Jacob sat down on the couch, unsure as to what to do now. With how much stuff they had to do later, he didn’t want to waste his energy on anything physical. The guy who was supposed to install the cable still hadn’t shown up, so the TV was out. His phone was also a no-go, there was no internet signal anywhere in this town.

He pulled out his phone anyway, hoping an internet connection would just magically appear. To his chagrin, there was still nothing, both in terms of his connection and messages from his old friends in North Palm.

It was a bit strange none of them had contacted him even once in all the time since he got here. Maybe they thought he was just busy?

He set the phone down. North Palm was still home for him, and he wasn’t sure if he would ever come to think of Oakwood as the same. As his mind wandered, memories of North Palm started flooding in. The days of going out to see movies, of hanging out by the local park and just chatting the day away, or trying some new experimental recipe a certain someone had come up with.

He shivered as he remembered a particularly vile experiment of apple and mint pizza before a smile forced its way onto his face.

His memories were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and his name being called.

“Jacob, are you awake?” his mother called as she walked into the living room and saw him lying on the couch. He gave her a thumbs up before getting to his feet. “You see the note?”

“The pretzel was delicious,” he said plainly as she walked over to him. They both just stood there for a moment before she reached her arms out and brought him into a sudden hug.

“Try not to have any more late-night adventures okay?” she said, smiling over his squawks of protest. He pretended to struggle out of her grip, knowing full well he had no chance of actually pulling it off.

“Let the boy breathe, Laura,” his father said holding in his laughter as he walked into the living room. He set a few bags on the ground before looking at the pair. “Why don’t you help me unload the car?”

“Whatever you say, dear,” she released him, who started rubbing his throat.

“Air, beautiful air. I’ll never take you for granted again,” he closed his eyes. Despite being unable to actually see it, he knew his mother was rolling her eyes at him.

“Come on, Drama King, let’s go help your father,” she said as he let go of his throat and followed her.

His father was already reaching in for another bag when he arrived outside. Despite knowing all of this was for the attic, Jacob had no clue as to what exactly they were doing with the room. One box in particular caught his eyes.

“Build your own table?” He read aloud the packaging on the largest of the boxes. He grabbed a few of the bags and brought them inside, where his father was leaving behind his own bags. “Hey, Dad, what are we doing with the attic anyway?”

“Well,” he started moving outside again. “I’ve always wanted a game room, figured the attic would be perfect for that kind of thing,” he explained as he bent his knees to start lifting the box.

“Need any help with that?” He asked. His father gave him a simple grunt, which he figured meant yes.

A few minutes later, the car was closed, his parents were standing over the bags, and Jacob himself was off to the side, eating another pretzel.

“Alright, time to get all this stuff up the stairs,” his mother stretched her arms for the lifting to come. His father, on the other hand, was looking at his wife in confusion.

“I thought you were going to tell me about whatever it was that kept Jacob up last night?” he asked, stopping Jacob’s mother mid-stretch.

“Oh right, I did say that didn’t I?” she said sheepishly. “Jacob, could you be a dear and tell your father about…” The sound of someone knocking on the door stopped her mid-sentence. She glanced back at the door and gave him a weird look. “Didn’t know we were expecting guests.”

His father walked up to open the door. Jacob couldn’t see who was at the door, but he could easily hear the familiar voice.

“Good afternoon, is Jacob home?” he heard Ellie ask as he met his mother’s frowning eyes.

“It’s happening again,” she said to him in an exasperated whisper.

“It’s not,” he harshly whispered back.

“You went out for one day and there’s already a girl at the door looking for you,” she said, sounding weary. “I did not raise you like this.”

“Mom, for the last time. Just because I have a weird tendency to make friends with people who happen to be girls does not make me some sort of Casanova,” he argued the familiar words for what felt like the millionth time.

He was honestly telling the truth. Jacob did not make many friends, only really having three by the time he left North Palm. The fact that all three were girls his age wasn’t strange… to him at least.

His mother looked ready to argue again when his father walked back into the room.

“We have guests,” he declared before stepping aside to show Ellie.

“Good to see you again, Jacob,” she greeted before Ryan suddenly materialized from behind the girl.

“Sup,” he said in a simple greeting. One that seemed to stop whatever it was Jacob’s mother was about to say.

“Ryan, Ryan, Ryan,” he repeated as he walked towards the other boy. He placed his hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “For reasons I have neither the time nor energy to go into, you have no idea how happy I am you’re here.”

The boy in question just looked at the hand on his shoulder and shrugged a bit.

