> stand
You begin to stand. The pain beats harder and faster inside your skull. You stagger. Your foot hits something slick. Slides. You stumble, manage to remain upright. Barely.
Looking down, you see a flattened object on the floor. You pick it up.

> i
You are carrying a credit card, a glob of wax and a wrist watch.

> x wax
A flattened glob of wax. No larger than a half dollar. Covered with bits of dirt and hair from the floor. In the red light from the exit sign it looks pink.
So this is the culprit that got you into this mess. You must have slipped on it as you left the museum, fell and hit your head. Whoever locked up never noticed you lying here. Not surprising with that faulty exit sign blinking on and off.

> l
Antechamber
A cramped, bare space, little more than a passage between the steel double door to the north and another sturdy door to the south. A wooden door to the west is marked PRIVATE. The only unbroken wall is covered by a large poster.

> open wooden door with credit card
You insert the credit card into the gap between door and frame and nudge the latch. With a bit of deft manipulation you convince the latch to slide back into the lock.
You push the unlocked door open.

> w
You step through the doorway.
A blurred snapshot of a memory flashes through your mind. A dim room. The back of a couch, the arm of a chair, a stairway, limned in the pale illumination filtering through drawn curtains. A room you know well enough to walk through with the lights off. Coming down the stairs you see...a small figure...just a boy...your son?
The memory vanishes before you can take it all in. If that was your son, why is your stomach knotted?
Where is the wallet you should be carrying? Your keys? How did you get here? Who has the keys to your car -- to your home?
The bang of the door slamming shut startles you back to reality. This time, you discover, the door is not only locked, but jammed. The credit card trick won't work.
You turn your attention to your new prison cell. At least someone left the lights on. In fact someone's still here. Working late on another wax model. Then you realize you've been deceived. The man who resembles Vincent Price doesn't turn at your entrance. He's much too still. A wax model himself, his long, elegant hands, appear to shape a featureless lump of wax perched on the neck of a metal armature. The unfinished figure also seems to be at work. Wire arms extend toward a shadowy shape, seated on the table in front of it. A sign attached to the front of the table explains the strange tableau.
The remarkable Professor Wily prepares his newest exhibit -- Madame Tussaud modeling Marie Antoinette in wax.
Workshop
Except for the weird tableau in the center of the room, you might think you've walked into someone's garage workshop. You see the same same jumble of tools on the wooden shelf that runs along one wall at waist level. You notice blocks of beeswax and clay, oil paints, acrylics and gouache, bags of plaster. You can also see a grating. The lump of wax that is Madame Tussaud puts the finishing touches on the head of Marie Antoinette. Professor Wily works on the wax model of Madame Tussaud.

> look under shelf
You see nothing beneath the shelf but some boxes piled against the wall.

> move boxes
As soon as you push the boxes to one side you see an uncovered rectangular opening in the wall.
Of course. The deus ex ventilation shaft. Just large enough to crawl through, naturally.

> crawl
You get down on your knees to crawl. You begin to bend down, in order to crawl through the opening in the wall.
Something thumps onto the floor behind you.
Always wary, you jerk your head around.
The head's rolling across the floor. Marie Antoinette's wax head! It rolls like it's on wheels, glass eyes flashing as they catch the light. The head bumps into the wall, makes a peculiar bounce and comes to a rest, perched on the stump of neck, directly in front of the open ventilation duct.

> ask marie about wily
From the painted mouth emerges a strangled moan, like a mournful wind, carrying within it whispered words, so faint you realize you have heard them only after the sound, if indeed there was a sound outside your imagination, has passed.
"Wily. He is the devil. Look at what he has made me! If you agree to take me out of this place, I will let you pass. Pick me up if you are trustworthy."

> get marie
You reach for Marie Antoinette's head. You're relieved to find it feels cool and waxen to the touch. Nothing like living, or dead, flesh.

