by P. T. Phronk
Three Incidents at Foster Manor
P.T. Phronk
Three Incidents at Foster Manor
Copyright © 2019 by P.T. Phronk
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except for the use of brief quotations. The people, events, and places in this book are fictional. The creeping madness you feel after reading it is real.
Cover and interior illustration and design © 2019 P.T. Phronk, with some elements from Book Cover Zone and Vellum.
First edition (1.0)
Published by Forest City Pulp
@ForestCityPulp
http://www.forestcitypulp.com
Contents
I. A Mystery
II. A Haunting
III. An Invasion
IV. A Solution
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Part I
A Mystery
Chapter 1
My arrival at Foster Manor was not without emotion.
Since losing my family, I’d thrown myself into work, which involved long hours at the dreary office followed by crashing at the apartment. Neither location had any sense of history, nor did they invoke any passion. The only time I felt anything at all was when my mind, without any conscious intention to do so, conjured up its own dark emotions. Being forced on this field trip, driving far from my apartment in the city, gave my mind far too much time to wander. To conjure.
My wandering thoughts could kill me if I let them. I knew that. It’s why I normally welcomed the long hours of work that kept my mind occupied.
I twitched when the storm behind me lit up trees surrounding the road with a blinding flash of lightning. The previously invisible trees exposed all their autumn colours, conjured from the darkness.
Gary had called me earlier that day, though it felt like yesterday. Amy! Are you free? And I was—of course I was—so I listened to what he had to say, throwing myself into work once again get my meandering mind back on course. Some millionaire client used our services when he renovated his old home, three hours north of the city. He’d fucked it all up, as our clients do, and he needed someone to go up there and unfuck it. Because he was a millionaire—maybe even a billionaire, Gary added, practically drooling—a regular tech wouldn’t do. This needed the white glove treatment, as he called it, but have you ever tried typing with gloves? You’re bound to make a lot of mistakes.
If it doesn’t take long, you could be home by ten? Gary phrased it like a question, hoping for an invite to my apartment as an answer. Gary was another thing I threw myself into after losing my family. He was a living distraction.
Okay, maybe Gary was distracting me for a short while before I lost my family too—I should be more honest with myself than I was with Wes. I was running away from my family even before they were taken from me.
I wouldn’t be home by ten. A few wrong turns and a malfunctioning GPS system had delayed me from getting on the right highway, and it was already getting dark.
Lightning flashed again, and I thought I saw a white truck among the trees, way off the road. Perhaps there were other roads back there, winding through the dense woods to come at this mansion from other angles. I’d grown up in a big city, where roads were generally straight enough that you didn’t change direction unless you wanted to. Up here, the roads twisted and turned, transforming from concrete to dirt, heading downhill, then uphill, still winding, tires slipping on gravel, the next twist threatening to toss you right into a lake.
When I turned again, the truck was gone. Maybe I’d passed it. Maybe it was a trick of the lightning. Maybe it drove into a lake.
The storm came together unnaturally fast. Red clouds on the horizon heralded its arrival, then suddenly filled the sky. These storms had been getting more severe every time—this already looked to be worse than last night’s drizzle. I’d be safe in the car if worst came to worst, but pulling over in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night wouldn’t be the most wholesome camping trip. Especially not with that white truck out there. Something was unsettling about seeing another vehicle so far from civilization, out in this forest, where only animals and reclusive billionaires belong.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips; I wouldn’t have to sleep in the car tonight. As the road’s path put fewer trees between me and the house, it gradually came into focus. I’d studied Foster Manor’s blueprints before, but never seen it in person, so driving up to it now was like meeting a friend from the internet. The home was new entwined with old. Its core was an ancient farm house, but it was now connected to an equally old carriage house by a newer wing. Another modern wing was built later, trying to match the character of the original buildings, but the yellow bricks were too clean compared to the blackened patina of the house’s ancient bones.
My company’s addition to the house was newest of all, but that wasn’t visible from the outside. The only clue was a sign stuck in the flower garden: This house protected by APT Security.
Thunder cracked overhead. I parked in front of the garage, then leaned forward and tilted my driving glasses up to check the sky. None of that awful rain was falling yet, but it would start soon. The clouds swooped and swirled, like they were reaching down to tap on the home’s slate roof, or topple one of its many chimneys. The windows below held only blackness—the house could have been abandoned, except for the dull glow showing through textured windows on the first floor.
A security camera hung from the awning over the front door. It didn’t belong with the rest of the professedly aged home, standing out like googly eyes stuck on a Renaissance painting.
I made sure my pony tail was all professionally bundled up, then hurried to the front stoop. I pressed the doorbell between the intricately-carved wooden doors and the wide windows that gave me a view of an expansive foyer.
