Where the Dark Things Bloom (Gloomsbury Manor)

Prologue

Lenore

I woke up in a bed covered in white cotton sheets, wearing an old white dress my mom had made for me when I was sixteen.

It had lace trim and silk straps that you could tie into bows at the top of your shoulders, a straight cut that reached all the way down to my feet.

I looked around. The room I woke up in was not the same room I had fallen asleep in.

I remembered this— all of it. Like some twisted déjà vu, a memory I knew had happened before. I remembered seeing this—maybe I’d dreamed it.

I pinched the tip of my skin to check if I was still dreaming, but the pain twisted in my stomach like all of this was real.

I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t be.

I sat up, holding the sheet beneath my fingers, looking around for a clock. Even though there wasn’t one in the room, I knew it was 3:18 a.m.

I always know when it’s 3:18 a.m. When the silence sharpens around rooms like this one, the house is listening, watching my every move.

I turned my head to the corner. The green wallpaper with white roses was peeling slowly from the wall like someone was peeling it—but no one was there. I was all alone.

My heart started pounding in my chest. My eyes widened as I exhaled.

The wallpaper began to bleed. It wasn’t just water or mold. It was red. Blood slid slowly from the peeling corner.

It was that slow, pulsating red that didn’t stain the wallpaper.

It just hummed and whispered toward me as I screamed, but I couldn’t look away.

I just stared until my screams went silent.

And when I blinked, there was a face in the corner, covered in blood.

And when I blinked again, that face was mine.

The mirror with the golden frame on the opposite wall didn’t reflect the room.

It showed the hallway on the second floor.

I remembered walking through it. There were still wet footprints on the dark green carpet that lay over the dark wooden floor.

I could smell the mud—the same smell of dirt after a storm, just like the first day I came here.

But I didn’t come here today. It’s been weeks.

I stood up, walking slowly to the door on the left side of the room. As I touched the knob, it was still warm. Someone had just touched it before me.

Behind me, I could feel his whisper calling out, “You left once before. Why did you come back?”

And my mind went black. I had no memory of when I left, or when I first arrived here.

Then came the part that always finds me, always too late—his footsteps, slowly approaching, syncing with the beat of my heart.

My stepbrother was haunting me tonight.

Again.