3. THREE
THREE
LENORE
The train finally stopped at the station, and I was the first to step out.
I couldn’t stand being inside for another second.
I couldn’t stand people, and I couldn’t stand myself enough to stay seated.
I hadn’t packed a thing—like I didn’t know whether I was going to stay.
But something in me did know. And still, between being stuck with Troy the cheater and a haunted house, I chose the house.
Because really, how much worse could it get?
People should be afraid of people—not ghosts.
Ghosts can’t hurt us. They’re just restless things, waiting for answers.
But people? People carry that quiet evil, the kind that doesn’t show until it does.
We don’t truly know people. But ghosts—we know them.
We know what it feels like to be unseen. I do.
Maybe I was a ghost all along. Maybe that’s why no one ever really loved me. Maybe I was the poison in the bloodline. Maybe I’ve always been haunting Gloomsbury Manor, even before I came back.
I walked to the end of the station, the Massachusetts air hitting my lungs, different from New York. It wasn’t dry. It was damp and gray. And something about it felt stuck in time, like if I went back a hundred years, nothing would have changed. Not the weather, not the people.
Gloomsbury Manor was fifteen minutes away, the same fifteen minutes I used to run from. Now, I walked them back.
I took a deep breath, eyes shut, memories flashing in again. The road, the path, all too familiar.
Two days after my birthday, July 2014.
I had a small backpack I kept hidden under the bed.
I even saved some leftovers from lunch, just in case.
I packed them along with a bottle of water.
The plan was simple: wait until everyone was asleep and leave.
But that’s hard to do when the windows have bars and the doors are always locked. Still, I knew I had to try.
I waited for midnight, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling wallpaper. It had started peeling at the corners again. No matter how many times Dad brought someone to fix it, it always came back. They blamed it on isolation. I knew better. Something was wrong with this place.
A soft knock came at the door. I didn’t move. Just turned to the side, pretending to sleep. The door creaked open. I heard the footsteps. I knew they were his. I always knew his steps.
He shut the door behind him. Sat down on the bed. Then lay next to me. His arm wrapped around me, pulling me close. My heart was pounding so loud I thought it would give me away.
When you have no one, and someone who is forbidden touches you like you matter, your body betrays you. Your heart drinks it in. Your mind sins in silence while your lips stay still. And we had each other—because we had no one else.
“You won’t leave me,” he whispered like he already knew.”You’ll never leave me.”
His mind was broken—just as much as my heart was when I lied, “Never.” Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at the wall. I bit my lower lip, nerves twisting inside me, then turned to face him—met his dark eyes.
“Promise me,” he said, wiping my tears with his thumb. “Promise. Me.”
“I promise,” I whispered, another tear sliding down.
He kissed my forehead, pulling me closer. “I have only you, Trouble. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t,” I said, wrapping my arms around him like it was the last time I ever would.
“Then why does it feel like I already lost you?” he asked, brushing a strand of hair from my face.
I bit my lip again, our eyes locked. I couldn’t lie this time—and he knew it. And instead of begging me to stay again, he asked, “What was your birthday wish?”
“A kiss,” I whispered, eyes closing, the tears still coming.
And just before I opened them, his lips touched mine. His hands pulled me in, his mouth moved against mine, slow and deep, his tongue tasting the words I never said. He kissed me like I belonged to him. Maybe I did. Maybe I wanted to. If I stayed, it would be for him.
It was wrong. All of it. My body betrayed me, but I couldn’t stop. I pulled him closer, wrapped my leg around his hip, fingers tangled in his hair—I couldn’t stop.
He stole my first kiss. But I wanted him to take it.
Then the door burst open. Dad.
He yelled something. I didn’t move. Dorian didn’t either. He kept kissing me like time had frozen. And maybe I wanted it to.
“Get off your sister!” Dad roared, already unbuckling his belt.
I heard the snap of leather and the whistle of air. Then it struck Dorian’s back.
He gasped against my lips, finally pulling away. He still held my hand.
Dad yanked him off me. Dorian hit the floor hard. The belt came down again. Again. The fabric of his shirt tore, his skin breaking. I screamed, throwing myself at them, trying to protect him. But the belt turned on me too.
“Ezekiel punishes sinners, and you have sinned!” Dad shouted, the belt gripped tighter, lashing across my body.
All I could see were Dorian’s eyes. And all he saw were mine. My tears, my screams as the leather bit into me.
He grabbed me, spun me around, and held me tight, shielding my body with his own.
“I got you, Trouble,” he whispered.
Then she appeared. My stepmother. Standing in the doorway, watching in silence, wearing some deep red cape like she’d dressed for a ritual. And she laughed. She laughed as Dad beat Dorian numb.
“Run,” Dorian whispered.
“Run!” he shouted this time, shoving me free.
I stood, shaking. Looked back one last time. Then ran. Brushed past Dad. Past Dorian. Toward the door. Toward her. She didn’t even try to stop me.
I rushed down the stairs, my soul calling for him. Tears streamed without permission. I couldn’t keep going—I couldn’t run. I stopped.
And then I turned. I ran back.
Before I even reached the front door, she grabbed me. Her nails dug into my arm as she pulled me away. Over her shoulder, I saw him. Dorian’s body is on the floor. Still. Not moving.
“No!” I screamed, shoving her with everything I had.
