Eleanor Gray
Part 1 – The Arrival
The rain had begun long before Anna reached the edge of the village. It was not the sudden monsoon torrent of her childhood stories, but a relentless English drizzle that sank deep into her coat, her shoes, even her bones. She tightened her grip on the worn leather suitcase, her grandmother’s initials still faintly etched on its brass clasp, and tried to steady her breath as the taxi pulled away, leaving her alone on the narrow country lane.
Before her, shrouded in mist, rose the house.
It was not a mansion—though once, perhaps, it had been. Time had gnawed at the walls until the stone appeared more bone than brick, the ivy climbing like veins across its skin. Two broken windows stared down at her, blind yet strangely watchful. The wooden door, swollen with years of damp, sagged against its frame as though the house had been caught mid-sigh.
Anna swallowed. The letter had been clear:
“Miss Anna Whitmore,
As the last living descendant of Eleanor Harrow, you are the rightful inheritor of Harrow House. You are requested to take possession within the month.”
Her grandmother, long dead, had never spoken of Eleanor Harrow, nor of any inheritance. Yet here it was, a house she had never known she owned, standing like a secret at the edge of the world.
She stepped forward, her boots sinking into the gravel. The crunch echoed too loudly in the damp air. She felt the distinct sensation of being overheard, as if the house were leaning closer to catch her footsteps.
The key was heavy, iron-cast, and cold even through her glove. It scraped against the lock with a sound like teeth grinding. She pressed her shoulder to the door, forcing it open, and at once a gust of stale air swept across her face.
The smell struck her first. Not the ordinary must of disuse, but something older, sharper, as though the walls had exhaled secrets held too long. Her hand brushed the doorframe, and splinters caught her skin, drawing the faintest bead of blood. For an instant, she thought the house shivered.
Inside, shadows clung to the corners like cobwebs. The hallway stretched ahead, narrower than she expected, lined with portraits whose eyes gleamed faintly in the light of her lantern. She raised the flame higher and froze.
The nearest portrait was of a woman in a high-collared dress, her hair pinned in a severe knot. The nameplate beneath read: Eleanor Harrow, 1893. The woman’s gaze was so steady, so intent, that Anna had the unsettling impression she was not being looked at but through.
“Hello?” Anna’s voice quavered, a foolish reflex. Of course no one would answer.
And yet, from somewhere deep within the house, a board creaked.
Her throat tightened. It might have been the shifting of the old structure, wood giving way to damp, but the sound carried a weight, a deliberation. A step.
Anna turned sharply, her lantern spilling light across the staircase. The banister twisted upward, swallowed in shadow. For a heartbeat, she thought she saw the hem of a dress trailing at the landing, pale against the dark. But when she blinked, there was nothing.
She laughed softly, though the sound seemed brittle. “You’re imagining things,” she whispered to herself. “It’s just an old house. That’s all.”
But her words fell flat, absorbed into the silence.
Part 2 – The First Night
Anna dropped her suitcase in the hallway, the sound startlingly loud against the hush. Dust leapt from the floorboards and shimmered briefly in the lantern light before dissolving back into the gloom. She tugged off her damp coat and hung it on a crooked peg by the door, though she doubted it would ever dry in this cold.
The silence was heavy. She had grown used to city life—the constant hum of traffic, voices bleeding through thin apartment walls, even the rattle of trains in the distance. Here, in Harrow House, there was none of that. Only the drip of water somewhere unseen, and the slow groan of wood that felt like breath.
Anna found the kitchen at the back of the house. It was a place abandoned halfway through life: a kettle rusted on the stove, a plate left overturned in the sink, an apron hanging limply on the back of a chair. Cobwebs gathered in the corners, but there was an eerie lack of dust on the table, as if someone had only recently left. She touched the wood; it was cool, faintly damp, but clean.
Her stomach clenched with hunger. She hadn’t eaten since the service station hours earlier, and the drizzle had turned her body cold. She rummaged through the cupboards, finding nothing but glass jars clouded with age and a tin of tea leaves so brittle they crumbled between her fingers. She sighed. There would be no supper tonight.
The letter had mentioned electricity, but when she found the switch and flicked it, nothing stirred. No bulbs warmed to life, no hum of power. The lantern would have to do. Its circle of light moved with her, shrinking the house to a small island against the dark.
At the base of the staircase, she hesitated. The boards above seemed to shift again, softly, the way one might when moving to avoid notice. She tilted her lantern upward. The pale wallpaper was patterned with faded vines, peeling in long strips. The carpet runner, once scarlet, had dulled to the color of dried blood.
“Nothing there,” she muttered, though her throat tightened. “Just air and wood. Just a house.”
The stairs protested beneath her weight as she climbed. At the landing, the air grew colder, her breath faintly visible in the lantern’s glow. A hallway stretched in both directions, doors lining it like shut mouths. The nearest stood ajar.
Anna pushed it open. Inside was a bedroom. The furniture was heavy, Victorian, still draped in white cloths yellowed with time. She pulled the sheet from the bed, releasing a puff of dust, and coughed. The mattress sagged but seemed intact enough. Her body ached for rest.
She lit a small candle from her lantern and set it by the bedside. The flame quivered in the draft that leaked beneath the door. She unpacked a few things—wool sweater, notebook, a photograph of her grandmother she had never known well but felt she should honor here—and placed them on the dresser.
By the time she slipped beneath the covers, exhaustion had dulled the edges of her fear. The house creaked around her, as though adjusting to her weight within it, but she told herself all houses did that. Her eyes closed. Sleep began to draw her under.
Then came the whisper.
It was faint, so faint she thought it might be the wind clawing through the ivy outside. A single word, stretched thin, almost breathless:
“Anna…”
Her eyes snapped open. She sat upright, candlelight throwing wild shadows across the room. Her heart pounded against her ribs.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, her voice shaking but loud.
Silence.
She waited, listening so hard her ears ached. Nothing came. Only the drip of water in the pipes, the groan of timber, the beat of her own pulse. She let out a strangled laugh. Fatigue. That’s all. A trick of tiredness.
Still, she did not lie down again. She sat against the headboard, staring at the door, until her candle guttered and died. The dark pressed close, thicker than night should be.
At last, her body betrayed her. She slipped into uneasy dreams where walls whispered and portraits breathed.
Anna woke before dawn. The lantern had burned out, but a dull gray seeped through the curtains. Her limbs were stiff, her mouth dry. For a moment she could not remember where she was. Then the smell returned—the sharp, metallic scent of age—and it rushed back.
