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“I’ve told you a thousand times, Ted. You can just call me Jonas.” He then locked his car, pocketed his keys, and waltzed over to the front door. He paused on the front step for a moment and gestured toward the ground to Ted, who was hobbling along beside him. “You’ll have to get the power washer out. Looks like they let her think she had a shot at escaping, and the bitch got blood all over the driveway.”
“Absolutely, Mr. Sil—Jonas,” Ted said without missing a beat.
The two men approached the massive front doors, and Jonas Silver pushed the door open, gesturing for Ted to take the first steps inside. Both men were silent as they looked around the foyer, admiring the bloody mess from the night before.
“Blood on the chandelier…” Ted moaned uncomfortably as he leaned backward, taking in the view of the ceiling. “The mess is truly astonishing, sometimes, and it never really gets easier. You’d think after all this time, they’d learn a few manners.”
Jonas was not nearly as amused as Ted was by his attempt at a joke, and he threw the older man an annoyed look that caused him to dismiss his smile with haste and reassess his friendly tone.
“Don’t get soft on me, Ted. Just be thankful it looks like they ate all of her,” Jonas snapped. “So at the very least, you don’t have to find a place to hide leftover appendages.”
“That is true, sir,” Ted answered sheepishly as he fidgeted with the lid of his cup. “I suppose this doesn’t look as bad as some of the others I’ve seen. I should be able to have this cleaned up well in time for your next guest.”
Jonas stuck out his arm and shook Ted’s hand firmly.
“That’s what I like to hear,” the modelesque man said before turning on his heels back toward the front door. “It’s a pleasure to employ you, Ted. As always, don’t be afraid to reach out if you need anything, but I trust you won’t.”
There was an edge to his voice that made it clear that evenifTed needed anything, he should seriously reconsider reaching out. Mr. Silver, Jonas to his associates, wasn’t a man to be bothered.
After one last look over his toned, impeccably dressed shoulder, Mr. Silver left through the front door and pulled it shut behind him before his employee could even respond. The mansion went hauntingly silent after his departure. Ted got to work right away, gathering his cleaning supplies, whistling the tune of an old TV show theme song to keep himself company and distract himself from the gore.
Even though he was frighteningly aware he was being watched the entire time.
Chapter1
Logan
I ran over the checklist in my head. T-shirts, check. Jeans, check. Bras and underwear, check. Toiletries, check. Phone charger, speaker, notebooks, check. The zipper of my suitcase was already going to strain against the volume of stuff I was already intending to bring, and I hadn’t even stopped by Blair’s yet to grab the few things I had left over there the previous weekend. I reminded myself that it wasn’t like I was flying. I could bring as many bags as I wanted in my car. It wasn’t like I would run out of space. Once I got to where I was going, I would have an entire mansion at my disposal to hang out in.
My long black hair kept falling in my face as I was trying to organize my things to make more room for my laptop, so I threw it into a lazy ponytail to keep it out of my field of vision. It was like I couldn’t concentrate without it pulled back.
A little over a week had passed since the spring semester ended at my school, the University of Pennsylvania, and I was home for the summer. My original plan was to crash at my dad’s house in Pittsburgh during break, to save the money I’d have spent on rent, and just relax. Unfortunately, it had only taken a couple of days for me to realize that I would lose my mind with boredom if I didn’t find something to do, so I scoured the internet for a summer job that wouldn’t suck the life out of me.
The opportunity to spend a month house-sitting an old mansion in the middle of the woods down in West Virginia was perfect for me. It was quiet, secluded, completely devoid of the customer-service tasks that I despised, and happened to be in an area of the state that the internet paranormal forums I lurked called “extremely unsettling” and “particularly strange.” I told myself I could hit two birds with one stone: make some cash babysitting the propertyandwrite a personal piece about the “strange and unsettling” environment. With any luck, I hoped I could add a Fangoria publication to my resume, but I’d even settle for a viral Reddit post. I’d happily take anything to make myself even vaguely known in the paranormal community prior to graduation.
I’d never experienced anything unusual, but my grandmother’s suspicious nature and Appalachian roots made sure I was raised with a healthy dose of openness to the possibility that there was much more to this world than we understood.
I heard my dad’s heavy footsteps plod up the stairs to my bedroom. As far as father-daughter relationships were concerned, ours was remarkably normal and overall very healthy and happy. My mother had died when I was young, so it had just been the two of us for so long. He never remarried and never even put himself back out there to try to find himself a date, despite my encouragement. Between raising me, working his way through the ranks at the fire station, and making sure his mother—my grandmother—was happy and taken care of, the man was almost always busy. Even with me out of the house during the school year, he still found a thousand “very important” projects to keep himself occupied.
He appeared in my doorway and leaned against it casually.
“How’s it going in here, kid?” he asked while he chewed on a toothpick. The thin wooden sticks had taken the place of cigarettes after he quit some years back, and now he almost always had one hanging out of his mouth.
“Oh, it’s going,” I answered as I sat on my suitcase to use my weight to shove the contents down enough to zip it closed. Once I found victory in a fully zipped suitcase, I shot back up to stand. “I’ve still gotta head to Blair’s and grab my hair and makeup stuff.”
“Hair and makeup stuff?” he asked. “You sure you need all that just for a month-long job hanging out in an empty house in the woods?” He let out a chuckle. My dad never failed to get a giggle out of himself, and it was a noise I definitely missed when I wasn’t around.
I gave him one of my standard “unimpressed daughter” looks.
“Just because I was hired to watch this guy’s house doesn’t mean I’m trapped there like some sort of prisoner,” I said as I rolled my eyes in his direction. “You’re talking like I have no desire to explore the town and see what sort of shit I can get myself into.”
He removed the toothpick from his mouth and pointed at me with it.
“Well, frankly, I’d prefer if you didn’t get intoanyshit and kept yourself safe, dammit,” he said pointedly before replacing the toothpick he’d removed with a fresh one. “Keep your dear old dad from stressing into an early grave.”
I knew he didn’t want me to go. He’d never admit it, but I knew he enjoyed our summers together, and I knew he worried like a mad-man even though he always tried to play it cool or hide his concern behind jokes.
I walked over and gave him a hug, and he awkwardly returned it. He was a great guy, but never quite figured out how to be affectionate.
