LIFE IS JACOB'S GAME
CHAPTER THREE
THE VISITOR WHO CAST NO SHADOW
A wooden spoon, two mysterious voices, and a house that suddenly felt too small.
Written by Regina Mgingwa
Jacob Brooks had faced many frightening situations in his eighteen years.
He had once opened his mother's electricity bill. He had once checked his bank balance immediately after buying lunch. He had even watched Malik attempt to cook spaghetti without water.
But nothing had prepared him for the sound of someone turning his front-door handle at midnight while whispering his name like a threat from the grave.
Jacob tightened his grip on the wooden spoon.
"Listen," he whispered toward the door. "I don't know who you are, but I should warn you that I have very limited fighting experience and absolutely no health insurance."
The handle stopped moving.
For three seconds, the house was silent.
Then somebody knocked again.
Three slow knocks.
Jacob's heart hammered against his ribs.
"Maybe it's a delivery," he muttered. "A very late delivery. Perhaps somebody ordered a pizza for a ghost."
A voice answered from the other side.
"Open the door, Jacob."
It was a man's voice, but something about it sounded wrong. The words seemed to arrive a fraction of a second after the sound itself, as though the speaker were standing far away and much too close at the same time.
Jacob took one step backward.
Then another.
He remembered the photograph on his phone. The basement corridor. The black star. The white sneaker lying near the wall.
He also remembered his mother's warning about confusing cleverness with invincibility.
For the first time that evening, he considered that she might have been right.
He moved quietly toward the kitchen, intending to wake her without alerting whoever stood outside.
Unfortunately, the universe had other plans.
His left sneaker squeaked.
The hallway fell silent.
"Really?" Jacob whispered at his shoe. "Now?"
From the front door came a soft chuckle.
"Still making jokes, Jacob?"
Jacob froze.
The voice knew him.
It knew how he spoke. It knew he was afraid. And somehow, it knew exactly where he was standing.
He rushed into the kitchen and switched on the light.
Denise sat upright on the sofa in the next room, wrapped in a blanket. She had clearly been asleep only moments earlier.
"What are you doing with that spoon?" she asked.
"Protecting the family."
"From what?"
"An unidentified situation."
She stared at him.
"Jacob, are you in trouble again?"
"I would prefer the word 'involved.'"
Another knock shook the door.
Denise stood immediately. Whatever she thought of her son's explanations, she knew the difference between a harmless visitor and someone who had come looking for trouble.
"Stay behind me," she said.
"Mom, I am technically taller than you."
"And technically foolish. Move."
She took her phone from the table and called the police. Jacob watched her give their address in a controlled voice while the knocking continued.
Then something changed.
The lights went out.
Not just in their house. Through the front window, Jacob saw the entire street disappear into darkness. The streetlights, the neighboring porch lamps, even the illuminated sign above the corner store had gone black.
A car alarm began screaming somewhere outside.
Denise whispered a prayer.
Jacob's phone lit up in his hand.
A new message had arrived.
Do not look through the peephole.
He stared at the screen.
Then he looked at the front door.
His mother noticed his expression.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Jacob."
"Something. But I haven't decided how much something yet."
The door handle began to turn again.
Denise stepped away from it and pulled Jacob toward the kitchen. They moved behind the wall just as a thin line of light appeared beneath the front door.
Someone outside had switched on a flashlight.
A shadow stretched across the floor.
Then another.
Jacob counted two people.
He was about to whisper this to his mother when he noticed something that made the blood drain from his face.
The flashlight beam moved from left to right, illuminating the floorboards. The shadows followed.
Except for one.
A tall figure stood directly in front of the door, its outline visible through the narrow gap beneath it. Yet no shadow appeared beneath the figure's feet.
Jacob blinked.
The figure remained.
He blinked again.
Still nothing.
"Mom," he whispered.
"I see it."
Her voice had lost its strength.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then the figure spoke.
"The boy has something that belongs to us."
Jacob felt for Richard Hale's business card in his pocket.
It was still there.
He had no idea why anyone would threaten a family over a business card. It was paper. Expensive paper, certainly, but paper all the same.
Unless the card was not the real reason.
Unless somebody had seen him talking to Richard and decided that Jacob had learned something he should not know.
His mind raced.
He had six dollars, a nearly useless phone, and a wooden spoon. His mother had a phone with the police on the line. There were two apparent intruders outside, and one of them seemed to have resigned from the laws of physics.
Jacob decided that a direct confrontation was not a promising business strategy.
He whispered to Denise, "Take the back door and go to Mrs. Patterson's house."
"I'm not leaving you."
"You're not leaving me. You're getting help."
"Jacob—"
"Please, Mom."
Something in his voice made her pause.
She nodded once, then moved toward the back of the house.
Jacob waited until she had disappeared around the corner. Then he did something that would have impressed a military strategist if the strategist had been very desperate and slightly stupid.
He threw the wooden spoon at the ceiling.
It struck a metal ventilation cover with a tremendous clatter.
The figures outside went silent.
Jacob ran.
He sprinted through the kitchen, slipped on a rug, caught himself against the counter, and continued toward the back door. His sneaker squeaked so loudly that he briefly wondered whether the shoe was trying to warn the intruders.
He reached the yard and found Denise already at the gate.
"You threw a spoon?" she demanded.
"It was a tactical distraction."
"It was a kitchen utensil!"
"A very brave kitchen utensil."
They hurried toward Mrs. Patterson's house. Behind them, a loud crash came from their kitchen.
Jacob did not look back.
Mrs. Patterson was a retired schoolteacher who owned three cats, six security cameras, and a personal collection of neighborhood gossip that could have brought down several city governments.
