CHAPTER ONE: The Hollow Mansion
"I yearn for your touch, your voice and your love."
~Annie Flame~
CHAPTER ONE: The Hollow Mansion
The journey to the estate had been a bitter and long one, disguised as mourning. Elara sat in the back of the cab, her cheek pressed against chilled glass, observing the trees standing up into the sky like broken fingers.It was raining—of course it was raining.For her rain was a curse. Her every tradegy was connected with rain. The type of rain that would not come, but dampened the air like a warning.
When the driver pulled up to the gates, even he hesitated.
"You 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 stinking air outside, heavy with rot, stale perfume, and something sweet—like something was dying under the floorboards. Her heels rang on dusty marble as she moved through the foyer, her presence surrounded by the high ceilings and darkness.
She didn't turn on the lights.
Not out of fear.
But 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 was meant to come here. But what a irony it was for Elara because for her she never have felt even an ounce of belonging anywhere in the world before.
She turned away.
The first night was meant to be peaceful. She didn't unpack her stuff. Didn't even had the energy to eat something. She straight up walked to the 2nd floor. Slept in the master bedroom on sheets that carried the smell of memory on them, looking at the ceiling. She should have cried, screamed or said something.
But all she would ever do was breathe. It was shallow and slow.
It was the 2nd night of living in the mansion.
That was when everything started happening to her.
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. It was dead silence.
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 wasn't the one who 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. It was a soft male voice.
"You always leave," it said, almost amused.
"But I won't... this time," she whispered back, lips dry.
She snapped back. What was she saying without even realizing it?
Who won't she leave?
---
She found the piano room accidentally. Or perhaps not, it felt like someone intentionally lead her there. The lid was open, one note sounding as if it were just played.
The air thick with candle smoke and desiccated rose.
And on the keys of the ivory there was written with grubby ink:
"Don't you recognize me now?"
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To be continued....