A Veil Between World's
795 Words
The rose was still there in the morning.
Red. Fragrant. Fresh.
But there were no rose bushes on the mansion grounds. Mei Lin had checked.
She sat at the edge of her bed, the silence pressing against her chest like a weight. The air had changed—thicker, heavier, like it carried unseen eyes. And every time she passed a mirror, she couldn’t help but glance twice. She hadn’t seen anything… but something inside her whispered that she almost had.
---
That afternoon, she decided to explore the attic.
The staircase groaned with every step, and by the time she reached the top, dust filled the air like ghosts that had been waiting to breathe again.
The attic was wide and shadowy, with sunlight filtering through a round, cracked window. Old furniture, trunks, and boxes lined the walls. Cobwebs curled like fingers across forgotten picture frames.
She opened a trunk.
Inside were wedding decorations—red silk streamers, gold lanterns, cracked porcelain tea cups. Carefully wrapped inside a layer of old fabric was a pair of red shoes, embroidered with gold thread. They looked never-worn. Pristine. Sacred.
And at the very bottom of the trunk, she found something that made her blood turn cold:
A wedding invitation.
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“You are cordially invited to the union of Lianhua and Cheng Ru…”
The rest was blurred with age, but the date was unmistakable.
May 4th, 1923.
Over a hundred years ago.
Mei Lin sat back on her heels, heart pounding. Was the ghost bride real?
Her name matched the woman from the village.
The diary. The veil. The rose.
Pieces were falling into place—and it felt like someone wanted her to see them.
Or worse—wanted her to remember something she had no memory of.
---
She brought the invitation downstairs and placed it on the dining table. As she stared at it, the temperature in the room dropped.
Knock. Knock.
A soft sound echoed from the front door.
Mei Lin jumped, heart racing. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
She opened the door.
A man stood there, dressed in dark clothes and carrying a satchel. He looked to be in his early twenties—calm, serious eyes, neatly tied black hair, and a presence that made the silence around him feel deeper.
“Are you Mei Lin?” he asked.
“Yes…”
“I’m Li Wei. I was your grandmother’s assistant. She asked me to check in on the house. And on you.”
---
She stepped aside and let him in, unsure whether to feel relief or suspicion. There was something about him—familiar, but distant.
“You knew my grandmother?” she asked as he set his bag down near the old piano.
“For a short while. She was interested in history—especially the kind no one talks about.”
He looked around the room, eyes scanning every dusty portrait, every shadowed corner like he expected something to jump out.
“I’ve heard things about this place,” he added. “Even when I was a child.”
“What kind of things?”
Li Wei didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stepped into the hallway and stared at the framed wedding photo Mei Lin had found earlier—the one with the smudged bride.
“This photo is cursed,” he said softly.
Mei Lin froze. “You’ve seen it before?”
He nodded once. “They say everyone who sees the bride clearly… dies within three days.”
She swallowed. “I haven’t seen her clearly.”
He turned to her. “Good. Don’t try to.”
---
Later that night, Mei Lin couldn't sleep again.
The house felt too still, like it was holding its breath.
She lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the slow ticking of the old wall clock.
Then she heard it.
Soft humming.
The same tune as before. Low. Mournful. Closer this time.
She sat up.
The humming was coming from inside the hallway.
Mei Lin opened her door slowly.
The hallway was dark—moonlight from the windows casting ghostly shadows across the walls.
The humming continued.
She followed the sound, heart thudding, breath catching in her throat.
At the end of the hall stood a woman in a red wedding dress.
Her back was turned.
The veil covered her head. Long black hair spilled from beneath it.
The humming stopped.
Mei Lin took a step forward—and the woman vanished.
Not faded. Not walked away.
Vanished.
---
She staggered back into her room and shut the door, hand shaking as she locked it.
When she turned around—
The mirror on her wall had fogged.
Four handprints smeared the surface from inside the glass.
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- Writer
