<<set $crumpet = 0>>
<<goto "Shadow of yesterday">><<mouseover>>Double-click this passage to edit it.<<onmouseover>><<set $message = "Go.">><<replace "#message">>$message<</replace>><<onmouseout>><<set $message = "Let be what should be.">><<replace "#message">>$message<</replace>><</mouseover>>
<span id="a">
Here there is a table.
<<if $apple neq 1>>On it there is an <<link "apple">><<set $apple = 1>><<replace "#message">>You got the apple.<</replace>><<replace "#a">><<include $passage>><</replace>><</link>>.<</if>>
</span>
<<textbox "$words" "" $passage autofocus>>
the amulet bride, the nail that broke the coffin, potroasts for aye, indarius
astrolabe, pickled eye bone, a star made by chipping a rock
squash gourd bulbs melon peaches pears brown pears papaya pitaya mango avocado almond fruit durian jackfruit bread fruit nutmeg fruit potato fruit pumpkin mandrake oak apples cashew fruits sweet potatoes<<set $passage = passage()>>\
<<if tags().includes("noheader")>><<else>>\
!!!!Granville Drive -- $passage
<<link "Inventory">><<set $backinventory = passage()>><<goto Inventory>><</link>>
----
<</if>>\
\
<<widget "blank">>\
<</widget>>\!!!!Granville Drive -- <<timed 0.01s>>$passage<</timed>>
<<link "Leave inventory">><<goto $backinventory>><</link>>
----
A small rock.<<if $box is 1>>
A fancy cedarwood [[box|The cedarwood box]].<</if>><<if $lock is 1>>
An interesting looking lock.<</if>><<if $key is 1>>
A chunky old key.<</if>><<if $crumpet is 8>>
A partly eaten crumpet.<</if>><<if $stool is 1>>
A useful stool made of curly metal.<</if>><<if $story is 1>>
An amazing story to tell your kids.<</if>>Radio towers in the near distance are decked with many thousands of flags, of many colours. Birds sweep like swallows through the air around their tops.
Dry leaves are scattered like dandruff on the concrete around the opening of an [[old well shaft|Down the well]].
In the distance you see a [[small shed|Decrepit shed]], which has mostly collapsed as if it could not bear the hardness of the concrete under it.<<if $nose is 1>>
In another distance you know of a bit of bare ground where there is a paper nose you can [[worm inside|Paper nose]].<</if>>
Nearby the concrete area has a lower level, like one stair-step seven feet high. Real stair-steps cut slantwise down through the upper level to reach the lower level. Down there is a white, insubstantial seeming house not much bigger than [[its door|Little white house: entryway]]. A fossilised Tyrannosaurus rex skull is embedded in the concrete under a window.Unreachable light comes from a hole high above.
In [[one direction|Earwig parlour]] there is a small smell, beyond the light and beyond the end of the concrete floor. In the [[other direction|Forgotten parlour]] there is a dimmer but closer light, and some steps, with even a metal handrail.The broad floor is paved with glass tiles, and beneath some of them are lighted compartments lined with silver foil, housing antiques such as photographs, tinsel, a rusty doorbell, moth-eaten flags, mineral samples, etc..
On the east end of the room there is an [[archway|Little white house: garage]] with white curtains, and a sign above it saying "Garage", lighted with lightbulbs (hard to tell they are lit in the already well lighted room).
On the west end of the room there is a large, heavily sealable, [[round door|Little white house: kitchen]] like a ship's hatch.
The [[front door|Shadow of yesterday]] looks small in a white wall that is bare except for a tawny plaid coat on a wire hanger on a hook, and a few names written next to lines showing how tall the people are (one is tall enough to even reach the coat).Spacious as an empty warehouse. Good old Danzel is driving his filemot 1980 Ford Fairmont sedan hither and yon through a <<if $hieroglyphs is 1>>[[maze|Maze]]<<else>>[[maze|Not an Egyptian]]<</if>> of tall, foggy, transparent plastic walls. He is practising using the Egyptian Hieroglyphics marked in matte white on the plastic, and the squeaks of his tires as he makes sharp turns is like clumsy birdsong.
