Familiar!

Copyright 2020 by HisArpy

All rights reserved.

Reproduction or copying in whole or part without written permission from the author is expressly prohibited. All events and characters in this story are purely fictional and a product of the Authors imagination. Any similarities between any persons living or dead is coincidental.

Authors note: This story is 58,246 words long.

Chapter 1

There it was. That tingle on the back of my neck which always told me someone was staring at me. Glancing over my shoulder I could see my new neighbor standing on her porch, arms crossed with her usual disapproving expression on her face.

She was creepy and reminded me of Morticia Adams from the old TV show. Like the TV character, she always wore long, tight, dresses in black. I'd never seen her wear anything else except the black dress which covered her body completely from neck to ankle and contrasted sharply with her pale skin. Her long, straight, dark hair only added to the resemblance. Seriously, Mortica Adams was my next door neighbor. A neighbor who, apparently, didn't like me very much.

She and her three daughters had moved into the vacant house next door only a few weeks ago. As the only child of a single mother I'd lived here my whole life, inheriting my house from my mom after she passed away when I was twenty-two. That had been four years ago. It wasn't the best neighborhood in L.A., but my little cul-de-sac was quiet and usually safe. Safe enough so when I was a kid I could set up a telescope in the street and watch the lunar eclipse without having to have my mom drive me up the hill to the Griffith Park Observatory. It'd been a great place to grow up, friendly, happy, and everyone knew everyone else. This was my neighborhood.

Yet, despite the weeks my new neighbors had lived next door, I'd never talked to any of them. Other than her staring at me whenever I was outside doing things like putting out the garbage cans, or trying to get my truck to start on a damp Monday morning, we hadn't interacted at all, I only knew her name from some mail which had gotten accidentally put into my mailbox. Two white envelopes and a couple of mail order catalogs, all addressed to Katherine Black.

If it wasn't for the staring, I wouldn't think anything was different about them. They seemed to be okay, though mostly they kept to themselves. There hadn't been any kind of housewarming party after they'd moved in and I hadn't noticed any visitors or strange cars parking on the street either. Just her, her daughters, and the cats which had suddenly appeared after they settled into the neighborhood.

The cats were everywhere. Sunning themselves on the porch, walking along the top of the fence around my backyard, crouching in the flowers or under hedges, sauntering across the lawn with their tails held high, or sitting in the window of their house staring at me just like their owner did.

I didn't know how many cats there were, other than there was more than one. I thought there might be three of them because a couple had seemed to be smaller and skinnier than the other one. It was impossible to count them though because they were never together all at once and all of them were glossy black with yellow gold eyes and no other markings, collars, or tags.

Ignoring the urge to spin around and confront my neighbor face on, I kept leaning over the engine compartment of my old truck, trying to keep my tie from soaking up the dew on the fender. Let her stare, it wasn't like I could stop her. Besides, I was late for work. My truck battery was dead and I wasn't going to be there on time unless some kind of miracle happened. Experimentally I tested the battery clamps and cables. There had to be a reason the battery kept going flat overnight. It was new, but it was acting just like the old one and not holding a charge.

As I jiggled the cables, my fingers started tingling. Almost as if I'd touched a live wire except it wasn't a sharp bite, more like the buzzing of a transformer. Was there an electrical short somewhere in the wiring? I wiggled the cables some more and the buzzing tingle stopped.

"One more time."

Hoping against hope, I leaned in through the window and twisted the key. If it didn't start, I was going to have to call a tow truck and get a jump. Which would make me even later for work than I was going to be. It would also cost me money I couldn't really afford to spend. I wasn't rich and my job didn't pay as well as the glamor advertising for all those educational job-training schools said it did. Computer technology might be the career of the future, but it paid like the sweatshops of yesterday.

As I turned the ignition key, the starter engaged with a rapid stuttering sound, the engine barely turning over to the sound of the statico clicking. I held my breath and prayed it started. C'mon, c'mon. Please! Start!

"Yes!"

