The Bride's Room
884 Words
Morning came slowly, though it felt more like a dim smudge of light than a sunrise. Mei Lin had barely slept. Every creak, every groan of the old house kept her on edge. And that veil…
She hadn’t touched it again.
It still lay on the guest bed, where she’d left it the night before, the word “Remember” staring back at her in dried, faded red.
She kept the door shut now. Locked, even. She wasn’t ready to ask why the veil was there—or what it wanted her to remember.
---
Downstairs, the kitchen was coated in dust, but still functional. Mei Lin boiled a kettle on the rusty gas stove, the flicker of blue flames somehow comforting. As the steam rose, she glanced out the kitchen window.
The fog had thickened. The world beyond the mansion was vanishing into grey.
She poured herself a cup of tea and walked into what used to be the sitting room. It was large, with high ceilings and faded paintings. A covered piano sat near the window. The wallpaper was peeling in places. On the floor was a single, strange mark:
A red footprint.
Small. Bare. Leading into the hallway.
She dropped her cup. It shattered on the floor.
---
“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “That’s enough.”
She stepped back, breathing heavily. She hadn’t stepped there. And there was no one else in the house.
Right?
She walked back to the foyer and picked up her phone. No signal. No Wi-Fi. The battery was already at thirty percent.
Useless.
But as she turned back toward the stairs, she noticed something odd—something that hadn’t been there the day before.
A door.
A new door at the far end of the hallway, hidden behind an old bookshelf that now stood wide open. She would’ve sworn it was just a wall yesterday.
Curious but tense, Mei Lin walked toward it.
The door was heavy, with black lacquer and an intricate floral carving at its center. She touched the handle and felt a chill run down her arm.
The air beyond the door was colder. Much colder.
---
Inside was a small room, round like a tower. The windows were sealed. The curtains hung stiff with age. And in the center sat a makeup table, its mirror cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
She stepped closer.
The vanity was covered in dust and old cosmetic jars, a faded fan, a comb, and—
A red lipstick, untouched by time.
Next to it was a journal, leather-bound and held shut by a rusted clasp.
It looked ancient, like something from a hundred years ago.
She gently picked it up and opened the first page.
“To my beloved husband,
Though you left me, I wait…”
The rest of the page was smeared.
Mei Lin turned to the next.
“They said it was an accident.
They said you never came to the altar.
But I saw your eyes when you looked at her.”
Her breath caught. The entries were messy, erratic. Some pages were slashed, others torn out. It was the diary of a woman consumed by grief, betrayal, and something darker.
And then the final written line:
“If I cannot have peace, neither shall this house.”
---
A cold breeze blew past her, though no window was open. The mirror fogged slightly, as though someone had exhaled against it.
Mei Lin backed away and left the room, heart racing.
When she turned to shut the door—she realized the bookshelf had moved again.
The door was hidden once more.
No one would believe her.
---
She went to the village that afternoon.
It was a small place, with barely a few dozen houses and one crumbling temple at the edge. The people were polite but distant. When she asked about the mansion, they looked away. When she mentioned the red wedding veil, one old man spat on the ground and made a sign of protection with his fingers.
“Don’t stay there, child,” he warned. “That house… it remembers.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer. He just walked away.
But as she turned to leave, a woman—perhaps in her forties—approached her.
“She was real, you know,” the woman whispered. “The bride.”
Mei Lin’s heart jumped. “Who?”
“The girl in red. They say she was betrayed at the altar. Her groom ran away with someone else. The wedding was canceled. She disappeared the same night.”
“Disappeared?”
The woman nodded. “Some say she took her life. Others say she never left the mansion at all.”
“And her name?”
No response.
Just silence.
Then, quietly, the woman whispered, “Lianhua. Her name was Lianhua.”
---
That night, back in the mansion, Mei Lin couldn’t stop thinking about the name. About the veil. About the diary.
The house groaned louder than before. The floorboards moaned beneath her feet like something breathing.
As she prepared for bed, she saw the guest room door had cracked open on its own.
Inside, the veil was gone.
But something else had taken its place.
A single red rose.
Fresh.
---
- Writer