> crawl
You manage to squeeze into the ventilation shaft and crawl. .
[Press Any Key]
It's dark. The shaft seems to narrow, press against your shoulders and hips. Suddenly you can't move!
[Press Any Key]
Damn! You're stuck! You remember reading newspaper stories about rotted corpses found in chimneys and crawlspaces. The remains of those who intended to be burglars but ended up bones.
You strain to move your shoulders. You can't see anything. You could swear Marie is hanging onto your shirt by her teeth.
Frantically you push again, free yourself, wriggle forward.
[Press Any Key]
For an instant you emerge into a familiar room. The couch which you know would reveal its green and yellow floral print were the lights on, the matching recliner, the pinewood sideboard, where the keys should be, where the wallet's always thrown, next to the family photos, the large screen television in the corner.
Then the welcome feeling of familiarity vanishes. This is another living room entirely.
[Press Any Key]
Or, rather -- you realize as you take the scene in -- a dying room.
The space is practically bare. An unfinished exhibit, obviously.
The Lizzie Borden Exhibit
Three walls are papered in a dark burgundy pattern. Where the fourth wall should be, there is instead, a barrier of glass, like a shop window. There's a doorway in the eastern wall. The room's only furniture, a love seat and a small end table sit at the back of the room, beneath a framed picture. A placard is propped up against the table, but what catches the eye is the body sprawled across the love seat.

> e
As you begin to step through the doorway a voice startles you.
"Sir. Wait. Please."
Soft and quavering.
You turn. A woman stands in the middle of the room. Something tells you it is Lizzie Borden.
The "something" being the bloody axe she's waving.
Not waving, you realize, but frozen in the act. Lizzie is, naturally, another of the Professor's creations.
Luckily. Slow as you were to react.
That thought seems to awaken another voice that whispers in your mind:
Kill... Don't hestitate, or stop to think about what to use or who to use it on...if you're threatened. Just kill...and quickly...or you'll lose...everything. Don't forget.

> get axe
Gingerly you remove the axe from Lizzie's grasp. Her rigid fingers remain curled around the absent handle. Does her painted mouth move ever so subtly or is the smile only in your imagination?

> e
You step into a tangle of dark vegetation. Your foot hits a stone and you fall forward, grab a sapling to steady yourself. You must have stumbled out the back door of the Museum!
Dark, Tangled Vegetation
Dense brush and tall, rank grass blocks your vision. You're disoriented. Not sure which direction you should go. At least you're outside. A large stone with a sign stuck to it juts up from the grass.

> e
You push a branch away from your face, move forward, and bang tour knee painfully against an invisible barrier.
Glass! You can make out the dim corridor beyond.
So you're not outside after all. This is another exhibit. From here you can see your surroundings more clearly.
The Manson Family Exhibit
Dense brush and tall, rank grass partially blocks your vision. Breaks in the foliage to the east and west might indicate doorways. The glass barrier looms to one side but looking in the other direction, through the black filagree of leaves, you can make out a house.

> x bushes
Dark leaves. Bushes. Aside from the fact its in your way, what does it matter? You're no gardener. Still. There's something odd. Something about the smell.
Also, there seems to be an opening, a sort of path, leading north toward the house.

> n
You push sharp pointed leaves aside and step forward. When you pause the rustling noise continues.
You freeze. Is that breathing?
Sudden motion in the dark foliage. A fog, a creature, no taller than your chest. Gleam of an eye, or a tooth, or claw. It scrabbles forward.
You back away.Again your foot encounters resistance. Again you begin to fall. You never have cared for dark gardens. This time you catch youself against the cunningly painted backdrop of the house, so much nearer than you supposed.
The figment of your fears has vanished. You see what tripped you up. A figure, lying on its belly beneath the bushes.

> ask charlie about house
Words form, not on the motionless lips, but in your mind.
"What a pad. We checked it all out. Creepy crawled the whole thing. Couldn't just sneak up, or lurk in the shadows. Creepy crawl. That was the only way to get close enough.
We were looking in the windows, on the other side of the glass, and they never knew."

> e
You move east.
The Yard
You're in a yard in front of a white, wood frame house. Or rather, some siding nailed to the back wall of the display. There's a doorframe in the middle of the siding, but no door. The exhibit's entrance, to the west, is aligned with the open gate of a picket fence glued to a sky-blue, cloudless, wall. The similar fence and wall to the east are unbroken, as is the familiar glass barrier, just beyond a patch of sidewalk leading nowhere. Jutting up from the lawn beside the door is what looks like a for sale sign.
In the middle of the lawn stands the wax figure of a clown, weirdly out of place in this patch of faux suburbia.