I couldn't help the exclamation which escaped from my lips as the engine caught and stumbled its way into an idle. Closing the hood with a slam, I felt the warning on my neck again. Slowly I turned around to see Mrs. Black standing only a few feet away, a snarl on her face and her hands flexed to form claws.

"Good morning." Slipping sideways around the front bumper of my truck, I offered the greeting and opened the door to put both distance and a barrier in between us. Just in case she went from being a creepy neighbor to a demented serial killer.

Her eyes raked up and down my body as her hands changed from claws into fists. Abruptly she spun on her toes, the heels of her shoes tap-tap-tapping on the concrete as she quickly wiggle-walked in the tight dress back up her driveway and into her house. A slam of her front door punctuated the end of the entire scene.

Like I said, she was creepy.

"You shouldn't do stuff like that unless you want my mom to get really mad at you."

The voice came from behind me. Spinning I saw my neighbor's eldest daughter standing at the back of my truck. Like her mother, she wore black. Except, instead of a dress, she wore jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. All in black, even the rubber soles of her shoes were black. And, like her mother and sisters, she had the same dark hair. She wore it parted in the middle, letting it fall unbound down her back, just like her mother and sisters.

I knew she was the eldest because the other two sisters were still young enough to go to school. Occasionally I would see them at the school bus stop on the corner with the other neighborhood kids, their elder sister standing with them until the bus came and picked all the kids up.

"Do what?" I rubbed the back of my neck wondering how I hadn't known she was there.

"What you were doing. It's not very nice of you."

"What are you talking about? I was just trying to start my truck so I could get to work."

"Uh huh." The two words were heavy with disbelief.

"Whatever." I motioned with my hands. "Can you move out of the way so I can go? I'm late for work."

Before she could respond, her mother stormed out of their house shouting.

"Kathleen! Get away from him!"

"He's not doing anything mom." The daughter, Kathleen, obediently moved away from me even though she disavowed we'd been doing anything. "Honest. I'm shielding but he's not even trying to catch me. I don't think he knows how."

"He knows how. He was born knowing how." Mrs. Black grabbed her daughter's arm in a vicelike grip and transferred her eyes to me.

"Be warned, Veneficus, stay away from my daughters or pay the price for seeking that which you have no right to steal."

"What are you talking about? I'm not trying to steal anything."

Kathleen shifted to whisper into her mother's ear. Mrs. Black raked me with her eyes again before turning and heading back to her house, pulling Kathleen along by the arm. I watched until they both disappeared with another slam of the front door.

"Nutso. Definitely nutso." Getting into my truck, I backed out of the driveway already wondering what I was going to tell my boss as an excuse for being late.

"Dude!" Jason, my colleague at work, and the only other IT tech at the small server farm where I worked, was replacing a server blade for a customer's account when he saw me sneak in. "Where you been? The boss was here looking for you for some reason and I hadda tell him you were late."

"My truck wouldn't start." I explained what happened.

"I thought you fixed that."

"Me too." I looked over his shoulder. "Bad blade again?"

Jason nodded. "I don't know what it is about this account. The server just doesn't like it for some reason. This is the fifth blade I've had to replace this month. Every time it's been for the same reason; corrupted code."

"You erase and randomize the blade before you reloaded the software?"

Jason nodded. "Just like usual. I don't understand it. It's only this one account too. And only for me. It never does this when you do the updates or backups, only for me. I've even swapped for hardware from different clients and it still doesn't run more than half the time."

"What can I say, maybe the hardware likes me more than it does you." I sat at my console and opened a program window to look at the account Jason was working on. "Get that closed up so I can see what's happening when it boots."

Jason closed the lid on the blade and shoved it into place in the rack of servers. Using his thumbs he made sure it was seated into the connection plugs at the back of the blade tray and pushed the tray drawer into place so it wasn't sticking out into the aisle. The lights on the front of the blade lit up as it powered itself and booted. I watched in real time as the code started scrolling upward on my screen before it stalled, the little green light on my screen blinking at the end of a partial line of code while nothing else happened before the screen suddenly went blue.

"Anything?" Jason looked over my shoulder.

I shook my head no. "Blue screen."

