Once I got the sewing machine repairing my blue dress and the vomit all cleaned outside, I got to work buying all the traps. I cut down a tree and placed a board in the dumpster to give me a little over a hundred dopamine points. After buying the four meat traps and a cow box trap, I had a whopping 6.62 points.

I then spent the afternoon cutting up the trees into boards to build the traps. Theo would eventually be back, and I’d figure out how much scrap metal he’d give.

It was a day of recovery. I made more baked clay and stored a lot of stone. When the bricks were done in the tool, I switched them out and made more bricks. One more batch, then I’d see what else the storage unit needed.

I kept working, kept storing. I made a lot of applesauce. It was getting closer to the evening time when Theo walked through the trees, holding metal in his arms. He wasn’t smiling, but I didn’t expect him to.

He dropped the metal near the traps as I walked over to him with all the applesauce I made in my inventory.

“Did the applesauce help?” I asked.

“Yeah, it did. Worked fantastic,” he said, not looking at me as he kept unloading the scrap metal from his inventory. I needed a lot, and I doubted Theo would have enough.

He finished with the scrap metal and stood up a bit straighter. “I’ll go get the other batch.”

“Oh. I… don’t have enough applesauce for all this,” I said.

“This is my apology.” Theo nudged a piece of scrap metal with his foot. “The other batch we can barter with.”

At first, I was confused until I remembered he had vomited all over me this morning. I glanced down at the scrap metal again. “Oh, well, you didn’t need to.”

“Yes, I did,” Theo said, still not looking at me. “But I will make it right. When is the corruption coming to your house?”

“Two more days. Midnight,” I said.

Theo nodded. “That’ll be great. It’ll be my first good look at what this corruption is. Then I can figure out how to destroy it.”

“Theo…” I trailed off. He glanced at me. There was such determination, yet shame in his eyes, that I wasn’t sure what to say. Instead, I pulled out the bowls of applesauce. “You can take these back to your base.”

He nodded, accepting them. There was a moment where we just passed bowls of applesauce between each other before he turned around. “I’ll be back. Give me another twenty minutes. It’s a long way to the teleport station to base camp.”

I nodded, watching him go. He was on his feet. That was something. But I could see the depression swirling around him, even as he pretended everything was alright. I noticed the way he stumbled a bit as he walked, like the weight was too much. The way he never smiled. Or caught my gaze. He simply existed for the next moment. And the next. And the next. Until the moment he went to bed.

I went to the pile of scrap metal and placed them carefully into the traps. There was a lot here. Theo was giving me way more than he needed to. I knew he was ashamed of what happened. I wasn’t. I had acted on instinct, and I didn’t regret it.

Theo must have had a lot of scrap metal, because it took him another half an hour before he arrived. I watched him close as he once again reached into his back and pulled out metal after metal. I distracted myself by grabbing the metal and placing it in the traps. I thought I would have to wait for another swap, but Theo gave me enough metal to finish all four of the meat traps. I’d wait until later for the cow box trap. I got to work placing the metal in the traps as Theo straightened.

“So, um… two days? Two days at midnight? Is there anything I should know about when the corruption appears?” Theo asked.

I cleared my throat. “The wolf usually roams around the house until they appear. Since he’s such a high-level wolf, I… I don’t know how you’re going to stay alive if you’re not in the house. The wolf doesn’t enter. I’ve tested it myself,” I said.

Theo’s eyes glanced up at the decrepit house. The longer he looked at it, the heavier his eyes were. He finally tore his gaze to look at the forest where the wolf was.

Stolen novel; please report.

“I’ve got to level up as much as I can. There is a way I can create my own teleportation device, and I can stick it right over there,” Theo said, pointing at the place next to the greenhouse. “But I have to be level twenty-five at least. So… I’ve got to kill more monsters.”

I nodded, placing the last of the metal in the deer trap before standing up. “The house is different now that I’ve been working on it all summer,” I ventured. “It might be good for you to at least try seeing one of the rooms.”

Theo again looked at the house. “Does… it still smell like my grandma?”

I hesitated, trying to recall what the house smelled like. “Um… hairspray? And… cigarettes?”

To my surprise, Theo let out a soft chuckle. A small smile appeared on his face, then blackness formed around his eyes. I stiffened, alarmed. Wondering if I needed to do something drastic like this morning again. The black liquid dropped from his eyes down his cheeks like tears before I realized that’s exactly what they were. Tears. Tears mingled with them.

