Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum

by R. L. Stine

  “It’s them!” you whisper to Liz. “The guys with the doctor’s masks. We must be close to Jake! Come on!”

  You have no choice but to tackle the maze on PAGE 96. Good luck!

  The face of the girl in the lab is a real horror!

  It looks as if it’s been stitched together from many different faces. Seams crisscross her cheeks. The skin is all different colors. A tuft of red hair grows right out of the middle of her forehead. One eye is blue. The other is brown. The brown eye is bigger than the blue eye. And it’s two inches higher up on her face!

  Then you realize who you’re staring at. It can only be Sybil Wicked.

  “This is a dead end,” Liz complains as she emerges from the right-hand hallway. “How about the other — hey! What are you looking at?”

  You hesitate. Sybil’s face is really scary, you think. Should you let Liz see it? Or should you spare her some nightmares?

  If you decide to show her, turn to PAGE 32.

  If you decide to spare her, turn to PAGE 44.

  A glare of yellow light blinds you. It’s as if someone just turned on the sun! You shade your eyes until they adjust.

  You jump back. You’re staring at your own face! A clone? No. You’re looking in a mirror. The room is lined with them. Pocket mirrors. Hand mirrors. Rearview mirrors. Bathroom mirrors. They cover the walls. The door. The ceiling. Even the floor!

  One bare light bulb hangs from a cord in the middle of the room. The light from that bulb bounces back and forth from mirror to mirror. Multiplying. That’s why the light is so strong.

  And getting stronger …

  “Oh, no!” Liz moans. “The bulb is glowing brighter!”

  It’s already too bright. And hot. And now there’s a sizzling sound. You squint at your reflection. Is that smoke coming out of your ears?

  The next thing you hear is Liz. Screaming. “My face!” she cries. “It’s melting!”

  “I told you you’d be sorry!” Axel yells through the door.

  You know what? For once, you wish you’d listened to him. But it’s too late now. Because you’re frying up faster than you can say …

  THE END.

  “I can’t help you escape,” Axel tells you. “But I can give you something that might help you later on.”

  He takes a round mirror from his jacket pocket. “Keep this,” he says, handing it to you. “It might come in handy.”

  “What for?” Liz asks. “Why would we need a mirror?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Axel says.

  “Can you at least tell us why we’re here?” you ask.

  Axel sighs. “My boss is Sybil Wicked,” he says. “She’s a scientist like her father, Dr. Izzy Wicked. Three years ago Miss Sybil was in a fire. Everyone thinks she died, but she didn’t. She lived — but her face was horribly burned. Since then she’s been living in secret, working on a way to make a new face for herself. But she needs someone else’s face to do it.”

  You shudder. “You mean she wants to — to steal our faces? Is that what happened to you, Axel?”

  Axel nods. “An early experiment,” he explains. “It didn’t work. But Miss Sybil kept me as her servant.”

  What a gruesome story! You can’t let it happen to you!

  “Now go,” Axel tells you and Liz. “I’ll count to a thousand before I come after you again. Good luck!”

  You tiptoe away as he starts to count.

  Sneak to PAGE 27.

  You push the green button. The ceiling above you opens up. A large pair of tongs reaches down and lifts you and Liz up through the opening in the ceiling.

  As you rise, you see the floor below speeding downward and away from you. In fact, you realize you’re not moving up at all. The tongs are holding you in place while all that is below you sinks farther and farther away!

  “Are they just going to keep us hanging here?” you wonder aloud.

  You spoke too soon. A veil of mist gathers at your feet. Your feeling of dangling in midair disappears. Solid ground is under your feet again. You peer down and see that you’re standing on a sidewalk.

  The tongs release you and vanish. When you glance up to see what happened to them, you see a row of small apartment buildings. “Hey, what is this place?” you say.

  Turn to PAGE 33.

  “Yuck! Total gross-out!” you declare.

  You’re looking at Sybil Wicked’s true face. But it isn’t really a face. It’s a head-shaped nest of purple slime. Worms and maggots slither in and out of its eye sockets. A beetle creeps along its cheek. Slimy goo drips from its chin onto the floor.

