Three Incidents at Foster Manor

by P. T. Phronk

  Ash grabbed my arm and turned me toward him while the others got further down the hall. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I mean, he shouldn’t have called you. These people have money, but sometimes they don’t have a clue. You know the type. Maybe you should just go. This is something we could’ve solved over the phone if he just let me handle it.”

  His hand still gripped my arm, harder than I liked. “I don’t think I’ll be going until the storm is over,” I said as I pulled away from him.

  “Yeah, alright,” he said. He ran the hand that had grabbed me through his wavy brown hair. The man looked boyish, with a face that was rounder at the bottom than the top, like a teardrop, yet simultaneously gave off an older vibe, perhaps because of the anachronistic goatee and an olive corduroy blazer that would have been at home in the ‘70s. “No skin off my nose. Just realize that you’re walking into a shitshow here. And I do keep everything up to date. I wasn’t even here when it all screwed up—everyone’s been on vacation, so I finally had some time off. So don’t be pinning all this on me just because I have the passwords, alright? I’m not the only one who does.”

  Was that his angle? Was he trying to get me out of here to avoid the blame for this screw-up?

  “Ash? The key?” Craig asked, now frazzled by the argument with his son, a strand of grey falling free from the ridge of hair above his forehead.

  “Look, I’m not here to pin this on anyone,” I said to Ash as he pulled a keychain from his pocket. “I’m just here to fix the problem, whatever the hell it is, and you can bet your ass I don’t want to be coming back here on another stormy night, so I’ll tell the owner of the system—that’s Craig—exactly what went wrong and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  Ash scowled, then opened his mouth to say something else, but Craig gestured for him to hurry. He stuck a key into a door near the end of the hallway, just before another stairway.

  We entered an office. Sometimes clients would insist on the control room being a tiny closet with a wall of equipment and monitors, like you’d see in movies, usually with a security guard snoozing in front of it. Craig had been more sensible, and had us set up our hardware and software to connect to a regular computer monitor in a regular office. Probably not his office, though; I had only known Craig for a short time, but I had a feeling the men’s magazines and old comic books lying around were more Ash’s deal.

  Craig turned on a light and they gathered around the screen. For a moment I thought we were looking at a desktop image—an aspirational .jpg of an unattainable luxury car. Then I realized the system was live. The main window displayed the camera’s-eye view from inside the perpetually well-lit garage, pointed right at Craig’s Lamborghini.

  Smaller windows along the top of the screen showed the other cameras installed throughout the house. One pointed away from the front door, and had most certainly watched me as I’d first gawked at the house. Another showed the back courtyard and tiki bar.

  The view of the front grounds panned back and forth to take it all in. I leaned forward. In the drizzling rain, three strange faces hovered in the forest past the driveway.

  “Do you see …” I began, pointing at the display, but by the time the camera panned back to the same spot, it was only forest. Perhaps, like that white truck, I’d read too much into the twisting trees and shrubs. With my nerves frayed, I was prone to seeing things that weren’t there—maybe I picked that up from my husband. Former husband. Late husband.

  Caleb sighed with relief as he squeezed behind the desk and looked at the screen.

  “It’s fine,” Craig said. “It’s designed to sustain life for three months.”

  The thunder crashed outside, and the room’s lights flickered.

  Craig wiggled the mouse, then tapped the keyboard, but nothing changed on the screen. It still only showed the car in the big window, with a line of tiny windows along the top. “See, Amy? We’re locked out. Can’t switch cameras, can’t do anything at all. And the safe room, well, it’s all tied to this, so she’s locked in.”

  “She?” I asked. They obviously hadn’t seen anything unusual outside. They were talking about something else. I followed Craig’s gaze to the end of the row of tiny windows. The final camera showed the safe room: a bombproof, chemicalproof, soundproof, and all-round impenetrable shelter that could only be unlocked with proper clearance. At least, it did all that when the system was working, which it clearly wasn’t.

  There was movement on the grainy screen. As I watched, the blur of pixels coalesced into waving arms, pacing legs, a pair of dark eyes set in a fearful face. A girl was locked inside the safe room.

  Chapter 2

  She paced back and forth in front of the yellow door. The tiny window on the computer screen didn’t have enough resolution to properly display her face, rendering it as a pale blob with darker blobs for eyes, but the girl could only have been one person: the one everyone had avoided talking about. She was Craig’s daughter.

  “How … how did she get in there?” I asked.

  “She had access,” Ash said.

  “Trista would never go in there on her own,” Caleb said. “She hated that stupid room.”

  Craig sighed through his teeth. “Caleb, don’t. Not now. You realize how important the safe room is, in case of the remote possibility that … you know, something could happen. It won’t, but it could. We talked about this.”

  Caleb looked at his father with tears in his eyes. He itched at the pocket where he’d stuffed the note he showed me. “I know, Dad, yeah, I know. But … look at her.”

  Trista approached the door and pounded on it. I could tell from the way her head jerked forward and the way she clenched her fists that she was shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything coming from the basement below, where the room had trapped her. Even if the rain hadn’t been pounding the roof and making a racket, the walls of the room, designed to absorb the shockwave of a nuclear bomb, would keep her cries from escaping. At least the room was serving its purpose: Trista was, physically, safe.

