Devotion After Dark

CHAPTER THREE

That evening, Solenne spent her time unpacking her things, putting all of her clothes in her childhood cabinet which it was still in good condition.

The house had settled into its nighttime quiet, the kind that only old houses seemed to have. Her childhood bedroom looked different at night.

During the afternoon, the faded blue walls and old furniture had seemed familiar and comforting. Under the dim light, however, the corners appeared deeper, and the shadows cast by the furniture stretched across the floor in long, uneven shapes. The room smelled faintly of clean sheets and old books; with a trace of the lavender powder her grandmother had probably used while preparing everything for her arrival.

Solenne changed into an oversized shirt and shorts before climbing into bed. She folded her clothes neatly over the wooden chair beside the bed, then pulled the blanket over her legs and adjusted the pillow behind her back.

She brought one of her old books with her and switched on the small lamp beside the bed. The lamp gave off a warm yellow glow, illuminating only a small portion of the room. The rest remained softened by darkness. On the bedside table, the edges of several old books were visible beneath a thin layer of dust. The sight made her smile faintly.

She had forgotten how much she liked this room. There was something comforting about being surrounded by things that had existed before she had grown old enough to worry about the future.

Solenne opened her book. The pages made a soft, familiar sound as she turned the first one. She settled deeper against the pillow, resting the book across her lap. For several minutes, she allowed herself to become absorbed in the story. Outside, the province had become almost completely dark.

The last traces of evening had disappeared from the sky, leaving only darkness beyond the window. The houses nearby had already begun turning off their lights one by one. A faint glow from a distant streetlamp reached the edge of the yard, but most of the surrounding trees had become dark silhouettes against the night.

The sounds of the daytime had faded. There were no longer children calling to one another outside, no motorcycles passing every few minutes, no voices drifting from neighboring houses. Even the occasional sounds from the road seemed farther away now. Crickets replaced them. Their steady chirping filled the spaces between the other sounds of the night. Somewhere beyond the house, something rustled through the grass before becoming quiet again.

The wind moved softly through the trees. Leaves brushed against one another outside the window, producing a gentle whispering sound. The curtain near the foot of the bed shifted slightly whenever the breeze slipped through the narrow opening in the window.

Solenne turned another page. Then another. She read two pages. Then three.

Her eyes moved more slowly across the words. She blinked. Read the same sentence again. Her eyelids began to feel heavy.

She lowered the book slightly and rubbed one eye with the back of her hand. She tried to continue, forcing herself to focus on the page, but the words seemed to blur together beneath the warm light of the lamp. A quiet sigh escaped her.

She closed the book and placed it on the bedside table. The cover landed against the wooden surface with a soft tap. For a moment, she simply stared at the ceiling.

The ceiling was plain and familiar, marked by faint imperfections that she remembered noticing when she was younger. She used to lie awake in this same room during childhood visits, watching the shadows from the trees move across it whenever the wind blew outside.

Back then, she had never worried about tomorrow. Tomorrow had meant breakfast. Or playing outside. Or another story from her grandmother before bed. Now tomorrow meant applications. Interviews. Decisions. Responsibilities. She thought about the future.

The thought came without warning, settling heavily in the quiet room. She imagined herself sitting in front of a computer, sending applications to companies she knew very little about. She imagined interviews where someone would ask where she saw herself in five years, as if she were supposed to have an answer ready.

She didn't. She wasn't even certain where she wanted to be next month. She turned slightly beneath the blanket and stared toward the window.

About jobs. The word alone made her tired. She had spent years preparing herself for this moment, and now that it had finally arrived, she felt as though someone had placed an enormous blank page in front of her and expected her to know exactly what to write.

About everything she was supposed to become.

A successful employee.

A responsible adult.

Someone with plans. Someone who knew what she wanted.

The expectations seemed to exist everywhere, even when nobody was saying them aloud. Solenne slowly exhaled. Then she remembered her grandmother's old fairy tales. The memories came quietly. Her grandmother sitting beside her bed. The warm yellow light. The smell of old wooden furniture. The sound of her voice lowering whenever the story reached the frightening part.

Monsters.

Forests.

Abandoned houses.

Things that looked frightening from a distance.

She remembered how seriously she had once believed in those stories. How easily her young imagination could turn an ordinary shadow into something mysterious. How she used to pull the blanket closer whenever her grandmother described a creature waiting somewhere beyond the trees.

Solenne smiled to herself. The expression was small, almost amused. Those stories had seemed enormous when she was five. Now they were simply childhood memories. She had outgrown fairy tales.

At least, she thought she had.

She turned toward the window.

The movement was slow, almost absentminded, as though she had only meant to glance outside before going back to sleep. The room was quiet behind her, and the soft light from the bedside lamp stretched only as far as the edge of the bed. Beyond that small circle of warmth, everything became shadow.

The curtains were slightly open.

A narrow gap remained between the two pieces of fabric, just wide enough for her to see the darkness outside. The night beyond the glass looked deeper than it had earlier that afternoon. Without the sunlight, the familiar garden had become a collection of vague shapes—the mango tree, the shrubs near the veranda, the wooden fence separating her grandmother's property from the neighboring land.

