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theknightmarket · 9 months

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Chapter 1

<> Chapter 1 <> 'You Were An Oh-So-Generous Imbecile' <>

You were pretty sure you hated your uncle. Hate was a big word, but it was a big sentiment that you harbored against him. If he wanted you to hate him less, then he should have actually told you what you were getting into – but he hadn’t, so you didn’t. That didn’t change where you were standing, that being in the front lawn of a rotting, decrepit manor with annoyance and fear steadily growing in your heart, on a beautiful summer’s day when you could have been doing literally anything else.

What a pain it was to be generous in this climate.

You slammed the door of your pick-up truck a bit harder than necessary, but it didn’t do as much to quell your anger as you had hoped it would. Instead, the only thing it did was startle the Jack Russel that had been peacefully napping in your passenger seat. The little thing jumped up at the indication you had arrived at your destination, beginning to whine at being in the car without you for more than a second. You rounded the hood, swung the other door open, and watched your pet leap to the dry dirt.

“C’mon, bud,” you muttered, mentally preparing yourself with a twist of your backpack’s strap, “let’s go see this damage.”

Buddy yipped at your feet as he trotted alongside you, only picking up the pace to be the first one at the top of the stairs that led to the porch. For him, it was completely silent with his rise, but your weight warranted a few more groans and creaks from the old wooden boards. Hopefully they would stay put until you had unloaded the boxes you brought with you. If they were to fall through, you were pretty sure you would boycott this entire thing.

However, for now, they were fine, meaning you were free to jostle the loop of keys that hung by your belt. The silver to your pick-up, the square to your apartment, the smooth to your work locker, and, finally, the rusted to the house. You eagerly shoved the key into the lock and twisted, not for want of seeing the interior, but more absolutely despising the texture of rust coming off on your fingers. With one hand, you pushed one half of the double doors and brushed the other off on your pant leg. It was the most you could do before putting on your gloves.

Buddy marched in before you, nose to the air and nails skittering over the boards. The bridge of light marked by your entrance didn’t let you see far, but it was enough to know that this place was going to be, to put it lightly, a lot of work. In just the foyer, you could see splinters in the floor, furniture scrapings along the baseboard, and too many holes to count in the walls. Half of the banister that trailed unhelpfully up the staircase to your right was snapped off, and a chill spread through your fingertips to the back of your neck at the sight of an extremely spear-like section at the curve.

You slung your backpack off your shoulder, landing it clean in the dust. Not ideal, but you were able to retrieve the notepad and pen that you had stashed in there from the depths, catching a flashlight and pair of gloves on the way out. Those went on before you pulled the bag back over your shoulder. The items left on the floor you brought with you when you stood back up straight, and, snapping the torch on, you noted down the damage in the notepad. Later, you would sort them out in order of importance, but now was time for inventory.

Once all your things were in order, and you had figured out a music situation that wouldn’t stop you from accidentally getting attacked by a racoon from not hearing it sneak up on your or you having no hands to defend yourself, you set out on your mission.

One that, by your count, took two hours, and that was just the first floor.

Now, when your uncle had offered you the ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ – which, really, should have been the first red flag – you hadn’t asked many questions. Only the basics you got answers to, like where the place was, when you could start, and how big it was. He posed it as a business proposition, you believed it to be a favor, and where did that leave you? Standing in front of this busted-up manor with the unenviable task of fixing it up to a livable condition, that’s where, and with three entire pages of repairs, it was definitely unenviable.

You flopped against the cardboard boxes in the back of your truck. Ceramics dug into your sides, and cushions cramped you into a box yourself, but it was the most you could relax in clear view of the second floor. A sigh forced itself between your teeth; to recount, there had been 11 rooms: a foyer, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, an office, a game room, a library, a pantry, a sunroom, and two bathrooms, plus or minus a few storage closets. How this place had been considered a home and not a hotel was beyond you, but you did know that you would kill to live in a place like this. Currently, you were renting a one-bedroom apartment in the bad side of your hometown, though, your uncle was now occupying it while you managed the manor.

Glaring up at the shaded windows of the second floor, you wondered if you had been tricked, even if you were somewhat to blame for not asking more questions, not least of all how he came into such a building in the first place. Your uncle wasn’t rich, he wasn’t particularly well-liked enough to have inherited it, the most likely scenario that you could think of was that he had broken in and decided you would be the best person to make it all better.

