"Come on, she can't still be mad at you for helping her brother", Alex says to me in a whisper.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk about this,” I say, still trying to get back with Julia.

  Then I see Julia, Victoria, and Jackie come closer, looking shaken from something. So I walked over to make sure everything was fine, but they looked at everyone. At least those of us who were waiting here then said, “We might not be safe”.

  We guys were unsure why they would say this, so I man up and asked.

  “What are you girls talking about?” I say, worried about Julia.

  “We found a note before we got here,” Julia says before handing it to me.

  I read it and look at the others, and I don’t think they would write this. Well, besides John being less open about the reason we are in a hot spot of people going missing on this mountain. Why did we come up here? I move towards John, but he begins walking more towards the old lodge. So we follow him a bit nervously about his actions, and the night is coming faster. So we get to the Lodge, and it doesn’t look abandoned; if anything, it is restored.

  I turn my head to look at Julia, expecting her not to be surprised. She was and looked scared of the sight, like there was something else there. So I follow John a bit to ask him about why we are here.

  “Do you mind telling me why we are here?” I say to him.

  “We are here to stay until we find out who killed the last people who were here,” He says, as if our lives aren't in danger of death.

  “Why didn’t you tell us before we got here?” I am pissed off at how he didn’t care about his own sister.

  “I don’t think it would matter that much,” he says with a shrug.

  I run to the others and tell them what he told me. It didn’t take long for everyone to question it and then understand I wouldn’t lie about something like that. I wait for Julia to speak up if she might have known. Then she looked as though she was not able to handle it honestly for now. I walked to her, and she started crying, now knowing I care, but her brother brought us to hell.

  I continue, “You didn’t know, did you?” I say only to her.

  She looked at me like I had insulted her, “I barely knew he was out of the hospital until today”.

  “Sorry, he isn’t going to let us leave until he finds something,” I say, kind of defeated.

  She sighs and goes to her brother for a moment. She looks mad, but doesn’t look like she wants to fight here. It’s now time to carry our bags in, and oddly, it looks like an inn now, an odd place for one after what happened. I went into the Now Inn, and we checked into the place. It felt odd being here. The place didn't seem to have anyone at first, so we rang the bell and a woman responded from upstairs.

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  "Give me a moment, please," she sounded normal enough.

  "Take your time," says John.

  I look at him like I want to be away from him; he got us into this mess, and I just calm down to not yell at the woman when she gets here. When she did appear, it was like she was a ghost; She was so pale, even her hair. John walked over to her and kissed her cheek. At least she was actually solid. I looked to the others like it wasn't actually happening; they all looked confused. So I wasn't the only one; she walked hand in hand with John, had to wonder how they met.

  “So your rooms are upstairs, not many people come here,” She says.

  Then continues with “so you all got the place, but I’ll be here for all of you.”

  I thought for a moment about something, so I asked, “So why make this place a business?”

  “Victor, don’t be rude, we are her guests,” Julia said, like I’m the bad one.

  I looked casually at the others, and they were acting as if I embarrassed them by asking an obvious question.

  The woman waves off the bad vibes. “It’s fine, I would ask the same thing if I were him”.

  Then continued by saying, “Well, I thought the place was beautiful, I thought it was a good place for mysteries to happen”.

  Then John spoke up, “Well, the bad thing that happened here brings those types here. I hope we can solve the mystery of the mountain.”

  I wanted to be mad again, but I gave up for now, and I look at the clock. It’s 8 o’clock and very dark outside, so she shows us to our rooms for now. I’m not looking forward to the first night here, but I’m sure we can’t get out of here, as it’s getting late. So I walked into my room for however long we are here, and I felt tired and restless from the fights. So I sit on the bed after taking my coat off and think of trying to sleep, but my stomach decides to growl.

  I get up off the bed and go downstairs, where I smell something tasty in the air, but I don’t know how. I wasn’t upstairs that long, at least I didn’t think I was. Everyone was in the dining room area, and there was some stew left for me, also. So I sat with everyone, and they were talking like everything was fine. I start to calm down as they talk about anything on their minds.

  “So I have a lot of respect for my brother; he did good things in the hospital,” Says Julia.

  “Yes, it seems so, and even helped others there,” Says the woman.

  I now know her name to be Leah Sherman. She seems to be nice and easy to be around, honestly. We all started to eat the stew, and it was pretty good, I think. Then she started to give us some drinks, now that was an interesting color of liquid. Then I notice something odd about the stew, something was in mine like nails from a person in it.

  I suddenly felt so ill and ran to the bathroom to get it out of me. Everyone seemed to react to it and check their bowls, too. I was done and left the bathroom to let everyone realize.

  “You all are acting weird now. What do you all see?” Leah says.

  I looked towards her and saw that John was fine with what happened, but upset at us.

  “She worked hard on the stew. Why did you ruin it?” John says.

  We all see he must not have been on his meds, or he'd have tricked all of us for a human snack. They were both laughing now and said, “We are just kidding you, this inn is a murder mystery sort of place.”

  John continues, “We can use this place as a safe place to figure things out”.

  “Then why make us think we were eating a person?” I say.

  “Well, I didn’t think you were going to think that, she does like crunchy baby onions,” John says in a way.

  “Are you crazy? This isn’t the time for some joke or just fooling around,” Julia says, so upset. I know the feeling, honestly, I want to punch him.