I gripped my flashlight and a plate of fish and chips as I walked into the kitchen. There was a container of regular fries and ketchup in my pocket, mainly because they could fit in there and I needed my flashlight. The mint green really clashed with the faded red carpet, and I wasn’t sure if I could last until the floors were restored. I might have to try a brown for the walls, but I didn’t want to put a brown color in my kitchen. I wanted a mint green. These hard wood floors I knew would be gorgeous, and I…

…was one hundred percent distracting myself from what I had to do.

It didn’t help that I walked into the living room, admiring the forest green as I ignored the brown shag carpet. That forest green was gorgeous, though. So much better than the paneling. And with the fake ceilings gone, I really wanted to decorate those ceilings with something. The green also brought out the beautiful built in bookshelf in the entertainment room, even if the contents of that bookshelf were things I’d rather not focus on.

And the thing I was supposed to be focusing on was clearly not where my mind was.

Killie moved through the house in a lazy manner. I stood in the middle of the living room holding my fish and chips, trying hard not to feel like an idiot.

“I know you’re here,” I mumbled.

True, I never purposefully sought them out. They usually found me. It was dark, the wolf prowling outside. I swallowed, holding my fish and chips, waiting.

Time ticked on, and in the quiet, I started to sweat.

“Seriously?” I asked quietly.

Where was the shrieking grandma? The giggling child? The conversations?

Killie meowed, trying to get my attention. I glanced down, seeing the cat swipe her paw at the beams of light. The realization hit me, and I whimpered.

“I hate this,” I mumbled. I then took a deep breath and switched off the flashlight, putting it in my pocket. The house was completely dark. I heard every creak and groan, waiting for something to happen.

Killie kept rubbing her back against the wall, meowing. She was trying to communicate something to me.

“What is it, girl?” I asked, petting her. If I had a high enough animal care level, could I understand her better?

Killie kept rubbing her back against the forest green walls. I glanced around, then my brows furrowed.

“Oh,” I started to say. I had wondered that one time whether painting and priming the entire first floor would give me some sort of reward. Perhaps the reward was that the grandma ghost that Killie hissed at so much wouldn’t haunt the first floor nearly as much. The first floor was slowly becoming unrecognizable, which meant the hauntings weren’t as prevalent here.

Which… fantastic! That’s not a bad trade off. Except now I really needed to know what these ghosts were doing.

I heard the giggling above the entertainment room and took a deep breath.

“It’s just Theo,” I told my psyche, keeping an eye on my sanity. “It’s just Theo.”

I needed to go to the second floor, anyway. I just wanted to start with the shrieking grandma.

Okay, truth be told, I was simply a wimp, and was terrified of the second floor at night. I spent a half hour on the first floor, waiting for something supernatural to happen when I already knew the second floor was a magnet for ghosts.

I sighed, once again holding my plate of fish and chips as I headed through the bedroom.

“Just Theo,” I whispered again. “It’s just Theo.”

My sanity had remained at full. Once I heard the giggling, my mind was certain. That was Theo. I don’t know why child Theo was here, but I would have to find out. The only problem was that finding out required me to go up the creaky staircase at night.

“How is this my life right now,” I mumbled as I got to the foot of the stairs again.

Little ghost Theo giggled again, and I closed my eyes, my heart started to pound. Despite knowing who it was, it was still a mystery I didn’t understand. Yet it was so cheerful and happy.

The steps groaned as I walked up, clutching my plate like it was my only lifeline. My sanity started to shiver, but I closed my eyes. My lips moved in the motion of saying “Just Theo,” but no sound escaped. I didn’t dare talk as I approached the second floor.

I turned, following the last few steps and stepped onto the landing. It was silent, and all I could hear was my breathing. I wanted to turn on the light. My soul desperately needed light, but I tried to tell it that I needed answers more.

The giggling happened again, and I looked over to the blue room, the one I hadn’t started cleaning yet. The one next to the locked room. I swallowed and my legs moved like they were under water.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

With a courage I did not possess, I pushed the door open. I couldn’t get in far with all the junk, but I held my breath, glancing around.

It was impossible to see anything. The junk cast shadows, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to look for.

“All around the mulberry bush,”

It took all the strength I had to keep my hands on the plate, so it didn’t slip from my fingers.

“The monkey chased the weasel.”

He was singing somewhere in here, yet I couldn’t see him. How could he be anywhere in here? There was too much junk.

“The monkey thought, ‘twas all in good fun.’

“Pop! Goes the weasel!”

I was breathing hard, a slight shiver to my sanity.

“Just Theo,” I kept saying soundlessly.

I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on, trying to find the ghost boy. Trying to imagine him as he was in the memories without that haunted look on his face. The cheerful, giggling boy I saw in later memories.

“All around the mulberry bush,”

My flashlight jumped all over, trying to find where the singing was coming from.

“The monkey chased the weasel.”

The sound lifted from the floor, the voice echoing throughout the room. The light in my hand trembled as the sound reverberated off the walls.