She opened her door wearing a pink robe and holding a baseball bat.
"I knew it," she said.
Jacob stared at her.
"Knew what?"
"Something strange was going to happen tonight. My cat refused to eat dinner."
"Ma'am, with respect, your cat once refused to eat because you served salmon instead of chicken."
"And what happened afterward?"
Jacob opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"I have no counterargument."
Mrs. Patterson ushered them inside and locked the door. Denise called the police again. Jacob checked his phone for a signal, but the screen displayed a single message from Malik.
Bro. Where are you? Someone just broke into my apartment.
Jacob immediately called him.
Malik answered in a whisper.
"Jacob, I think somebody was looking for you."
"Why would they be looking for me at your place?"
"Because your genius self left your notebook here this afternoon."
Jacob closed his eyes.
The notebook.
The one with the names of local businesses, his ideas for a startup, and the three words he had written across the top of the page.
PEOPLE. PROBLEMS. PAYMENT.
"Did they take it?" Jacob asked.
"I don't know. I hid in the bathroom."
"Are you safe?"
"Define safe."
"Malik, this is not the time to borrow my personality."
"I can hear someone walking around out there."
Jacob gripped the phone.
"Stay where you are. Don't confront anyone. I'm calling the police."
"Already did. They said they're on their way."
A sudden bang came through the phone.
Malik gasped.
"Jacob—"
The call ended.
Jacob stared at his screen, then at his mother.
For the first time that night, fear was replaced by something sharper.
Anger.
Malik could be reckless, lazy, and financially irresponsible. He had once spent his rent money on a limited-edition basketball jersey because he claimed it was an investment in his personal brand.
But he was Jacob's friend.
And somebody had just brought danger to his door.
Sirens sounded in the distance.
When the police arrived, they found Jacob's front door open, the kitchen light flickering, and a broken window facing the backyard. Nothing valuable appeared to have been stolen.
There were no footprints in the dust near the entrance.
No fingerprints on the door handle that could be identified immediately.
And no sign of the two visitors.
One officer asked Jacob what he had seen.
Jacob hesitated.
"Two men," he said finally. "One of them might have been... unusual."
The officer raised an eyebrow.
"Unusual how?"
Jacob thought about the missing shadow.
"Very tall."
The officer wrote something on his notepad.
Jacob suspected he had just been classified as an unreliable witness.
By two in the morning, Denise was staying with Mrs. Patterson, the police had left, and Jacob was sitting on the front steps of his damaged home.
He was exhausted.
His phone buzzed again.
This time, the message came from an unknown email address.
We are sorry about your friend. The notebook was never the target.
Another message followed.
Tomorrow, 2:00 p.m. Northstar Solutions. Ask Richard Hale about the Black Star Room.
Jacob read the words several times.
Then he searched the internet for "Black Star Room Chicago."
Most results were useless. A nightclub. A music group. A restaurant that had closed years ago.
Then he found an old local news article.
It reported that a young software engineer named Daniel Price had disappeared after leaving a technology company in downtown Chicago. His family believed he had been involved in a dispute over stolen intellectual property. The company had denied wrongdoing.
Jacob scrolled to the photograph.
Daniel was smiling beside a whiteboard covered in diagrams. He looked young, clever, and slightly uncomfortable in a suit that did not fit properly.
At the bottom of the article, Jacob noticed the name of the company where Daniel had worked.
Northstar Solutions.
Jacob leaned back against the steps.
"Of course," he whispered. "Because a normal job interview would have been too easy."
He looked at his worn sneakers. One lace had come loose. The left shoe squeaked even when he moved it slightly.
He should have been thinking about the debt, the broken window, and the threat against his family.
Instead, he was thinking about Daniel Price.
About the missing engineer.
About the black star on the basement door.
And about why someone had gone to so much trouble to frighten an eighteen-year-old boy who had not even managed to buy himself breakfast.
Jacob took out his notebook and wrote a new line beneath his three rules.
FOURTH RULE: WHEN EVERYONE TELLS YOU NOT TO ASK QUESTIONS, FIND OUT WHO BENEFITS FROM YOUR SILENCE.
He stared at the sentence.
"That sounds intelligent," he said aloud. "I should charge people for advice."
Then he noticed something strange on the back of Richard Hale's business card.
Under the handwritten address, almost invisible beneath the light, was a second line of text. It had been pressed into the paper without ink.
Jacob tilted the card toward the porch light.
The words slowly became visible.
THE FIRST DOOR IS A LIE.
Jacob's smile disappeared.
Across the street, beneath a dead streetlight, a tall figure stood motionless.
Jacob could not see its face.
He could not see its shadow.
Then a car passed between them, headlights sweeping across the pavement.
When the road became visible again, the figure was gone.
Jacob slipped the card into his pocket.
Tomorrow, he would visit Northstar Solutions.
Not because he trusted Richard Hale.
Not because he believed the mysterious messages.
And certainly not because he wanted to investigate a room with a frightening name.
He was going because he needed money, Malik needed help, and his family deserved to sleep without strangers knocking at the door.
Besides, Jacob had a theory.
Whatever was happening at Northstar, someone had made one serious mistake.
They had frightened him.
But they had also made him curious.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
The Black Star Room
Daniel Price disappeared after working at Northstar Solutions. Jacob has been warned to stay away, but tomorrow he intends to enter the building. Will he find a business opportunity—or discover why the last boy vanished?
Continue to Chapter Four
READ CHAPTER FOUR →Written by Regina Mgingwa | Published by TaleNest · www.talenest.co.tz