It Waits on the Top Floor (Horror Lurks Beneath Book 1) Read online

  It Waits on the Top Floor

  Ben Farthing

  Copyright © 2021 by Ben Farthing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  61. Epilogue

  About the Author

  1

  A crooked skyscraper sprung up overnight.

  Chris stood in his driveway. November chill seeped through his bathrobe. It was colder than last night, as if the new tower had brought a cold front with it.

  Chris loved the simple Richmond skyline, and he knew every angle and window. He'd hoped to design a building for it one day.

  This new tower didn’t belong. It was off by itself, in Northside somewhere, where it was all neighborhoods. Residential zoning issues weren't quite as eerie as the fact that last night, the building hadn't been there.

  Almost as weird: Chris recognized the building. He thought he might have once sketched its twisting tiers, its off-center penthouse.

  The tower felt like it belonged to him.

  But he'd finished his architecture degrees five years ago, and he'd worked on a grand total of four projects since then. He couldn't place the tugging familiarity of this new building.

  "Well?" His wife, Sherri, tapped on the steering wheel in her rumbling Ford. "You chase me out here, beg me to wait, and now what? Your head's right back in the clouds."

  Chris looked down at her. He snapped back to his immediate situation. After a night of insomnia, Chris had gone upstairs to find Sherri stuffing clothes into the cherry red Samsonite luggage he'd bought her for Christmas.

  It didn't surprise him she was leaving.

  But the timing was a kick in the groin. And not just to Chris.

  He pulled his bathrobe tight against the cold. He had one chance to sketch out a reason Sherri should stay. Only one angle to take, really. "Did you wake up Eddie to tell him? Or am I supposed to break the news?"

  Sherri swallowed. She teared up.

  Hope flickered inside Chris. Would she change her mind?

  "How could you ask me that? This isn't easy for me, either."

  "Then don't leave." Chris bit his tongue. He'd let too much exasperation into his voice. Now she'd be mad.

  "Tell Eddie I'm sorry. You'll be a good dad. I'm not cut out for this."

  Chris resisted the urge to reach for Sherri's hand. The car's heat drifted up to his cheeks. No reason he drew for her would change her mind. He shouldn't have tried at all; now he looked like a manipulative loser. He'd never win her back now that she was seeing him like this.

  He hated himself for that last thought. "Was your signature on the adoption paperwork even dry before you started the the divorce papers?"

  Sherri's expression turned sharp. "You should be thanking me. If I'd left when I wanted to, the State wouldn't have finalized the adoption."

  Chris leaned back to breathe in the cold, damp air. The new skyscraper grabbed his attention again. It wasn't his design. He was confident in that. But he remembered the scrape of the pencil on drafting paper as he filled in the shadows where the tiers twisted at odd angles. Maybe it'd been an assignment to copy an existing drawing? But even that didn't quite explain why he felt like the tower was his.

  "This is why we can't work." Sherri shook her head. "Anything bad happens, you withdraw. What was all that therapy for, if you never learned to talk to me?"

  Her hypocrisy yanked him back. "Remind me how many times you talked about separation? Help me remember? Was it zero? Zero times?"

  "You pushed me into an adoption I wasn't sure about."

  "Eddie's been part of our family for three years!"

  "On and off. I agreed to be a foster parent. Not a permanent parent."

  "The paperwork you signed last week says otherwise!"

  "You can do this on your own."

  "I can't even pay for this house on my own."

  "Stop yelling at me."

  "Oh, the volume of my voice is the real offense here? Not the fact that now I have to tell Eddie, hey, you know how your bio mom got really into meth after your bio dad died? Well guess what? It's time for another abandonment! So forget the bedroom we painted that garish red color that you love, and the family portrait we took by the river! Forget anything else we did to drill into your little impressionable skull that you're now in a stable home. Because--surprise!--the whole world's shaking again, and the Haberman household is not rated for seismic shocks."

  His chest heaved. He watched for Sherri's reaction. He knew later he'd think he'd gone too far, but right now, it was cathartic.

  Sherri stared through the windshield. Mascara smudged in the corner of her eyes. "Just mom."

  "What?"

  "Don't call her Eddie's 'bio mom.' She's just his mom."

  A stupid thing to say. Legally, Sherri was now mom. But apparently she'd never embraced it.

  Everything shifted. He'd wanted to woo her back, to persuade her back, to guilt her back. Now she needed to leave.