She dressed quickly, eager for daylight. The house was different in the morning, though not kinder. Mist clung to the windows, muting the view of the fields beyond. The portraits in the hallway seemed less alive, though their eyes still followed her with unsettling devotion.
She returned to the kitchen. On the table lay something that had not been there before: a single teacup. White porcelain, delicate, rimmed with gold.
It was filled with water.
She froze. Her breath caught in her throat. Slowly, she reached out and touched the cup. It was warm.
The sound came again then, clearer, closer. Not from upstairs this time, but directly behind her.
“Anna…”
She spun, the lantern swinging in her hand.
The kitchen was empty.
But the door to the cellar, which she could have sworn had been locked, now stood wide open.
Part 3 – The Cellar
Anna stood rooted to the flagstone floor, the open cellar door gaping before her like a throat waiting to swallow. The air that rose from it was colder than the rest of the house, heavy with a smell that was not quite rot, not quite damp, but something older, earthier, as if the ground itself had been disturbed.
Her fingers tightened around the lantern’s handle. She should shut the door. She should bolt it, walk away, call someone—though she had no one to call. But the whisper still trembled in her ears, curling around her name, and she could not bear the thought of turning her back on it.
The stone steps descended steeply, each one slick with moisture. She placed her foot carefully, the lantern trembling in her hand, casting jittery shadows along the walls. They looked like hands reaching out to grasp her coat.
At the bottom, the air was thick and clammy. She lifted the lantern high. The cellar was larger than she expected, stretching beneath the house like a second, hidden foundation. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with jars whose contents had long since decayed into unrecognizable lumps. Rusted tools hung from hooks: spades, sickles, a cleaver that gleamed faintly in the light as though it had been touched more recently than the others.
In the far corner stood a chair. Wooden, high-backed, its legs sunk slightly into the earthen floor. Beside it, on the ground, lay a coil of rope.
Anna’s throat tightened. She whispered to herself, “Storage. Nothing more.” But the words felt empty.
The lantern’s glow caught something else—a faint line etched into the wall behind the chair. She stepped closer, heart pounding. It was a carving, crude but deliberate: a circle crossed with two intersecting lines, like an ancient sigil. Her hand rose before she realized what she was doing, fingertips grazing the grooves. The stone was icy to the touch.
The whisper came again, this time directly in her ear.
“Leave.”
Anna gasped and spun around. The cellar was empty. Her lantern swung wildly, shadows leaping, jars glinting like eyes. Her pulse roared in her ears.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, voice breaking. “Show yourself!”
Nothing. Only silence, thick as stone.
Her courage faltered. She stumbled back, nearly dropping the lantern, and fled up the stairs, the sound of her boots striking stone echoing too loud in the hollow space. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, her breath ragged, palms slick with sweat.
The house pressed close around her, listening.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Anna wandered through the rooms, forcing herself to keep moving, to catalogue what she now owned. A study thick with books whose spines crumbled at her touch. A drawing room whose piano still held a faint, sour note when pressed. Bedrooms with beds stripped bare, curtains eaten by moths.
But always, at the edge of her vision, she felt it: a shifting, a presence. Once, in the mirror above the mantle, she thought she saw a pale figure standing behind her, but when she turned, there was only emptiness.
By afternoon, she had convinced herself she needed air. The drizzle had ceased, though mist still clung to the ground. She walked the perimeter of the property, boots sinking into the sodden earth. The fields stretched out, wild and overgrown, bounded by a line of skeletal trees. From a distance, the house loomed—its windows blank, its roof slouching under years of rain—but it seemed almost alive, watching her with mute anticipation.
At the rear of the grounds, she found a small cemetery. The stones were crooked, many toppled, their inscriptions eroded by weather. She crouched before one still legible, brushing moss from its surface.
Eleanor Harrow, 1863–1893
The same name, the same face from the portrait in the hallway. Her supposed ancestor. Dead at thirty.
Anna’s skin prickled. She rose quickly, unwilling to linger among the graves.
When she returned inside, the house felt darker, though daylight had not yet faded. She lit the lantern again, unease crawling along her spine. She told herself she would stay only one more night. Tomorrow she would leave—at least for a while. She needed distance, perspective. She could decide later what to do with the house. Sell it. Abandon it. Anything but this.
That night, she dreamed of the cellar.
In the dream, she descended again, the lantern’s light sputtering, the sigil on the wall glowing faintly as if lit from within. The chair was no longer empty. A woman sat there, dressed in white, her hair hanging in damp ropes across her face. Her hands were bound with the same rope coiled at her feet.
“Anna,” the woman whispered, though her lips did not move.
Anna woke with a cry, her sheets tangled around her limbs, her skin slick with cold sweat. The candle on her bedside table had gone out, though she had not extinguished it. The darkness was complete.
Then the door to her bedroom creaked open.
Her breath caught. Slowly, she reached for the lantern. The flame struggled to life, spilling dim light across the room.
The doorway yawned empty.
But on the floor just beyond the threshold, faint and wet as though traced in dew, was a single footprint. Bare. Small. Pointed toward her bed.
Anna did not sleep again. She sat upright until dawn, the lantern burning low, her eyes fixed on the door. Her mind raced in circles: dreams, exhaustion, hallucinations. Yet the footprint had remained until the morning light erased it.
When she finally rose, unsteady with fatigue, she knew she could not ignore it any longer. Something lived in Harrow House.
And it knew her name.
Part 4 – The Journals
Anna could not shake the image of the footprint. Even as daylight crept back into the house, softening the edges of its gloom, her skin prickled with the memory of that damp mark pressed into the floorboards. She dressed quickly, pulled her hair back with shaking fingers, and decided to confront the house directly. No more wandering aimlessly. If Harrow House wanted to whisper its secrets, she would listen.
The study lay at the end of the northern hall. The door stuck as though it had not been opened in decades. She shoved her shoulder against it until it gave way with a reluctant groan. The smell was immediate—paper, ink, and the slow rot of leather bindings.
Books lined every wall, stacked two and three deep in places. Many had collapsed into heaps, their spines gnawed by insects, pages curling into themselves. Dust blanketed the desk at the center of the room, except for one corner where a small square had been cleared, as if something had rested there not long ago.
Anna ran her fingers across the surface. A faint outline remained: the shape of a book.
