Black Swan

𝓖𝓱𝓸𝓼𝓽𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓵𝓭𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓭

The late-afternoon sun dipped low over Savannah, GA, casting a honeyed glow across the iron fences and creeping ivy of the Victorian District. The Brooks family's Victorian home stood at the end of the block with pale yellow paint and white trim. The house had once been a beacon of joy for the Brooks family, now faded with grief. But tonight, the setting sun turned the weathered ginger-ish paint to molten gold. The house had a historical beauty that anyone could see if they were a tourist in the city.

Selene Brooks stood on the porch, arms folded tightly across her chest. The cicadas buzzed in the still air, their rhythm competing with the thud of her own heartbeat as a sleek black SUV turned into the drive. Tires crunched over crushed oyster shells in the pavement. Malik. Her older brother, who's been forcing these wellness check visits for the past five years. After their parents died, Selene had been in a depressive rut. Ignoring Malik and her friend Zara, and refusing to eat for weeks. Malik was more than worried about her, and it was weighing down on his relationship with his girlfriend, Heather. He told her he'd only visit his sister once a week just to make sure she had everything she needed. Their parents had left their home to Selene, and Malik thought the house was way too big just for her to live there. He had wanted to start his family there, but his parents weren't there for him to ask them why they hadn't left it to him.

She spotted his silhouette through the tinted windshield. Her stomach tightened.

He stepped out, crisp as always in a fitted white button-down, black slacks, and black loafers that hadn't seen a drop of mud in months. His smile was restrained, his gaze scanning her face like he was searching for cracks in plaster. He was here on another one of his well-meaning visits. Another pity visit.

Selene smoothed her curls and summoned a smile she didn't mean. She only had an hour before her 4pm shift at the haunted hotel. Just enough time to fake her way through this. It's not that she hated when her brother visited, she hated that there was pity behind it.

"Selene," he said gently, tossing his car keys onto the wrought-iron table next to the rocking chair. His voice had the rich, calming timbre of someone who argued cases for a living—because he did. She always knew he'd make a great lawyer when they were younger, the boy could lie his way out of anything, and he'd have a sixth sense of knowing when people were lying. "You good?"

She raised an eyebrow, one hand on the doorknob. "I'm fine, Malik. Every week, I'm fine. That's what I tell you, isn't it?"

He gave a half-chuckle that didn't reach his eyes. She pushed open the door, and the two stepped inside, met by the scent of lavender oil and the faint musk of old furniture. Dust particles floated in the rays of light slicing through the lace curtains.

The walls were lined with photographs framed in gold and dark gray frames, arranged like a museum. A smiling Seraphina in pearls. Jackson in a Navy uniform. Selene and Malik in pictures grinning with missing teeth and family vacations.

Malik lingered at the base of the stairs, his gaze lingering on their parents' wedding photo. "Damn, I wish they were still here...I miss them so f*****g much."

"I know...I do too," she replied, walking ahead of him toward the living room. "But I'm fine, I promise."

He followed, undeterred. "You sure? Cause you never leave the house except to go to work or buy groceries. You haven't taken time off to relax. You barely eat. You barely go out with Zara. Your world stopped the day they died."

Selene's expression flickered. "Don't."

"Zara told me you haven't been—"

"Oh, so now my best friend's giving reports to you?" Her voice turned sharp. "Do I need a guardian now?"

He stepped forward, more hurt than angry. "You're my sister. Of course I'm going to worry about you. I found you bleeding to death in the bath tub with cuts down your f*****g arm!"

Selene turned to the fireplace mantel and tapped the edge of the family photo there—her fingers trailing the frame of a family picture. She looked so happy while hugging her mother. Now...now she was angry. Angry that Malik would bring up a moment where her mental health was at an all time low. But she knew he was scared for her, and she wouldn't forgive herself for leaving him behind in this world. "I'm functioning. That's enough. You don't get to swoop in with your perfect life and act like you understand what I've been through mentally. I can't be nonchalant like you."

"You think I wasn't grieving too?" Malik's voice cracked slightly, the lawyer mask slipping. "You think I haven't had nights where I couldn't take it? Heather told me you'd react like this, but I wanted to give you the benefit of doubt. I just felt that you'd be a little more grateful that I take time out of my f*****g day – taking time from work and spending time with my girl – to babysit you!"

Silence fell between them like a record had scratched. The ticks from the grandfather clock marked the seconds. Babysit her. That's what he thinks this is? She never asked him to do this, he made the decision to do this on his own.

Her voice dropped. "I don't need your pity, and I don't need you to babysit me, Malik. And I sure as hell don't need Heather's unsolicited commentary about my life."

