A Fiendish
Publishing Co.
The Catalog / No. 004
No. 004 · In Development
Novella · Literary mystery
Every light in the house was written down.
Is the house haunted, or did a father simply know his son well enough to write the boy’s future before he lived it?
The Book
Daniel Mercer doesn’t cry at his father’s funeral. He handles it — the arrangements, the estate, the keys — then stays behind to settle a house that has been labeled, dated, and written down for decades. When his own son offers to come help, Daniel tells him it’s just paperwork and dust.
Paper only. No cameras, no sensors, no cloud, nothing that could be accused of remembering. Just notebooks in a careful hand.
March 17 — hallway light came on. 2:14 a.m.
An old house, a bad switch. Then more entries like it — garage doors, chirping detectors, a furnace that starts on its own. Every one has a boring explanation. Then Daniel lines the dates up. They are not random. They cluster on the days that mattered. 2:14 a.m. is when his mother died. And one year, in decades of careful records, is almost blank.
Daniel copes the way his father did: with tools. He rewires the hallway switch himself to prove it’s only hardware. He cancels on his son to keep auditing the house. When he suggests his father’s mind was going, the elderly neighbor doesn’t laugh: “He thought the house was telling him things.”
In the attic the notebooks stop being about the house and start being about him — things his father noticed, things Daniel forgot, things Daniel remembers differently. Accurate about what he does. Wrong about why. Then an entry with no date at all, keyed to his third night back. Tonight. It describes something only Daniel would do. Something that has not happened yet.
Is the house haunted, or did a father simply know his son well enough to write the boy’s future before he lived it?
He has to do one thing his father did not already write down. At 2:14 a.m., the hallway light comes on.
The People
The son · executor
Forty-five, highly competent, emotionally guarded. Handles the funeral, the estate, and the keys without shedding a tear. Dismisses the first strange entry as a bad switch, and then cannot stop reading, or fixing.
The man who wrote it all down
A draftsman, meticulous to the point of eccentric. Labeled, dated, and maintained everything in the house for decades, by hand. Paid closer attention to his son than either of them ever said out loud.
Remembered at 2:14 a.m.
Present only in memory, in her illness, and in the minute she died. The hour the hallway light keeps choosing.
The one he keeps putting off
Twenty-two. Offers to take days off and come help. Daniel tells him it’s just paperwork and dust, and promises Saturday dinner instead.
The one who isn’t laughing
Elderly, serious, direct. Watched the father’s final years from next door and won’t hear a word against his mind. Untroubled by any of it, which is somehow worse.
Spoiler-safe · nothing here goes past what the catalog already says
From the Notebooks
March 17 — hallway light came on. 2:14 a.m.
Garage door — opened on its own. Closed it.
Smoke detector, upstairs hall — chirped.
Furnace — started without a call for heat.
Humid. Windows tight.
Every one of these has a boring explanation.
Opening chapter coming when the manuscript locks
Particulars
Grief, a parent’s death, and restrained uncanny elements. A full content notice will be posted with the finished manuscript.
Slated 2027 · not yet released
Behind the Book
paper only (n.)
No smart devices, no sensors, no digital record of any kind. Dates, times, and small observations, written by hand and kept in order. Everything in the house labeled, documented, and maintained.
The book never tells you which way to read it. Every strange entry gets a plain explanation sitting right beside it, and the reader has to decide, as Daniel does, whether the house was haunted or a father simply knew his son that well. The family was never cruel. It was just unfinished.
In a careful man’s handwriting, a measurement and a conclusion look exactly alike. Hallway light on, 2:14 is a measurement. The house is telling me something is a conclusion. Daniel has to learn to tell them apart, and so does the reader.
The Catalog
