CHAPTER 15 “Keep It In The Dark”
“Keep It In The Dark”
I wake with a start.
What is that?
I hold my breath, listening.
There.
A low creak, like the hesitant exhale of old wood. Then another, closer.
Is someone outside my door?
I wait, senses on high alert. The mansion sleeps beneath a shroud of fog, the moonlight filtering weakly through my window. The air in my room hangs cold and stale, tasting faintly of iron and old decay.
I push aside my threadbare blanket, my pulse thudding in the silence.
Everything hurts, as if I’ve run a marathon, but I force the feeling aside.
The faint ticking of a clock somewhere below echoes like a heartbeat.
My bare feet meet the chill of the wooden floor as I cross to the door. The knob is icy beneath my fingers.
Outside, the corridor stretches long and hollow, the portraits and their subjects watching me from their place of quiet solitude, the scones dark but for that one—a single candle guttering at the far end, the same as last time. The flame is bent and wavers though there is no draft.
I hear it again, the sound that woke me. A whisper, too faint to be words, too fluid to be the wind. It seems to slide along the walls themselves.
My throat tightens, and I step into the hall. The boards creek underfoot, and with each step, the whisper retreats, drawing me deeper into the mansion’s belly.
At the end of the corridor, beneath the flickering candlelight, something moves.
A figure—pale and translucent, its outline shifting like mist caught in the moonlight. It faces away from me, its long hair floating as though underwater. Ice washes over me and I freeze, my breath catching on the edge of fear.
Eyes wide, my heart pounds wildly against my ribs, not believing what stands before me as clear as day.
This isn’t possible.
The ghost turns its head slightly, revealing hollow eyes that glimmer faintly, not with malice, but sorrow. Then it begins to glide down the staircase, slow and deliberate, vanishing into the shadows below.
I hesitate only a moment. My fear mingles with a strange pull: curiosity, recognition, something oddly comforting. I take the candle from the wall, its flame trembling in my hand, and follow the apparition into the dark, where the mansion seems to breathe again.
I stand at the top of the staircase, the lone candle spluttering in my hand. Its light shakes wildly against the walls, throwing fractured shadows that stretch and shrink like living things.
The silence that follows is too complete. Even the wind outside seems to be holding its breath.
Did I really see it? The pale figure, the hollow eyes, the way it looked back at me? I strain to recall the details, but my memory falters. Maybe it was the moonlight catching in the dust. Maybe I’m still asleep, dreaming.
My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “Hello...?”
The sound is swallowed instantly by the empty air.
No answer. No echo. Only the steady drip of water somewhere below—slow, deliberate, rhythmic.
I descend the first few steps, each one groaning under my weight.
The air grows colder, thick with the scent of damp stone and mildew. My candle flame shrinks, as if afraid.
Halfway down, I pause. A framed portrait I failed to notice before hangs crooked on the landing wall: a man and a woman, both middle aged, are captured in a moment of time, but it’s the woman that catches my eye.
She’s in a faded yellow dress, her painted eyes, for some reason, reminding me of the ghost’s.
Her hair appears to be a dark brown, like the color of burnt mocha, yet it’s too hard to tell.
I stare at the painting—at her—unable to escape the sense of familiarity.
I tilt the frame back into place, and as I do so, a chill brushes my ear.
“Elena...”
My blood turns to ice. The whisper is unmistakable: my name, drawn out like a sigh, so close it might have come from the darkness itself. I spin around. No one. Only my trembling reflection in the cracked glass of the portrait.
My throat tightens. “Who’s there?”
Nothing.
“Hello?”
The whisper comes again. “Elena...” Fainter now, drifting down the corridor that leads back up and away from the stairs. The same corridor where I’d first seen the ghost.
For a moment, I debate on retreating to my room.
Of closing the door, burying my head under the blankets, pretending none of this happened.
But something in me—the same force that drove me out of bed, or maybe my natural need to explore and get to the bottom of things—urges me forward.
If this is all real, if this ghost is real, there is a reason why it chose to appear before me.
I tighten my grip on the candle and turn back up, toward the corridor. The flame flares, a sudden desperate brightness, and in that instant, I see it again.
A shape at the far end, motionless. Watching.
And when I blink, it’s gone, once more.
“Where’d it go?”
I spin, eyes flitting about. The wall at the far end stares back at me.
Except—it’s not a wall. Another staircase, this one much narrower, hidden in thick shadows, stands there.
