Chapter 4: Beneath the Surface
Cassandra could still hear their voices. Even after leaving the drawing room, even after the door had closed behind her with an unsettling finality, their words echoed in her mind, reverberating off the walls of her thoughts. The house calls to you. It will never let you leave. You are its heir, its victim.
The house, the Blackthorn curse, the ancestors who had spoken to her as though they had been waiting for this moment for centuries—each word, each phrase, settled heavily in her chest, pressing her deeper into the cold embrace of the manor. The fog had grown thicker outside, the landscape outside the windows a wash of white and grey, but it was the haze inside the house that felt more suffocating. It wrapped around her like a fog of uncertainty and dread, and the walls seemed to whisper when no one was near.
She had retreated to her room, seeking the solace of its four walls, but no comfort came. The shadows in the corners seemed deeper than before, as though the house was expanding, growing with every breath she took. The floor creaked beneath her feet with every step, as though something—or someone—was following her through the house.
For hours, Cassandra had walked the halls, searching for something she could not name. Answers, perhaps, or a clue to free herself from this maddening house. But every corner she turned only led to more unsettling discoveries. The air was thick, oppressive, and the house seemed to shift and change with each passing moment, its rooms never quite the same as when she had last seen them.
She found herself back in the library, that dim, dusty room where she had first uncovered the truth about the house’s history. The book—the one bound in black leather with the strange title The House of Blackthorn—lay open on the desk, its pages yellowed with age, its contents more unsettling with every turn. She had read it over and over again, yet still, the meaning of it all eluded her. Each ancestor detailed within its pages seemed to be linked to some dark secret, some hidden curse that had been passed down through the generations.
Her fingers hovered over the page, trembling as she traced the intricate illustrations—pictures of the manor, its grounds, and the family members who had once lived there. They were faces she did not recognize, yet somehow, they felt hauntingly familiar, as though their souls still lingered within the walls.
The portraits of the Blackthorn family watched her with empty eyes, their faces filled with sadness, grief, and something darker—something Cassandra could not yet understand. She turned the page, searching for more, for something that would make sense of this madness.
But as she read the final entry on the last page, her breath caught in her throat.
“The curse of Blackthorn is not just one of blood. It is a curse of memory—a curse of the forgotten. To claim the inheritance of the house is to claim the inheritance of its past. The bloodline is bound to the manor, to its ghosts. The heir will never know peace until the sins of the past are paid for, and the past itself is set free.”
Cassandra’s hand fell away from the book, her heart pounding in her chest. The sins of the past. The heir. Was that what she had become? Was she truly the one meant to set things right—or was she merely the next in line to suffer the consequences of those who came before her?
The shadows shifted in the room as though responding to her thoughts. The fire crackled faintly in the hearth, casting strange, flickering shapes on the walls. And once again, the whispers came. This time, they were louder, closer, more distinct.
Cassandra spun around, her breath quickening. The library was empty—of course it was. But there, in the farthest corner of the room, she noticed something she hadn’t before. A door. Small, almost hidden behind a thick curtain of dust. She had passed by it countless times, but now it called to her, its dark presence pulling her toward it.
Without thinking, Cassandra crossed the room, her feet heavy on the floorboards, the echo of each step sounding louder in the silence. She reached for the door, its handle cold and unyielding, as though resisting her touch. But with a firm grip, she twisted it and pushed. The door creaked open slowly, revealing a narrow, winding staircase leading down into darkness.
Her pulse quickened as she stared into the abyss below. There was no logical reason to go down there. No rational explanation for why she would subject herself to further mystery, to further danger. But she knew—somewhere deep inside—that this was the next step she had to take. The house was calling to her, and she could no longer ignore its whispers.
She descended slowly, the air growing colder with each step. The darkness seemed to press in on her, heavy and suffocating, and the stone walls were damp, slick with years of neglect. A foul, musty odor clung to the air, and Cassandra’s stomach churned as she stepped into the depths of the manor’s forgotten bowels.
At the bottom of the stairs, a long, narrow corridor stretched out before her. The walls were lined with dusty, decaying tapestries—strange, unsettling scenes that seemed to shift in the flickering light from her lantern. Each one depicted moments in the manor’s past, and each one made her skin crawl. Figures that looked almost human, but not quite, stared out from the fabric, their eyes hollow and distant, their mouths contorted in expressions of terror.
As she walked, the temperature dropped further, and she could hear the sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance, like the beating of a forgotten heart. There was no sound of life down here—only silence, broken only by the echo of her own footsteps.
She rounded a corner and found herself standing before a large iron door. It was ancient, its surface corroded by rust, its hinges so worn they looked as though they might break at any moment. The door felt alive, as though it were waiting for her to open it, to step into whatever lay behind.
Cassandra hesitated, her heart pounding, but she knew there was no turning back now. She gripped the handle, her fingers shaking as she turned it, and pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was small, its air thick with dust and decay. The walls were lined with shelves, each one filled with old, faded objects—dolls with cracked faces, faded portraits, and books bound in materials she could not identify. But it was the center of the room that caught her attention.
Atop a pedestal stood a single object—a small, ornate box, intricately carved with symbols she could not decipher. It seemed out of place, as though it did not belong to this room, to this house. And yet, Cassandra knew with an eerie certainty that this box held the key to everything.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out to touch it, but as soon as her hand made contact with the box, a violent surge of energy coursed through her. The air around her crackled, the shadows seeming to dance and swirl in the corners of the room. The whispers rose to a crescendo, deafening in their urgency.
The house was alive.