> put nose on clown
You squeeze the glob of wax into a slightly more spherical shape and stick it onto the raw gap in the white-painted face. It clings there -- pink, hairy and disgusting.
The clown's little black eyes flare with delight. You can almost imagine the pudgy hands clapping.
The hands must have moved because you realize you are holding what appears to be a glowstick. A reward for your act of cosmetic mercy.

> n
You step inside. Into cold. Like the inside of a freezer. Or a morgue.
The Front Room
Illuminated by the aqueous green phosphorescence of the glowstick, the front room of the Gacy house is disappointing. Not only are there no doors or windows, there isn't even a piece of furniture. Whatever purpose Professor Wiley has in mind for the room, it is not yet apparent. At the moment it gives the impression of a raw plywood box with creaking floorboards. A vile miasma fills the air.

> x floorboards
In the light from the glowstick you can see cracks between the floorboards. You guess there might be a crawlspace underneath the room.

> hit floorboards with axe
You grip the short axe haft with both hands and chop at the floorboards. The blade bites in with a dull thunk. Nothing like the sound of a splitting skull. You jerk the blade free and bring it down again. Chips fly. Another blow and a board splinters. It doesn't take long until there's a jagged hole in the floor, leading down.

> d
You move down.
The Crawlspace
Now you know why it is called a crawlspace. About all you can do is crawl. You can barely turn over without catching your shoulder on the rough undersides of the floorboards. Cobwebs hang like tattered curtains. The floor is covered by powdery dust. In the diffused light from the glowstick, the shadows of your movements flicker around you like half-seen phantoms. The light faintly illuminates the wall of the room above. It isn't clear what direction you might move in. Down here the foetur is overpowering.

> creepy crawl
You remember Charlie Manson's advice. Creepy crawl. It all comes back. He must've imparted the skill to you in some way because you begin to slither on your belly, hardly moving. Just inching forward. Utterly silent. Pulling yourself across the dust by your breathing.
The grasping skeletal hands grow still. Your axe touches bony fingers and is snatched away, then the glowstick. But nothing reaches for you.
You aren't there. Creepy crawl quiet, you are. Just a swaying cobweb, a draft.
Then, before you realize it, you have escaped.
The Street
You are on a sidewalk, in front of a brownstone. The gray corridor, beyond the glass barrier, might pass for part of the city street. The windows of the brownstone are boarded over. Stone steps lead up to a stoop and the gaping entranceway into the building.
The street extends back west and east, or rather appears to. A few feet from where you stand the wooden pavement runs almost imperceptibly into the perspective painted on a vertical wall. The lifeless street, receding into the gloom toward a lowering gray sky, the dark hunched masses of the buildings, displaying not a single light among them, forms a scene you would not choose to enter, even if you could.
A car is parked by the curb. From its prominent tail fins you judge it to be a remnant of the fifties.

> u
You move up.
The Bedroom
More a cavern than a room. Arcane grafitti -- like cave paintings of some mad, ancient race -- covers the walls.
The scene is dominated by the room's single window. Outside lies the city, an illimitable pit of darkness strewn with dull, orange embers. Only against the lighter darkness of the sky can you make out the jagged upthrust shapes of skyscrapers, a few illuminated by the same glowing embers that fill the pit. Red, wavering light, as from a distant conflgartion, marks the horizon. Mist, like smoke, coils around the buildings.
This is no painted backdrop. Through the open window comes a sickly warm exhalation. The breath of some great beast.
Or perhaps it is the breath of the monstrous black dog crouched in front of the window.

> give marie to dog
You make a grab for Marie's head. She snaps at your fingers and somehow scuttles up to your shoulder.
You grab her by the wig and pull but she hangs onto your shirt with her teeth.
"Do not betray me, monsieur!"

> give marie to dog
Ignoring her pleas, you yank Marie's head free of your shirt.. Holding it by the beehive wig, you dangle the whimpering head in front of the black dog. The head jerks and turns. The dog's monstrous jaws open.
"Non! Non! Do not do this terrible thing! I beg of you!"

> give marie to dog
You drop the head. What is it, after all, but a wax head?
It appears almost to float downward. You can see Marie's glass eyes staring up at you in disbelief. A horrible keening vibrates in your bones, as if the gates of hell had opened to let out the screams of the numberless damned.
Then the black dog's head descends and the sound ceases.