  “We were all away for the week,” Craig said. “Caleb and I took a few extra days off after Thanksgiving to spend with family, while Trista … well, she was doing her own thing. With the house empty, Marcus and Ash only checked in occasionally. Trista must have come home earlier than she’d planned to, then, via some unknown method, got herself locked in there. She’s been in there all day. Maybe longer.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I can fix this.” I reached for the mouse, and felt Ash tense as I took over the control console that he must have been accustomed to dominating. I clicked on the window where Trista was trapped, to get a closer look, and to activate the intercom so we could communicate with her. I didn’t even get to that step. The system prompted me to log in. “You’ve been logged out. Can you type in your password?”

  Ash didn’t move. “Do you honestly think I didn’t try that already?”

  I wheeled around. Ash met my gaze. He had blank eyes that seemed to look past me—a look I’d frequently gotten from dudes, working in this business. Like I was simultaneously getting in their way, yet not worthy of acknowledging. “Just humour the person who designed the system, will you?”

  He blinked slowly, then reached over to type something so quickly that it looked like he was randomly pawing at the keyboard. Incorrect username or password.

  “Try again, slower, just in case you mistyped it,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, not quite doing it.

  This time he deliberately paused between each keystroke, drawing out the moment while Caleb drummed his fingertips on the desk. Incorrect username or password.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m sure it’s right,” Ash said. His face had reddened.

  “Okay, you’re doing great. Craig, can you try?” I asked.

  “It’s right,” Ash said again, but Craig pushed past him and tried his password. Incorrect username or password. Ash continued to go on in a detached drawl. “I t
ried everything already. I tried the forgot password link. I tried resetting the computer. I tried the passcode on the door. I tried—”

  “Yeah yeah, you tried everything, yet here we are, at the last step, which is calling the emergency number to get an expert on site. And who is that expert? Oh yeah, it’s me. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but can you all let me do my job? Go downstairs, have a drink, and Trista will join you in a few minutes.”

  They bickered for a while longer before Craig convinced them all to leave the room. “I trust this company. They’ve been doing this since the beginning,” he said, then herded Caleb and Ash away.

  I waited until I heard their footsteps on the creaky stairs. I got myself a few moments of blissful silence before the wind whistling at the windows and near-constant thunder started getting to me as much as the Fosters. I went through my usual troubleshooting steps, getting as far as I could without going into the diagnostics menu, which would require another password.

  What was that password? I’d set it myself, but it had been so long since a system screwed up so badly that I needed it. All I could remember is I’d chosen a code with so much meaning that I could never forget it. Except that had been years ago, and what had meaning to my past self didn’t seem to be particularly memorable to my present self. Whenever I tried to remember, my past became a puzzle made of clear, painful memories, complete except for the one missing piece where the passcode should have been.

  I’d have to call Gary and use his code. Fuck. Why did my memory have to betray me at the worst possible times?

  I took out my phone, but it had zero bars. The storm must have been messing with the signal, or worse, lightning could have completely fried the nearest and only cell tower.

  Something rustled in the hallway. I looked up, but nobody was at the door.

  It didn’t matter. There were two more things to try. I clicked the button to reset the password, which would send an email to the people with admin access to the system—Craig and Ash. I’d go downstairs, get them to check their email, and if that failed, I’d call Gary from the Fosters’ landline.

  I closed the password window. The girl was now facing the camera, her black, pixelated eyes staring right at me.

  I leaned forward. I could just make out the shine of tears on Trista’s cheeks as she stared at the camera, her eyes pleading, her shoulders shaking with sobs. The poor girl must have been so scared. Trapped there, scratching at the door, nobody answering her cries as the flames began to boil her skin.

  No, I thought to myself, you’re thinking of Todd again. Trista is fine. There are no flames here; all the company’s brochures brag about the precise climate control and disaster suppression systems.

  I hurried out of the room and into the hallway. As my footsteps echoed across the house, I heard the rustling sound again, like a broom sweeping a floor, this time behind me.

  I turned around. Nothing. Just the sounds of the home’s filtration system working, whoosh-ah whoosh-ah whoosh-ah, underneath the sharper rhythm of the rain.

  I continued down the hallway, but with every step, that rustling seemed to follow behind me. Just underneath the whoosh of the HVAC was another, subtler pattern.

  What if, what if, what if.

  It sounded like words. Just my imagination again, surely. I took a few more steps, but each thump of my feet was followed by an answering swish behind me.

  What if. WHAT IF.

  This was more than a rustle. I could hear the growl of vocal chords, the moist slither of a tongue against teeth, right behind my left ear.

  I whipped around for one last look back at the empty hallway, then walked as fast as I could, not stopping until I’d practically stumbled down the stairs and the sound behind me was gone, replaced by the chatter of the others in the family room. My nerves must have been completely shot now, conjuring voices from the typical sounds of an old house.