A tall man with greying hair opened one of the doors. “Welcome! Oh, looks like another storm. You’d better come in.” He stepped aside to let me in. “Amy, correct? Sorry, Ms. Burnett?”
My married name. I’d been meaning to get that changed. “Just Amy’s great. Pleasure to meet you in person, Mr. Foster.”
He took my coat and hung it on a rack by the door. “Craig is great too. You know, for my name. I’m not—I’m not saying I’m great.” As soon as his hands were free, they began to fidget with each other. “I appreciate you coming at such short notice.”
“Hey, it’s what we do,” I said, hoping I didn’t come across as sarcastic. Because that would be so out of character for me.
“Yes, but with the unexpected storm and everything, you know. It’s appreciated, by me, by all of us.” Amy heard murmuring voices as Craig led her across the marble floor, past the carved banisters of the double-wide staircase leading to the second floor, and down a hallway lined with art. The frames were filled with a haphazard mix of subject matter—from photos of a pair of children to a sickly-thin woman to paintings of dragons that would have been more at home in a kid’s room. Lightning flashed outside, and through a pair of glass French doors to my left, I spotted a dining room that had been set up for a meal but not used. The white linens took on a red tinge for a moment in the odd light of the storm. A moment later, thunder crashed, momentarily silencing the voices down the hall.
“So, do you live with family?” I asked, careful not to be specific about a wife, or a husband, or kids, as I’d discovered how awkward and painful bringing that up could be as soon as I lost all of mine.
&nbs
p; “My son, yes, and well … yes, my daughter as well. My daughter lives here.” He coughed into a clenched fist. His hair was full and well-trimmed, sticking out in the front like a little cliff over his forehead, but its grey sheen gave away that he was much older than me. He was in good shape, with a deeply-lined but handsome face and a thin build that made his arms look a little too long for his body. I only noticed how old he really was when he coughed, his eyes squinting to accentuate the crevices radiating from them and the bags underneath them. “How about I introduce you to my son and the others, then show you to the control room?”
“Sounds grand,” I said.
The hallway opened into a modern kitchen on the right, and to the left, a family room with a mishmash of old and new furniture, gathered around a wood-burning fireplace that must have emptied up into one of the many chimneys I had spotted from the outside. The people sitting around the fire were as varied as the furniture itself. They stopped talking when Craig and I walked into the room.
“Everyone, this is Amy Burnett, from the security company. She’s come to troubleshoot the, um, the issues with our system.”
“About time,” muttered a pale man with a goatee sitting on a couch near the far wall.
The others ignored him. A short and burly black man near the fire rose from his chair and approached me with his hand outstretched.
“This is—” Craig began.
“I’m Marcus,” the man said, shaking my hand with a firm grip and a smile that instantly eased my increasingly frayed nerves.
“Marcus is a long-time friend of the family, and the greatest cook in the county.”
“There isn’t much competition around here, Craig,” Marcus said.
“The point remains, the point remains,” Craig said quickly, as if they’d done this little bit many times before. “And that’s Ash back there. He takes care of the facilities, including the security systems.”
Ash looked up from his watch and made eye contact with me for a split second, which I suppose he considered a greeting. I usually didn’t judge people too quickly, but—ah, I’d almost forgotten that I’d promised to be more honest with myself. I always judged people quickly, and I immediately judged Ash to be a prick.
Neither Marcus nor Ash were wearing anything that gave away their roles. I guess I expected a white chef’s uniform and a jumpsuit, respectively. “You both live here? That must be a nice perk of the job, huh?”
“I also get to eat the best food in the county,” Marcus said, and winked. While everyone else laughed, Ash muttered something; I only caught “never leave work, never stop working.”
The third person in the room cleared his throat. There was a moment of silent anticipation while we waited for him to say something, just long enough to be awkward. “I live here too.”
“Yes yes, this is Caleb, my son,” Craig said.
Caleb Foster couldn’t have been older than seventeen, but the bags under his eyes matched his father’s. His hand vibrated slightly as he half-stood from his chair to shake my hand.
I scanned the dark corners of the room, where knick-knacks on tables and shelves cast oddly-moving shadows in the flicker of the fireplace. “Your daughter lives here too, you said? It must be nice to have your family so close, especially with everything going on outside, and being so far from the city.”
Caleb’s head snapped down so he could get a better view of the floor. Marcus turned to Ash, who subtly shook his head.
Craig cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, well, we’d better get down to business then.”
Craig stepped aside and gestured for me to follow him. “Ash, come with us, will you? You know this stuff better than me.”
Ash pursed his lips and stood. A sudden clap of thunder filled the room, making Caleb jump and nearly fall out of his chair. “I’ll come and see too. I want to see,” he said.
“Well, I sure as heck am not staying here alone,” Marcus said.
