Micah Rourke arrived at the gate of the estate after a three-hour train ride, one missed bus, and a final cab driven by a man who wouldn't make eye contact and asked no questions. That suited Micah just fine. He hadn't shaved in three days, his coat collar was frayed at the edges, and he hadn't buttoned his shirt properly since the motel in town. His hands smelled faintly of nitrate and vinegar, and his briefcase; scarred leather with one broken latch, held more spliced tape than clothing.
The driver had dropped him half a mile from the gate and muttered something about dead zones and "wrong air." Micah didn't press. He knew the look... polite, rehearsed fear. He'd seen it enough times on museum boards and university deans when they realized who he was, or had been.
The gate ahead was a wrought-iron maw, its bars twisted like they'd grown into that shape rather than been forged. Moss clung to the hinges in brittle, chalky strands, and spiderwebs glistened like nerves in the corners. A cracked plaque hung crookedly on the stone wall beside it. Most of the engraving had been worn to nothing, save a warning etched more recently:
'PRIVATE PROPERTY - TRESPASSERS WILL BE RECORDED.'
Micah stared at it a little longer than necessary. Not arrested. Not shot. Recorded. A very specific kind of threat. Jest? may be. It smelt lil bit funny regardless. Then, without his touch, the gate yawned open. Metal shrieked like a throat being pried apart. He adjusted his briefcase and walked through. The estate's long drive was lined with ash trees warped by wind and gravity. Their limbs curled toward one another overhead like knuckles, forming a corridor of skeletal branches. Leaves carpeted the ground in shades of rust and bile. To his left, the remains of a greenhouse stood in jagged silhouette, its glass long shattered and blackened at the edges as though scorched.
The manor appeared slowly, its size growing unnatural as it came into view, not in width or height, but in suggestion. The architecture didn't match itself: one wing Gothic, another Victorian? a strange turret rising in the back like it had been bolted on by a madman. Micah counted seven chimneys. Two were smoking. Windows pocked the facade like empty sockets. Some were boarded up from the inside. Some had curtains that never moved, even in the presence of wind. One window; high in the east wing, was lit. Then it wasn't.
Micah did not look back as he approached the front steps.
His autumn brown coat was too thin for the season, and his boots had split along the sole weeks ago. He walked with the slight stiffness of someone who had slept on the floor too many times, but his bearing remained; shoulders straight, spine long, chin tilted in the exact angle of a man once introduced at podiums and award ceremonies. The closer he drew to the manor, the quieter the world became. No birds. No insects. Even his own footsteps began to sound muffled, as though the air here refused to carry noise properly. The sky above was a sickly, washed-out yellow. Not quite dusk, not quite storm... just the permanent hue of something drained of life.
Then came the house in full: three stories tall, there was no ivy, no paint, no welcome mat. Just brick, soot, and silence. Ancient, yet it carried a peculiar sense of royalty. A regal ghost of the past clung to the unkempt corners, may be very much similar to the observer himself.
The heavy door opened before he reached it. A man stood just inside the threshold, tall and thin, his grey suit worn at the cuffs. He looked like he'd been standing there for hours, maybe days. Waiting.
"Mr. Rourke! " the man said. "You're early."
Micah set down his luggage, his breath faint in the cool air. "Not by much," he replied, smoothing the tired edge from his voice, eyes randomly drifting inside with a subtle hint of curiosity about this new 'job'.
The other man's eyebrows lifted; appreciation, perhaps, for the conversational polish or maybe recognition.
"It's good," he said. "The films don't like waiting."
Micah frowned. The man didn't look like he was joking.
"I'm Lorne. I manage the estate."
The first thing Micah noticed about Lorne, aside from the way he blended too easily into the dimness of the manor... was that he moved like someone who'd studied human behavior from a great distance and was trying very hard to mimic it. Everything was deliberate: the turn of his shoulder, the clasp of his long fingers behind his back, the half-smile he wore like a borrowed tie. His suit was pristine but outdated, high-collared with faded stitching that might once have been silver. His eyes, pale blue and slightly too wide, didn't blink often enough. Not in the rhythm Micah was used to. And when they did, it seemed more like a reset than a reflex. Weird, but not something alarming... just weird.
"You'll find the room prepared" Lorne said, turning away. His voice had a curious softness to it, almost like he was speaking from just behind your ear no matter where he stood. Micah followed him into the house, trying to ignore the chill creeping up his spine.
