"I yearn for your touch, your voice and your love."
~Annie Flame~
CHAPTER ONE: Hollow House
The road to the estate was long and cruel, like grief pretending to be healing. Elara sat in the backseat of the cab, her cheek pressed against the cold glass, eyes fixed on the trees that clawed at the sky like broken fingers. It was raining—of course it was raining. The kind of rain that didn't fall, but soaked the air like a warning.
When the driver pulled up to the gates, even he hesitated.
"Sure this is the place?" he asked, eyes darting between the wrought-iron gate and the woman in black.
She didn't answer. Just handed him the fare with a hand that trembled too slightly to notice unless you were really watching.
He drove off before she opened the gate.
The estate rose from the earth like a half-remembered nightmare. Three stories of forgotten time, stone grayed and bruised by years of weather and abandonment. Ivy strangled the pillars. The windows stared back, vacant and unblinking.
Elara didn't flinch.
It had belonged to her aunt once—an eccentric recluse she met only once at the age of nine. The woman died mysteriously, leaving the house to Elara in a will written in calligraphy and signed with something that looked more like a blood smear than ink.
Everyone told her to sell it or some even told her to burn it down.
She didn't.
Because she needed silence. Solitude. A place no one would ask her how she was holding up after the accident. A car accident in which she lost her fiance of two years. She didn't love him too much but he still meant a lot to her. It was natural to develop feelings for someone you've spent three years of your life with. But his death caused Elara a trauma for crowded places so she left her old house and moved here in this isolated place.
She stepped inside.
The door creaked in greeting, and the air inside was colder than the outside, smelling of wood rot, old perfume, and something sweeter—like something dying under the floorboards. Her heels clicked against the dusty marble as she walked through the foyer, her figure swallowed by the high ceilings and shadows.
She didn't turn on the lights.
Not out of fear.
Out of something worse—curiosity.
There was a mirror by the staircase—tall, cracked, with a black wooden frame shaped like thorns. In the dim light, her reflection looked pale and distant.
She looked like she belonged there.
Like she always had.
She turned away.
The first night was meant to be quiet. She unpacked nothing. Ate nothing. Laid in the master bedroom on sheets that smelled like memory, staring at the ceiling. She should've cried. Screamed. Something.
But all she did was breathe. Shallow and slow.
That was when it started.
The mirror across from the bed—the one she'd draped with a cloth out of some vague superstition—fogged over.
She hadn't even noticed it was glass until the condensation spelled it out:
"You're late."
Elara sat up too fast.
The room was still. Dead. Silent.
But the letters were real.
Her breath hitched in her throat as she crossed the room barefoot, fingers trembling as she reached out to the mirror. Her skin met cold glass. The message disappeared the moment she touched it.
Gone. Like it was never there.
She whispered, "Who's there?"
Because saying nothing felt worse.
Silence. But the air shifted. Like someone had just stepped into the room with her. Close. Too close.
Her eyes scanned the corners. Nothing. Not even a flicker. But something was here. She felt it in the marrow of her bones. In the way her skin tingled. In the whisper of her name—Elara—like a sigh tucked into the breeze.
She laughed, but it cracked halfway out of her throat.
Not because she found it funny.
Because she was scared she didn't find it strange.
---
The next morning, the house felt... different.
She found a cup of tea already steeped in the kitchen. Still warm.
She hadn't made it.
There were footprints in the dust leading toward the west wing.
Bare feet. Larger than hers.
She followed them like a woman possessed.
The west wing had been locked, she was sure of it. But the door swung open without resistance. The hallway stretched long and gray, lined with portraits of people she'd never met but somehow recognized. A man with sharp cheekbones. Cold eyes. A cruel mouth. Painted in such detail it felt like he was watching her.
She passed the painting.
It whispered.
She turned, fast, but the voice had already bled into the walls. Soft. Male.
"You always leave," it said, almost amused.
"Not this time," she whispered back, lips dry.
She snapped back. What was she saying without even realizing it?
---
She found the piano room by accident. Or maybe not. The lid was already open, a single note ringing like it had just been touched.
The air smelled like old roses and candle smoke.
And something was written on the ivory keys in smudged ink:
"Do you remember me yet?"
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To be continued....