(18+) Someone in the dark

Ch. 7: Fifty-seven photos

A few days passed and nothing too much out of the ordinary happened. I fell into a routine of serving my boss' meals in time and cleaning the rooms one by one. My biggest issue was getting enough sleep because of all the noises. But I soon learned to ignore the many sighs, groans, growls, and creaking sounds from the attic and other places in the mansion. I heard them, for sure, but I pretended I didn't. It was the crying that bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Come on! I was a human like everybody else. Of course, my heart ached for the little girl. And the question that rang over and over in my head. Who was Pat?

At least I had someone to talk to now. I didn't know where he was during the daytime, but every evening while I was cleaning up and doing the dishes, my furball friend visited me. He wagged his tail, licked my hand, and turned on his back to make me rub his belly. Like most dogs, he always begged me for a treat, and like most soft-hearted people, I didn't stand a chance against his pleading eyes and small whimpers. Unfortunately, after some leftovers from dinner, he always outsmarted me and ran off before I could see where to.

I had to admit that I struggled to decide if he was real. I mean, when he jumped around me with joy or gulped down his food, he seemed more than real enough. But since he kept appearing and disappearing the same way as everybody else did, I couldn't help but to question if he really was an actual dog. However, for the sake of my sanity, I convinced myself that he was.

And I still hadn't been allowed to call my mom.

That bothered me more than anything in this house. I asked every day. And every day, I got the same answer. "Today it not a good time." And then I was told to do something that in my eyes wasn't even that important.

Today I was doing the red room. That was where I'd signed the papers the first day I got here, and just for fun, I had started calling it the REDRUM, inspired by Stephen King's novel. It was actually a suitable name. Especially because of the atmosphere in the rest of the house. But this room in particular always felt creepier than the others, although I didn't know why. It was probably because of the portraits.

I ran the duster over three sculptures of people in awkward positions. I couldn't decide whether they did gymnastics, sports, or adult activities, but it gave me the feeling that I wasn't supposed to look at them, which was strange since you are supposed to want to look at art. Pieces of plaster, cement, or brass shaped into things that rarely made sense. Especially the price. And I felt pretty certain several of these items cost more than everything I owned combined.

I swiped over the furniture, the windowsills, and a couple of shelves with more expensive-looking art. Then I came to the only cupboard in the room and groaned when I saw the many framed photos stacked side by side on top of it. And since they were all of different sizes, it looked quite chaotic.

"This will take forever..." I muttered and sighed.

I started with the ones in the back but ended up removing them all and starting from scratch. Hopefully Mrs. Lee would give me some bonus points for sorting them after size, starting with the bigger ones in the back. It sure would make it look better. However, it was still difficult to see what was in the pictures unless you picked them up.

I couldn't really understand why they needed to have so many photos in one place. It would be much better to spread them out so people could actually see them. The way they were standing now, you could only see the top of the frames, and there were fifty-seven of them. On top of one cupboard!

While I went through them one by one, I couldn't help but to notice the diversity of the people in the pictures. Almost all the photos were in black and white, and a few looked really old, with that typical yellowish color they often get over the years. Then there were some pictures that looked like they were of newer dates. But there was one thing all the pictures had in common. Neither of the people in the photos were smiling. Except from one, and that was of a little girl and a dog. I get that taking photos back in the days was serious business, with professional photographers and the old-style equipment they had. But the newer photos were just as emotionless. Gray. Cold.