  Sherri couldn't be here when Eddie woke up. She couldn't have second thoughts and turn around, come back tomorrow and throw Eddie's world back into unstable chaos. She wasn't staying, so she needed to forever.

  "Get out of my driveway."

  He might as well have slapped her. She sobbed and cursed and told him this was his fault.

  But she did leave.

  His heart pumped like a rattling AC unit. Sweat leaked out of his palms to quickly turn frigid.

  His therapist--who Sherri had been paying for, so that was over--suggested he avoid catastrophizing by losing himself in something he loved. Normally, he'd admire the Richmond skyline.

  Now the new building was a distraction. He should get over there, check it out. Maybe being up close would jog his memory on why he felt possessive of it.

  But he was getting ahead
of himself.

  How the hell had it gone up overnight?

  2

  Eddie peeked around his bedroom doorframe to watch Sherri leave and Chris follow her outside.

  It was his fault.

  Because he hadn't done the right chores. But maybe there was still time to fix it. Eddie slipped out of his room.

  Last night Eddie pretended to be asleep and then after Chris and Sherri went to bed, he'd snuck out to do some more chores.

  He knew perfectly well that adults got angry when you weren't helpful. And you kept them happy by being helpful.

  But what adults thought was helpful didn't always make sense. With his old mom, sometimes the best way to be helpful was to sit absolutely still and quiet. But she had problems--that's why he had to leave. And that meant that what she thought was helpful, wasn't necessarily what other adults would find helpful.

  So Eddie had to guess how Sherri and Chris wanted him to be helpful. At least, if he wanted to stay.

  Last night, he'd dusted all the books. Then he heard Chris coming--sometimes Chris didn't sleep for very long--so Eddie snuck back to bed.

  This morning, when he heard them arguing and then Sherri leaving, Eddie knew he'd picked the wrong chore. He hadn't been helpful enough.

  Eddie turned in a slow circle, searching the living room for the perfect chore. The books were clean. The fuzzy carpet was vacuumed. The pillows on the couch were stacked just right. The pictures on the walls were crooked.

  Eddie started there, and while Chris's shouts drifted in from outside, Eddie decided the walls themselves needed a good scrubbing.

  He couldn't reach, and the ladder was in the garage, so he used a rubber band to attach a dishrag to the broom, ran it under the faucet, then got to work.

  He started next to the front window.

  He heard Chris yelling about money. Sherri had a full time job, but Chris only worked sometimes. If Sherri left, Eddie didn't know about the rent. His old mom worried about the rent a lot.

  Water dripped onto the carpet. Eddie's stomach flipped. His old mom hated it when he spilled.

  Outside, the car engine roared. Eddie watched from the window as Sherri backed out of the driveway.

  Chris stood watching in his green plaid bathrobe, hands on his hips. He went really still, like his mom's boyfriend did before he started screaming.

  Eddie scrubbed the wall harder. "Come on," he said, watching Sherri's car. But no matter how hard he scrubbed, Sherri kept driving. She rounded the corner, disappeared out of sight. Eddie ran to grab another rag to soak up his spills.

  But it was too late.

  He hadn't been helpful enough.

  Sherri was gone.

  Eddie squeezed shut his eyes. Some kids his age still cried, but he wanted to act old for his age. That was a big part of being helpful.

  Which he'd failed at. Again.

  The longer Chris stood still out there, the more Eddie worried. Would he leave, too? Eddie pushed his rag harder into the carpet.

  Another car pulled into the driveway. Not Sherri's.

  Eddie peeked through the window to see who it was.

  3

  Chris snapped a photo of the building with his phone.

  He looked up and down his street to see if any neighbors were out who could confirm what he was seeing.

  It had been a total of fourteen hours since Chris had last stood on his porch to repeat his meditative ritual of mentally redesigning the Richmond skyline. He was positive the new building had not been there.

  Buildings were not built in fourteen hours.

  Steel supports for a building that size took more than a month. He would have been watching it slowly go up.

  Actually, he loved Richmond architecture, old and new. Google, in its infinite wisdom, should have suggested news stories about the new building from the day it was proposed.

  And he would have felt it going up. It was his, after all.

  That didn't make any sense. He must have copied a sketch to a similar building back in school. That was all.

  Chris felt himself slipping into this structural mystery. He knew it was an escape just as much as getting drunk would be an escape. There were legitimate problems he needed to deal with.

