The road curled like a black ribbon through the woods, narrowing the closer I drew to the manor. Tall skeletal trees arched overhead, their bare limbs clutching at the grey sky as though to tear it down. My driver said nothing as we crested the hill— just cast a furtive glance at the house as it came into view, and muttered something in a language I did not understand.
I understood enough.
The manor had been empty for years. Abandoned after the scandal, they said. Cursed, whispered others. But it was mine now, left to me by a relative I had never met, or perhaps had long since forgotten. I told myself I didn’t believe in curses. I told myself I came here to paint in peace, to mourn in silence.
But that wasn’t the truth.
I came because nowhere else wanted me. And I needed a place to fall apart where no one would notice.
The manor rose out of the mist like a monument to grief. Its stone walls were cracked, ivy winding through broken windows and up toward a roof that sagged in places like a dying breath. A tangle of brambles hugged the grounds, and the fountain in the front courtyard—once ornate—had dried to a brittle husk, its statue headless.
I stepped out of the carriage. The cold met me like an old friend, wrapping its fingers around my neck. As the driver unloaded my trunks, I could hear the distant caw of crows. Or perhaps it was laughter. Wind has a way of making cruel music.
Madame Morvane was waiting at the door.
She stood as still as a statue, her hands folded in front of her, dressed in black from collar to heel. Her silver hair was pulled back so tightly it made her eyes seem sharper. She nodded once, curtly, and turned inside without a word.
I followed, the floor groaning beneath our footsteps as we passed under the archway.
The air inside was different. Thick. Old. Like the house had been holding its breath, and now—at last—it exhaled.
Rooms opened on either side, like mouths: drawing rooms, music rooms, parlors filled with furniture covered in moth-eaten sheets. A grand staircase loomed ahead, dust falling from its banister in drifting motes. Everything smelled of cedar and mildew, old varnish and faint decay.
“You’ll find the east wing best suited to your needs,” Madame Morvane said, her voice like rustling paper. “The studio windows face the forest. Morning light is best there, when the fog isn’t too heavy.”
I stopped walking.
“Have you lived here ling?”
She paused.
“I was born here. And I will likely die here.” She looked at me, her eyes not unkind.
“This house chooses who it lets in.”
“And who it keeps?”
She did not smile. “Some doors are best left shut, Miss Elysia.”
Later, when I was alone in my room, I told myself she meant nothing by it. That old houses made people strange. But as I unpacked my paints, my brushes, my unused canvases, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was listening.
That night, I dreamt of Victor.
He stood at the edge of a lake that shimmered black beneath a moonless sky. His back was to me, and when I called his name, he didn’t turn. The water lapped at his feet, and something moved beneath the surface—too fast to be seen, too large to be ignored.
I woke with a start.
Behind the walls, beneath the floorboards, deep in the bones of the house—I swear I heard a whisper:
“Paint”.
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