“The monkey thought, ‘twas all in good fun,’

“Pop! Goes the weasel!”

It was coming from all over the room, and yet it was just one boy’s voice. My sanity was dropping, and I did my best to stay brave.

“You can’t scare me. I have fish and chips,” I said, sound coming out of me for the first time since I reached the second floor.

“A penny for a spool of thread,

“A penny for a needle,

“That’s the way the money goes!”

The voice held out the word ‘goes’ for as long as he could, his voice shaking as he lost air. Perhaps it would have been cute, but the sound was echoing around the room until he sucked in the biggest breath I ever heard.

“Pop! Goes the weasel!” the boy shouted with everything he had before giggling up a storm.

I covered one of my ears, holding my fish and chips. It was nothing more than a cute boy singing a nursery rhyme. That couldn’t be scary, right? No way that could be scary.

My sanity told a different story. It shivered again, dropping a few percentages. The only thing I could figure that was scary was that I couldn’t pinpoint the voice. Once I was in the room long enough, the voice seemed to come from all over, echoing off the walls. It wasn’t exactly a calming voice, either.

“This is what I need,” I whispered to myself. “Exactly what I need. My sanity to drop. Drop far enough to know how much fish and chips will give me. It’s okay to be scared. Totally okay to be-”

“Who are you?” It was the ghostly voice of the little boy. The plate of fish and chips clattered to the ground. It should have made the contents spill all over, but the food remained glued to the plate, holding true to game logic.

I gasped for air, my flashlight shooting in every direction to try and find the boy, whether ghostly or otherwise. The boy was nowhere to be found. The voice disappeared, and I found myself in a darkened, cluttered room.

Whispers appeared in the locked room. I quickly picked up the plate of fish and chips and moved into the landing area. I hated getting so close to the locked room. I kept my flashlight pointed at the base of the door. As soon as anything resembling liquid of any kind trickled out of the bottom, I was sprinting out of here.

The whispers didn’t change. I expected them to get louder as I got closer, but that wasn’t the case. They were the same muffled noises I would have heard if I was downstairs in the living room.

I approached the locked door, trying the knob again just to be certain. It was locked, and even the jiggling of the knob did not alert the people who were whispering. They kept going. I placed my ear to the door, my head bowed as I kept staring at the base of the door.

One was a male voice. I could differentiate that much. From the tone of his voice, he sounded far more laid back than the woman. Despite the two voices whispering, the woman seemed to be doing the most to keep her voice nearly silent to make sure no one could overhear them. I could hear nothing of their conversation and would hear nothing unless I could enter this room.

But the very thought of opening this door filled me with such nausea that I couldn’t handle it. All the hardship, all the evil, all the haunting, stemmed from this locked room. Yes, I was biased because I saw that blood trickle from the base of this door, but I had to admit that was a pretty freaky thing to have happen. Perhaps, later in the game, I would find the key to this room, but it would not be tonight.

My sanity had gone down past seventy-five percent as I backed away from the door. That was enough information tonight. I made a final trip to the pink room to switch out the clothes, to pretend I wasn’t trembling the entire time. I switched out the plaid shirt for the bright orange building overalls. I had buffed all my logging clothes, now. My building clothes would be harder to buff with me using them all the time, but coming up here at nights to switch them out would make it easier.

I moved down the stairs, eating my fish and chips as I watched my sanity fill up about fifteen percent. Not bad. Honestly, it was something. Something that didn’t involve me sleeping in my nightgown. I pulled out a container of fries from my pocket. I would have tried putting the fish and chips in my pocket, but they wouldn’t fit. Instead, I held the fries and ketchup, eating them slowly as I watched my sanity bar. The fries only gave me about five percent of my sanity back, maybe a little more. It wasn’t a lot, but then again, after being used to waiting until I slept, this was better than nothing. Once I unlocked more comfort foods, they would undoubtably have more options that gave more sanity.

The gamer in me was hurt that I wasted the fish and chips and fries on something that I would already gain back when sleeping, but it was all for experimentation. Now I knew that if I had six fish and chips on hand, I could go from next to no sanity to well past ninety percent. Considering they would be attacking tomorrow night, this was vital information to know.

As I relaxed in bed, I took a moment to understand what I was feeling. My sanity took a few hits tonight, but I was almost back to normal. I wasn’t sure what those two were talking about in the locked room, but it made me uneasy. And despite knowing for certain that it was Theo doing the giggling and the singing, it still hurt my sanity. I was still deeply uneasy by what he did. It was this house. Despite it being absolutely charming in the morning and afternoon, something shifted in the evening that made things like this happen.

I wasn’t as scared. Despite my sanity taking a hit, I no longer felt fear. I knew the child was Theo. I knew that this house wasn’t some random house with strange ghosts. There was a purpose to all of this, and food that could help me regain my sanity I had lost. That alone helped me not be so terrified.

Still a bit scared. But now I would figure out what happened to little Theo. With those thoughts, I closed my eyes and asked the game to force me to sleep.