  I stopped to compose myself near the kitchen. The fridge there had a few pictures of the kids when they were young—mostly Trista, sometimes with another young girl, Trista’s pale skin cheek-to-cheek against the other girl’s darker skin. Sometimes Caleb was in the background, and he had those deep-set, haunted eyes even when he was younger. Above the pictures was a sticky note containing shaky hand-written words:

  DONT CRY

  DONT CRY

  What the hell was that about?

  I told myself to get it together, then checked to make sure my hair was still held tight in its ponytail before entering the family room. The family was gathered near the fireplace, their conversation heated. They fell silent as I stood before them.

  “Well?” Ash asked immediately.

  Marcus stood and blocked my view of Ash, which was, I thought, a kind little thing to do. He waved me toward the girl who’d been sitting on the couch beside him.

  “Amy’s here to get Trista out,” he said to her. “Nothing to worry about. Amy, this is Jasmine.”

  I recognized her from the photograph on the fridge, where a slightly younger and slightly happier version of her played with Trista. Jasmine’s handshake was firm but had a tremor to it. Mine may have been similarly unsteady after the odd experience upstairs, but I tried to make my voice reassuring. “I’m more worried about the storm right now. Looks like a doozy.”

  Jasmine cleared her throat. “The wind was bad. Dad and I were supposed to go for dinner, but that probably isn’t happening. So? Is Trista okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “There’s enough food and water in there to last months.”

  I meant it as a joke, but Jasmine’s mouth dropped in shock.

  “Trista and Jasmine have been friends since they were children,” Craig said. “Always worrying about each other. These two are like peas in a pod, or peas and carrots, or whatever they say about peas and friendship. I guess they had to be close, during those summers when they were the only kids around for miles.”

  I noticed Caleb’s eyes narrow.

  Jasmine finally laughed, but there was still a shake to it. “Yeah, good thing us peas got along. That could’ve been awkward. Can I go see her?”

  Craig said it was fine, and Marcus nodded. Jasmine hurried out of the room and toward the stairs like she’d been waiting for a starting gun. She knew exactly where the control room was. It was kind of sweet that the cook and his daughter were treated like family here, but also kind of concerning that they shared access to the security system. The home got less secure with each additional person who had free run of the place.

  I asked Craig and Ash to check their email inboxes. The Wi-Fi was still working, luckily, but they both said they had no new messages from the security system. I got them to check their spam folders. Still nothing. Dammit. Had the tech guys messed with the servers without telling me again?

  This was getting desperate. I really didn’t want to call Gary, especially this late at night. Any dependence on him made me feel more and more like a pile of guilty garbage. Without a doubt, calling in even that small favour would lead to another night of drinks with him, another night in his bed, another morning of regret.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is fine. There’s another thing we can try before—”

  Ash interrupted. “Are you going to ask Caleb what he was doing in the office?”

  Caleb looked up from staring at the fire. “What? When?”

  “There’s no when. I’ve caught you in there more than once, messing with the cameras, and every time, I tell you not to come back. If only your father locked down—”

  “Now,” Craig said, “Ash, I think you’re getting out of line. Again.”

  “Am I? Do you really think the system fucked itself up?”

  Craig fidgeted with a rip in the old chair he sat in. He began coughing as Ash paced the room, ending up beside me. Ash leaned over and whispered in my ear, quietly enough that nobody else could hear. “He’s not long for this world, you know.”

  Marcus stood and got between Ash and I again. “Could we all just calm
right down?”

  Ash puffed his chest out. “Calm down? Trista is locked in a room, the tech support here is useless, and Caleb won’t even say what he keeps doing in that room.”

  Craig stopped coughing. “I don’t appreciate what you’re accusing my son of here.”

  “I was just …” Caleb started.

  “Oh boo hoo, you were just, you were just. You broke it. You screwed everything up. It’s nothing new, but you can at least come clean with it for once.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Everyone!” I shouted. My voice had never been loud, but some tone in it commanded attention when I wanted it to. It had always made Wes and Todd stop in their tracks and listen, and it had the same effect here. “I can solve this in one phone call. I just need to—”

  A flash of light from the windows bleached the room white for a moment. There was zero delay before the deafening thunder, then all the lights went out.

  The phone lines were fried. Cell service too. Marcus said he thought he saw one bar pop up on his phone for a second, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his imagination. He went upstairs to check if being higher up would help with cell service, which it wouldn’t, but he was probably more interested in checking on Jasmine, who was still up there in the control room.

  The security system ran off a high-capacity battery, so Trista had the best room in the house right now, not that she knew it. The security station in the control room still “worked” too, in the sense that it had power, though without a passcode it couldn’t do anything other than show us the girl suffering in the safe room.

  They probably wouldn’t be calling it the “safe room” any more after tonight.

  At Ash’s urging, Caleb used some of his valuable cell battery to light the way to a supply closet, well-stocked with candles.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Craig said to me after we’d placed and lit tea lights around the house, then returned to the family room.

  It was almost ten now, so my hopes of getting home at a reasonable hour had gone up in flames, so to speak. “I guess I’ll be following the lead of your other helpers and staying here overnight.” After I said it, I blushed, hoped that calling Ash and Marcus helpers wasn’t offensive.