CHAPTER 1: Whispers in the Dark-Part 2

Evelyn sighs, looking up at the sky, where the clouds seem to hang lower than she’d ever remembered. A murder of crows circles overhead, their black silhouettes stark against the overcast sky. Her father always told her that crows were guardians of secrets. 

“Now what secrets are you guarding, you silly birds” she scoffs in wonder, laughing at herself for still believing things like that.

“Stupid stories” she curses under her breath, as she heads to the grocery store to buy things she will need for as long as she stays here. 

The peeling paint on the sign, the worn steps—everything speaks of age and decay. The owner watches her every move, his tired eyes revealing little. She picks what she wants, heads to the counter to make her payment. The line is long it being the only grocery store in town. She waits patiently but with frustration on her face as elderly people start whispering behind her. She stays calm to keep her cool, until it is her turn. She makes her cash payment, heads to her car and drove away to her destination.

“I hate this God forsaken town” she mumbles to herself as she continues on her way. The closer she comes to Blackwood mansion, the stronger she feels a pull towards it. The gravel road leading up to the estate is so familiar; it feels like she used it yesterday. Each bump and curve is etched into her memory. She feels her pulse quicken, her thoughts swirling in a storm of emotions—resentment, fear, and, to her own surprise, a strange curiosity. 

The mansion had always terrified her, but this time around, she is here to face it for the next one month. She is stronger than she was when she left. Whatever this mansion is hiding, she will face it strong.

Blackwood mansion has always felt like it is trapped in time—a place suspended between the past and present, forever cloaked in mist and half-truths. As Evelyn’s car slows down just outside the rusted iron gates of the Blackwood estate, she can feel the cold weight of the air pressing down on her, thick with secrets that refused to be buried. It is as if the mansion is watching her from the shadows with invisible eyes.

She grips the steering wheel as the wrought-iron gates looms before her, twisted and dark, its sharp points reaching toward the sky like the claws of some monstrous creature. Beyond it, the mansion stands tall and foreboding in shadow, as if it has been waiting for her, too. 

“Great, home sweet hell” she says in a shaky voice, while looking at the ivy crawling up the gate walls, pulsing, like veins spreading across an ancient stone. 

“I can do this………..Evelyn Blackwood, you can do this, you’ve got this” She closes her eyes, willing herself to breathe, to steady the storm of emotions raging within her. 

This place is the source of all her fears and her nightmare. But she will not flee this time, she will stay and get all that she came to do done. The crypt is part her inheritance. It lies in the massive land that Blackwood Mansion is part of.  And though a part of her dreads what she might find, another part—small, buried deep—feels undeniable sense of belonging, as if this haunted land and all its secrets are hers to uncover.

With a final, resolute breath, she opens her eyes and steps out of the car, the cold air biting at her skin, grounding her in the present. The crunch of gravel beneath her boots, echoes in the quiet, each step heavy with purpose, as she moves towards the gate. 

Her fingers trembles as she reaches for the Iron Gate, her touch lingering on the cold metal. She looks up, and the mansion looms in the distance, shrouded in mist and shadows, each window darkened like the empty eyes of a long-dead giant, and for a moment. As she places her hand on the gate, she feels a faint tremor beneath her fingers, as if the gate itself recognizes her.

She pushes the gate open, and steps onto the path that leads up to the mansion. The weight of her family’s legacy pressed down on her with every step, but Evelyn forces herself forward, determined to face whatever awaits her within those walls. For the first time since she had left, she feels the urge to confront what she has been running from. She can’t keep running away. This is her life, her family’s life. Whatever mysteries her family had left behind, whatever truths her father had hidden, it is her duty to uncover them. Or at least, she tells herself she is. 

But the other part of her, says otherwise. It tells her to only do the job and leave. It is the only reason she is here. She has been doing well all these years without this place. She has been burying herself in work in cities far from this cursed land, and she has been fine.

But she knows the reality. She will face these demons now or in the near future. She must settle all this and move on. Every step feels like a battle against herself, her body telling her this is where she belongs, it’s time to face her demons.

