Introduction:
Some inherit houses. Sofia inherited a letter with the house.
It came in the form of a blood red wax seal, an address that didn't exist, and a key that remembered her touch. No explanations. No condolences. Just a summons.
So she went up the mountain, into the storm, chasing something ancient through fog and frost.
She didn't know if she was going toward a legacy or a trap.
Only that something was waiting.
And it wanted her.
.............................................................................................................................................................
The wind screamed down the mountain like a curse, high and mean, biting at Sofia's face as if nature itself wanted her gone. It didn't howl like a warning it shrieked like a dare.
She ignored it.
Shrugging her coat tighter against her frame, she powered up the gravel path with stubborn, purposeful steps. Frost cracked beneath her boots; dead leaves crumbled like brittle bones. The duffel bag on her shoulder dragged her slightly off balance with every step, packed to bursting with camera gear, two fingers of cheap wine, a half used bottle of lube, and what was left of her patience. It swung like a pendulum of poor decisions. Her thighs were already going numb in the cold, her breath fogging out in short bursts but her determination burned hot, flaring brighter with each gust of wind that tried to turn her around.
"Perfect," she muttered, glancing up at the looming silhouette ahead. "Hell of a place to die in. Or get fucked by a ghost. Who knows maybe both."
She hadn't even known she had a great aunt Katarina until the letter arrived two weeks ago real parchment, bleeding ink, sealed with wax so dark it looked like dried blood. The envelope had smelled like lavender and old fire. Inside, a single iron key had been tucked beside the letter, cold and oddly warm at the same time, as if it remembered her fingers before she touched it.
And the message.
Just one line, scrawled in elegant, spidery handwriting:
You have inherited the house.
No explanation. Just the key, the warning, and an address that didn't exist on any map until she typed it into a browser she no longer had access to.
It had felt theatrical. Gothic. Possibly cursed.
And just slightly erotic in that way things were when they flirted with danger and velvet in the same breath.
She went because she had nowhere else left to go.
No family. No friends she hadn't burned.
Her mother died when Sofia was seventeen. Her father ghosted before she could spell his last name. She'd learned early that names were just anchors for grief. The state gave her a diploma, a dented camera, and a shrug. She gave herself everything else.
And when that letter arrived dripping with history and the heavy promise of the unknown she felt something she hadn't in a long time.
Called.
So here she was.
A camera, a key, a bag full of bad ideas. And the very real possibility that she'd walked straight into the mouth of something that could either save her or kill her.
The estate loomed like it had grown straight from the stone beneath it, hunched and brooding against the gray sky. Three stories of blackened stone, every inch soaked in dread. Spires jabbed upward like the claws of something buried that still wanted to rise. The stained glass windows glared down, cold and unblinking depictions of saints long forgotten, eyes hollow with judgment, faces twisted in divine disappointment. Ivy strangled the walls like veins on a corpse, curling into the cracks like it had been feeding on whatever lived inside.
The front door stood massive and uncaring, warped with age, its iron hinges thick with rust. It didn't whisper don't enter. It dared her to try.
It wasn't just unwelcoming.
It was hungry.
Sofia took a long breath then exhaled through gritted teeth, braced herself, and shoved the door open with her hip.
The air inside greeted her like a breath drawn after centuries of silence. Cold, and deliberate. It slipped over her skin like silk pulled too tight, wrapping around her throat and wrists with the intimate pressure of something unseen.
The house didn't breathe.
It waited.
Sofia froze just inside the threshold, blinking into the dim foyer. Dust danced in shafts of pale light like ashes in a cathedral. Shadows clung to the corners, deep and thick as oil. The air tasted like old wood, candle smoke, and rose petals buried under tombstones.
She whispered, "Okay. Not creepy at all."
Silence replied but it wasn't hollow.
It listened.
Her boots thudded against the marble as she stepped forward, every sound magnified, echoing like footsteps from another time. Overhead, chandeliers hung like cages of bone and crystal, glittering faintly in the gloom. The grand staircase curled up into darkness, carved from oak so dark it looked scorched. It reminded her of a spine. Something once alive.
She could smell the wealth here not new, but ancient. Stale perfume and leather bound secrets. Money left to rot.
It smelled like history.
Like loneliness with a price tag.
She let the duffel drop with a graceless thud onto a velvet chaise that looked like it had never known a wrinkle, much less the abuse of cheap zippers and wine bottles. It creaked delicately beneath the weight, offended but obliging. The fabric was plum colored, lush, and absurdly expensive looking the kind of antique that came with its own ghostly dowry.
Sofia pulled out her phone and tapped the screen.
Black.
No bars. No Wi Fi. No GPS. Just a battery icon fading like a dying star.
"Of course," she muttered, and dropped it on top of the bag.
The house probably blocked signals out of spite.
Like everything about this fucking place.