> s
You sidle past the black dog. So close you can feel the heat from its heaving sides. Your heart jumps but true to its word, the creature makes no effort to stop you. It's busy with Marie. The wax head, that is.
The floor vibrates with the beast's contented growl. The cracking sounds must be the armature inside the fake skull. A plastic mold. Not real bone, certainly. Like everything else in this place, Marie is an illusion.
Like the window and the fire escape...
You climb over the sill and the city vanishes. You can't recall looking away, but suddenly the black pit is gone. Smoke and mirrors. At least you are somewhere else.
A Corridor
A featureless corridor. Rusty, shifting, light with no apparent source, crawls over gray concrete walls.
This must be part of the corridor you glimpsed from the exhibit. There is no evidence of the display windows here, though. To the east and west, doorways lead into even more dimly lit spaces.

> e
The door comes open easily and you step forward...out of your nightmare...into a room which is almost familiar. A living room. An ordinary living room. Obviously ordinary, even in the dark.
A Living Room
You are surrounded by dim shapes of furniture,which you know you'd recognize if you could find the light switch. A couch, a recliner. Light from somewhere - a partially drawn blind perhaps - falls across the polished top of a sideboard, the only thing in the room you can see clearly.

> x sideboard
You can't see much the sideboard, just the light glistening on the polished top. Some pale wood. Pine, perhaps. A wallet and the framed photograph are on the sideboard.

> get wallet
You take the wallet from the sideboard.

> open wallet
You open the wallet. A driver's license is inside the wallet.

> get licence
You take the driver's license from the wallet.

> x licence
The driver's license belongs to Paul Walker.
Of course. Who else would it belong to?
The photo shows a man with thick lensed glasses. Young, with a big brush of a mustache, as if to make up for the premature baldness.
What was that? A sound. A footstep?

> kill
There's a gun in your hand.
A deafening explosion.
Then in the ringing silence you're aware of something resting lightly on your shoe. A stuffed bear.
Now, even in the dim light you can make out the boy, no more than four or five, lying on his back in a pool of blood, dead eyes wide open.
What have you done?
The Execution Chamber
A glaringly lit concrete box with a clock on one wall. In the middle of the box squats an old fashioned electric chair. Strangely, even as you survey the scene, you realize you are strapped into the chair.
You are observing an exhibit.
You are the exhibit.
You can feel leather restraints biting into your wrists and the cold electrodes stuck to your arms. Your head is partially covered by a cap and you feel dampness against your scalp. The air is alive with a faint buzzing which seems to impart a vague vibration to the chair.

> l
The Execution Chamber
A glaringly lit concrete box with a clock on one wall. In the middle of the box squats an old fashioned electric chair. Strangely, even as you survey the scene, you realize you are strapped into the chair.
You are observing an exhibit.
You are the exhibit.
You can feel leather restraints biting into your wrists and the cold electrodes stuck to your arms. Your head is partially covered by a cap and you feel dampness against your scalp. The air is alive with a faint buzzing which seems to impart a vague vibration to the chair.

> wait
Time passes…

> wait
Time passes…

> wait
Time passes…

> wait
Time passes…

> wait
No time for that. You have to get out of here. Suddenly a voice fills the room, tinny and crackling, as if emerging from unseen loudspeakers. For some reason you are sure it is Professor Wily.
"Billy, meet Old Sparky. The two of you are going to be spending a lot of time together. When all's said and done, what would a murder museum be without a good electrocution exhibit? I wouldn't waste Charlie or Lizzie in the chair. Creative killers, murderers with personality, with flair, are like great performers. And Old Sparky's the star here. For the execution chamber we just needed a spear carrier, a dull little two-bit thief. Like you, Billy.
"Did you really think you were Paul Walker? He's a succesful man. A doctor. And you...? Well...you know how to pop a lock with a credit card, and creep about. I'll give you credit for that. You're willing to help a killer with his disguise or take a bloody murder weapon off someone's hands. The worst thing though was how you betrayed a friend. A woman who assisted and trusted you. Poor Marie. You treated her...dare I say it...like a piece of meat.
"Oh, I know, you were thinking about that girlfriend of yours. Mary Anna isn't it? Expense tastes, for a babysitter. Tipped you off to where the Walkers kept the cash. Very gallant, burglary. If only the boy hadn't come down the stairs. If only you hadn't panicked...If only you'd never been born.
"Shame about that dent in your wax head. Movers can be so careless.
"Ah, but now...now it's time to begin!"
[PRESS ANY KEY TO DIE]