A tall [[aluminum slide|Little white house: entryway]] is in one corner, pointed into some curtains.
A knobbly [[manhole|Warm drains]] is in another corner, past some black rolling tool cabinets.A spacious, well-equipped kitchen, with everything well-polished, even the stains on the granite countertop and on the "stainless" steel ware.
One square white cupboard the size of a windowpane is alone in one wall, right up <<if $stool is 1>>where you can only [[reach it|Little white house: rat parlour]] with your stool.<<else>>out of reach.<</if>>
On a round table is piled a raucous assortment of delicacies: blue strawberries made of chalky chocolate in laurel wreaths, ox eyebrows in spearmint sauce, pompous grass, <<if $crumpet is 0>>[[dripping crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 1>>[[good and savoury crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 2>>[[crisp and wholesome crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 3>>[[crumpets that still look good|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 4>>[[crumpets that are somehow still crispy|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 5>>[[rich crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 6 or $crumpet is 7>>[[tantalising crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 8 and $key neq 1>>[[soft and melting crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>><<if $crumpet is 8 and $key is 1>>[[mostly eaten crumpets|You want to eat a crumpet]]<</if>>, sweet wax sticks, mounds of stewed and chilled greens like mustard greens and watercress, and wicked looking cinnamon and black-currant croissants.
Keeping warm on the stove is a compote of assumptions, gourd flesh, and apricots, which smells thick and untrustworthy.
There is a meagrely-sized, strongly <<if $key is 1>>[[locked|Doesn't work]]<<else>>locked<</if>> bookcase by a column. Through the glass you can see the titles: The Amulet Bride, The Nail that Broke the Coffin, Potroasts for Aye, Sails of Yor, and Indarius.
The great, heavy, round, sealable [[door|Little white house: entryway]] looks like it was made to trip people carrying trays of food or running from a fire.<<set $kitchen = 1>>A serpent, a basket, a falcon, a reaper, and four ears of wheat.
[[Left|Oops!]] [[Right|Maze ]]Stacks of old-fashioned windmill blades, a large plastic penguin which looks threatening in the gloom, tall canisters making soft, rhythmic hisses, and dark grit like fertiliser on the stone floor.
There is a narrow space between two cardboard boxes which you can just [[squeeze through|Forgotten parlour]].
A vertical beam of pale light from an ajar manhole cover shows a [[ladder|Little white house: garage]] leading up to it.A knife, an ear of wheat, a vulture, a falcon, and ten vases beside a pair of hands.
[[Left|Maze ]] [[Straight|Oops!]]Apparently a wrong turning: you wind up right in front of Danzel's car.
With a squeal of tires, the shiny bumper rams into you, and you are bumped back in time.
<<if $chasing is 1>>[[Sorry, Danzel.|Little white house: back door]]<<else>>[[Sorry, Danzel.|Little white house: garage]]<</if>>You find at the back of the garage a large, bare wall, and a plain [[back door|Forest view]].A feather, two eyes, two reapers, a sickle, and a knife.
[[Left|Oops!]] [[Straight|Maze ]] [[Right|Oops!]]A winowing fan, three hands, three falcons, a horned serpent, an ear of wheat, and a feather.
[[Left|Maze ]] [[Right|Oops!]]A serpent, a horned serpent, a feather, six vases, a falcon, and an Anubis.
[[Left|Oops!]] [[Straight|Maze ]]A basket, an owl, two knives, seven ears of wheat, and a feather.
[[Left|Oops!]] [[Right|Little white house: back door]]Opening the back door, the light from the garage shines out through nighttime darkness, lights up a patch of rough grass spotted with dandelions (which shouldn't be open this late), and beyond that it illuminates the first and a few further trunks and undergrowth of a dense forest.