We returned to the kitchen, then turned toward the foyer where I’d entered the house. I fell behind as I gawked at the small touches that made the house unique. Intricately-carved crown molding lined the ceiling. Every wall was adorned with ornate wooden panels. Looking through the cluttered rooms, I could see that many of the windows—even those in the modern portions of the house—were topped with old stained-glass illustrations. When the lightning flashed, it lit up a glass cow in the living room’s window.
“We get notes!” Caleb said, his sweat-dappled face suddenly an inch from mine.
“Excuse me?”
He made sure that his father and Marcus were occupied talking to each other, then pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Threats,” he said. “You’re the security company, right? Dad ignores it, but maybe there’s something you can do.”
I scanned the note, which was typed on paper creased from being folded and unfolded too many times. I caught the gist of it: abandon this place … you have the money to go elsewhere … we know about the safe room … we will return.
I thought about that odd white truck in the woods. “Have you told the police?” I asked.
“They’re useless. Wouldn’t get here in time even if a psycho with a chainsaw scheduled a visit in Dad’s calendar.”
Christ. What had I walked into here? “So this is why your father built the …”
“The control room is upstairs,” Craig said, climbing the ancient wooden staircase that was the centrepiece of the foyer.
Caleb gave me a worried look with his watery eyes, then rushed to help his father up the stairs. Craig’s legs shook with the effort of climbing each step. I followed, but paused at the landing halfway up. The windows there gave me a view of the back yard, which had so much concrete and furniture that it could’ve been considered a third wing of the house, and the newest one, by the looks of it. A swimming pool, glowing from lights embedded in its walls, took up most of a courtyard. At the far end, a half-indoor / half-outdoor shelter was done up like a tiki bar.
“It’s beautiful, wow,” I said.
“You’ll have to refilter the pool after the storm,” Craig said to Ash.
“Right,” Ash said. He’d fallen behind and was checking his phone.
Marcus stared out the window and bit his lip, his eyes on the horizon, where pinpricks of headlights on a highway were barely visible across a vast canopy of trees.
I stared at the view a moment longer, and the others indulged me. The rain started then. It looked normal at first, but as the droplets hit the water below, I could see a slight pink mist in the glow of the pool lights. Most storms looked like this since the environmental catastrophe.
Lightning flashed in the distance.
Thump thump! It came from directly behind us. Then two more thumps. The sound came from nearby—someone at the door. I twitched and whipped around, my heart thrashing in my chest. Something about the way these people were acting made me jumpy.
“Oh, thank God,” Marcus said. He must have seen the shock on my face. “It’s okay. That’s probably my daughter. She just finished work, and we’re supposed to go for a late dinner, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with all this going on outside.” He glanced at the pool, now alive, frothy with the heavy raindrops pouring from the sky. “Anyway, go ahead. I’ll get the door.”
Craig led us up the second flight of stairs while Marcus headed for the door and I heard it creak open. When I got to the top of the stairs, I peeked over the railing that overlooked the foyer. A girl in her late teens, maybe early twenties, let herself into the house, using the edge of her coat to wipe rain from her face, then checking over her shoulder as if to make sure the door was still closed. Marcus put his arms around her and whispered something in her ear. Her eyebrows creased with worry. She looked down, as if she could see something that I couldn’t in the patterns of the marble floors.
I caught up with Craig, pushing past Caleb, who was trying to get my attention again.
“Mr. Foster,” I said, “you did call me to fix a malf
unctioning security system, correct? Perhaps it’s just the storm making me nervous, but I feel like I’m being left out of something here.”
He inhaled too quickly, which made him cough again. When he regained his breath, he waved me forward, toward a hallway leading back into a wing of the home’s upper floor. “Yes, yes, I’ll show you.”
“Will you just tell her?” Ash asked.
Craig’s lips tightened. “Ash takes care of the security system. He’s quite diligent about always arming it at the proper times and keeping the software up to date. So I’m not sure what could possibly have gone wrong to make it all go offline.”
We passed more bedrooms. Caleb pointed at the closed door to one of them—this one had a crystal doorknob that was so old it was turning yellow. “I don’t go in that room. Ever,” he said, a lopsided smile on his face as he stared at me with glassy eyes. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do with that information.
“Okay, um, cool,” I said.
Further up the hall and to our right, I spotted a second kitchen, though this one was bathed in darkness except for when lightning flashed yet again. I could hear the rain beating at the windows and the roof above us. The storm was getting worse, making my chances of getting home tonight between slim and jack shit.
“Wait, it’s completely offline?” Caleb’s voice was squeaky. “I thought it was just the safe room.”
He bickered with his father, who tried to assure him that he’d tried not to incite any worry by telling his son that the security system was, in his words, completely buggered. Caleb looked like he was going to cry when he found out he’d been lied to, and rubbed at the pocket in his jeans that he’d pulled the note from.