She turned to the shelves, lantern light sweeping across rows of titles. Histories, treatises, sermons. But near the bottom, half-buried beneath a fallen atlas, she saw something different. A stack of journals, bound in cracked brown leather, their edges mottled with age. She pulled one free, coughing as a cloud of dust rose around her.
The cover bore a name in faded ink: Eleanor Harrow.
Anna’s pulse quickened. She carried the journal to the desk, set it carefully in the cleared space, and opened it. The first page was dated January 1892.
“The house listens. I am certain of it now. At night I hear the walls shift, not with wind, but with intent. Mother dismisses me, saying it is my imagination, but I know better. Harrow House breathes, and it knows my name.”
Anna’s mouth went dry. The words might have been her own.
She read on, eyes devouring the neat, slanted script. Eleanor wrote of sleepless nights, of whispers drifting through her door, of seeing her reflection move independently in the glass. She described a woman in white who appeared at the edge of her vision, vanishing when faced directly.
And then, in an entry dated March 1892:
“I found the mark in the cellar. A circle with intersecting lines. Father says it is nothing, only a mason’s careless carving, but I felt its coldness under my hand. Something in the stone spoke to me. A voice soft and insistent: leave. But where would I go? This house is mine as much as it is theirs. Perhaps more.”
Anna’s hands trembled as she turned the page. The entries grew more frantic, ink blotted, handwriting hurried. Eleanor spoke of dreams that bled into waking, of doors that opened themselves, of voices that sometimes cried her name, sometimes wept, sometimes laughed.
The final entry was dated June 1893.
“It comes for me tonight. I have no doubt. The rope is ready, the chair waiting. If I resist, it will not matter. The house decides. But if anyone should find this, know: the house remembers blood. It will call again.”
The page ended there, a smear of ink trailing into the corner.
Anna closed the journal with shaking hands. Her ancestor had died that same year, her gravestone weathered and lonesome at the back of the property. But how? By her own hand? By the house’s? The thought made Anna’s stomach twist.
She pulled the other journals from the shelf, stacking them on the desk. There were five in total, their dates spanning Eleanor’s last two years. She wanted to devour them all at once, to piece together the story, but exhaustion tugged at her, the words swimming in front of her eyes. She decided to carry the first volume back to her room.
That evening, as the mist thickened outside, Anna sat on her bed with the journal open across her lap. The candle beside her flickered violently though the window was shut. She ignored it and read on, her heart thudding at each word.
The whispers began softly, as if the house were waiting for her to reach a certain passage.
“June 12, 1893. I hear it moving above my head, though I am alone. The walls hum with a low chant, and the mark in the cellar burns in my dreams. It wants me to sit in the chair. It shows me visions of myself tied, waiting. I feel almost compelled to obey, as though the rope were already tightening around my wrists.”
The candle guttered, wax spilling down its side.
Anna looked up sharply. The whisper had changed. No longer her name, but words she could not fully catch, a susurration like water over stones. She rose quickly, snatching the lantern, and flung open her door.
The hallway yawned dark. At the far end, the portrait of Eleanor Harrow glowed faintly in the lantern light, her painted eyes sharp, unblinking. For an instant Anna thought the corners of Eleanor’s mouth had curved upward in the barest smile.
She shut the door with a shudder.
Later, sleep dragged her down despite herself. And again, she dreamed.
This time she was in the study. The journals were open, pages fluttering though no wind stirred. Ink bled across them in long, curling lines until they formed a single word, scrawled again and again:
“STAY.”
Anna woke with a gasp. The journal lay open beside her, though she was certain she had closed it. The page bore no such word, only Eleanor’s neat script. Yet on the cover, in a place no ink should have touched, was a damp handprint. Small. Bare.
She touched it with a trembling finger. The leather was wet.
Morning brought no comfort. The footprint outside her door had returned, darker this time, as though pressed fresh. She followed it down the hall, lantern raised, heart hammering. The trail ended at the cellar door.
The lock hung broken.
Anna’s resolve faltered. She thought of Eleanor, of the rope and chair waiting below. The journal’s final line burned in her mind: The house remembers blood. It will call again.
Her own blood, she realized, might be what it wanted now.
Part 5 – The Woman in White
The broken lock dangled from the cellar door like a tooth knocked loose. Anna’s hand hovered near the handle, her lantern trembling in its grip. She could not recall breaking the lock herself. Yet there it hung, snapped clean through, the wood beneath it splintered.
The air seeping up from the opening was colder than before, the chill of stone buried deep beneath the ground. She drew in a long breath, the iron tang of damp earth prickling the back of her throat, and forced herself to descend.
The steps creaked under her weight. Each groan sounded deliberate, as though announcing her presence. Her lantern carved pale circles in the dark, catching the gleam of jars, the dull sheen of rusted tools, the glistening wet sheen of the stone floor.
The chair was still there. This time it was not empty.
A woman sat in it, her back straight, her arms folded neatly in her lap as though awaiting company. She wore white—not the crisp white of cloth but a gray-tinged pallor, as though the fabric had been steeped in ash. Her hair fell across her shoulders in damp ropes. Her face was obscured, her chin angled down, but her stillness was absolute, deeper than any living person’s.
Anna froze, breath hitching. The lantern quivered in her hand, casting light that seemed to slide across the figure without clinging, as though the woman absorbed illumination into herself.
“Who are you?” Anna whispered, though she already knew.
The woman raised her head.
Her eyes were hollow sockets, cavernous and dark. Her lips moved, but the sound came not from her mouth but from every corner of the cellar at once, a breath curling through stone and wood alike.
“Anna.”
The voice was unmistakable, the same that had whispered through the walls, the same that had haunted her dreams. It was not cruel, not yet, but it was insistent. A calling.
Anna stumbled back. Her shoulder struck the wall, dislodging flakes of damp plaster. “You’re not real. You’re—”
The woman rose.
The rope coiled at her feet writhed as though alive, slithering up her arms, binding her wrists without her touch. She stepped forward, and with each step the ground seemed to soften, sagging as though she walked on something living.
Anna bolted for the stairs. Her lantern clanged against the wall, shadows jerking wildly. Behind her came the scrape of rope across stone, steady, patient, inexorable.
She burst into the hallway and slammed the door, her breath tearing from her lungs. For a moment, she thought she had escaped.
Then she heard it. The creak of footsteps climbing the stairs after her.
Anna ran. Her boots thudded across the boards, her lantern rattling in her grasp. She darted through the hall, into the study, and shoved the door shut behind her, chest heaving.