  “You’re not Dr. Wicked’s daughter!” you cry. “You’re not even human!”

  “Correct!” the Sybil-monster agrees. “I am the doctor’s most beautiful living wax creation. Or I was. Until the fire made me mutate into … this. A thing so hideous I don’t even dare to look at myself in the mirror.”

  The Sybil-monster starts to weep as she comes toward you. You can’t blame her. You’d even feel sorry for her. That is, if she wasn’t about to seize you and steal your face!

  Then something she said gives you an idea. If only you had a mirror handy!

  If you picked up a MIRROR somewhere in this adventure, go to PAGE 60.

  If you didn’t, go to PAGE 58.

  The hand belongs to Sybil Wicked. You were wrong. You didn’t get her after all. She got you. And she’s mad.

  “You’ve made a lot of trouble for me,” she snarls. “Now I’m going to make some for you.”

  You know she’s not kidding. You struggle. But her grip is too strong to break.

  “Let me go!” you hear Liz yelling. Out of the corner of your eye, you see her. She’s trying to break away from Sybil’s mad servant, Axel. But she’s not having any luck.

  Sybil and Axel drag you and Liz to the other end of the huge room. There they stand you with your backs against a lavender screen. “Turn on the Suction Screen, Axel,” Sybil orders.

  Axel flips a giant purple switch. An instant later, you and Liz are sucked backward and pinned against the screen. You pull with all your might. But you can’t move your arms and legs.

  Go to PAGE 64.

  You search your pockets frantically. But it’s no use. You never carry a mirror.

  The Sybil-monster grabs you. She holds you with one hand. With the other, she wheels the Face Lifter forward.

  “Your face is mine,” she croons. “Relax. Don’t fight it.”

  Her putrid flesh is so horrifying that you can’t even struggle. You hang limp in her grasp, staring helplessly.

  The mechanical arms of the Face Lifter reach toward you. Tiny drills whirl. Pincers snap. Scalpels slice.

  You can’t bear to watch anymore. You shut your eyes.

  Turn to PAGE 110.

  “We’ve got to see what they’re doing!” you whisper.

  You and Liz tiptoe along the conveyor belt. Finally, you can see the room at the end of the tunnel. Two men are lifting Jake off the conveyor belt. His body hangs limp. You watch in terror as they load him into a tall glass tube and shut the door.

  The room is filled with these human-sized tubes. They look like big test tubes, but they have doors. Each tube also has a clear hose sticking out of the top, connecting it to a big pipe on the ceiling. And Jake is inside one of them!

  “How can we get him out of there?” Liz whispers.

  Before you can answer, the conveyor belt starts up again with a jolt. You and Liz are knocked off your feet and carried down the tunnel … toward the test tube room!

  Then you notice that the air around you is getting damp and heavy. And you’re feeling sleepy. Very sleepy!

  You spot purple smoke hissing from under the conveyor belt. Sleeping gas! It registers in your brain, but your body is now helpless to do anything about it! It’s all you can do to rock your head to the side so you can see where you’re going.

  No surprise there. You and Liz are headed straight into the waiting hands of two men in gloves and doctor�
�s masks!

  Turn to PAGE 133 to see what happens next!

  You slap your pockets frantically. Axel gave you a mirror after you rescued him from the Deboner. What did you do with it?

  The Sybil-monster’s disgusting, rotting breath is right in your face. If she gets any closer the worms from her face will crawl over to yours. Where is that mirror?

  There! You find the small disk in your back pocket. Pulling it out, you thrust it in the Sybil-monster’s face.

  “The horror!” she cries as she sees her own reflection. “The horror! The horror!”

  She said she couldn’t bear to look at herself in a mirror. Will it stop her?

  It does — and more! The Sybil-monster begins to melt into a pool of purple liquid. The nest of creepy-crawlies spreads out over the puddle and begins to slurp it up. Soon there’ll be nothing left of Sybil Wicked.

