CHAPTER 5: WHISPERS AT MIDNIGHT
1467 Words
The mansion never fully slept.
Even after the clocks stilled, it breathed a quiet surge through its bones like wind through a hollow body.
Elena told herself she wouldn’t wander tonight. She had promised it to Adrian when he left the study hours ago, tiredness darkening his cheeks. No more investigating, not until dawn.
Yet the instant the rain started again, gently and rhythmically on the glass, her resolve cracked.
Something called her.
She lay on the guest-room bed, eyes wide awake, the faint perfume of flowers wafting through the air. It shouldn’t have been there. No one has brought flowers inside the home since Isabella’s death.
The fragrance got stronger.
Then three quiet notes floated through the walls. The piano.
Her breath caught. It was the same tune she’d heard dimly the night before: slow, melancholy, lovely. But this time, the sound wasn’t coming from below; it was everywhere, reverberating like the memories themselves.
Elena stood, put a shawl over her shoulders, and followed the music.
Candles still burned weakly in the corridor from Adrian’s late-night pacing. Their radiance shimmered across the stone, luring her into the atrium. The piano’s voice got clearer with each note deliberate, like a pulse ticking down.
She rounded the corner and froze.
Adrian was already there, standing before the grand piano, shirt sleeves pulled up, hair moist from the rain he’d endured on the balcony. His hands lingered over the keys, although he wasn’t playing.
The piano moved on its own.
A single chord shook, the keys dropping beneath phantom fingers.
Elena’s gasp made him turn. “You hear it too,” he added gently. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded. “It started again just now. The same song.”
He gazed back at the keys, jaw stiff. “It was hers. Isabella used to play when she couldn’t sleep.”
Lightning burst over the glass walls, and for a second, both of their reflections shimmered, then another person emerged between them. A woman’s figure, transparent, hair flowing over her shoulders.
The room still went.
“Elena,” Adrian whispered, voice low, “get behind me.”
But the figure didn’t advance near them. It turned toward the piano, hands translucent, trembling, hanging over the keys. Then came the whisper, softer than breath:
“He never knew.”
Elena’s pulse pounded. “Did you hear?”
“Yes,” Adrian muttered, his face blanched.
The ghost flashed once, twice, and then the room became quiet. Only the storm remained.
Adrian poured brandy with a shaky hand. They sat across from each other in the study, the firelight pouring gold over his face.
“I built this house for her,” he continued. “But sometimes I think she built it for herself. Every corridor seems like her handwriting.”
Elena clutched the glass he’d given but didn’t sip. “She’s trying to tell you something. The letters, the key, now this… none of it feels like rage. It feels like regret.”
He met her eyes. “You sound certain.”
“I am.”
A pause spread between them. The rain outside eased to a mist.
Adrian leaned back, watching her. “You shouldn’t be here, Elena. The deeper you go, the more this place will steal from you. It feeds on obsession.”
“Then why haven’t you left?” she inquired softly.
His grin was sour. “Because it’s the only place where she still exists. And now, allegedly, where she still speaks.”
Elena stood and crossed the window, watching raindrops chase each other down the glass. “Maybe she doesn’t want to haunt you,” she mumbled. “Maybe she wants to set you free.”
Adrian’s reflection joined hers. He stood near enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her back. “Freedom,” he whispered gently. “After five years, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
She turned then, and for a second, they were inches apart, two ghosts of different types. His hand raised, stroking a moist strand of hair from her face.
“Elena…” His voice was nearly a sigh.
Something electric flowed between them, something that startled them both. She stepped back before the globe could tilt any farther.
“I should rest,” she muttered. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
He let her go.
Sleep didn’t come easily. Every creak of the house conveyed whispers. At one point, she stood again and opened her notebook, seeking to centre herself. The lines of her newest design created almost on their own a wing of glass and open air, light streaming in from every direction. A spot where darkness couldn’t hide.
She smiled softly, but when she glanced down at the paper again, words had emerged at the bottom in thin pencil strokes she hadn’t written:
Find what’s under the rose window.
Elena’s skin prickled. She flicked through the other pages blank. Only one message remained, as if the mansion itself had stolen her hand.
By morning, the storm had gone. Mist curled over the gardens, velvety and silver. Adrian discovered her in the atrium, a sketchbook clutched to her breast.
“You didn’t sleep,” he said.
“Neither did you.”
He nodded once, surrendering. “What did she show you?”
Elena paused, then flipped the sketchbook around. He read the words, his face hardening.
“The rose window,” he muttered. “Isabella’s favourite piece. It overlooks the chapel.”
“There’s something hidden there,” she remarked. “We should look.”
He caught her eyes, divided between fear and inevitability. Then he added softly, “Tonight.”
The day went rather slowly. Unaware of the ongoing conflict between the two people in charge of the home, workers arrived for repairs. Clara moved around the rooms with her usual ease, but every time she passed a mirror, Elena saw the little tremble in her hands.
The sky turned into a violet glass by dusk. Adrian pushed open the chapel doors, which creaked. Like old prayers, dust rose.
Half-lit by the fading light, the rose window shimmered high above a wheel of colourful glass. There was a white marble altar underneath it.
Elena traced the engravings down the edge, which were exactly like the chest she had found—flowers entwined with vines. Her fingers made contact with a cold metal ridge.
She said, "There's a panel here."
Pushing against the gap, Adrian knelt beside her. It shifted a little, revealing a little room. There was a single package inside, sealed with time-discoloured wax.
He cracked it open. There were two missing pages.
Isabella was the first.
The second was a note to him:
Adrian
The truth can no longer harm me if you are reading this. You could still be hurt by it. The land you promised to protect, the property my father took from others, is where the company you founded is located. It was too late for me to discover what he had done. I tried to fix it, but I was prevented. Perhaps you could write it in my place if I am unable to.
Don't bury the past. Release it.
As he read, Adrian's hands trembled. "She was aware," he whispered. "She was attempting to shield me from them, but for all those years I thought she was hiding secrets from me."
Elena gave him a shoulder rub. This isn't haunting, then. It's a plea for salvation.
He looked up at her, and for the first time since they had first met, she saw faint, uncertain, but sincere peace.
He said softly, "Maybe that's what salvation means." "Mine and hers."
Their gazes are locked. The world seemed to be suspended in the rose window's magnificent light, with hope and sorrow intertwined like stained glass.
A sudden gust of wind rushed inside the cathedral, blowing out the candles and dispersing dust. They both briefly caught a glimpse of Isabella grinning as she stood in the light. Then she vanished, leaving just the last note of the piano.
Later, Adrian turned to Elena as they stood on the terrace and watched the city come to life. "You need to spend some time away from this home. Start your designs in a bright location. You don't realise how much you've done for me.
Elena gave a little shake of her head. "Until it breathes again, maybe I belong here."
Tiny, tired, and very human, he smiled. "So perhaps we both do."
The ghosts of the night were banished as the first light touched the glass walls. The piano within the home finally stood still.
However, a last voice emerged through the dust in the locked room where Isabella's letters had been:
I'm grateful.
- Writer
