LJ Idol Prompt 2 — Uncanny Valley

[flipflop_diva]

I knew there was something wrong with Abigail Spencer from the moment I met her. Call it a gut feeling or whatever you like.

She showed up on the doorstep of our new home, side by side with her mother, holding a platter of cookies while her mother held out a pie.

My own mother oooh’d and awww’d over the baked goods, practically giving our new neighbors our entire life story as we all stood there at our front door, but I kept quiet, watching Abigail and her mother, feeling uneasy the whole time.

I didn’t even know why. Abigail seemed like any other teenager I would expect to find at my new high school — blonde hair, blue eyes, overly cheery like a cheerleader who stays in pep squad mode forever.

But there was just something about her that gave me the creeps.

Clearly, I was the only one.

As my mother closed the door, she turned to me and gushed, “Isn’t that lovely? A friend your age right across the street! That will be so nice for you!”

“Yeah,” I said, barely managing to hide my disgust, but I plastered a smile across my face and my mom went dancing off into the kitchen to put our new cookies and pie away for dessert.

As you can probably guess, that first meeting with Abigail was not even close to being the last. By the next afternoon, my mother had decided her mother was her new BFF, and suddenly Abigail and her mother were over at our house, Abigail in my room with me, helping me unpack.

Now don’t get me wrong — Abigail was a great unpacker. Probably the best I’ve ever seen. She had a weird sixth sense about just where to put things so they would look their best and also so everything was incredibly efficiently organized. Except “efficiently organized” were two words that no one would ever use to describe me, and my new room was causing dread to grow inside me.

I tried to focus on being a friendly neighbor, though, so I asked Abigail about the other kids at school, hoping to get some basic gossip — the bullies, the cool kids, the nerds, the jocks, etc., etc.

I did get that, along with detailed factoids about almost every kid who was going to be in our class. Their parental situation, their sibling situation, who was smart and who needed to hunker down a little more and study harder. It was knowledgeable — but it was weird. So weird that I could barely restrain my sigh of relief when she left. Nor the other sigh of relief when I tossed a few items in my new room out of their perfect position and instead let them crumple in a pile on the floor.

So much better.

I hoped against hope that Abigail wouldn’t insist on putting them back where they belonged when she made her inevitable return visit, but fortunately, she seemed a bit more relaxed the next day when she and her mother returned. Not in a way that made me want to be her best friend but at least in a way where I felt I could tolerate her.

Which was good. Because she and her mother soon became fixtures in our lives and in our house. But it was better than the two times we went across the street to their house. Talk about modern living. Everything they owned was “smart.” The TVs, the lights, the vacuum cleaner, the window blinds. They even had chairs that moved on rollers. It was unnerving, but it also felt ominous in a way that my mother didn’t seem to notice.

Like the fact that Abigail’s dad appeared for all of three seconds, his eyes practically wide with terror when he saw us, and then he scurried away. And the door down to their basement with the three padlocks. I have never felt so happy to leave a house as I did exiting theirs after I saw that basement door on my way to the bathroom — I felt like how I imagined someone escaping a serial killer must feel.

Life — for me anyway — got better after that. The end of August rolled around and, with it, the beginning of a school year. And finally, for the first time after moving to this small in-the-middle-of-nowhere town with just my mom, I was able to make friends with people who weren’t Abigail Spencer. And it was nice. And I was happy.

But Abigail was still always at the back of my mind.

“What do you know about Abigail?” I asked my new friend, Lacey, one day after softball practice.

“She’s weird,” Lacey said immediately and then laughed.

“How so?” I asked, and Lacey frowned at me.

“You don’t think so?”

“I do. I just was wondering what other people see.”

“Oh.” Lacey shrugged. “Well, she moved here last year, just like you did this year, but I don’t know. She just never really fit in. Like maybe she’s trying too hard? And her mom is just so extra. Not sure about her dad. Never seen him.”

I opened my mouth to comment, but a shout from across the field interrupted us.

“It’s my brother,” Lacey said. “I’ll be right back, Hailey.”

She was off like a flash. I turned around and almost smacked right into Abigail Spencer. I jumped back, hand pressed to my heart.

“Abigail!” I gasped.