  Voices approach. It’s Liz — with a mob of reporters! “They’re here for Sybil’s press conference,” she explains.

  Flashbulbs go off all around you. Reporters buzz with questions. The press has arrived just in time to catch Sybil’s final moments on film. “What a story!” one of them cries.

  It sure is. And you and Liz are the real heroes, in …

  THE END.

  “Down,” you decide. “Let’s go!”

  You and Liz bound down the escalator steps two at a time. You’re running … running … running….

  Finally, you slow to a walk. You’re exhausted!

  “Where does this thing end?” Liz grumbles. “I’ve never been on such a long escalator.”

  You’ve been wondering about something else. “Does it seem to you like this thing is slowing down?” you ask.

  Soon there’s no question. The escalator is slowing down.

  Then it stops completely.

  Then it starts moving again. In the other direction!

  Turn to PAGE 31.

  Before you can react, Sybil hauls you up and ties you to a chair. Liz is already tied to another one next to you. Your nose throbs and your lip feels like it might be split. Liz has a black eye.

  Sybil paces, grumbling to herself. “These faces are ruined!” she whines. “Flattened! Bent! Swollen! I can’t use them now. They look as bad as the one I already have!”

  “Too bad,” you remark. “I guess that means you’ll have to let us go, doesn’t it?”

  Sybil laughs. “Hah! I can’t let you go now. You could get me in trouble! No, I think I’ll keep you for my other experiments.”

  “Wh-what other experiments?” Liz stammers.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Sybil says, smirking.

  Not soon enough, as far as you’re concerned. Axel carts you away to a giant hamster cage. The only thing there is to do there is run on a giant exercise wheel. Which gets really boring, really fast. After a week, you’re just wishing for …

  THE END.

  You’re left-handed? Congratulations! The Executioner is holding your right arm. But your strongest arm is free.

  Great gobs of wax hang in hideous shreds from the Executioner’s face, arms, and neck. He’s still peeling.

  Underneath the wax, patches of burned and raw flesh ooze! He’s half flesh, half wax. But he’s all bad!

  His blade is aimed at your neck. You reach your left hand up and grab the handle of the ax.

  The Executioner pulls it back. You grit your teeth and yank as hard as you can. His waxy hands can’t hold on. He lets go!

  But his sudden loss of grip surprises you. You go flying backwards. And so does the ax!

  You watch in horror as the blade comes spinning through the air. Right toward your face!

  Turn to PAGE 24.

  “Fetch the Face Lifter!” Sybil commands. “And hurry! It’s almost time for my press conference!”

  Axel disappears down the aisles of shelves. A moment later he returns. He’s pushing a shiny stainless steel machine in front of him. It looks like an octopus, with lots of metal arms that wave in the air. Each arm is tipped with a different lethal-looking instrument.

  “Excellent,” Sybil gloats. She and Axel bend over the machine, making last-minute adjustments.

  “There’s the Chin Skinner,” Liz moans. “And that one must be the Eye Popper. And —”

  “Shut up,” you beg. You don’t want to hear it! Without thinking, you slide away from Liz. That’s when you realize you might have a chance after all. Because you can move — sideways! You can slide along the Suction Screen!

  You make sure that Axel and Sybil are still busy with the Face Lifter. Then you start slithering. It’s hard work, but you slide all the way to the giant purple switch. If you can only move your hand enough to flip it to OFF …

  Flip to PAGE 117.

  “Mr. Dunning!” you, Liz, and Jake all cry at once. “What are you doing here?”

  “Good question,” Mr. Dunning says angrily. “I might ask you the same thing! I thought I told you to wait in the lobby!”

  “Ah … well … we … uh …” Jake stammers.

  “Never mind that now. I’ll deal with you three later. Maybe missing this wonderful trip was punishment enough. We saw everything there was to see and even met the owner of the museum himself, Dr. Wicked. Haven’t seen him lately, though. Anyway, you three really missed out on a lot. I hope you’ve learned a lesson after this experience.”