Silence.
Her lantern illuminated the desk, the journals stacked neatly as she had left them. But the top volume now lay open, its pages fluttering though no air moved. Words bled across the paper in fresh ink, curling letters that formed her name over and over.
Anna. Anna. Anna.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it. The ink was wet.
She backed away, her heel catching against the rug. She stumbled, striking the edge of the bookcase. A cascade of volumes fell around her, spilling across the floor in a muffled avalanche.
Beneath the fallen books, her lantern light caught another object. A small box, wooden, its lid cracked but intact. She crouched, snatched it up, and pulled it open.
Inside lay a bundle of letters tied with ribbon, browned and brittle with age. The handwriting was Eleanor’s. Anna tugged one free, the ribbon snapping as if eager to release it.
“To whoever comes after: the woman is not me. She wears my shape but she is older, hungrier. The sigil in the cellar binds her, but only if kept unbroken. If the mark fades, she will walk. If she walks, she will feed.”
Anna’s breath caught. She thought of the sigil carved in the stone, the one she had touched with her own fingers. She had felt it cold, but had she disturbed it? Had her contact loosened what kept the woman bound?
The floor beneath her shuddered, faint but unmistakable. She staggered, clutching the letter to her chest.
The sound of the cellar door slamming open echoed through the house.
She did not remember running, only the slam of her boots, the scrape of her breath, the crash of doors as she flung them wide. The woman’s presence followed, not fast but steady, her footsteps matching Anna’s in rhythm, always close, always nearer.
Anna burst into the drawing room. The piano loomed in the corner, its keys yellowed, its body cloaked in dust. She stumbled against it, one hand falling across the keys. A note rang out—clear, shrill, a sound too alive for the dead wood.
At once, the house shivered. The portraits along the walls rattled in their frames. The chandelier above swayed though no breeze stirred.
The woman’s voice slid through the room.
“Sit.”
Anna turned. The figure stood in the doorway, pale dress trailing across the floor like mist. Rope still bound her wrists, dragging behind her in a snake’s coil. Her head tilted, lips curling in something that was not quite a smile.
“Sit,” she repeated, pointing to a chair by the fire.
Anna shook her head violently. “No. You’re not her. You’re not Eleanor.”
The woman stepped closer. With each pace, the candles in the room extinguished themselves, one by one, until only Anna’s lantern remained. Its light flickered weakly, straining against the dark.
“You carry her blood,” the voice said. “You will finish what she began.”
Anna’s chest tightened. The rope on the woman’s wrists unraveled, slithering across the floor, inching toward Anna’s boots like a living serpent.
She bolted for the hallway. The rope struck the leg of the chair behind her, toppling it with a crash. She sprinted up the staircase, lantern jerking, her breath tearing from her lungs. She did not stop until she reached the attic door. She flung it open and stumbled inside, slamming it shut and throwing the bolt.
The attic was a low, sprawling space, its beams thick with cobwebs, its floor strewn with trunks and broken furniture. She pressed herself against the wall, lantern shaking in her hand, heart pounding like a drum.
Below, the woman’s footsteps climbed steadily.
Anna sank to the floor, clutching Eleanor’s letter. The words blurred in her vision but burned in her mind: The sigil binds her. If the mark fades, she will walk. If she walks, she will feed.
The rope scraped against the door. The bolt quivered.
Anna realized then: the sigil had already weakened. The woman was no longer bound. And she would not stop until Anna sat in the chair, tied and waiting, just as Eleanor had foretold.
Part 6 – The Sigil
Anna pressed her back against the attic door, her breath coming in ragged bursts. The bolt rattled in its housing as if an unseen hand tested its strength. She clutched the letter tighter, sweat dampening the edges. The lantern flame quivered, barely holding back the dark.
She repeated Eleanor’s words silently like a prayer: The sigil binds her. If the mark fades, she will walk. If she walks, she will feed.
The scratching at the door ceased. Silence fell, heavier than before. Anna strained her ears. Nothing. No footsteps. No breath. But she knew the woman had not gone. She was waiting, listening.
Anna rose on shaking legs. She could not stay here, trapped. The sigil was her only chance. If it had been carved to bind, perhaps it could still be restored. She had chalk in her suitcase, a remnant from her university days when she sketched in parks. Could chalk trace power? She did not know. But she had nothing else.
She crossed the attic in silence, the lantern beam sweeping across trunks swollen with damp, broken rocking horses, and a cracked mirror that reflected her face pale as bone. She shivered, looked away, and found the narrow window at the far end. Mist pressed against the glass, blurring the fields beyond. For an instant she thought she saw a figure standing in the overgrown cemetery, but when she blinked, the fog swallowed it whole.
She slipped back to the door. With careful hands, she lifted the bolt. The wood creaked too loudly. She winced, listening. Still silence.
She descended the stairs one at a time, each step deliberate, holding her lantern high. The hallway stretched empty. Shadows clung thickly in the corners, but the woman in white did not appear.
Anna hurried to her room. She tore open her suitcase, scattering clothes across the bed, and found the small tin box of chalks. Her hands shook so badly the sticks nearly slipped from her grasp. She shoved them into her pocket and turned back to the hall.
The cellar door waited.
The descent was worse this time. The air was colder, thick enough to choke. Her lantern light struck the sigil on the far wall, and her heart lurched. The carving was fainter, its lines worn, as though centuries had passed overnight. Moss had crept into the grooves, softening the sharpness of its edges.
Anna dropped to her knees. She drew out a stick of chalk and pressed it hard into the stone, tracing the lines as Eleanor must have once done. The circle, the intersecting lines, each stroke trembling under her hand. White dust smeared her palms, her knees bruised against the floor, but she forced herself on.
As she worked, a whisper coiled around her ears.
“Anna…”
She ignored it, grinding the chalk harder, carving her will into the wall.
“Anna… why resist? You carry her blood. Sit, and it will be easy.”
The rope on the floor stirred, uncoiling with a hiss. Anna’s heart pounded. She drew the last line, closing the circle, and pressed her palm to the stone.
For a moment, nothing.
Then the wall shuddered beneath her hand. The sigil glowed faintly, pale as moonlight. The rope shrieked as though scalded and recoiled into the shadows. The cellar trembled.
Anna staggered back, her chalk falling from her hand. Relief surged through her—but it lasted only a heartbeat.
A scream erupted from the stairwell above, a sound so raw it clawed at her bones. The woman in white stood at the top of the stairs, her hollow eyes blazing with fury, her mouth gaping wider than any human’s.