You glared down at your hands; you were only getting yourself more worked up, and that was doing you no good. The best thing to do would be to check out the damage on the second floor, and then make your next plan of action, which would probably include setting yourself up in one of the bedrooms.

And yes, you knew that there were multiple bedrooms, only because your uncle had phrased it as being a good place for the family to meet up without having to worry about getting home to sleep. But, knowing him, you wouldn’t put it past him to expect everyone to sleep in a tent outside.

The size of the floor gave you some security in your idea, so you threw yourself out the cargo bed and strutted up to the front door again. As you passed, you tried to keep your eyes off the growing pile of rats, mice, and other pests that Buddy had been delivering to the porch. You had never been gladder to have a hunting dog as a companion, the suggestion of finding all those vermin yourself practically making you gag.

But the journey up the stairs damn-near made you flinch. That spiked section taunted you as you neared it, and, even when you’d moved away by five steps, it felt like you were just one wrong move from impaling yourself on it. You could already feel that being at the top of your list from mere discomfort alone, but that would have to come after looking at the remaining rooms. You only hoped that they would be better than the downstairs.

When your feet came to a stop at the carpet in the hallway, you were greeted by the lovely sight of not-too-much-damage. It seemed to have been spared from the barrage of destruction that the rest of the house suffered from, with the walls looking good as new. No peeling paint, no scratches, no nothing could be seen in the dim light given by an overarching window. The decorations didn’t look bad either, with the only thing off being a knocked over vase, luckily, empty. The corners of your lips perked up in relief. This wasn’t so bad.

Or, you had thought, before you took a couple steps forward and your left leg fell straight through the floor.

You cursed and panicked and flailed, the jagged edges of broken floorboards jutting into your leg and pulling the skin from the flesh of your calf. Immediate lines of pain struck like lightning; the true damage hidden from you by your thigh getting stuck in the hole. The few spots of light that surrounded you only hinted that there was going to be splinters in your leg, and the stinging agreed with that.

Alongside your squirming, your music played naïvely, not quite a mockery as it was a bystander not realizing they were a bystander. Past that, it was very quickly becoming a hindrance, clogging your brain with innocent lyrics, and tugging your attention in too many places. Your breathing hastened underneath the melody.

You needed to stop panicking. You knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier, especially when you could feel the beginnings of a trail of blood flow down your leg. Your breathing was stuck between calming down and speeding up, mind desperately trying to keep up with your instincts. It was an unfortunate purgatory that you found yourself in while your body fought with itself to decide your next course of action. The second that you started to shift in the hold of the floor, pain leaped out and stopped you dead in your tracks. You tried to take in a deep breath but even that felt like the wrong move. A million and one questions sprinted through your mind; how were you going to get out, how long would it take, where was your dog, were you going to die? That one was unlikely, but you were understandably scared.

Which meant that you needed to calm down, and that was somewhat easier now that the shot of adrenaline was emptying out of your system. So, planting your hands against the floor at your sides, you sucked in a breath, held it, and began the task of bringing yourself up. The first seconds were the hardest, since you were also taking the splinters of wood that were still attached to the boards with you. When they snapped, you, trusting that it wasn’t the sound of your bones breaking or something, managed to wedge yourself out and lug your body onto more stable ground.

You couldn’t help but let out a pitiful laugh. The first day wasn’t even over yet, and you’d nearly fallen through the second floor. You could try and get some compensation for that, but then you wondered if this was even legal, and you were already too tired to deal with your uncle, let alone law enforcement. That left you lying on your back, staring at the ceiling, and hoping beyond all hope that there wasn’t a secret third floor.

As you let your head loll to the side, another aspect was added to your hopes; that being that you hadn’t somehow gotten head trauma from this whole incident – because, standing at the end of the hallway, bathed in the light from your flashlight, was a person. A full, in-tact, random stranger, who was decked out in a black suit and white dress shirt. A similarly ashen cane was planted next to stainless dress shoes, giving the impression of high-class society. That, coupled with a ribbon on their lapel, hinted that they weren’t actually there.