Her father’s final words echo in her mind. “You cannot outrun the curse of the Blackwoods’. You have to see it; you have to discover it, to understand.” She needs to figure that out. She needs to know what secrets this house is hiding, buried beneath layers of dust and darkness. She knows her father’s death wasn’t the end of the story; it was the beginning of a revelation.

As she nears the house, she takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. Walking up the gravel path leading to the mansion, her heels crunch against the stones, the sound unnaturally loud in the eerie quiet. The mansion looms before her, dark and massive, its once-pristine facade weathered by time. Ivy curled around the pillars and twisted along the crumbling walls, as if the mansion itself is being devoured by the earth it rests on.

Evelyn’s gaze drifts over the windows unconsciously, each one a dark, empty eye staring out at her. She wonders if she is imagining the faint flicker of movements beyond the glass but dismisses it. 

She had spent time as a child, listening to the strange creaks and whispers that echoed through the house, convinced that something watched her from the shadows. Her father called them stories, tales to keep a young child away from danger, but Evelyn knew better, at that young age.

There was always a presence she felt, something that lurked in the walls, in the halls, and in the forgotten corners of the house. Her father had never been able to explain it, but she saw it in his eyes, and right now, it’s the same haunted look she sees in her reflection, in the glass door in front of her lit by the moon light.

As she stares at the door and it at her, her mind races with fear and memories that made her fear this place more. The Blackwood mansion has been in her family for generations; a towering relic of an era lost to time. Her father used to say it was a gift and a curse, a place where their ancestors had made sacrifices and promises. Evelyn had never understood that, up to now. 

The Blackwood family, had always been different; they had an unspoken connection to things that others would never see or comprehend, things that lingered just beyond the veil of reality. But her father had warned her against asking too many questions. “Some truths,” he would say, “are better left forgotten.”

Evelyn shivers, as she remembers one night in particular. She had wandered down to the east wing; drawn by an inexplicable urge she couldn’t explain. Her father caught her just as she’d reached the heavy, ancient door at the end of the corridor. The same dream she had on the plain. She remembers the look in his eyes—fear, and something else she couldn’t place. Without a word, he picked her up and carried her back to her room, warning her to never go near that door again.

Since then, Evelyn had done her best to obey, treating the east wing as if it didn’t exist. She buried herself in books and studies, finding solace in artifacts from other places, things she could understand. She had even gone on to pursue a career in ancient symbols and curses, perhaps subconsciously drawn to uncovering the mysteries that had defined her own family history. But no amount of study could prepare her for the reality of the mansion, standing here in front of her like a dark, looming specter.

She opens the door, and the silence that welcomes her is the first reality. The hallway beyond the entrance twists off to her left, where the door to the east wing awaits, and it’s the one place that makes this mansion creepier and scarier. She shakes her head without realizing. “Not yet,” she thinks.

She has no intention of giving in to her curiosity just yet, she has work to do. Turning back, Evelyn forces herself to focus on the familiar parts of the mansion, the areas she can remember as friendly, or at least without fear. She walks through the grand entry hall, past the portraits of her ancestors, their eyes following her as if they knew this day would come, the day she would come back home.

Each face is stern, distant, as if bearing the weight of a shared burden. Evelyn cannot shake the feeling that her family has carried this curse for centuries, I curse she knows nothing about. Each generation trapped by it, bound to the mansion as though they were prisoners in their own home.

The echoes of her footsteps seem to chase her as she moves, her heart pounding in time with each beat. The silence of the mansion is deafening, a void that swallows every sound. She stops in front of the largest portrait—the face of her great-grandmother, a woman whose name she barely remembers, yet whose eyes have haunted her since childhood. There is something in those eyes, a glimmer of knowledge, of secrets lost to time. 

Evelyn finds herself reaching out, her fingers brushing the edge of the frame, as if the woman might speak to her, reveal the answers she has been searching for all these years. But the silence remains unbroken, and Evelyn looks away.