“You cannot bind me!” she howled. The voice was not one voice but many, echoing from every surface, rattling the shelves and jars.
Anna stumbled toward the stairs, but the figure descended, each step cracking the stone. The lantern flickered violently, shadows jerking in wild arcs.
“Eleanor failed,” the woman hissed. “And so will you.”
Anna clutched the lantern like a weapon. She hurled it at the woman’s feet. The glass shattered, flame spilling across the damp floor. The fire hissed, smoke curling upward. For a moment, the figure recoiled, her shape unraveling in the light.
Anna seized the chance. She sprinted past, boots slipping on stone, and tore up the stairs. Behind her, the woman screamed again, a sound that seemed to strip the air from her lungs.
She slammed the cellar door shut, chest heaving. The flames below sputtered out, plunging the basement into silence once more.
In the study, Anna collapsed into the chair, her body shaking. The journals lay scattered where she had left them, pages splayed open like wounded birds. She grabbed the nearest one, flipping through desperately.
Midway through the volume she found it: “The sigil weakens if touched. It must be redrawn, fed with blood. Without it, she grows strong. With it, she may be kept at bay. But never destroyed.”
Anna’s stomach lurched. Blood. Not chalk, not ink. Blood.
Her hand throbbed where the splinter had pricked her on the first day. A bead of crimson still marked the bandage. She pressed her thumb hard against the cut until fresh blood welled.
She returned to the cellar once more, each step heavier than the last. The sigil still glowed faintly, but the glow wavered. With her bloody fingertip, she traced the lines again. The stone pulsed beneath her touch, as though drinking. The glow steadied, deepened.
The house groaned around her, beams creaking, walls sighing. For a moment, she thought she heard a chorus of voices—not angry now, but subdued, weary.
She pulled her hand back. The sigil burned with a cold white light. The cellar was silent. The rope lay slack.
Anna exhaled. Perhaps she had done it. Perhaps she had bought herself time.
That night, she sat in her room, bandaging her bleeding finger, the journal open beside her. The candle flickered but did not go out. For the first time since she arrived, the whisper did not call her name.
But as she lay in bed, exhaustion finally dragging her under, she dreamed again.
In the dream, Eleanor Harrow stood before her. Not the ghastly woman in white, but Eleanor as she had appeared in the portrait: high-collared dress, severe hair, sharp eyes. She reached out, her hand hovering above Anna’s shoulder.
“You have bound her again,” Eleanor said softly. “But she is patient. The house will always hunger. It will take, and take, until someone ends it.”
Anna tried to speak, but her voice was gone.
Eleanor leaned closer, her breath cold against Anna’s ear.
“You are not the last, Anna. You are only the next.”
Anna woke with a cry. Her candle had guttered, smoke curling in the air. And on her pillow lay a length of rope, frayed and damp, coiled neatly like a gift.
Part 7 – The Bloodline
Anna stared at the rope coiled neatly on her pillow. Its fibers glistened faintly as if damp, though her hands came away dry when she touched them. It smelled of earth and age, a graveyard scent. She recoiled, heart racing, and hurled it into the far corner. But when she blinked, it was gone.
She pressed her palms to her face, trying to steady her breathing. She wanted to leave—God, how she wanted to flee into the mist, never look back—but some grim tether rooted her here. The journals, Eleanor’s warnings, the sigil that seemed to breathe beneath her touch. This was not only Eleanor’s story. It was hers.
She returned to the study with a kind of grim determination. The journals waited where she had left them, patient and silent. She opened the second volume.
August 1892: I see her now even in daylight. Always just behind me, reflected in the glass, the piano, the water in my basin. Mother still refuses to believe me. She says madness runs in our line, that I am cursed with it as my grandmother was. Perhaps she is right. But I think it is not madness. It is inheritance.
Anna froze at the word. Inheritance. The letter that had summoned her here had called the house an inheritance.
She turned the page.
October 1892: The blood remembers. That is why she speaks to me and not to others. She is older than this house, older than Harrow blood, but she roots herself in it like ivy. The sigil keeps her from walking freely, yet it does not banish her. It never will. She waits for weakness in the line. She waits for me.
Anna’s hand tightened on the page. The line. The family line.
The realization hit her like cold water. She was the last Whitmore. The last Harrow by blood. The woman’s whispers had not been chance; they had been inheritance.
Anna’s stomach churned. She rose from the desk and paced, lantern swinging. She had no siblings, no cousins she knew of. Her grandmother had been silent about family, her mother dead young, leaving only Anna. If the house remembered blood, she was the final link.
The rope appeared again that evening.
She had gone to the kitchen in search of anything edible, settling for stale crackers from her suitcase. When she turned, there it was—draped across the chair at the table, its frayed ends coiled like snakes. She froze. The lantern flame leapt violently, casting shadows that writhed across the walls.
“Sit.”
The voice slid into her ear, closer than ever before. Anna spun, heart hammering. The kitchen was empty.
She seized the rope and hurled it into the fireplace. The strands blackened, curled, and fell into ash. Relief surged through her—until she turned back to the table.
The rope lay there again, pristine, untouched by flame.
Anna staggered back, bile rising in her throat. She fled the kitchen, lantern light bouncing wildly, her breath ragged.
Sleep did not come easily. When at last it dragged her under, she dreamed of the rope binding her wrists, coiling her ankles, dragging her down into the cellar. The chair waited, and the woman in white loomed above, her hollow eyes filling with Anna’s reflection.
She woke screaming, sweat soaking her sheets. The rope was knotted across her chest, pinning her to the bed.
Anna tore it away with frantic strength, throwing it to the floor. She clutched her chest, heart pounding so violently she thought it might split. Her breath tore from her lungs in ragged gasps.
On the nightstand lay another of Eleanor’s journals, though she had not brought it here. Its pages were open, the ink wet. Words scrawled across them, jagged and urgent:
“She feeds on fear. Starve her.”
Anna’s skin prickled. Eleanor was speaking still, through the pages, across time. But how? Was it truly Eleanor, or only the house’s mimicry? She did not know. Yet the words rang true. The woman’s strength grew with Anna’s terror.
Starve her.
Anna clenched her fists. She rose, shaking, and carried the journal back to the study. The rope followed her, slithering at the edge of her vision, always reappearing where she least expected: across the chair, draped on the desk, dangling from the chandelier. She ignored it, forcing her breath slow, steady, deliberate.