You rubbed your eyes with one, dusty hand, and then brought yourself to look in their direction again. They hadn’t disappeared.

Were they real?

You called out a shaky, “Hello?” to which they didn’t respond.

Not real.

They blinked.

Real.

You collected yourself and stood to your feet, albeit without much confidence now that you were once more above the hole, but you managed to take a step closer. Again, they failed to react.

Not real.

But they weren’t a trick of the light, and your head felt relatively fine, so what was causing this illusion? Was it an illusion in the first place?

“You… nobody’s supposed to be here,” you mumbled, barely loud enough for it to be heard. Nevertheless, it seemed third time was the charm, because this did earn a response from the suited stranger. That being, they twisted on their heel and walked into one of the adjacent rooms, not even the sound of their cane coming down on the floor trailing after them.

Without much else to do, you pursued.

“Hey, wait!” you called, skidding to a stop where they once stood, “I’m gonna need to talk to you!” Your own heartbeat overtook the sound of your shoes against the boards as you rushed to open the door that they had presumably closed behind them. “You can’t just—!”

They were gone. There was nothing else to say, apart from that they were gone, like a fire’s smoke dissipating into the air. You didn’t know how, considering that you were only two seconds behind them, and there was no feasible way out of the room, apart from the door that you were obviously blocking. If there were some secret passage, it wasn’t visible to you, and they wouldn’t have had enough time to close a door behind them when you had gotten into the room.

You hated this.

But you still had a job to do, so, having the chance to brush yourself off, you whipped out the notebook and pen from your back pocket, put the flashlight in your mouth, and started to inspect the room. All the while, you tried your hardest to dismiss the stranger as an adrenaline-created illusion.

It was pretty obvious that the room was another study, a lot like the one downstairs, if not smaller. That would have made it appear cozier, but the tighter constraints were only balanced out by the sparse décor. It was simple; a desk, chair, and – when you approached to grab at the string – a broken lamp were stationed underneath the singular, large window. The draws were entirely empty, save for a fine layer of dust that similarly permeated the air. In fact, everything was coated with the stuff, from the shelf and mirror at one end of the room, to the chest of draws at the other. Why such a thing was in there was beyond you, but, like the desk, they were all empty. It was a good thing, too, because, as soon as you pulled one of the handles, the whole thing collapsed in on itself, as if it had never been stable in the first place. Next to the note of its damage, you scribbled down a reminder to just throw the whole thing out.

Apart from that, the damage in this study was less unique. There were the common scratches along the floorboards and the peeling paint, though those could all be fixed just as the rest of the house. You left that room feeling infinitely more positive about your chances than when you ran into it.

Those positive feelings were dashed as soon as you stepped foot into the room across from it.

What looked like it should have been in a hospital instead of an old manor, also would have suited a dump better. Five beds, headboards aligned against the walls, gave the whole place an asylum-esque feeling. The cold metal outside, the spilled first aid boxes, a collection of pill bottles in the corner, and a stain on the floor that you wished was just weird-old-house-juice but was definitely just blood. A horror scene that had happened years ago.

“Oh, what the fuck,” you sighed. You repeated this as you stumbled through a forest floor of old clothes and spare rags, not a single one looking useful anymore. Picking your way over them, you made your way to the bottles in the corner. It would give you an indication of the furthest this house could have been occupied.

After locating one with a semi-legible label, you twisted it around to look at the expiration date. March 1995. March 1995. 23 years ago. You quickly dropped the bottle.

Well, at least it explained the state of the place. 23 years was plenty of time for raccoons or bandits to come along and pick it apart, not to mention the damage it could have sustained from the owner themself, especially given that this specific room looked more like an infirmary than a normal bedroom. It was anyone’s guess as to what the entire manor was used for.

Your shoes clicked at the door a few moments later, when you were entirely done looking over the room. They weren’t normally this loud, but, when the only other inhabitant of the building was your dog – who was who-knows-where – and a possible ghost, there wasn’t much else to fill the void. In fact, it was an eerie quiet, a worrisome quiet, a something-is-wrong quiet.

Why had your music stopped?

Your hand trailed to your ear.

What happened to your earbuds?

You patted your backpack’s pocket.

Where was your phone?