"It doesn't make any sense. The blade runs when it not in the rack. I loaded the software and verified the copy. It ran." Jason scratched his scalp. "You think it could be a problem with the cables somewhere?"

"Let me look."

I got up from my chair at the console and pulled the blade out of the rack. Checking the cables and plugs for solid connection I wiggled the wires and pressed the connectors into their sockets. A sharp zap on my fingertips make me yank my hands away from the metal rack with an exclamation.

"OW!"

"What happened?" Jason was right there.

"I got shocked." I bent and started running my eyes over the power system looking for bare wires and broken grounding straps. "We need to take the entire rack off line."

"The boss isn't going to like that."

"I didn't like getting electrocuted." I went back to my console and started taking the rest of the server blades off line. "If the rack itself it bad it could be affecting everything. Gary won't like it if every account fails because our hardware killed all of them. Or worse by burning the whole place down in an electrical fire."

"The boss doesn't like anything that costs him money."

"Me either. But we gotta do what we gotta do or we're going to lose all the accounts anyway. Then we lose our jobs."

"Dude! Don't say that! I need this job."

"Me too." I turned off the power to the whole rack and started pulling blades from their trays so I could get to the power cables and transformers. "What do you think? Should we replace all the cabling just to be on the safe side."

"Everything?"

"Unless the problem is obvious, what other choice do we have?" I squatted and crawled into the base of the tower where the power transformer was located. A tingle met my arm as I touched the rack frame.

"Is the power completely off?" I snatched my arm away from the metal structure of the rack and looked over my shoulder at Jason.

Jason nodded. Carefully I touched the rack frame with my finger, holding my breath against another shock. Nothing.

Jason saw what I was doing. "You get another shock?"

"A little one." I rested my arm against the rack where I touched it earlier. "Although it wasn't actually a shock. It was more like how a transformer feels. The hum, you know?"

"McAllister! I need you to . . ." Gary, my boss, opened the door and saw me kneeling inside the now empty server tower. "What are you doing?"

I sighed. It was going to be a long day.

Chapter 2

Refilling the bowl outside my front door with cat kibble, I put down the tiny catnip plant in its container right before I felt it again, that feeling on the back of my neck.

The bowl of kibble was for the scrawny pair of black cats that lived next door. I'd thought, maybe with some extra food they'd put some weight on. It seemed to be working, or at least something was eating the kibble. Along with drinking the half-and-half I'd been leaving in a small bowl next to the dry food each morning.

For the past two weeks I'd been leaving the food on my porch, coming home to a pair of empty bowls. After the third day of tending to the bowls I opened my door ready for my morning commute to work only to find my neighbor standing at the end of her driveway, arms crossed, staring at me. She didn't speak, but as she stood there her daughters passed behind and headed for the bus stop. Eyes held rigidly forward, none of them so much as glanced in my direction as they marched in lockstep toward the corner.

Without uttering a single word, Mrs. Black glared at me the whole time her daughters waited for the bus. After they boarded, she wiggle-stomped back into her house. I looked but didn't see Kathleen anywhere. There was just one of the cats, which zipped across my yard and bounded over the fence. A last tail flick and it was gone.

This scene replayed itself every morning after that day; the girls heading to school while I was pinned by my neighbor's stare, the parade pausing over the weekend before resuming on Monday morning. I was definitely getting the idea they didn't like me.

Despite the creepiness of the whole situation, yesterday on the way home from work, I'd stopped at the pet store for another bag of kibble and, on impulse, a catnip plant which was on sale. I'd gotten up early this morning to plant the catnip in the front flower garden.

"Your allures won't work Veneficus. My daughters know about your kind. They will not be foolish enough to allow you to take them. And you are not powerful enough to force them."

"It's just some dry food for the cats." I ignored the warning on the back of my neck and knelt down with the gardening spade to dig a hole for the catnip. Removing it from its tiny plastic pot, I gently placed the little plant in the hole before backfilling with soil and patting it down. Not too firmly, just enough to hold everything upright and let water soak in where it needed to go.

"And the allure?"

"Allure?"