“I am not afraid,” she whispered aloud, though her voice trembled. “You cannot have me.”
The house groaned, beams protesting, plaster cracking. The lantern flame steadied, brighter than before.
Anna dared to believe Eleanor had been right. Fear was the woman’s feast. Refusal was resistance.
But the woman adapted.
By the third night, the hauntings changed. No longer whispers in the dark but memories twisted into knives. Anna heard her mother’s voice calling her name from the hallway, soft and aching. She stumbled out, only to find the corridor empty, the portraits watching with cold, painted eyes.
She dreamed of her grandmother, standing at the edge of the cemetery, beckoning her to follow. But when Anna approached, her grandmother’s face melted into the hollow-eyed visage of the woman in white.
The rope was everywhere now. Across her pillow. Beneath her boots. Tangled in her hair when she woke.
And yet, the sigil still held. The cellar remained bound. The woman had not yet walked freely.
Anna knew she had little time. She needed answers beyond the journals. Somewhere in this house lay the truth of Eleanor’s end.
She found it on the fourth morning, in the attic.
The trunks had seemed ordinary before, filled with moth-eaten clothes and broken toys. But one trunk, shoved into the farthest corner, was different. Its lid was nailed shut. She pried at it with a rusted poker until the wood splintered, the nails screeching free.
Inside lay bones.
Human bones, brittle and yellowed. A skull rested atop the pile, its jaw twisted open in a silent scream. Rope still clung to the wrist bones, frayed but unmistakable.
Anna gagged, dropping the poker. Her lantern slipped and nearly shattered. She staggered back, bile rising. These were not graves marked in the cemetery. These were hidden dead.
Beneath the skull lay a final journal, thinner than the rest. Its cover bore no name, only the mark of the sigil scrawled in dark ink. Anna opened it with trembling fingers.
June 1893: This is my last confession. I am bound. The house has claimed me. If anyone finds this, know the woman is not only hunger but memory. She wears us to survive. Each of us becomes her. I am not the first. I will not be the last.
Anna closed the book with shaking hands. The bones before her were not only Eleanor’s. They were all the women before her, each one consumed, each one bound, each one turned into the woman in white.
The inheritance was not property. It was a sentence.
Anna staggered to her feet, the journal clutched tight. The rope coiled around her boots, pulling tight. She kicked free, stumbling down the stairs, heart pounding with new clarity.
The house did not want her to leave. It wanted her to stay, to sit, to become.
And Anna, blood of the line, was next.
Part 8 – Daylight Hauntings
By dawn, Anna had stopped pretending she was merely a visitor in Harrow House. She was a prisoner. Each hour bound her tighter, as surely as the rope that slithered back no matter how many times she burned, buried, or cut it. The attic discovery left her hollow. The inheritance was not wealth or land but a lineage of women devoured by the same hunger.
She carried the thin, final journal with her now, unwilling to leave it behind. Its pages shook as she read them, Eleanor’s script collapsing into frantic scrawls: “Burn it. Only fire speaks louder than she does. But beware—she feeds even on flames. The house is her skin.”
Burn it. The thought had circled in Anna’s mind for hours. Fire as liberation. Fire as erasure. But fire as sacrifice too. Could she light a match without sealing herself in with the blaze?
When the first haunting came in daylight, she realized the question was no longer optional.
She had gone into the drawing room to breathe—the only space where windows faced the meadow, where mist sometimes lifted enough to reveal sky. She needed proof the world beyond the house still existed. But when she drew the curtains, the meadow was gone.
Instead, rows of women stood outside, their dresses gray, their hair tangled ropes. Some clutched their own bones, others dragged coils of rope, their hollow eyes fixed on the house. They did not move, but their presence pressed against the glass like a tide.
Anna staggered back, breath ragged. When she blinked, the meadow returned. But the echo of their gaze remained in her chest.
The woman in white had broken the boundary of night.
Anna began her preparations. She searched the house for oil, for candles, for tinder. The cellar yielded rusted lanterns still half-full of kerosene, their stench sharp and bitter. She carried them up one by one, lining them in the hall, her fingers raw from gripping the cold metal handles.
Every step was watched. Portrait eyes seemed sharper, the faces behind the cracked frames more alive. The whisper followed her, not words now but laughter, low and knowing.
By evening, the rope had grown bold. It draped itself across the banister, knotted itself into her suitcase, wound through the chandelier above her bed. Once, she awoke to find it coiled loosely around her neck like a lover’s arm.
“Not afraid,” she whispered through clenched teeth, forcing herself not to tear it away. “I starve you.”
But her voice shook. And the rope tightened, just enough to remind her it could end her with one breath. Then it slackened, slipping away, as though amused by her defiance.
The second daylight haunting came as she lit the study fire. She bent low, coaxing sparks into kindling, when a reflection in the hearth’s iron plate caught her eye.
Not her face.
Eleanor’s.
High collar, severe hair, sharp eyes—but twisted, warped, as though melted by grief. The lips moved, but the voice that spilled into the room was not hers.
“Burn it, Anna,” the woman in white hissed, Eleanor’s face stretching into a rictus smile. “Burn, and I will be free.”
Anna staggered back, the poker clattering from her hand. The reflection’s lips twisted wider.
“You cannot leave. You cannot starve me. The house is me. And soon, so are you.”
The reflection rippled, and for a moment Anna saw herself there instead, bound to the chair in the cellar, eyes hollow, mouth slack.
She slammed the fireplate shut, choking on smoke.
That night, she made her choice.
Anna gathered the journals, stacking them in a neat pile by her bed. She placed the final thin one atop the others. If she burned the house, these too would go. But she could not bear the thought of them falling into another’s hands, dragging someone else into this hunger. Better ash than inheritance.
She set the kerosene lanterns in every corridor. In the kitchen. In the drawing room. In the cellar too, right before the sigil. She doused curtains with oil, her eyes watering at the fumes. Her skin prickled with the knowledge that she was sewing her own shroud.
And all the while, the rope followed. It writhed lazily in corners, slithered under doors, curled across her path like a waiting tripwire. Never attacking fully. Never leaving either.
When at last she carried the last lantern to the staircase, she saw her.
The woman in white stood at the landing, dress trailing down the steps like fog. Hollow eyes fixed on Anna. Rope dangled from her wrists, but she did not drag it—she held it, offering it like a gift.
“Anna,” she said softly. Not a hiss this time, not a threat, but almost tender. “Why resist? This house is home. Sit, and you will never be alone again.”