Now that he had a chance to see the two of them by themselves, Jacob had to admit they made quite a pair.

Ellie with her minimalist and vaguely fancy looking whites and yellows. Ryan with his ‘completely inappropriate for the weather’ hoodie and jeans patterned black and blue. The two looked like they should clash completely, yet also like they were part of the same set.

Ryan turned to look at her and gave her a stiff gaze.

“If anything happens,” he started before Ellie rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I know, you’re throwing me at it and running for the hills,” she replied looking a bit slighted.

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“What are you talking about?” Jacob asked, despite having a suspicion he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Yes, Ryan, why don’t you go ahead and tell Jacob your paranoid reasons to not want to go into his house?” She said before walking up to Jacob’s mother to talk about something else.

“Think about what you learned about your house yesterday,” he lifted his arms up and pointing at his face. “Now with that in mind, look at my skin.”

“Okay, I see why you wouldn’t want to be in here,” he looked at his face and then around the room.

Ryan was currently the only black person in a house with two white people, one Latina, and one mixed person. Going off classic horror movie rules, he would be the most likely to die first. And was there anything more Classic American Horror then a haunted house?

“Jacob, what is your friend talking about?” His father asked, looking a bit concerned at the conversation that had just occurred in front of them. In his defense, without context it probably looked bizarre.

He glanced at his mother and gave her a questioning look. “We really should get around to telling him.”

“I was going to when your friends showed up,” she pointed out.

“Wait, your dad doesn’t know about what happened in this house? That’s messed up,” Ellie looked at Jacob’s father in amazement from the couch in the living room. Both she and Ryan had apparently made themselves at home while the three Thistles had been busy.

“Will someone please tell me what everyone’s talking about?” His father asked, looking absolutely done with everyone involved.

“Someone may or may not have been brutally murdered on the property,” Jacob put it bluntly.

“Wow, just going straight for the throat with that one, aren’t you?” Ryan pointed out from the couch.

“Jacob, you shouldn’t joke about that kind of stuff,” he said, sounding strangely serious. Seeing him like this was a rare sight for him. “This is how rumors get started, isn’t that right, Laura?”

It was at this point both Jacob and his father noticed his mother was walking towards them with two glasses filled with something he was sure he wasn’t allowed to drink yet.

“So about that…” she said in a slightly high pitch. She handed him one of the drinks and started leading him to another room. “There was an… incident a few years ago on the property.” They closed the door behind them, leaving him unable to hear the rest.

Jacob turned to the two guests who were still on the couch, both of them carrying drinks he assumed his mother had given them.

“So… you like the house?” He winced at the awkward question, but it was the first thing that had come to mind.

“It’s nice,” Ellie said without missing beat. “This is the part of town with all the nice houses though, so it would be a little weird if it wasn’t.”

“Nice couch too,” Ryan added as Ellie took a sip of her drink.

The three of them lingered in silence for a moment as he tried to think of something else to say.

“You guys hungry?” he suddenly asked. “My mom bought these really good soft pretzels from… somewhere in town,”

“Oh, are they really soft and chewy, with a weird cinnamon paste in the center?” Ellie asked as she suddenly sat up and gave him an intense stare. Ryan also had his head turned, his full attention on him.

“Well they don’t have a paste in the center,” Jacob explained as he opened the fridge, a bit taken aback at the pair’s intensity. “But they do have a cinnamon taste.”

He reached into the fridge and took the bag out. He was about to ask if they wanted some when the pair almost teleported to his side.

“Oh yeah, those are Mick’s,” Ryan looked at the bag in Jacob’s hand.

“Mick’s?” He asked, confused. Ellie took the chance to explain it for him.

“There’s a guy in town named Mick who makes soft pretzels and sells them around town. The trick is, he only makes so many in a day, so they all sell really quickly,” she said before biting the nail on her thumb. “His best ones are the ones with cinnamon paste in the center, but you have to either get up super early, or get super lucky.”

“Congratulations on stumbling onto one of Oakwood’s few hidden gems,” Ryan said. “Now heat those things up in the oven.” Jacob did as he was told, following along as the two of them gave him the exact directions for reheating Mick’s pretzels.

The three of them stood in front of the oven, watching the pretzels heat up, when Jacob gave the two of them a side glance.

“Soft pretzels are one of this town’s hidden gems?” he asked the pair, who found themselves unable to look him in the eye.

“When you put it that way, it does sound a little pathetic,” Ryan admitted.