You didn’t have the time to have another freak-out, nor did you want to, so you elected to take a deep breath in and turn back to the infirmary room. You valued the thing that held all your information, contacts, and way out of the manor over your body not contracting some minor disease, so you retraced your steps to the best of your ability. It was like diving without a mask, you would keep coming back out of the piles of stained rags and medicine bottles to get oxygen, and then you’d go back down to try and find your phone amongst the wreckage. Along the way, you discovered a worrying number of bullet holes in the floorboards below – 13, you counted – and a couple cinder marks marring the baseboard. The piling concerns for the building’s integrity didn’t help the fact that you did not find your phone, but you had been sure that you had it when you first entered. Where else could it have been?

Sighing, you admitted that there was a lot of places it could have been, and your not-so-enviable task of searching for your phone was not-so-kindly extended. Ten minutes turned to thirty, thirty minutes turned to an hour, and then an hour turned to two, until you had wasted two whole hours looking in every nook and cranny, even the rooms you had yet to explore. After scouring the hallway, study, and the infirmary for a second or third time, you moved on to the rooms the other side of the staircase.

The first were quick busts; two bathrooms that would have suited a haunted house more than there, with growing mold spots you were not excited to deal with. The porcelain of one of the sinks had been cracked so much that it would spill any water poured into it if the pipes worked at all. You doubted it very much so, especially for the second toilet that had duct-tape haphazardly wrapped around a portion. It also had you making a mental note to look up when lead pipes were banned.

Next up was a bedroom. The master bedroom, you presumed, given the larger bed and the adjoining bathroom. You gaped at the red satin sheets when you first entered, marveled at the canopy drawn around them, which were an equally rich color, and let out an expected wolf whistle for the impeccable mahogany posts. Looking at it nearly brought tears to your eyes, not only because of the unimageable design, but because it looked untouched. No damage for you to deal with. You felt the bright light of hope claw itself from the depths of your stomach. If you weren’t still missing your phone, you would have collapsed onto the plush pillows.

You shuddered with the burden of a sinner when you forced yourself to disturb the room to search – was it worth it, though – and you were quick to leave when you found nothing. When your boots stopped outside the room, you couldn’t help but laugh. What were you, a maid too scared to get caught in the master’s private quarters?

You stopped laughing when you realized that was just what you were.

Onto the next room! You scuttled from the master bedroom to the room opposite. What you thought was a room, anyway, a belief that was broken when you opened the doors to see the outside. A balcony that stretched from the door you had just stepped through to the room one over. That same mahogany danced the border between you and the rest of the world, the same as the bedroom, but with notable cracks and divots. Patterns were inscribed in the pillars supporting the roof above, and, for a brief moment, your shoulders dropped, your lungs exhaled, your weight disappeared just like that. With how creepy the manor appeared, you had forgotten that it was still a home. One that people lived their lives in.

Carved into the banister were notes. Some were small, some were full sentences. ‘Don’t forget Tiny’s birthday’ – ‘violet, moss, garlic’ – ‘o’ slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?’. None of them lined up in a manner of tone or handwriting, it just showed you how many people had taken to this place enough to leave something of themself there, ingrained in the wood. You would probably be passing this onto your uncle when you finished up, and, for some reason, that almost disappointed you. Sentimentality was a fickle thing, you had your ups and downs with it, and yet you rapidly found yourself wanting to make the same connection that these people had made, even though you knew it would be short-lived and painful. But maybe that was what it was like for them, too.

You wished you could meet them.

Pushing off from the balcony’s edge, you decided that this wasn’t something you needed to fix. Instead, you would focus on getting your phone to finish up the day. It was already getting late, with the sun dipping into the horizon behind you, so it was the most you could do to make use of the light. You only hoped you could find it soon, or else you’d be stuck for the rest of the night in the dark, alone. The mere thought made you shiver as you pulled open the other door along the balcony.

And then you stopped.

“Okay, then.” Your quiet muttering was left drifting in the air. You tried to conjure another thought to replace it, something more helpful, but you only managed another, “Okay.”