Stepping into the light just outside the door is some hideous creature. The body is of a leopard, the head of a dwarf, with a lion's mane and teeth, and you just see it has the tail of a scorpion and remember that it's called a "manticore" as you turn to [[run|Run!]].
Don't forget to reverse the right and left turns you made in coming.<<set $chasing = 1>>[[Left|Run! ]] [[Straight|Oops!]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>You'd get lost because you don't read hieroglyphics.
It would be interesting to find out what's on the other side of the maze though.
[[Humph.|Little white house: garage]]Green carpet, dome lights dimmed with dust and dead flies; a worn spacesuit slumps in a corner, an ambulance is parked on the carpet with a [[dark interior|Inside the dark ambulance]], a lampstand of stained glass that looks black stands by a broken candelabra.
A framed [[collage|The collage]] of newspaper clippings is on a faded teal wall under mounted antelope horns clothed with spider webs.
Some concrete steps with a metal rail lead up to a [[dark passage|Down the well]].
It seems that you could squeeze under a black armoire blocking a [[gap|Warm drains]] in the wall.The walls, or more accurately the inside of the room, is covered in wallpaper, crumpled to fit the tiny room's amorphous shape. <<if $lock is 1>>There is a little tear, baring the dirt of the "wall".<<else>>There is not much reason to notice a little [[bulge|The bulge]] in the wallpaper.<</if>> Hundreds of staples are stapled in the paper for decoration, and several seem to have rat hair caught under them.
You can see all this because the centrepiece of the bottom of the room is a large lightbulb in a large brass socket or lantern base. As well as giving a little light to make the staples gleam, the bulb rotates slowly and plays quiet, tinny music.
The dim light doesn't reach far out of the entrance of the room, leaving it mostly in [[darkness|Down the well]].You notice it anyway, because you have good eyes honed by insatiable curiosity.
Tearing a hole in the wallpaper, you uncover a lock.
[[Interesting lock.|Earwig parlour]]<<set $lock = 1>>[[Straight|Run! ]] [[Right|Oops!]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>[[Straight|Oops!]] [[Right|Run! ]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>[[Left|Oops!]] [[Straight|Run! ]] [[Right|Oops!]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>[[Left|Oops!]] [[Right|Run! ]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>[[Left|Yes!!]] [[Straight|Oops!]]<<timed 2.5s>><<goto "Dodge!">><</timed>>Out of the maze, and you see the blessedly familiar empty gun rack on the garage wall, and the slide. You seem to have lost the manticore back there: you can see it through the plastic walls as a dark blob going here and there.
You hear an eerie whistle, repeated until the manticore seems to find its way back, and a door slams. The sound of Danzel's driving continues.
Now at least you have an awesome story to tell your children.
[[Thank goodness.|Little white house: garage]]<<set $chasing = 0>><<set $story = 1>>The manticore catches up with you, snapping and snarling with a disturbingly bizarre combination of human and bestial sound.
You dash off in a random direction, and crash right into Danzel's roving car, which collision knocks you back in time.
[[Owch.|Little white house: back door]]You just catch a glimpse of a tiny table and tiny chairs (the tablecloth is a quarter napkin), tiny dishes of shell and seed husk with remains of a meal of roast cricket leg with a bread crumb and some dandelion seed tea, a postage stamp on a wall made of tiny grey bricks, a stove made of a thimble and a metal straw, tiny laundry hanging on the spokes of a cast iron spur, a tiny sword forged from a needle (the pommel still has the eye of the needle), a saddle cleverly fashioned from a clothespin, and a...<<timed 2s>><<goto "Slam!">><</timed>>The splayed boards of the walls let in almost more light than they keep out. You can see some wooden skis, a broken candle the size of a small tree,<<if $stool neq 1>> a <<if $kitchen is 1>>[[stool|The stool looks useful]]<<else>>stool<</if>> of curly metal,<</if>> roller skates with chipped paint depicting fanged clowns, and a bashed in guitar case with rustling inside.