Theo brushed his cheeks, then glanced down as though realizing there was color to his tears. When he noticed it, he spun, his back toward me as he kept brushing away the blackness.

“I’m going to keep leveling. It takes a lot of grinding. If I reach level twenty-five and make the teleportation, I’ll meet you before to set it. If not…”

I waited for him to admit he’d have to stay at the house. Theo said nothing, and I didn’t think he would. Instead, he walked toward the forest, and I watched him go.

There was a part of me that felt like I didn’t actually know how to help Theo. I felt so incredibly useless. For whatever reason, even though they attacked me twice now, I never had that lingering experience with them. I blacked out, then woke up the next morning, fine as ever. But with Theo, it lingered. It entered his body and weighed him down. It stayed inside him. Didn’t come out unless I pulled it out. Or made him cry.

I wanted to do something, but Theo was adamant in not wanting my help. It was mostly out of embarrassment, which I sort of understood. If I vomited all over Theo, I would have a hard time looking him in the eye, too. I just didn’t like how much this shame lasted. Did Theo understand I didn’t care? Did I communicate that well enough to him?

I gathered the traps in my inventory, trying not to think about all the things I could have done better. The wolf wouldn’t appear for another hour and a half, so I had time.

I entered the forest, holding my flashlight. I remained mostly in my head, trying to think of ways to help Theo. I also came back to thinking about ways to get out of the game. Theo told me what happened in the place I now assumed was the locked room. Murder suicide. He had seen the aftermath of it.

Once I entered wolf territory, I gathered the raw chicken meat before setting the other meat traps in a cluster. The traps still had to be away from the others, but it was nice I didn’t have to walk far to get the meat.

I then followed my new map instincts toward the orchard, gathering all the apples I could hold. Theo gave me a lot of scrap metal, and I intended to give him a lot of applesauce for it. Hopefully I could also get him to understand that I didn’t care that he vomited on me.

The wolf was far enough away that I didn’t want to press my luck. The traps were set, my inventory was full to bursting with apples. I kept my gaze sharp until I left the wolf territory. Even then, I kept a weary eye out. I didn’t like this revelation that the person drinking beer in front of my bedroom window was Theo’s murderous dad.

I unloaded the inventory into the storage unit before dropping the final eight bricks into the storage unit. I took a step back, watching the shift before words appeared.

Apply Primer

Alright, well, that also felt like a final thing. It also jogged my memory to check the sewing machine. The wolf was coming out soon, and I needed to be inside, anyway.

I paused at the tool, putting in five bags of sand so one of the greenhouses could finally be finished before I walked up to the second floor. Once I got the clothes switched out, I sat down on the chair, glancing at this room. The walls needed cleaning. Then this room could be ready to paint. It was the only room on the second floor that was clean enough to do it.

The only problem was I was at twenty-five present sanity. The shadows were being weird, and I could hear noises that I couldn’t explain. I got part way through one wall before I called it a night.

My nightgown appeared as I walked down the stairs. I wasn’t sure if it had been an hour since bedtime. I had been so busy figuring out the mysteries of the haunts or cleaning the floor that I always stayed way later past my bedtime anyway. I entered the bedroom and realized there was still one thing I hadn’t thought about. I had never checked out my bedroom window to see if I could catch the creep.

I stared at the window, then slowly walked toward it. I pushed open the curtains before I could tell myself to stop.

No one was out there. Just the darkness. I placed my forehead against the glass, staring at the dark forest outside my window. Hearing the hauntings was terrifying. Slowly, though, I was learning more about them. The more I learned, the less scared I got. It made sense that the giggling child was Theo and I didn’t need to be concerned about him. The grandma who hated cats was a little harder, and I might need Theo to tell me more stories about his grandma to help me not be so scared of her.

But this? The possibility that his abusive father was out there, right now, leaving beer cans near my window? Watching me sleep? Knowing that it was the murderer right outside my window would not lessen the sanity attack of those beer cans.

I closed the blinds and climbed into bed. Killie hopped onto the bed, plopping down next to me.

“You have a bed, you know,” I said. Killie, as always, said nothing. She just cozied up closer to my face and started purring. I reached out, my hand in her fur. “I’m glad you’re here, too.”