THE LETTER THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST
The rain had followed Alexa Ashford all the way from the city.
It hammered against the windshield, blurring the narrow road ahead into streaks of gray. The farther she drove, the fewer signs of civilization remained.
Streetlights disappeared.
Phone signal vanished.
Even the radio dissolved into static.
Only one road led to Black Hollow.
And no one seemed eager to use it.
A rusted wooden sign emerged through the mist.
WELCOME TO BLACK HOLLOW.
Population: 613.
Someone had scratched something beneath the numbers.
"Until the bells ring again."
Alexa frowned.
"What kind of sick joke..."
She drove on.
The town looked abandoned despite the lights glowing behind old windows. Curtains shifted as she passed, but whenever she looked directly at a house, whoever had been watching vanished.
No children.
No laughter.
Only silence.
Heavy...
Unnatural silence.
Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
The lawyer had insisted she come in person.
"Your grandmother left everything to you."
She had laughed when she first heard it.
Everything?
Her grandmother had died twenty years ago.
At least...
That's what Alexa believed.
Then the letter arrived.
It wasn't the inheritance that frightened her.
It was the date.
Written three days before her funeral.
Only...
The funeral had taken place twenty years earlier.
It made no sense.
None at all.
Yet here she was.
Driving toward a town she'd never heard of...
To claim a house that shouldn't belong to her.
Black Hollow Manor stood at the edge of the forest.
The mansion looked less like a home and more like a warning.
Its towering windows stared into the darkness like hollow eyes.
Dead vines crawled over cracked stone walls.
A broken fountain sat in the courtyard, filled with black water.
Lightning flashed.
For a split second...
Alexa could have sworn someone was standing in an upstairs window.
A woman.
Dressed entirely in white.
The next flash came.
The window was empty.
She laughed nervously.
"You're tired, Alexa."
That's all it was.
A trick of the storm.
Nothing more.
Inside, the air smelled of dust...
And roses.
Fresh roses.
Impossible.
No one had lived here in decades.
Her footsteps echoed across the wooden floor.
Portraits lined the walls.
Every face seemed to follow her.
She ignored them.
She had one goal.
Find the documents.
Sell the manor.
Leave.
Simple.
Then she noticed something.
At the end of the hallway...
A grand piano.
Its keys were moving.
One after another.
Slowly.
As if invisible fingers were playing.
A soft melody drifted through the empty house.
Alexa froze.
The music stopped.
Silence.
Her heartbeat thundered inside her chest.
"Hello?"
No answer.
She took another cautious step.
The piano lid slammed shut.
BANG!
She screamed.
Her flashlight slipped from her hand.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Then...
A whisper floated beside her ear.
"So..."
A cold breath brushed against her neck.
"...you finally came home."
Alexa spun around.
No one was there.
Only darkness.
And somewhere upstairs...
Wedding bells began to ring.
