There was Manderley, our Manderley, the place that I had learned to love, through Maxim's words, even before I first saw it. 

It stood there in front of me, secretive and silent as it had always been, its tall walls reaching for the black sky, and its many windows reflecting the moonlight...

As I approached it, I noticed how changed it looked. My beloved Manderley wasn't quite the same place anymore. The once large, gravel drive lined with beautiful shrubs and flowering bushes was reduced to a thin, muddy ribbon overgrown with grass and weeds. The house itself looked forlorn and abandoned. It made me feel sad to see how nature, and Rebecca, claimed it back. She was suffocating it with her poisonous presence.

My heart thumped loudly in my chest as I reached the terrace, my long, white night dress made me look like a ghost in the moon-lit darkness. I was here, again, to claim this dear house, to make it mine. Because I was Mrs. de Winter now, the one and only. 

I walked under the rhododendrons, which grew tall, wild and twisted, their huge flowers resembling splashes of fresh blood. The blood from Rebecca's heart. Maybe their roots grew all the way through the cliff, reaching the beach hut where she had died, and got drunk on the blood of their beloved mistress. The flowers danced crazily around me in the sea breeze as if to confirm my suspicions. 

I passed through the locked door as it often happens in dreams, so absorbed in my memories and unpleasant visions that I failed to notice Rebecca, long dead, climbing from the placid, silvery sea and up the cliff, creeping behind me across the sloping green. She glided across the lawn, half hidden in the light mist, her hair dripping, and her wet dress clinging to her emaciated figure.

As soon as I entered the eerily quiet house, I could feel her presence. She beat me again, I wasn't the first one to return. She was still here, her ghost following me from the sea and her spirit knitted into the very fabric of this building.

I fancied hearing her footsteps on the floors above, her commanding voice and seducing laughter reverberating off the cold, stone walls.

"Welcome back, yet again, second Mrs. de Winter," her voice now exploded around me, so loud and clear that I had to press my freezing hands to my ears. But I could still hear her when she continued, "I've been expecting you!"

I saw her walking down the stairway, still drenched, the sea water dripping off her body. Unexpectedly, her beautiful face morphed into a skull as I watched it. A large, crimson stain looking like one of her favourite flowers, bloomed on her dress, in the place where her heart would be. It kept shifting its shape, growing, and I realised it was not a flower, but blood. 

My own body was drenched in cold sweat when I screamed, but no sound left my lips.

"I'm the rightful mistress of this house, you can't do anything without my permission, not even scream... or breathe." Rebecca laughed viciously, and I had to let go of my ears to clasp my throat; I was choking, suffocating.

"Amuse our guest, Danny," Rebecca called, her icy, calculating voice causing gooseflesh to spread around my body.

Only then I noticed a second figure hiding in the shadows at the top of the stairs. It was old Mrs. Danvers, still loyal to Rebecca, the 'real' Mrs. de Winter.

"As you wish," Mrs. Danvers said, lighting a match and throwing it at my feet.

My long, white dress caught fire immediately, then it was the turn of the carpets and drapes. Soon enough, all was covered in blazing flames. My precious Manderley turned into an inferno.

Just Rebecca stood there untouched and laughing, vanishing behind the thick curtain of suffocating smoke...

Then I woke up. My Maxim sat at my side, shaking me awake, a strong smell of fire filling our room. He watched me sadly, his eyes full of silent questions, curious and scared of my answers at the same time.

"I dreamt I went to Manderley again..."