HOW DID MY NEW BOSS KNOW THE INSIDE OF MY CHILDHOOD HOME?
I sat down across from Mr. Abernathy, my new boss, and immediately noticed the heavy curtains pulled shut.
He didn’t look at the papers on his desk. Just stared at the wall behind me, tapping a pen rhythmically against the wood. The air felt thick and close, like dust motes hanging stagnant in the pale slivers of light that crept in from under the heavy curtains.
“So,” he finally said, his voice unexpectedly low, almost a whisper. “You mentioned during the interview you grew up in Elmwood?” My stomach dropped. He shouldn’t know that detail; my carefully crafted resume and job application only listed my current address.
He pushed a grainy, faded photograph across the polished desk surface. It showed a messy living room, a familiar worn armchair draped with a handmade quilt. “Recognize it?” he asked, that strange, unnerving smile touching the corners of his lips. My heart hammered against my ribs. It was undeniably my grandmother’s house from when I was a child.
Just as I reached a trembling hand towards the photo, ready to demand how he got it, his office phone rang, a shrill, sudden sound that cut through the quiet tension. He snatched it up immediately, his eyes never leaving mine.
While on the phone, I saw his screen flash a name I hadn’t heard in twenty years.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…He hung up the phone, his gaze still fixed on me, the pen forgotten on the desk. The tension, briefly broken by the ring, snapped back into place, thicker than before.
“Mr. Abernathy,” I managed, my voice hoarse. “How do you have this photo? How do you know about Elmwood? My application—”
He held up a hand, cutting me off. “Your application was… thorough,” he said, a hint of that strange smile returning. “But public records can be more revealing than a carefully curated resume, can’t they? Particularly concerning property.”
He finally looked down at the photo, picking it up. “This,” he said, his tone shifting slightly, losing some of its unnerving edge and gaining a sort of distant contemplation, “was in the attic. Box of miscellaneous junk. Photos, old letters, a few dusty toys.”
My mind raced. The attic? “You… you were in the house?”
He nodded slowly. “I bought it. Twenty years ago. Shortly after your grandmother… well, after the estate was settled.”
My breath caught. My grandmother had passed away when I was nineteen, almost exactly twenty years ago. The house had been sold by the executor of her will. The name on the screen…
“Mr. Henderson,” I whispered, recognizing the connection.
“Ah, you saw,” Abernathy said. “Yes, George Henderson. He handled the sale. A rather inefficient process, as I recall. Left a lot of things behind.” He gestured at the photo. “Like this.”
He leaned back in his chair, the mystery seemingly deflating with each word, replaced by a mundane, if unsettling, coincidence. “When your application came across my desk, the name was familiar. A quick search of county property records confirmed the address. Elmwood. And then seeing that name again just now… well, it was quite a convergence of past and present, wasn’t it?”
He placed the photo back on the desk. “I was simply curious if you’d recognize it. It’s been extensively renovated since, of course. Doesn’t look like that at all anymore.”
The heavy curtains, the intense stare, the unnerving smile – it hadn’t been malice or stalking, but apparently just… his peculiar way of navigating an unexpected overlap between my childhood past and my professional future. My heart slowed its frantic pace, replaced by a sense of stunned anticlimax. The terrifying enigma was just a man who had bought my grandmother’s old house and had a strange way of making conversation.
He picked up the pen again, this time tapping it against a stack of files. “Well,” he said, his voice returning to a more standard business tone, though still low. “Now that we’ve cleared up the architecture. Let’s discuss your projected Q3 targets…”