I looked up at her in confusion. I wasn't trying to lure anything. She gave a quick flick of a finger at the bowl of milk and then the puny catnip plant.

"You seek first to entice. Then to poison and confuse the mind. There is only one reason one of your kind would do so; you attempt to ensnare. My daughters are not so easily captured by such an obvious trap."

I stood up and faced her.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not trying to do anything with your daughters. This is for the cats, I thought they could use some extra food." I pointed at the pair of cats skulking under the bushes next to the driveway. "Look at how skinny they are."

The twin black cats blinked their yellow eyes in unison as I pointed at them. Mrs. Black twisted toward them and her expression changed. She spat! Literally, she spat at them just like a cat would, baring her teeth for a moment before ordering them away.

"Begone! Or I will punish you both!"

The pair squirmed backwards out from under the bush and slunk away. The last I saw of them was when they jumped the fence into the back yard. As I watched them disappear, the feeling on the back of my neck sprang up again. I turned around to discover my weird neighbor now standing inches away, her sudden closeness making me take a step backward in surprise.

As I moved out of her way, she kicked over the bowl of milk and scattered the cat kibble. Snatching the gardening spade from my unresisting fingers, she bent and stabbed it directly into the catnip plant, severing the stem from the roots. There was an expression of disgust on her face as she stood back up. The air filled with the sharp pungent smell of the abused catnip.

"Hey!" I protested against the destruction and waste.

"This is your last warning. Leave my daughters alone!"

With that she marched away, holding her hands out to the sides as if she was trying to keep some unpleasant odor at bay. Like the twin black cats, she vanished into the back yard, except she used the gate in the fence.

"Are you really that stupid?"

Once again the voice came from behind without my usual warning signal telling me someone was there. I spun to find Kathleen leaning against my truck, her arms crossed as she gazed at me. Not knowing what to say, I just looked back at her.

"You can't be." Kathleen pushed off and moved closer to stop a dozen feet away, her eyes examining me head to toe before flicking to encompass the mess her mother had just made. "Can you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I glanced around at the kibble strewn everywhere across my front doorstep and lost it. "Look at what your mother just did! For no reason at all! What the hell is wrong with you people?"

"Us?" Kathleen laughed. "We moved here because we thought it would be safe where no one knew us. We didn't know you lived here already. You weren't letting anyone know about you, so how would we know to stay away?"

None of what she said made any sense so I ignored most of it. I mean, c'mon, my name was on the mailbox. How could they not know I lived here?

"I was here first. Then you moved in. And now your mother is threatening me for no reason, over things I'm not even doing. Look at what just happened! I spent money to buy this stuff. Money I didn't really have extra to spend. I just thought it'd be a nice thing to do for your cats!"

"You don't know?" Kathleen gave me an incredulous look. "Oh that's rich, you really don't know?"

"Don't know what?" I bent and picked up the milk bowl, checking to see if it was broken before setting it next to the kibble bowl on the doorstep. "You could at least help me clean up"

"No way. I'm not getting anywhere close to that." Kathleen waved her hands in refusal. "It's bad enough I'm already this close. I don't need my mom smelling it on me worse than it is now."

"Whatever." I used my foot to sweep most of the spilled kibble into a ragged pile, I'd get a broom and dustpan to pick it up in a minute. Meanwhile, my poor ruined catnip plant needed to be disposed of. A whole three dollars and ninety-nine cents had just disappeared down the drain.

Kneeling I dug up the small root ball with my fingers and picked up the severed plant. Standing again, I turned toward the garbage cans on the side of the house and saw Kathleen's expression change. She hastily backed away several steps, her eyes hungry looking even through the sudden fear on her face.

"What?"

I spun to check behind me trying to see what had just happened to make her act so weird. Kathleen just backed up another step, slowly this time. Almost like she was forcing herself to move away from me.

"Prae . . . sidium . . . meeeeum."

I could see her strain to say the words, stumbling over them and dragging them out into a long syllable. The air sparkled for a moment after she spoke, looking like dust motes caught in a stray sunbeam. She slumped in what looked like obvious relief then flopped backward, landing on her butt in the grass of my front yard.