“Well, he’s from North Palm, the big city. Any tiny town in the middle of nowhere would look bad in comparison,” Ellie argued back, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

Luckily for her, the pretzels were pretty much done by that point. They took them out of the oven and placed them on the table. Soon, all talk of comparing Oakwood with North Palm was forgotten in favor of enjoying the sweet treats.

Which was, of course, the moment Jacob’s parents walked back into the room.

“Good news, Jacob you have a new roommate. Her name is Sam and…”

“Mom already made that joke yesterday,” he cut him off, stopping him in his tracks. His mother passed him from behind while giving her husband a smug grin.

“Ha,” she gloated before swiping a pretzel off the rack. “Twenty years of beating you to the punchline and you still think you can beat me.”

“Yes, I know, I never learn,” he said, defeated, before looking at the two other kids in the room. “So you two came to see Jacob?”

“Honestly?” Ellie finished off the last of the pretzel she was eating. “We came here because we were curious to see what kind of people buy a haunted house. The answer, it turns out, is people who had no idea it was haunted in the first place.”

“That’s why you came here,” Ryan added. “I’m here because you dragged me here against my will.”

“But isn’t that what friends do? Pull you into experiencing new things you’d never experience otherwise?” Ellie explained as she gave them all a smile as sweet and genuine as processed sugar substitute. “Isn’t that right, Jacob?”

“Yeah, of course,” he answered, the overly sweet smile creeping him out more than the house at the moment.

“Well, it was nice of you to drop by,” his father said, unaware of the strange atmosphere in the room. “But we’re actually about to be a little busy. We’re taking all this stuff up to the attic and setting it up,” he pointed to all the bags and boxes on the floor. “But you kids feel free to drop by any time.”

“Oh, we can help you out with that,” Ellie volunteered, despite the wary look Ryan was giving her. “Our parents aren’t expecting us back ‘til later anyway.”

“By ‘we’ do you mean…” He asked before Ellie cut him off.

“Oh come on, it’ll be fun,” she gave him the same strange smile as before. Ryan just let out a sigh and stayed silent.

“If you say so, but maybe it would be better if you two contacted your parents just in case,” Jacob’s mother pointed out.

“Sure thing, Mrs. Thistle,” Ellie said with a sloppy salute. She started walking out the door when his mother stopped her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Ellie.

“To go tell my parents where I am?” She told her, not sure what else she was supposed to do.

“Why don’t you just call her?” She demanded.

“Oh,” her eyes cleared up. “I don’t have a cellphone. Parents say I’m too young for one.”

“I see,” Jacob’s mother took her own phone out. A quick lesson later, and Ellie was calling her mother over the phone.

“Hey, Mom, it’s me Ellie. I’m calling you from the Old Lady Makenzie house. I met the family who moved in a few days ago,” she said in the most cheerful voice Jacob had ever heard from the girl. “No, I’m not bothering them. They have a son my age who I met yesterday.”

“And now I’m the excuse,” he muttered too low for anyone to hear as Ellie spoke to her mother.

“Funny story about that, they only learned about the house today,” she explained to her mother, who was probably wondering what kind of people bought a haunted house. “So do you mind if I stay a little longer? They’re finishing up the house and I offered to help them out.”

Jacob could almost hear the sigh on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Ryan is with me. Could you do me a huge favor and tell his parents about all of this?” Ellie added as an almost afterthought. “Really? Thanks, Mom. I’ll see you later,” she finished as she hung the phone up and passed it back to Jacob’s mother.

“Everything go well?” Jacob asked with a half smirk.

“Looks like the two of us are clear to stay,” Ellie said with a big smile. “So, what are we doing?”

Jacob’s father shrugged and passed both Ryan and Ellie some of the lighter objects they had gotten the day before. “We need to get all this stuff upstairs into the attic,” he explained before handing some more stuff to his wife and son. “Come on, the sooner we get this done, the better.”

The five of them spent a good chunk of the afternoon setting up the game room in the attic. Ellie and Ryan were intrigued by the idea and had found themselves invited back to try it out anytime. By the time they were done, night had almost fallen and it was time for dinner.

The two gave their goodbyes and soon only Jacob was left in the attic.

It was an impressive sight. The walls had hanging shelves filled with board games, while the center of the room was taken up by a table large enough for six people. On one side of the table was a light couch used in place of chairs.

However, for as nice as it looked, he couldn’t help but notice the spot next to the AC was now filled with a chest containing more games. There was no longer a place for the monster he had met the night before.