In the mid October sun, a willowy young woman, in her early twenties by appearance, heaved fruitlessly on a worn bronze door handle. The lock, a 1970s replacement, had yielded with suspicious ease but the door, as old and daunting as the Victorian Manor it was attached too, was stuck. Heavy with warn away carvings that may have once displays divine and mythic scenes adorning it and a bronze goat head knocker, the door was an impressive gateway—Certainly not the type to be opened by frazzled youth before it.
Jen Fields wore an old boyfriend's plain grey sweatshirt that was two sizes too big for her small frame and a tired paint-stained pair of jeans that had survived years of art school with the kind of look that reminded passers-by of gulf war veterans and old reality show stars. Her auburn hair was cut short and loosely fell over her ears. If not for her C sized breasts an observer would have mistaken her for a vagrant teen boy trying to break into a seemingly abandoned home.
Not that there was any observers. The home, called Lanell Manor according to faded sign that greeted visitors half a mile down the road was located in the middle of nowhere. A suburb of nowhere, in fact. On the outskirts of an already laughably small summer town in Massachusetts, Lanell Manor was surrounded by a young forest that had been allowed to grow in the once cleared hill the mansion was built on. The town, called Sheppard's Green, was a bustling attraction in the summer, housing middle class vacationers from around the country. But come Autumn the cheery drunk faces of bourgeois comfort gave way to the bitter yet stalwart frowns. The adults simmered in grease and television while the youth revolted with mid quality cannabis and smuggled wine. It was a Sadness. Not a kind of sad felt after some tragic but the kind which makes and entire bus of strangers sigh at once—or in other words: a Sadness.
"Fuuuuuuuuck," sighed Jen, dejectedly leaning her forehead against the wood door. "Fuck!" she shouted again, this time with shameful jubilation as the felt the door give way to the slight pressure. In an effort to avoid thinking about the fact that she had never seen a front door that opened outward, Jen picked her up her large duffel bag and threw it in before her. Holding her breath for fear of dust she took in the visuals of the room, which for the most part, looked exactly as she would have imagined. A large curving stair climbed one side the tall foyer. Except for the doors upstairs and one built into the side of the stairs, which presumably led into the basement, most of the rooms were accessible by tall gilded openings. Long rugs covered the old floors and the decorations matched the style with various tapestries, landscape paintings, wooden furnishings, and an actual suit of armor equipped with lance. Between these hung several portraits of thin, pale men and women all with green eyes and blank expressions.
Jen released her breath at the sight of herself in a mirror. "Oh God, I look homeless," She said. For a moment she tried to justify her shabbiness with the long drive that her taken her here from Poughkeepsie but she knew that the similarly contents of her duffel bag would render the argument pointless. "Well, advantages of self-employment..." Her voice had been a comfort to her during the long stakeouts outside of motels of suspected cheaters and hours spent in her Poughkeepsie apartment alone, but the house seemed to silence her.
It wasn't that it was creepy in the traditional sense; she had expected dusty armor, creaky floors, and portraits with eyes that followed her around the room. She could handle those. Clichés out of movies couldn't frighten her—too easy to be rationalized. But the house was off in another way. There was no layer of dust on anything and the floor, though visibly scuffed, was entirely solid. The way everything was so well maintained was unexpected, unexplainable, and frankly wrong. Enhancing this effect were the portraits; their eyes didn't follow her but instead all seemed to be looking at a point just twenty feet behind her left shoulder.
Like all people made uneasy by the unexplainable, Jen set out to do something. Slinging her bag over her shoulder she made way upstairs for a bedroom so she could get set up and review her job order. The hallway was lite by the long window that hung over the foyer and a single window at the furthest end of the hall. Unconcerned with comfort she walked into the first room at the end of the stairwell.
Inside was a room clearly inspired by 1950's Frank Lloyd Wright and a stark contrast from the rest of the house. Later generations of Lanell's had made sure to improve and change the house to their style. No doubt they each had planned to make the whole of the manor in their ideal but for whatever reasons none had managed to complete more than a few rooms or additions. What was left was an eclectic chaotic and all together bizarre hodgepodge of radically different rooms. The garden was modeled after a Roman courtyard by Jonathan Lanell who had a taste for the classics. Other rooms had various styles from the ages. Some had two as they were left half finished by one Lanell and completed by another.
Jen's room felt neutral and calm, as intended probably; it was a guest bedroom. The only furnishings were a wardrobe, a bed, and a small desk. On the walls were no portraits or tapestries but prints of French impressionists.
Jen relaxed her shoulders and fell onto the bed. "Well, it's not so bad." She was talking freely to herself again. "Not actually all that creepy and surprisingly well maintained," she laughed. "Of course, that's what's wrong. The job letter mentioned that no one has lived here since the late 1980's."
She was chewing on her lip. Warning signs appeared all over this case, but she couldn't resist the paycheck. No, not the money. It was the adventure pulling her into it. Everything about the job was just slightly off. A small wealthy pair of siblings had hired a private detective from Poughkeepsie to investigate the condition of their newly inherited family estate for a week at a whopping fifteen-hundred dollars a day.
"I just being paranoid. The Lanell's are hiring a private detective because they don't want to do it themselves. They hired from Poughkeepsie for the same reason they offered to pay so much money: their spoiled uninformed ignorant trust funders who are shit at geography." Jen was getting excited from the rationalizing. "And they hired me because..." That stopped her. There was absolutely no rational explanation as to why anyone would hire Jen.
Trust funders and idiots maybe, but even the Lanell's should have been able to tell that Jen was the classic example of a failure. A daughter of hippies she had followed her whims to a sub-standard art education. Failing to kick off a prospering career of sculture and fine art, Jen began to craigslist PI, offering to do background checks and relationship checks for money. After a year she had established herself in a studio apartment and small office next to a strip mall where she mostly met clients to talk about why they still had to pay her even if their spouses weren't cheating and that, no, she couldn't fake pictures for the court. In fact, there was only one reason why anyone would hire Jen Fields Private Investigator and the thought of it made her cringe. She was, effectively, disposable.
Jen, discomforted by her thoughts, tried to take her mind off of them—something she was getting very good at. Kicking off her shoes, she pushed herself back on the bed and bathed in the afternoon sunlight. The heating must have been maintained over the years, for suddenly the room became very warm. Realizing how tiring the drive had been Jen eased into sleep, muttering to herself, "Still, not bad detective work to make me so worried."
Lavender and jasmine scented the breeze that tickled Jen's olfactories into waking. She opened her eyes and stretched her arms wide, disrupting the tuxedo clad man kissing his way up her legs. Neither his sudden appearance or her change of wardrobe bothered Jen; the thin white cotton summer dress was definite improvement and she knew that the man was the butler assigned to take care of her every need—the Lanell's were legendary hosts.
"Good morning, Mr. Pekus," said Jen, cheery and relaxed.
Mr. Pekus the butler smiled and continued his way up Jen's calves. "You are in a dream, Ms. Fields," he said in between kisses.
The private detective bent forward and played with her butler's hair. "Yes, yes I am," she gasped as he ran his hands over her thighs.
