to my totally clinical exploration of his body and turn him in when we get rescued. All this nonsense happens in rapid fire, with no choices to break it up. I'm a hero, Spanish marginally better, guilty punished, blah blah.

It's too bad because I was liking this one right until I had to make a choice that was a glorified coin toss and then everything just went into a cocked hat. I actually got pretty lucky with my run, other paths give you b.s. like "if today's date is an even number" and "if you play a musical instrument" to make choices. This gets no love from me. The whole point is the highly limited agency to guide the story and once that's gone there's nothing left but cringe-inducing attempts at humor and blood diamond-fueled touch freaks. 

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.