Becca still didn’t like the idea of having no control over what was happening to them. Who was this Game Master, and what did they ultimately want?

“Follow the books to the higher ground,” Kylie mumbled, walking in small circles as she thought it through. “Follow the books to the higher ground.”

“Follow what books?” Miguel asked. “I don’t see a single book in here.”

“That must mean there’s a room in this house with books in it,” Kylie said. “Or books leading up to it. Has anyone in your group tried going upstairs yet?”

Becca shivered as she thought about the staircase she’d passed in the hallway on the way to the mudroom. “Not yet,” she said. “We didn’t even see the stairs at first, except for the ones that went down to the basement.”

“Maybe there’s a library of some sort up there,” Kylie said. “Old, creepy houses like this always have libraries, I feel like.”

“What do you think, Becca?” Danny asked from behind the camera. “Should we brave the upstairs?”

Becca looked up the steep staircase, knowing in her gut that there was something on the second floor that was put there specifically to terrify her with her worst fear.

“We have to,” she said at last, adjusting the strap of her backpack and putting her foot on the first step. “It’s the only way to find Elephant and Nacho.”

Matt

The staircase was even darker than the living room, with no windows to offer even the slightest bit of light. The steps were steep, winding, and covered in a thick, dark-green carpet that reminded Matt of moss. The air felt hotter and more stifling as they made their way up, making Matt wish he had a cold soda to guzzle. At the top of the stairs was a long hallway with a few different rooms off the sides. This house was even bigger than it looked from the outside!

“Okay,” Becca said from where she stood at the front of the pack. “One of these rooms has got to contain books. We should stick together while we check.”

They all moved together down the hall, peeking into rooms as they walked by. The first room was a bathroom, with an enormous stained tub with huge, creaturelike claw feet. The mirror that hung over the sink was cracked, so when you looked in it, your face got all scrambled up, as though it’d been broken into pieces and shoved clumsily back together.

“No thank you,” Matt muttered as he passed by the terrible mirror, his reflection gawking back at him like Frankenstein’s monster.