The floor space was relatively empty in the room. A single leather chair sat next to a small table in the middle, while a bookcase leaned against one wall. In contrast, the walls were what caught your attention; from one corner to the next, the tanned wallpaper was splattered with mounted animal heads like bullets from a shotgun blast. The largest was a bison, complete with the two horns and furry head. Surrounding it was a wolf, moose, and elk separately mounted. Golden plaques were screwed in below some, though others had either fallen to the ground or disappeared entirely. As you side-stepped a crack in the floor that was barely hidden by a dusty rug, you were sympathetic to the smaller wolf head that had a clear bullet through its forehead, one not taken in its death. Whoever had been in there before you had an obvious distaste for the décor choice.

The room itself unnerved you. The glossy eyes of dead animals both mocked and pitied you as you walked towards the centre, like the angels of death that couldn’t make up their minds. The lack of… well, anything made you grimace; there was no smell, no sound, no sight for the blackened edges of the room that neither your torch nor the windows could reach. But the feature at the head of it all, the one that had you debating taking off from the balcony behind you, was your phone on the table.

Your phone, on the table, in a room you hadn’t even known existed.

Why were you doing this again?

Oh, yeah, because you were an oh-so-generous imbecile.

Your damn-near jumped out of your skin when your phone started belting a tune to an old song you thought you’d forgotten. It would have been nostalgic in any other situation, but you rushed forward to scoop the offending device up and jump to the door. The eyes of the taxidermized heads trailed your boots, burning holes into your back and bringing a cold shock up your spine. You didn’t look back, refused to look back, until you were safely crashing into the front seat of your truck. The door slammed next to you, making both yourself and Buddy – who had been peacefully snoozing away in the passenger seat – rear up like horses.

“Damn it,” you mumbled, elbows on the steering wheel and the heels of your hands boring into your eyes, as if, if you pushed hard enough, you could gouge the fear out of your brain. It didn’t work.

But the adrenaline was leaking out of you now that you were inside something that wasn’t an ancient manor dead-set on giving you a heart-attack. You even managed to crack a smile when you felt the wet texture of Buddy’s nose push against your side. Bringing one hand to scratch behind your ears, you steeled your nerves and stared daggers into the window opposite you.

You weren’t going to be beaten. Not by a house that could be knocked down by a bad gust of wind. Not here, not now.

“C’mon, bud,” you announced with a confidence that was half-convincing your canine companion, “let’s go set up shop.”

You lugged the borderline camping gear out of the bed of your truck, Buddy helping by carrying his dog bed as best he could, and through to the foyer. It was only the question of where you would be sleeping. The bedrooms were no-go, the master was definitely out because you would feel like you were disgracing a 1600s lord, and you were not sleeping in a bathroom. Most of the downstairs rooms were out, as much as it pained you to say it, just from the concerning amount of bullet holes in the walls that meant it was as cold as a grave down there. That meant that the best bet was the study.

So, that’s where you found yourself, ten minutes later, with an old mattress covered with a comforter you’d found buried in your closet draped over it. A flat pillow marked the top of the bed, while Buddy’s little nest sat next to the bottom. With him with you, you could find relief in there being no rats, at the very least.

It was when you were getting dressed into your nightwear that you received a message from the one person you had been dreading talking to, who was also the someone you’d missed a call from out of your panic.

Throwing your last shirt over the chair, you tapped on your uncle’s contact and skimmed over his message.

‘Hows it going champ’.

You scowled.

‘Really appreciate you doing this for me’.

Your fingers moved quicker than your brain, but, at 11 o’clock at night, with your physical and mental energy zapped, that wasn’t an accomplishment.

‘I hate you.’

His reply was immediate. ‘I know’.

You flopped onto the mattress and pushed your face into the pillow. With your luck, maybe you’d suffocate before the morning.

But that wouldn’t be the end of it. Not for you, because something in the manor was stirring. While you slept on the second floor, the first floor was alive with whisps of shadow, light, laughter, and graveness.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. In the past 100 years that this house had stood, there had been many a meeting in its halls. Now, the dining room was being used as the hub for nine very uncommon individuals.

At the foot of the table, on the right-hand side, sat someone only shadowed by the brim of their hat. A strap stretched from one shoulder to the other, the same color as the table at which they sat, and it ended at a satchel marred with soot, similar to the rest of their outfit. A button-up shirt and, noticeably, two different belts to hold up their pants. As was typical, a smirk was carved into their mouth, like they were getting just what they wanted, regardless of whether they knew what that was or not. What was not typical, however, was that it was closed.