But then Father appeared behind me. Without a word, he seized me by the arm and dragged me toward the attic door. I fought. I kicked. I begged. He didn’t listen.
He shoved me through and slammed the door behind me, locking it. I pounded my fists against the wood, again and again —hard enough to shake the walls, hard enough to wake the dead. But no one came.
No one came for me.
No one came for him.
I sank on the stairs, burying my face in my palms, my elbows pressed to my knees.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. And when the tears finally dried, I stood and climbed the steps.
The attic. Dorian’s room for years. But it was the first time I’d ever been here.
Dust clung to everything. The air was stale. There was no bed, just a single blanket folded neatly on the wooden floor. No pillow. No mattress. Just that blanket.
Boxes were stacked along the walls, old furniture draped in white sheets like ghosts waiting to be remembered. It didn’t feel like someone lived here. It felt like someone hid here.
Only one thing wasn’t covered: a wooden chest in the corner.
I moved toward it, and knelt, my heart cracking open all over again. I lifted the lid.
Inside were his clothes. Black jeans. Black shirts. Two jackets, all folded carefully. At the bottom, tucked in the corner, was a golden chain.
My golden chain. He kept it.
I reached for it, but as I moved one of his shirts, something slipped out and fell to the floor. A Polaroid photo.
Us.
Sitting on the sofa on my fourteenth birthday. My first time drunk. The night we played Memory Lane. The night he took that photo. He’d kept it.
It was the only picture in the chest. And it was us.
I crumpled to the floor, sobs rising again as the photo trembled in my hands. Somewhere below me, he was hurting—maybe worse. Alone.
I didn’t feel the pain anymore—the stinging welts across my back, my arms. I barely noticed them. All I could think about was him.
I leaned against the chest, pressing the photo to my chest. I stared at his eyes, the way they looked at mine in the picture.
Then I closed my eyes, holding onto that look, letting it pull me back in time.
I stood in front of Gloomsbury Manor, a Polaroid picture in my hand.
It’s crazy how happy we looked—how much it seemed like family.
But no one would ever know how miserable we were.
How he wasn’t even my blood. He was my stepbrother.
How behind every smile, something is hiding.
And once you do see it, it rips you apart.
Because the person behind that smile… was the saddest person I’ve ever known. And he only smiled to make me smile.
I wiped a tear from my cheek and reached for the iron gate. Overgrown rose roots wrapped around the rusted bars like veins. I pushed it open. The hinges groaned as I stepped onto the dusty path, the grass on either side damp and thick with fog—even though it was nearly noon.
Gloomsbury Manor sat atop Bloomy Hill, the only house for miles, surrounded by a sprawling yard, two side gardens, and a single stone wall enclosing it all. Only one gate. Only one way out.
The manor rose from the center, an old Gothic building with dark brick walls, a steep black rooftop, and oval windows barred with iron.
It had three floors. On the first: the kitchen to the right, a long hallway lined with black and white tiles, dark green walls, and faded family portraits.
A dark wooden staircase split the space down the middle, leading to the second floor.
To the left was the living room, with a large stone fireplace and two cracked leather sofas, still sitting where they always had.
The second floor held the bedrooms—six in total. And out of all of them, they chose the attic for Dorian. Like he didn’t deserve a real room. Like he belonged somewhere forgotten.
We weren’t the manor’s first owners. According to legend, or at least what Father said, it was built in 1894.
The original owner hanged himself after discovering his wife had drowned their two children in the upstairs bathtub.
People said their ghosts still haunted these walls. Father called them history lessons.
And now the manor belonged to me.
Along with all its ghosts. All its curses.
And the truth? I believed in every single one of them.
But I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to run.
No matter how close I got to anything, I was always too far away.
That was my curse—never finding love. Always circling the edge of something almost. Stuck in the endless loop of what if and what could’ve been .
And that’s the worst kind of pain: wondering.
I wondered all the time. What if I’d stayed that night? What if I hadn’t let him go? Would I be dead in that same accident? Would I haunt these walls too?
But most of all… I wondered what if he had come with me. If we’d escaped together, just the two of us. In some other universe, would we have been happy?
He told me he’d survive if I left. That he could handle it. But deep down, I think he was waiting for me to say I’d wait for him . That I wouldn’t choose anyone else.
And now, I know the truth: we were both chasing a happy ending that never existed.
Maybe in another life, he found his happiness.
His happy ending.
And maybe, in that life, I told him what I couldn’t say in this one—that if he had asked me to stay, begged instead of letting me go… I would have.
If he had told me he couldn’t live without me, that he would wait, that he would fight —maybe I would’ve said it too. No matter where I went, no matter where I was, he was always the last thought before I fell asleep and the first one when I woke up.
And yes, this house was haunted.
But not by ghosts.
It was haunted by him.
They say the places where we lose someone never truly let us go. They stay in the walls, in the air, in the quiet. And being here again—back in this town, in this house—only fills me with more what-ifs . More wondering. But what it doesn’t give me… is a way back. A way to live it all again.
So I stepped into Gloomsbury Manor.
Its shadows reached out to greet me. Its walls whispered in silence, and the darkness closed around me like a secret I had once buried.
The moment I crossed the threshold, a wind brushed past me. A sharp gust hit my face, cold enough to catch my breath in the air like smoke.
And I realized then—I wasn’t just someone returning.
I was just another ghost who came home.