Story 1116: The Whispering Portrait

They told Clara Veil the manor had been abandoned for decades, but someone was still lighting candles in the west wing.

She’d seen it herself—through cracked windows and moonlight: a single room glowing faintly every night at precisely 2:16 a.m.

She was drawn to it.

The manor, once called Edevane House, had belonged to a painter whose name had been erased from local records. Only one artifact remained—a massive, dust-caked portrait that hung in the parlor like a warning. Covered in a velvet drape, its frame was taller than Clara and thrice as wide.

The caretaker, an old man with trembling hands, warned her:

“Don’t look at it. It speaks when it’s hungry.”

Clara, of course, looked.

That night, beneath the dripping ceiling and rotting beams, she pulled aside the velvet cloth and gasped.