Opposing them was someone who looked vastly brighter and bubblier. No smirk, just a calm, welcoming grin, almost golden retriever like. Given the late-night mist practically pooling around their feet, their attire was the most suited to where they sat; a beige jumpsuit thrown over a spotless turtleneck, adorned with patches and badges that hinted at a wider experience than what was given by their disposition. A belt wrapped around their waist – just one, this time – but it was decorated with little machines with readings and logs and all manner of technical things that lit up once in a while. In general, they looked happy to be there.

Next to the first person was a figure hunched over, calloused hands squeezed between their legs. A myriad of tattoos drifted up their arms, breached their neck and curved down their chest, not that all of them were visible. A plain white shirt blocked most, but that didn’t cover the scratches and bruises that dotted their face. A plaster here, a bandage there. Some looked like they had never fully healed, while some appeared as though they had been sewn into the skin.

That was nothing, though, given who they were across from. The most notable thing about them was the bloodied rag wound around their eyes, the middle pushed in as if the sockets were empty. The trail of velvet dripped down from the cloth to the dress shirt to the collar of their trench coat, marrying the fabrics together. This figure sat straight, straighter than any of the others before them, and yet was just as relaxed. They found comfort in their knowledge, which scattered from their mouth with no sign of stopping.

Continuing on was someone situated diagonal to the blinded. Had there not been a constant flickering of light from their right, one might have thought they were hidden in the darkness, bathed only in the light of the shadows. They were completely grayscale, not a single article of clothing or expanse of skin was natural. A gray hat with a black band – the shadow it threw down nearly invisible compared to the rest of them –, darkened eyebrows that hinted at nothing but curiosity, a tie loosened around their own dress shirt that offered the strictest contrast. Their head was tossed to the side, but it was held aloft just enough that they were able to guide a glass of whiskey to their lips.

Despite this phantasm being a contradiction of color in of themself, the one perched haphazardly in the seat over the table was an insult to their monochromatic scheme. They were dressed head to toe with a sugary motif, like cotton candy turned to silk. The two shared a drink, however, as one of their hands curled around a martini glass. The bright pink handlebar mustache was a surprise and the fluffy hair that dropped over their forehead threw the only darkness on their face. Even the air around them seemed to pop and fizz with eccentricity; fireworks on the fourth of July.

A much more arrogant space wavered around the one on the next diagonal. They laid back in their chair, like it wouldn’t dare fall over with them in it, no matter how far they tipped it, something they did with proud elegance. Slicked back hair that tapered out at points less effected by product swayed as they rocked, not a single piece out of place enough to touch the collar of their shirt. Their outfit looked plucked straight out of a catalogue, nothing odd or unkempt or even ruffled. A deep crimson suit jacket sat atop the dress shirt, with a black bowtie peeking out between the folds. Although it appeared without fault, the person donning them looked like they would rather be wearing anything else; otherwise, the scowl was just a permanent quirk of their face.

Their opposing guest dropped the vibrancy, settling, instead, for the classic suit jacket, shirt and pants that high-class society adorned. Slicked back hair, more so than the previous figure, but the only feeling expressed was a strict somberness. A prisoner accustomed to their fate, their eyes were trained on the reflective surface of the table, their hands fiddled with a cane that was their only tethering to this world.

All of these phantoms of the night were gathered in the same place, for once in a blue moon, to discuss a single matter. Each had been questioned in turn, and, while some were let off without a comment, others were heavily berated. Often times, they weren’t sure of what these meetings were for, but there were the odd occasions, the rarest of the rare, that it was obvious.

The dismal creature at the head of the table, sitting with their hands wrapped firmly around each other – as if the last speck of patience they held was caught in their fingers –, had announced the communion for one reason, and one reason only. The room flexed around them, and the blinking of red and blue lights struck lightning into the walls. Their grasp was so tight, not as if they were running out of patience, but because they were. Collected in a black shirt and white suit, ashen skin only rivaling that of the monochrome guest, it was easy to imagine it cracking.

“Now,” they spoke, slowly rising to their feet in what felt like a millisecond, “what are we going to do about the new owner?”

And crack it did.

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