On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 210, of 240 so far.

Conveyancing

The house was at the end of a long, winding road through the country, and it took Erin almost three hours to get there. When she pulled up on the expanse of gravel in front of the imposing entrance, there was one vehicle already parked there, with its owner standing nearby.

The solicitor who was acting as executor of her late aunt’s estate was dressed conservatively, and bundled up against the cold. The day was clear and dry, but the wind cut right across the esplanade. In the middle distance, the closest edge of a pine forest swayed with each gust.

“Thank you for joining me here,” the man said, and Erin nodded. She’d met him a week earlier at the reading of the will, and this had been the first available date convenient to both of them for completing the conveyancing process at the house itself. The word house, though, was an understatement.

It stretched both upwards and away, looming and frowning over them, and as she looked up at the towering roofline, Erin noticed that no birds perched there. Even the forest was silent, except for the whispers it made as it moved.

“Is the power on?” Erin asked, and the solicitor smiled.

“I’ve not been in yet today, but I hope so,” he replied. “I thought I saw a light left on through one of the windows when I drove in. I’ve been here only twice before, most recently a few days ago. I expect that everything is much as your relative left it.”

Erin looked up at the facade now, her eyes scanning every pane of glass, but from her vantage point she couldn’t see any indication of illumination from anywhere. If anything, the building’s dark stone seemed to shroud the day itself, exuding its own faint aura of premature twilight. She shook her head involuntarily. It was a foolish thought, and simply the product of a confusing couple of weeks, and a tiring journey.

The whole thing had been unexpected. The death of her aunt, who Erin hadn’t been close to or even seen in more than two decades, had been no more of a surprise than the fact that Erin had been informed of the event in the first place. Then came the request to attend the reading of the will, which was a sparse affair with only the solicitor, Erin herself, and a representative of some feline welfare charity to which the deceased had left the princely sum of five thousand pounds. Everything else — which was chiefly the house and its grounds — was valued at around two thousand times more. She felt pale even now to think of it.

“You must have been fond of your aunt,” the solicitor said. It was a mere pleasantry, with no response expected, but Erin felt compelled to give one.

“More than ever,” she said dryly, and the solicitor gave a perfunctory smile as if he’d heard it a hundred times before. Which, Erin thought, he very likely had.

“Shall we go in?” the man asked, and she nodded. He gestured for her to precede him, but she demurred and the solicitor quickly crossed the gravel and went up the four wide but shallow steps which led to the studded double doors. He retrieved a key from his coat pocket to unlock the rightmost portal, and pushed it open. Erin followed him inside, staying a short distance behind, and the place smelled like a museum, or a school, or perhaps a church.

“The paperwork is in the east sitting room on this level,” the solicitor said, and he went off down a corridor.

Erin followed, suddenly eager to get it all done with. Her plan was to read whatever documents were there, sign them if everything seemed reasonable and in order, then collect the key, close the place up, and go back home. The actual decision about what to do with the vast, empty, mausoleum-like place would come later, when she’d had a chance to come to terms with these new circumstances and consider her options.

The east sitting room was comfortably furnished, though uncomfortably large for its purpose, in Erin’s opinion. It was also cold, but the central heating was clanking away to keep the worst of it at bay. The energy costs were probably prodigious, but her aunt had also left her a generous monetary endowment which could sustain the place for quite some time if necessary.

Above the mantelpiece, there was a framed portrait of the house’s late owner, looking stern in the way that people who sit for portraits invariably do. It was an outdated accommodation to ego that seemed faintly grotesque in this day and age, but Erin couldn’t deny that it felt well in keeping with its surroundings.

On a card table were some documents, neatly stacked, and with three pens sitting atop the bundle. There weren’t many papers, and far fewer than Erin had expected. The solicitor said he’d leave her to peruse them in peace, and she heard his footsteps echoing as they receded back along the wooden floor of the corridor.

She began going through the papers, reading and initialing and dating and signing, and when she next looked up to see the solicitor standing patiently in the doorway, she had apparently lost track of time, because the light from the windows was much duller than before, and it looked like sunset might not be far ahead.

Gripped by an odd compulsion, Erin signed the final page with a flourish, then looked again at the solicitor, who walked across the room to join her. He quickly flipped through the documents, and nodded with approval before gathering them up.

“That should be everything, then, thank you,” he said. “The transfer of ownership is complete. I very much hope you’ll enjoy your time here, as your relative did.”

Erin laughed self-consciously. “I really haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it yet,” she replied.

The solicitor smiled his empty smile again. “I think the decision has been made nonetheless,” he said, nodding towards the opposite side of the room. There, over the mantelpiece, was the portrait from before, but now it was of Erin, wearing the same clothes she had on at that moment.

The solicitor straightened the papers in his hands, and then tapped one finger against them.

“You belong to the house, now,” he said.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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