It seems to go only up, to the top of one of the towers.
Instinctively, I climb it with haste, not wanting to miss my chance of seeing the strange apparition again.
Another corridor greets me, this one much shorter, the walls here different: no portraits, no candle scones. Just smooth, cold stone, covered in ivy and twisting vines that seem to swallow it whole. There’s an ever-so-slight hum in the air. A vibration in my bones.
At the end of the passage, a door. Heavy.
Wood blackened with time, its surface etched with symbols and images of forest creatures and strange, otherworldly beings that belong in a horror tale.
I trace them with the pads of my fingers, marveling at the precision and detail that went into carving them.
I open it with a single, silent push.
Inside, a circular room awaits. The air is thick with centuries of dust and decay.
The stone walls are damp, veined with cracks that glisten faintly in the dim candlelight.
Heavy iron scones cling to the walls like skeletal hands, each bearing a single, flickering flame that casts long, restless shadows across the chamber.
My gaze falls to the center of the room—and I gasp.
Five coffins, one smaller than the rest, arranged in a solemn half-circle upon a raised platform of black marble, stare back at me.
Each coffin is carved from dark, aged wood, their surfaces etched with fading sigils, claw marks of time, and traces of tarnished silver ornamentation.
Some lids sit perfectly sealed; others seem slightly ajar, as though disturbed by something unseen.
Above each coffin hangs a portrait in an ornate, dust-choked frame.
Heavy black veils drape over the paintings, concealing the faces beneath.
The fabric stirs ever so slightly, though no breeze touches the air, as if the figures behind them still move, still watch.
A faint scent of mildew and candle wax mingles with something older, metallic, and bitter, as if smelling of death, itself.
Somewhere beyond the walls, something scratches softly—patient, deliberate—as though waiting for the right moment to return to its resting place.
I shift uneasily. My foot catches on something on the floor, and I look down.
A small, brass plaque glitters at the base of the nearest coffin.
I kneel, brushing away the dust. A name is engraved there.
Krasimir Bear.
My breath catches. I rush to the next one, hurriedly cleaning its plaque.
Vedrana Bear.
And the next one, the smallest of the five.
Karina Bear.
Realization dawns on me. It’s a crypt.
The Bear family’s crypt.
Before I can continue my exploration of the coffins, the flame from the candle in my other hand flares to life, then steadies. The door bangs shut, then opens just as violently, rattling the walls. My heart pounds as I remain crouching, senses on high alert.
“It’s a draft. It was only the draft,” I mutter out loud, trying to convince myself that I didn’t wake any of the dead. Yet the image of the apparition from the stairs remains in my mind.
Hours seem to pass as I remain unmoving, ears straining for the slightest hint of a sound that shouldn’t belong in this place of eternal slumber, and as if on cue, a whisper—low and dry, like dead leaves dragged across stone—fills the air.
“Who’s there?” My voice comes out as a rasp, the hand holding the candle shaking slightly.
The portraits above seem to lean in closer.
The veils tremble.
My gaze shifts to the door, the very same one that’s wide open, like a gaping jaw ready to devour me whole. Pitch black darkness stares back at me, the glow from my candle reaching only a few feet before being swallowed. Somewhere behind me, faintly, wood creaks—the sound of a coffin lid shifting.
Every cell in my body turns to ice. My heart is on the verge of exploding. Blood rushes to my ears, the pounding so loud, I can barely hear my breathing that’s coming out ragged and strained.
“Who—who’s there?” I repeat, my voice a barely there whisper.
No answer; only the slow, unmistakable sound of another lid opening.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
The hairs on my body stand on end.
A large lump of crippling anxiety sits in my throat.
My mind is a blank. A black, endless expanse of nothing.
I’m aware I should move. Should get up and remove myself from this cursed place. And yet—I’m unable to. My body is not my own.
I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
The flame wavers. I lift the candle towards the portraits once more. One of the veils has fallen, revealing the painting beneath. A woman’s face, rosy and lovely, painted in strokes of uncanny precision. The very same one from the landing below. The eyes gleam, as if wet and alive.
And they’re looking straight at me.
A blot of red forms in the corner of one eye. A blot that soon turns to streaks of thick, crimson liquid that drip down the canvas and onto the floor.
It appears as if the painting is bleeding.
This isn’t real.
This isn’t real.
I’m dreaming.
I’m—
A breeze moves my hair.
A breath caresses my cheek.
And a voice, deep and low, whispers to me: “Run.”