Her features were narrowed in a way I had never seen before. Her blues eyes almost frosty.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Hailey. Or you will regret it.”

And then she too was gone. Leaving me standing there with my heart beating wildly and a curiosity too strong to ignore.

I didn’t say anything to anyone, but I hadn’t spent my teenage years watching every Dateline Investigations episode for nothing.

I couldn’t find anything via Google about Abigail or her mother, Rosemary. But then I remembered the name on all the smart systems in the Spencer household and typed that in.

And then I saw it. The newspaper article with the picture of the Spencer family, in front of the headquarters of the company that made all the products in their current home — the company that Abigail’s father used to be president of, according to the photo.

And then my eyes landed on the date of the photo.

Four years ago.

Four years ago.

But all of them looking exactly as they looked now.

I clicked on the photo so I could read the accompanying article and felt a chill run through my body.

Scientist Richard Spencer presumed dead after grisly deaths of wife and daughter in house fire two years before

I closed my eyes, shook my head, opened my eyes. Re-read the headline. Scanned the article. Looked at the photo.

Bodies of Abigail Spencer, 16, and Rosemary Spencer, 39, were recovered

Last seen hiking into the woods behind the destroyed home

Hasn’t been seen in more than nine months

I kept staring at what I had found, wanting to Google more but paralyzed with fear. If Abigail Spencer and her mother were dead … and had been dead for six years … But that wasn’t possible, was it? They lived across the street.

Except …

My mind was turning. The way she unpacked my room. The way she knew everything about every kid in our class. The basement door with the padlocks. Her father being a scientist.

But that was insane right? If Abigail wasn’t Abigail but was really … what? A robot? An AI?

I shuddered. Her words ran repeatedly through my mind.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Hailey. Or you will regret it.”

Oh shit. What had I just uncovered? And what, oh what, did I do now?








Fiction.



This was written for the new season of therealljidol. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read the other amazing entries. You can find them here. Voting should be up Wednesday night!

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

I want to know what will happen next! I enjoyed this!

[halfshellvenus]

This was really well done! The voices were also terrific, and I really liked the detail about the triple-padlocked basement door. It just screams serial killer. :O

[muchtooarrogant]

"blonde hair, blue eyes, overly cheery like a cheerleader who stays in pep squad mode forever."

Ha, dead give away, teenagers are "never" that happy all the time. :)

Fun entry.

Dan

[xeena]

help this made me laugh because blonde/blue eyes/lively is my description and I am/was always very fun loving and lively even as a teenager (I had very sad/heavy things going on, but I never showed it outwardly so it does actually in a sense fit, lol). Imagining teen!me as an annoyed robot is killing me though 🤣

[xeena]

I really loved this, it reminded me of The Twilight Zone and I really like how you made Abigail seem like a lot of other teenagers on the surface!

[roina_arwen]

Very cool! I liked the build up of tension and details. This also made me giggle because I know a teenager of the same name, whose mother (not named Rosemary) loves to bake, lol!

[static_abyss]

Everyone is just knocking it out of the park this week, and this story is no exception. I love the concept. I love the plot. I love Abigail. I love that I was thinking serial killers and then it turns out it wasn't. And then I was thinking vampires. And it wasn't. Tell me more. I want to know everything about this family.

[mollywheezy]

I want to know what Hailey does with this information!

[n3m3sis43]

This was a great read! You kept me guessing all the way until the reveal.

[murielle]

So creepy! Well done! I think I may have Abigail coloured nightmares tonight. 😊

[inkstainedfingertips]

I love this. It has such an engagingly dark and mysterious tone. Your pacing is spot on and is just an enjoyable read overall.

[chasing_silver]

Nice cliffhanger! I wonder who Abigail really is! I hope we find out in another story.

[rayaso]

You left me wanting to know what happens next, which is great. You managed to work in possible androids and serial killers, which is exciting. Nothing like three padlocks on a door to get one's imagination stirring - what's behind the door?

[banana_galaxy]

Oooh, that's some digging! It does seem like the kind of thing she probably shouldn't dig into further, but at the same time, would want to know more about.

[erulissedances]

Oooh, I want the next chapter to this - although she might regret investigating farther.

- Erulisse (one L)

[talonkarrde]

Creepy, and a good take on the prompt :)