She tugged her oversized sweater lower over her thighs, the hem catching against her hips as if it too was reluctant to keep going, and padded deeper into the manor's interior.
It wasn't just big. It was vast. An estate, really. A world built inside itself. Each room she passed seemed designed to seduce and disturb in equal measure wood polished to an impossible gleam, chandeliers that glittered with the promise of secrets, and furniture that practically moaned under its own history.
The velvet on the chairs was too red. The wood on the tables was too dark. The gold on the mirrors was too bright. Everything whispered, touch me and bleed.
She caught her reflection in one of the taller mirrors and paused. It didn't just show her. It studied her. Her body wavered in the glass, sharp then soft, framed by golden filigree that curled like claws. She stepped away before she saw something she couldn't unsee.
The oil paintings were worse. Painted eyes followed her, not with curiosity but with recognition. Saints, sinners, ancestors who knew but they stared like they knew her, like they'd been waiting.
She moved faster.
Even the clocks conspired against her. Each tick from a grandfather clock sounded too loud, too alive. The kind of ticking that wasn't just time passing it was time watching.
So she decided to drop her bags in the bedroom first. The space was vast but strangely intimate high ceilings, antique molding, and a four poster bed draped in gauzy curtains that danced in the occasional breeze slipping through the cracked window. Dust clung to the heavy furniture like skin on bone. She left her things untouched on the bed, feeling as though unpacking in this house might be too presumptuous.
Curiosity itched beneath her skin, so she wandered.
The house unfolded like a dream room after room revealing itself with a kind of eerie elegance. Hours slipped by as she explored, her fingers brushing over cold banisters, aged wallpaper, frames thick with grime. The more she uncovered, the heavier it all felt. Like the walls were watching. Like the house was remembering her.
By late afternoon, weariness settled into her bones. The ornate mirrors, the slanted sun filtering through lace curtains, the endless portraits with eyes too knowing it was all too much. She showered in a claw foot tub that groaned beneath her weight, the water lukewarm and quick to run cold. Afterward, she curled into the unfamiliar bed, its mattress strangely warm, like someone had been there before her.
Sleep was uneasy.
But morning came, and with it, a stubborn clarity. She rose and resumed her wandering, more deliberate now, determined to understand this place. She ate from the small stash of food she had packed cheese, bread, apples and stood by the kitchen window as she chewed, the garden calling to her just beyond the glass.
The garden was a wild kind of beautiful, overgrown but not ruined. Vines twisted over wrought iron arches, and white roses bloomed where they shouldn't. A fountain coughed up water like it hadn't breathed in years, yet it flowed. She stayed out until the sky bruised violet and the shadows began to stretch long across the lawn.
And then she went back inside.
That was when she noticed it. Upstairs, the air had shifted.
The temperature dropped not the sort of chill that came from bad insulation or a cracked window. This cold was intentional. It wasn't in the walls. It was on her skin. Under it. The kind of cold that slid beneath her clothes, crawled down her spine, and settled at the small of her back like a hand.
It felt personal.
The hallway stretched before her like a mouth about to swallow. Closed doors lined the corridor like unspoken things. Each one pulsed with a presence, like breath caught behind wood. She passed a music room, its double doors slightly open. Inside, a piano exhaled a single note, soft and sorrowful, though no one touched the keys. It was less a sound than a sigh.
She didn't linger.
Next was a nursery, the air behind its half open door tinged with powder and memory. A rocking horse tilted forward, then back, as though someone had just slipped off its seat. She didn't look too long.
There was something just behind her, always just behind, but when she turned, the hall was empty.
She walked faster.
And then she reached it.
The study.
The door loomed at the end of the hall, darker than the others, heavy with significance. She didn't need a map to know this was the room. She knew it the way a body knows it's being watched.
Her hand reached for the doorknob before she told it to.
The door was heavy oak, carved with a pattern she didn't understand thorns? vines? veins? and when her fingers touched the handle, the wood felt strangely warm, like it had been waiting for her. It opened under her hand with a slow groan, the kind that usually preceded either sex or death in an old movie.
But the room beyond didn't push back.
It pulled.
The study welcomed her like a mouth welcomes a kiss dark, soft, and full of breath held too long. Thick velvet drapes framed the tall windows, letting in only slivers of dying daylight. The light cast long, lascivious shadows, all wine and rust and secrets pressed into fabric.
There was no fire in the hearth, but the air carried heat not from flame, but from memory. Old warmth. Familiar in a way that made her skin prickle. The space around her felt inhabited, though no one stood there. The weight of presence, like something just out of view, brushing its fingers along her shoulder.
She stepped further in, boots silent on the thick carpet, drawn without meaning to the far wall.
And then she saw it.
The portrait.
It dominated the room not by size alone, but by gravity. Everything else was arranged in subtle reverence around it: shelves of ancient books sagging with weight, a high backed leather chair poised just beneath as if someone still sat there, waiting to be addressed.