They passed through a hallway lined with oil portraits... family ancestors, presumably. All of them gaunt. All of them unsmiling. At least two of the portraits looked like they might have been of the same person, painted decades apart. He might've asked about it, if not for the lingering sensation that they were being watched. Not by the portraits, but through them. The hall turned sharply, then sloped downward, and the architecture began to change. The wallpaper gave way to stone, the ornate trim vanished, and the floor underfoot grew colder with each step. As they descended, Lorne kept talking, but never turned to look back. Micah had nowhere to run away, anyway.
"There are rules Mr. Rourke " he said. "Some are procedural. Others… you'll come to understand."
Micah rolled his eyes silently, but said nothing. Rules, decorum - he is familiar with them. He has followed and broken a few without showing any particular bias towards either side. However for this one, he needed to play safe... more like he absolutely had to. A sigh shed it's coarse presence, leaving his lips almost immediately.
"No wireless devices. No copying the footage. No skipping forward. You must watch each reel in full; eyes on screen. And don't stop once it's begun. And I mean don't stop. No breaks, no timeouts. "
He paused and tilted his head, as if listening for something down the stairwell. Then continued with an almost absent shrug .
"More importantly: don't remove any materials from the room. No matter what they show. No matter what they ask. If you have any doubt, just believe that they were carefully implemented there for their own purposes and move on. You don't really have the time or luxury to be doubtful or play the thinker here anyway, right Mr. Rourke? "
Micah stopped walking for a moment. Omitting the last bit he focused where he had to- "What do you mean, what they ask?"
Lorne finally turned. There was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, but it didn't reach his expression. "You'll be working with material that was never meant to be... revised. Some of the recordings are persistent. They remember things."
Micah stared at him with a little uneased gaze.
"Most clients just want their film cleaned up," he said flatly. "Stabilized, color-corrected, digitized. They don't usually warn me about sentient footages."
Lorne gave a smile that had too many teeth and too little warmth. Weird, and may be a little alarming... a little.
"That's why they hired you, Mr. Rourke. They're not most clients."
Micah didn't ask who they were.
They reached the bottom of the stairwell. The air was sterile and dry. The corridor ended in a massive metal door with no handle on the inside, only a sliding bolt and a complex locking mechanism. A faint hum came from somewhere beyond it, like static under breath. The door was etched with oxidized lettering that caught the light at an angle.
'PRESERVATION ROOM'
Lorne produced a set of keys from his jacket and began unlocking it, one tumbling mechanism at a time. His hands, Micah noticed, were far too smooth. No wrinkles. No scars. No visible pores. As if they'd never gripped anything real in their life. When the final lock clacked open, Lorne rested his hand on the cold metal.
"You'll be alone in here. That's part of the arrangement."
"I asked for isolation."
"Yes. But there's a difference between isolation and absence." He opened the door, just a crack, and looked at Micah with that not-quite-human calm. "If you feel you've been forgotten, do not attempt to leave. That's the room working. Keep the rules in mind."
Micah didn't move. Lorne stepped aside.
"Do your work. Don't listen to anything that tries to speak while the reel is playing. And above all…"
He lowered his voice.
"…don't let them follow you out." another toothy grin... mechanical, may be a bit sinister as well. Alarming... totally alarming.
Then the door opened with a breathless exhale, revealing a chamber that smelled like dustless air and the thin bite of ozone. The temperature dropped noticeably, not with the damp cold of a cellar, but with the mechanical chill of something refrigerated... preserved.
The room was round, or nearly so. A strange architectural choice again. The walls curved slightly inward, giving the sense of being inside a closed eye. Lined along the perimeter were rows of shelves, filled with canisters in various states of age and decay; some neatly labelled, others corroded beyond legibility. There were gaps between the reels, as though several had been taken recently… or had removed themselves.
At the centre of the room sat a heavy wooden desk bolted to the floor. Above it: a film projector suspended by a rusted chain from the ceiling, its lens aimed toward a yellowed pull-down screen opposite to the shelves. Beneath the desk sat a thick logbook, opened to the first page. A name had already been written there in black ink, neat and clinical-
Micah Rourke.
He hadn't touched a pen yet. A brass bell rested beside the book, small enough to look harmless. Something about its placement... precise, ritualistic; made it seem less like a call for service and more like a final judgment.
There were no windows. No ventilation he could see. The walls were sealed with what looked like lead or tarnished steel, interrupted only by power conduits snaking along the ceiling. The light buzzed faintly, as if the room breathed through wires.
Micah took a slow breath.
The door groaned shut behind him. He didn't need to turn around to know that Lorne was gone. And just like that, he was alone. Micah took a deep breath before stepping further into the room and let the silence settle around him.