  “Oh, we sure have, Mr. Dunning,” you say. “We definitely, positively, sure have!”

  THE END

  “Whoa!” you cry. You’re on a metal slide, bouncing off stone walls. Down, down, down you go. Finally, you land with a THUD.

  “Wh-where are we?” Liz stammers as she picks herself up.

  You gaze around. You’re in a windowless little room that looks like a dungeon cell. Greenish water oozes down slimy stone walls and makes puddles at the bottom.

  In one corner, there’s a wooden door. It’s held closed by a rusted chain and a big padlock. The door, chain, and lock are thickly covered with spider webs. Ugh! You shudder. Spiders give you the creeps!

  “I don’t know where we are,” you reply, brushing yourself off. “But I know we’ve got to get out of here before that weirdo Axel finds us.”

  “Yeah,” Liz agrees. “And if we don’t get back to the wax museum before Mr. Dunning misses us, we’ve had it!”

  You don’t really want to go through the spider webs to the door. You gaze up at the chute that dumped you here. You might be able to climb back up. But will the skull-faced Axel be waiting for you?

  If you try the locked door, turn to PAGE 14.

  If you try to climb the chute, turn to PAGE 114.

  “Don’t look down!” you warn Liz. It’s too late. She’s already seen what you’ve seen. She knows hot wax when she smells it and she’s panicked!

  “I’m not waiting around to be dropped into that!” Liz says, batting her arms against the sides of the wind funnel.

  Suddenly, Liz’s arms break through the solid wall of wind. Right before your eyes, she is sucked out of the funnel!

  “Liz!” you shout. Seconds later, her arm reaches in from outside, grabs your arm, and yanks you out, too!

  “Ugh!” you say, trying to catch your breath. “My stomach feels like it exploded! I didn’t think we were going to make it for a minute there.”

  “Uh-oh,” Liz gulps as she looks around. “I have a feeling we’re not out of danger yet….”

  Turn to PAGE 9.

  A blowtorch! “Excellent!” you cry, and turn on the gas.

  WHOOSH! A blue flame shoots out. You aim the fire at the nearest zombie Sybil — number 68. “Back off!” you command.

  The Sybils gasp and step back. But Sybil 68 is too close to the flame. Her face turns shiny. Then her mouth starts to sag.

  “She’s melting,” Liz gasps. “Hey! She’s made of wax!”

  Liz is right! And you’re saved!

  Waving the torch, you advance on the wax Sybils. “Take that, candleheads!” you shout. Wax figures melt lik
e ice cream on a hot day. Then you hear a female voice. Shrieking.

  “My models! My beautiful wax me’s! Ruined!”

  It’s the real Sybil. She’s there, too. But you have no idea which one she is! There’s only one way to handle this. Shutting your eyes, you spray fire until the blowtorch is empty.

  Silence. You open your eyes. Purple wax coats the floor as far as you can see. And there’s no sign of the real Sybil.

  You must have torched her. “Wow!” you say. “What a —”

  Your sentence ends in a gurgle. Because a hand shoots out from behind a lump of wax and grabs your throat.

  Go to PAGE 57.

  “Help!” Liz cries. “Our friend is trapped in the museum and we can’t find anyone to help us rescue him!”

  “Calm down,” Axel says. “There’s a phone in the backseat. Get in! You can call for help.”

  The limo’s back door opens. You spot the phone. But that’s not all you see. This car is equipped with the works! There’s a television, a refrigerator filled with sodas and snacks, and a full music library.

  “Wow! This car is loaded!” you declare.

  The driver laughs. “That’s right. Hop in and help yourselves to a soda! Put on some music!”

  Your parents always told you never to get into a stranger’s car. On the other hand, you do need to call for help — and a cold soda sure would taste good!

  What should you do?

  If you decide to get into the limo, go to PAGE 118.

  If you decide you’d better not, go to PAGE 135.

  You’re right-handed? Really? Too bad. The Executioner grabbed your right hand. So you can fight back only with your weaker left one.