  Rent would be due in three weeks, and that was twelve hundred dollars that he didn't have. Eddie would be awake soon.

  Should he send him to school? Or spend the day together to ease the news? Maybe he should lie to say that Sherri would just be gone for a few weeks, so Eddie could get used to only having Chris around.

  No, Eddie was too old for that. Chris would damage trust if he lied.

  Okay, so he had to come up with a way to tell Eddie that Sherri was gone, without tattooing onto the kid's brain that parents always left.

  His hands grew clammy again. His bathrobe practically shuddered from his heartbeat.

  He breathed deep and looked at the skyline.

  The new building was at least sixty stories. A nose taller than anything else in the Richmond. Its top half was tiered, but unevenly. A narrower fifteen story section sat atop the bottom twenty stories. Then on top of that, but off-center, another ten stories. At the top, and off-center in the other direction, the final five stories or so.

  From this distance, Chris could just barely make out the penthouse on top.

  The building itself was glass and steel.

  The longer he stared at it, the more he felt like he could figure this all out. He could be a dad. He was already a dad. Legally, he'd been Eddie's permanent dad for just a week, but he'd been his foster dad on and off for three years.

  Money was a tougher issue, but he'd come back to that.

  Chris stood up. He could research the mystery building later.

  Right now, he needed to do everything he could to make their house feel like a permanent home to Eddie.

  Thank God at their family photo shoot this week, Sherri had insisted that Eddie take one with just him and Chris.

  Oh. That made sense now.

  He wished he could tell Sherri to fuck off one more time. What kind of person did that?

  No, not right now.

  Right now, he was going to get his phone, and send the photo of him and Eddie to Walgreens. Once Eddie woke up, they could go pick it up. And then use Sherri's credit card to buy donuts.

  He started for the door when a Buick pulled into the driveway.

  His first reaction was annoyance that he was still stuck out in the cold in his bathrobe.

  Then out stepped the man responsible for Chris's financial problems.

  4

  Chris realized that his anger at Sherri wasn't hate.

  This was hate.

  Dr. Lance Terry, Chair Professor of Architecture, closed his Buick door and tucked his burgundy leather driving gloves into the pocket of his tweed blazer. The man actually owned driving gloves. Gray, curly hair sat over a pale, intentionally stoic face. He wore thick, saucer-sized glasses that Chris's hipster neighbors were trying to bring back. Dr. Terry never knew they'd left.

  He turned a slow circle, taking in the early 1930's squat construction of Chris's rental house. Not a Sears "house-in-a-kit," but the architectural inspiration for them. He raised his eyebrows at Chris, undoubtedly for choosing to live in such an architectural bore. When his slow circle reached the view of Richmond, his shoulders relaxed.

  As much as Chris hated Dr. Terry, he understood the love for your own city's skyline.

  He noted that Dr. Terry spent only a moment staring at the new lopsided building off in Northside that had shown up overnight. Chris felt a twinge of jealousy. He knew it wasn't his building, but he still didn't want Dr. Terry thinking he could claim it.

  Not a useless old fop like him.

  Most professors of architecture transitioned to teaching after working in the field. Many had put in time managing actual construction sites. In a hands-on industry, Dr. Terry was one of the few who'd always been an academic. Everything he said sounded like overconfident opi
ning. "From this distance, the city's a mishmash of heartless boxes, but it's our mishmash of heartless boxes, is it not?" He finally made eye contact with Chris.

  "I've got the same soft spot," Chris said. "But you're right. Not nearly as much personality as, say, Fredericksburg."

  Dr. Terry raised his eyebrows. He understood the jab, but cared less about the substance, and more about the impropriety of it. "Why are you in your bathrobe?"

  "I was getting the paper." This was his house. He'd put up with enough shit today. "How do you know where I live?"

  "The white pages still exist."

  Typical stodgy answer. "Why are you here? Is the college putting tenured professors on fundraising duty now?"

  "Hardly. This is outside my scholarly responsibilities."

  "A side job?" Chris laughed. It felt good after the morning he'd had. "You think I'd help you with another side job?"

  Dr. Terry recoiled. His students didn't laugh at him. His fellow professors treated him with equal respect. He was the preeminent scholar of modern United States architectural history. His recommendation could guarantee a student was accepted to graduate school. His whims could determine whether a visiting professor received tenure, or whether a tenured professor received a committee seat. People didn't tell him no. They certainly didn't laugh at him.