Outside the broken door you can see [[places to go|Shadow of yesterday]].[[So you take it.|Decrepit shed]]<<set $stool = 1>><<if $crumpet is 0>>It tastes surprisingly savoury and good.
[[Nice.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 1>>Crisp, sticky, with a wholesome tone.
[[Good.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 2>>Though you've eaten two, another still tastes good.
[[That's nice.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 3>>You wonder how they are still crispy.
[[Hmm.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 4>>This one is a little browner, and tastes more rich.
[[Yes.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 5>>Maybe you should stop eating crumpets.
[[Mm-hmm.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 6>>Maybe you should stop eating crumpets.
[[Mm-hmm.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 7>>That one is a little smaller though, and looks so soft...
[[Yes.|Little white house: kitchen]]<<set $crumpet += 1>><<else>><<if $crumpet is 8>>You really can't eat any more crumpets now.<<if $key neq 1>>
You seem to have uncovered a lump of something hard in all the food.
[[Pick it out of the stickiness.|The key][$key = 1]]<<else>>
[[Okay.|Little white house: kitchen]]<</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>><</if>>
It seems clean, but gives off a sense of being extremely old and worn. There is something creepy about the back, like there might be a body on the gurney back there. <<if $box is 1>>There is still some bounce in the seats.<<else>>As you bounce on the seat, your foot knocks against [[something|The cedarwood box]] under the dashboard.<</if>>
[[Get out of the car.|Forgotten parlour]]The indistinct photographs show scenes of starvation, school sport teams, and ticker tape parades for victories in war, but the indistinct text talks about various other things.
It's sitting on the top edge of some wainscoting, not fastened to the wall.
<<if $collage is 1>>There is a ragged [[hole|Paper nose]] eaten in the wall.<<else>>[[Push it aside.|The collage][$collage = 1]]<</if>>
[[Look away.|Forgotten parlour]]A crumbly [[hole|Forgotten parlour]] in the ground like a mole hill.
This bit of ground is covered by a large nose made of white paper, sunlight on the outside making it pretty bright inside.<<timed 4s>><<set $nose = 1>><<goto "Sneezed!">><</timed>>The paper nose quivers, and launches you in a great sneeze: you land painfully on concrete a ways away.
[[Ow.|Shadow of yesterday]]It is a little black key; still rather sticky.
[[I found a key.|Little white house: kitchen]]It's an ornate looking cedarwood box, a little thicker and narrower than a briefcase.
<<if $box neq 1>>[[I have a box.|Forgotten parlour][$box = 1]]<<else>><<if $lock neq 1>>It has a place for a lock, but, because it has no lock to unlock, it cannot be opened.
[[Strange.|Inventory]]<<else>><<if $key neq 1>>You have a lock for it now, but the lock is locked.
[[Hum.|Inventory]]<<else>>Now that you have it unlocked, you see it contains an astrolabe, a pickled eye bone, a star shape made by chipping a stone, some other things, and a hardback [[book|The grey book]] with old grey cloth binding. There is nothing on the outside of the book to indicate what it is.<</if>><</if>><</if>><<if $hieroglyphs is 1>>All the words have crumbled off, sadly.
[[Sigh.|Inventory]]<<else>><<set $hieroglyphs = 1>>It's about Hieroglyphics, and in the first few pages it says:
"These be the most important markings, taken from ancient street signs:
If there be a falcon, and no ears of wheat, turn right.
If there be a falcon and one ear of wheat, turn left.
If there be a falcon and two or more ears of wheat, turn right.
If there be an eye, without either a sythe, or a falcon, go straight.
If there be vases less than seven, do not go left.
If there be an owl, with..."
But the words begin to fade and crumble off the pages. Perhaps your eyes are not worthy to read this book?
[[Hopefully you can remember what you read.|Inventory]]<</if>>Your key is too chunky for this lock.
[[Oh well.|Little white house: kitchen]]...when a rat slams the door.<<timed 0.4s>><<goto "Little white house: kitchen">><</timed>>