Beyond them was the dark silhouette of the neighboring property.

Solenne knew the house was there. She had seen it earlier from the road.

The old Montrose mansion.

Even in daylight, it looked abandoned.

From her bedroom window, however, it seemed even more imposing. The mansion stood farther back from the road than her grandmother's house, partially hidden behind trees and overgrown vegetation. Its upper floors rose above the surrounding greenery, giving it the appearance of something that had been forgotten by time rather than simply left unattended.

The property was enormous compared with her grandmother's house, surrounded by a tall iron fence almost completely hidden beneath climbing vines. The gardens had long since become wild. Trees crowded the grounds, their branches twisting toward the roof.

Some of the vines had climbed so high that they nearly reached the upper windows. Others hung loosely over the fence, their leaves moving whenever the night breeze passed through them. The garden looked as though it had continued growing without anyone bothering to tell it where to stop.

Solenne narrowed her eyes slightly.

She remembered hearing about it when she was younger. The mansion had always been there. It had been there during her childhood visits, during family gatherings, during the years when she had stopped coming to the province as often. She couldn't remember ever seeing anyone enter through its gates.

Nobody lived there.

That was what everyone said. She had heard it from relatives. She had heard it from neighbors. She had probably heard it from her grandmother, too.

The house was simply there, existing at the edge of the family property like something everyone had become accustomed to ignoring.

Solenne pulled the curtain aside. The fabric brushed lightly against her fingers as she moved it farther to the side. A faint chill touched her face through the glass.

The mansion stood in darkness. For several seconds, nothing moved. Its windows were black. Every one of them. There was no porch light. No garden lamp. No warm glow behind any of the curtains. Its roof disappeared beneath the shadows of the trees.

Solenne stared at it for several seconds. She wasn't sure what she expected to see. Perhaps nothing. Probably nothing. It was an abandoned house. Of course it was dark.

She shifted closer to the window, resting one hand lightly against the curtain while she continued looking. Then—

A light appeared.

Solenne froze. The change was so sudden that for a moment, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing. One of the upstairs windows suddenly glowed with a faint yellow warmth.

The light wasn't bright. It didn't flood the room or spill dramatically across the grounds. It was simply there. A small, steady square of yellow behind the glass.

Solenne's fingers tightened around the curtain. She blinked. The light remained. Her sleepy expression disappeared. She straightened; her attention completely fixed on the distant window. Someone was inside. The thought arrived with such certainty that she didn't question it.

Someone was inside.

She leaned closer to the glass. The window was too far away for her to make out anything beyond the glow. The room behind it remained indistinct, and the darkness around the mansion made the single illuminated window seem even more noticeable.

Perhaps it was a caretaker. She searched her memory. Maybe the property had a caretaker after all. Perhaps it was someone checking on the place.

Perhaps someone had finally bought the property. That seemed possible, too. The mansion was old, but its structure still looked intact. Someone could have purchased it and begun restoring it without anyone in the family knowing.

Perhaps—

The light disappeared. Solenne's breath caught. The sudden darkness felt different from before. A moment ago, she had been looking at an abandoned mansion. Now she was staring at a completely dark building where a light had just been switched off.

Solenne frowned. She didn't move. Her eyes remained fixed on the upstairs window, waiting for the light to return. It didn't.

The entire mansion returned to darkness.

The faint reflection of her own face appeared in the glass now that there was nothing illuminated beyond it. She could see the outline of her hair, the oversized shirt she had changed into, and the uncertain expression she hadn't realized she was making.

She remained by the window.

Her childhood imagination supplied a hundred explanations, most of them ridiculous.

A ghost. The thought came first. She immediately dismissed it.

A thief. Possible, although why would a thief turn on a light?

A secret passage. She almost smiled at herself.

A monster. She almost laughed at the last thought. Her lips curved faintly, but the expression disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

Then she remembered her grandmother's voice from twenty years ago.

Sometimes, the monster wears a handsome face.

The memory came so clearly that Solenne could almost hear her grandmother saying it beside her childhood bed.

She stared at the dark mansion for another moment. The joke suddenly didn't feel quite as funny. Solenne slowly pulled the curtain closed. The fabric fell back into place, blocking the mansion from view. The room immediately felt smaller, warmer, safer.

She stood there for another moment before shaking her head.

“You’re being ridiculous.” Her voice sounded strangely small in the quiet room.

She gave the closed curtains one last glance before turning away. She returned to bed. The mattress shifted softly beneath her weight as she climbed beneath the blanket. She adjusted her pillow, pulled the covers closer, and reached toward the bedside table.

The small lamp clicked off. Darkness filled the room.

But long after she turned off the lamp, Solenne found herself staring into the darkness, wondering who—or what—had been standing behind that upstairs window.

She remained still, listening.

The crickets continued outside. The wind moved through the trees. The old house settled with a faint creak somewhere beyond her bedroom.

She closed her eyes.

Opened them again.

The image of that single yellow window returned to her mind. She turned onto her side and pulled the blanket slightly higher.

And for the first time since coming home, Solenne's two-month escape from adulthood didn't feel quite as peaceful as she had imagined.