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.