For a heartbeat, Anna’s resolve faltered. The loneliness in the voice cut sharper than anger. She thought of her mother gone too soon, of the quiet years since, of nights spent listening to silence press against her apartment walls. A house that spoke, even with malice, was less empty than silence.
But then she remembered the bones in the trunk. The skull bound with rope. Eleanor’s frantic ink. I am not the first. I will not be the last.
Anna lifted the lantern. Her voice broke, but it held. “Better ash than you.”
The woman’s mouth opened, too wide, splitting across her face. Her scream shook the beams, splintered the glass in the portraits, rattled the piano keys into discordant notes.
Anna struck the lantern against the banister. Glass shattered, flame spilling across the oil-slick wood.
The fire leapt eagerly, racing along the stairs. The house roared as though in pain, beams groaning, walls shuddering. Shadows writhed like smoke alive.
The woman in white shrieked, her form blurring, unraveling, as if fire dissolved her shape. She staggered, clutching the rope, and then surged toward Anna, her body burning, her hollow eyes blazing.
Anna turned and fled into the night, the house blazing behind her, smoke devouring the sky.
She did not stop until she reached the cemetery. She collapsed against Eleanor Harrow’s grave, chest heaving, eyes stinging from smoke and tears. The roar of flames filled the air. Sparks drifted into the mist like fireflies.
For a moment, she thought it was done. The house would be ash. The hunger would end.
Then, faintly, from the fire’s roar, a voice whispered her name.
“Anna…”
She froze. The ground beneath Eleanor’s grave shifted, just slightly, as if something moved below.
Anna clutched the journal tighter, her breath tearing in her chest.
The house might burn. The rope might char. But the inheritance—the bloodline—remained.
And the hunger was not finished.
Part 9 – Ashes
By morning, Harrow House was no more.
Where once its stone walls hunched against the mist, only a skeleton of blackened beams remained, still smoldering, smoke curling into the gray sky. The air was sharp with ash and kerosene, acrid enough to sting Anna’s throat until she coughed. The earth around the ruin was scorched in a wide circle, as if the fire had leapt outward, hungry to consume more.
Anna sat slumped at the edge of the cemetery, her coat singed, her hair heavy with soot. Her hands still shook though hours had passed since she struck the lantern. She had not slept. Every time her eyes closed, she heard the scream again—the woman’s hollow wail as her form blurred in the firelight, as rope blackened and walls collapsed. It rang through her skull, high and keening, a sound no blaze should have preserved.
When the villagers came, she thought for a moment they were the women from her vision, hollow-eyed and gray. But these were living men and women, bundled in coats, their boots crunching over frosted grass. Some carried buckets though the fire had long since starved itself.
They stopped when they saw her.
A murmur spread through the group. She caught fragments—“the Whitmore girl,” “came at last,” “like her grandmother.” Their eyes flicked between Anna and the ruins, suspicion mingling with fear.
A man stepped forward, older, with a weathered face and a cap pulled low. “You were in there?”
Anna swallowed, her voice raw. “Yes. I—I set it alight. It had to be done.”
A gasp rippled through them. The man’s mouth tightened. “Harrow House stood two hundred years. Why burn it now?”
Anna almost laughed. How could she explain the rope that returned no matter the fire, the woman in white who whispered from walls? How could she tell them that stone and timber were skin, and that she had tried to flay it with flame?
“You wouldn’t believe me,” she whispered.
The villagers exchanged looks. One woman crossed herself. Another muttered, “Like Eleanor, speaking of shadows.”
The older man’s gaze hardened. “Best you leave here, Miss Whitmore. Nothing but ruin now. Best for all if the bloodline ends with you.”
The words chilled her. He knew. They all knew, in their way. The Harrow inheritance had been whispered in this village for generations. And now, with the house ash, they believed the curse done.
But Anna knew better.
She returned to the ruins that evening, after the villagers had gone. The fire’s heat still radiated from the charred beams, a warmth that felt wrong, as though the house’s heart still pulsed beneath its ashes. She picked through blackened stone and brittle timbers, searching for anything left.
The journals were gone. The final confession, Eleanor’s desperate ink—all ash. She had wanted it that way. Yet a hollowness opened in her chest, as though she had lost a voice that tethered her sanity.
In the center of what had been the cellar, she found it: the sigil, carved into stone, blackened but unbroken. Its lines still glowed faintly, as though the fire had not dared consume it.
Anna knelt, pressing her soot-streaked hand to its surface. It was cold. Too cold.
The whisper curled against her ear.
“Anna.”
She jerked back, eyes darting wildly. Nothing stood among the ruins. The rope did not slither. The woman in white did not emerge from the smoke. But the voice had been there, undeniable.
The house was gone. Yet the hunger remained.
That night she took refuge in the village inn, a squat building that smelled of ale and damp wool. The innkeeper, a broad woman with tired eyes, offered no warmth, only a room key and muttered directions. Anna climbed the stairs, her boots heavy with soot.
The room was plain: narrow bed, cracked basin, a single candle stub. She sat on the mattress, body aching, head pounding. For the first time since her arrival, she was outside Harrow House’s walls. She should have felt safe.
Yet as she undressed, something tugged at her sleeve.
She froze. The rope dangled there, looped neatly, as though tied in the seam of her coat.
Anna ripped it free, heart lurching. She flung it across the room. It landed with a soft hiss, like breath through teeth.
She blew out the candle and lay stiff beneath the blankets. Sleep did not come easily. When it did, it came jagged, broken.
She dreamed of fire, of women screaming as their faces melted into hers. She dreamed of Eleanor, whispering: “Ash does not erase blood. It carries it.”
When she woke, gray dawn seeping through the curtains, the rope lay across her chest.
She could not stay in the village. Their eyes weighed too heavy, their whispers too sharp. She left the inn that morning, suitcase in hand, coat collar turned against the drizzle. The villagers watched her from doorways, silent as stones. None offered farewell.
The road stretched before her, slick with rain. She walked quickly, breath fogging, her suitcase biting into her hand. She told herself she would not look back. Harrow House was ash. That was the end.
But at the bend in the lane, she turned despite herself.
Smoke still rose from the ruins, curling into the sky like a signal. For a moment, in the haze, she thought she saw her own figure standing in the wreckage, pale dress trailing, hollow eyes gleaming. Watching.
Anna tore her gaze away and hurried on.