Malik looked away. Heather was his longtime girlfriend of a year, receptionist to a therapist by profession, and a self-proclaimed fixer. Selene had never liked her. Heather thought parroting the things she heard from Dr. Gregory, it made her a therapist too. She was too judgmental. Too in Malik's ear.

"I came here because I care, not because I pity you," he said finally.

Selene was already reaching for the lanyard on the sitting on the mantel—her name badge for The Hartland Haunted Tours, the one thing in her life that made any sense anymore. Her lifeline at the moment. To be connected to the spirits.

"I have a job to get to," she said flatly. "The guests love hearing about the murder in room 12. They don't care if their tour guide's life has fallen apart."

Malik took a step forward, but she was already moving to the door to leave.

"Lock up when you leave," she said over her shoulder, the front door creaking open.

"Selene —"

But the door slammed shut with a finality that startled even her. She got into her car, started it, and drove off to work. Pushing the argument at the back of her mind. She had a job to do, and she needed to change her attitude to be a sickly sweet tour guide.

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As a child, Selene often wandered barefoot through the backyard, the sun casting waving shadows through the drooping Spanish moss. The breeze carried the sweet scent of magnolia and fresh cut grass. She loved going out to play but she never crossed the invisible threshold at the edge of the oak grove. Because that was where she saw her.

A woman with soft, pale-brown skin that shimmered under the Georgia sun, dressed in a white dress that waved as the wind blew. She stood still, almost statuesque, with eyes that held Selene's gaze like they knew things too heavy for a child to bear. Her smile was faint, tender, as if offering a benediction. Then she would vanish, her image evaporating into the trees like smoke.

Selene told her mother, Seraphina, every time it happened. Asking her why there was a woman standing out in the yard staring at her. Seraphina never doubted her question, never brushed it aside like a fantasy. She'd simply kneel down, take Selene's small hands into her own warm ones, and say in that hushed voice..."That woman is my mother. She died when I was born."

Those words echoed louder now than they ever had.

Years later, Selene stood within the Savannah Hartland Hotel, its gothic Victorian interior was glowing in the dimly lit lighting to build an ambiance. Once a grand southern manor turned exclusive inn, the Hartland was now known more for its ghosts, just like the many other hotels and haunted places in Savannah. It was the perfect place for Selene.

Inside, the cool air smelled of polish, candle wax, and a faint old metal. Voices buzzed around her as she led her evening tour group across the glossy checkered floor. Tourists and amateur ghost-hunters trailed behind, giddy with morbid excitement, clutching phones and EMF meters like talismans.

"The railing to the grand staircase," Selene said, pausing at top of the stairs, gesturing to the old brass rail, "Is where the wife of Henry Hartland, Elizabeth, hung herself after she found Henry drowning in the courtyard fountain in 1889."

Gasps and nervous laughter rippled through the group as an old thick rope dangled on the railing.

She smiled with the practiced ease of someone who'd told the story a hundred times—but her eye twitched as something flickered in the edge of her vision. A pale shape drifted across the grand staircase just behind the group—a figure in gray, translucent and weary, climbing the steps slowly. Elizabeth Hartland glided to the rail beside Selene, numbly staring out to other tour guides and their groups. A man who could be presumed as her husband stood behind her, angrily.

Selene didn't flinch. She didn't acknowledge it, she only learned to ignore spirits and ghosts as the years went on. Her smile remained fixed. Long ago, her mother told her that reacting gave them power, and if she knew a spirit had ill intentions, giving it power was a bad idea. The dead came and went, and she let them. It was part of the curse she bore. And the job.

She continued on, gesturing down a narrow, wallpapered corridor with velvet red runners beneath their feet. "This hallway was once part of the honeymoon wing. In 1892, a woman by the name Clarissa Fitzgerald stabbed her groom thirteen times after discovering he'd marry her for her family's fortune. It's said she dragged his body all the way down this very hall before slitting her own throat. Blood soaked the runner for days. And every so often, guests swear they can hear her husband's screams."

Another chill passed through the group. A woman clutched her boyfriend's arm tighter.

Selene's voice dropped to a whisper as they rounded the bottom of the staircase. "And here," she said, pausing on the marble tile, "is where Theodore Hartland, the hotel's owner's brother, took his own life. In 1903, after the many deaths that plagued the hotel, he poisoned himself with arsenic and fell from the top of the stairs and landed right here in this very spot."

All eyes tilted down at the spot Selene stood at.

"Some say he was jealous of his brother, Henry, for his success at running this hotel. Some say he had an affair with Elizabeth, and he killed Henry to be with her. To this day, their spirits are still watching. Watching who comes... and who never leaves."

The crowd shivered in unison. Goosebumps rose. Someone whispered, "This place is really haunted." Selene smiled again, hollow and calm. Haunted, yes. But she learned the ghosts there were harmless to the living. It was the living she learned to fear.