That night, far from the village, she lodged in another inn, one where no one knew her name. She sat at the desk with borrowed paper, her hand cramping as she wrote. She wrote everything—the journals, the sigil, the rope, the woman in white. She wrote Eleanor’s last words, the bones in the attic, the inheritance that was hunger.
When she finished, her hand smeared with ink, she folded the pages and sealed them in an envelope. She addressed it not to anyone in particular but simply:
To whoever comes after.
She left it with the innkeeper, telling her it was for the post.
But as she climbed the stairs, the rope brushed her ankle, soft as a caress.
Anna lay awake in her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling. The house was gone. Yet the woman remained. Perhaps Eleanor had been right—the house was only her skin. Now the skin was ash. And hunger had found a new vessel to wear.
Anna closed her eyes. The whisper rose again, soft, almost tender.
“You cannot run, Anna. You are mine. The blood is mine.”
Her breath caught. She clutched the blanket tighter, willing her body not to tremble. She would not feed the hunger. She would starve it.
But the rope slid beneath the blanket, curling around her wrist.
Part 10 – The Last Inheritance
Anna’s wrist burned where the rope curled, even though the fibers felt no rougher than cloth. She tried to wrench free, but the coil tightened, gentle yet unyielding, as if reminding her of ownership rather than enforcing it.
She whispered into the dark, voice cracking: “You have no house. You have no walls. You burned.”
The rope pulsed, alive beneath her skin. The whisper slid into her ear, softer than ever before.
“I have you.”
Anna bit her lip until she tasted blood. She would not scream, would not cry. Fear was its feast. Eleanor had been right. But starving the hunger was like starving fire—it only waited, patient, until weakness came.
Morning brought no relief. She woke with the rope gone but her wrist still ringed red, like a brand. She splashed water over it in the basin until her skin went raw. The mark did not fade.
She left the inn quickly, clutching her suitcase, the letter she had written tucked deep inside. She did not know where she was going—only that distance mattered, movement mattered. If she kept moving, perhaps the hunger would not catch hold.
But by the second day on the road, she felt it within.
Not outside anymore. Not a whisper in the walls. Inside her chest. Inside her blood.
She walked through a wood, branches dripping with rain. The air smelled of moss and rot. Her breath fogged as she quickened her pace. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw her.
The woman in white, drifting between the trees. Hollow-eyed, hair dripping in ropes. But she did not step closer. She walked in parallel, each stride a mirror of Anna’s own.
Anna stumbled, her suitcase striking mud. The woman’s mouth curved upward.
“You see now,” the whisper breathed, though the lips never moved. “I am not bound to stone. I am bound to you.”
Anna squeezed her eyes shut. “No. You wore Eleanor. You wore the others. You will not wear me.”
The woman tilted her head, rope sliding from her hands like spilled water. “Eleanor resisted too.”
Anna reached the next town by dusk. She rented another small room above a tavern, locked the door twice, and sat at the desk with another sheet of paper. She wrote again, hand shaking. She wrote not of ghosts, but of bloodlines and inheritance, of a hunger older than stone. She addressed this letter to no one, only “To the next.”
Because there would be a next. She could feel it.
When she finished, she folded the pages and slid them beneath the mattress. Perhaps someone would find them when she was gone.
The rope appeared across the desk, neatly coiled. Anna slammed her fist into it. Her knuckles met wood. The rope was gone.
Her pulse thundered.
That night, the dreams deepened.
She dreamed of Eleanor again, but Eleanor’s face shifted into Anna’s own, hollow eyes staring back at her. She dreamed of sitting in the cellar chair though the house was ash, rope binding her wrists, her mouth open in a scream that made no sound.
When she woke, she was standing. Not in bed, not in the room at all, but in the corridor outside, the inn silent around her. She clutched a piece of rope in her hand, damp and frayed.
Her knees buckled. She sank against the wall, breath shuddering. Sleepwalking. She was not only haunted—she was inhabited.
On the final morning, Anna sat before the window of her room, watching rain streak down glass. Her reflection was pale, eyes ringed with exhaustion. For a heartbeat, the reflection smiled though she had not.
She realized then what Eleanor had written was true: She wears us to survive.
Not only the house. The bloodline. Each Harrow woman, devoured, hollowed, worn like a mask.
Anna was the last.
And if the hunger required her blood, then ending the bloodline meant ending it too.
She packed her suitcase with mechanical precision. She left her letters stacked on the desk, her name scrawled on each envelope. Perhaps someone would read them. Perhaps not. But she would not leave silence.
She walked through the town square, boots splashing in puddles. The villagers stared. Some whispered her name, others crossed themselves. She ignored them all.
At the edge of the village, she entered the cemetery. Not Harrow’s, but one older, smaller, tucked behind a crumbling church. Graves leaned drunkenly in the rain, names washed away. It seemed the right place.
She set the suitcase down, opened it, and took out a single stick of chalk. She knelt on the wet earth and drew the sigil—circle with intersecting lines. The chalk smeared in the rain but held faintly, ghostlike on stone.
She cut her palm with the pocketknife she carried. Blood welled, mixing with rain. She pressed her hand to the sigil.
The whisper surged inside her head, furious, terrified.
“No. Anna. Not you.”
Her blood sizzled against the chalk, bright as flame. The rope appeared at her feet, writhing, trying to coil her ankles. She pressed harder, her blood smearing the lines.
Her voice broke, but she spoke aloud. “It ends with me.”
The ground trembled. Rain lashed harder, wind tearing through the trees. The rope shrieked, splitting into ash.
The woman in white appeared one final time before her, hollow eyes blazing, mouth stretched in fury. For the first time, Anna did not flinch. She met the gaze head-on, unblinking.
The figure dissolved into mist. The whisper cut off, sharp as a snapped thread.
Silence.
Anna collapsed against the grave, her palm bleeding freely, her breath shallow. She felt lighter, emptier. The hunger was gone. The inheritance was broken.
But as she closed her eyes, the thought pierced her: broken did not mean destroyed. Hunger never destroyed itself. It only moved.
Perhaps to another bloodline. Perhaps to whoever found her letters. Perhaps to whoever drew near enough to listen.
She let her head rest against the cold stone, rain mingling with her blood, her breath slowing.
The last Whitmore. The last Harrow.
The last voice the house would ever call.
Weeks later, a boy exploring the ruined grounds of Harrow House found something half-buried in ash: a length of rope, frayed but whole.
When he touched it, it was warm.
The End
