The Night They Buried Her

The train ride to Boston felt like traveling backward through time, each mile taking me further from the life I'd built and closer to the ghosts I'd spent twenty years running from. The bus to Ashwick was worse—a rattling, half-empty vessel that wound through increasingly desolate coastal roads until civilization seemed like something I'd imagined.

Ashwick itself was the kind of New England town that tourism brochures would call "quaint" and locals would call "dying." Weathered houses clung to rocky cliffs like barnacles, their paint peeling from decades of salt air. The few people I saw on the streets moved with the careful deliberation of those who knew everyone else's business and preferred to keep their own buried.

Blackthorn Manor sat at the end of a winding road that seemed designed to discourage visitors. My taxi driver—a grizzled man who'd said maybe ten words during the entire ride—pulled up to rusted iron gates and refused to go any further.

"This is as far as I take folks," he said, not meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. "You sure about this place, miss?"

I wasn't sure about anything anymore. But I paid him anyway and dragged my suitcase through the gates, which stood open like a mouth waiting to swallow me whole.

The gravel driveway crunched under my feet, each step echoing off the stone walls that rose before me. The photograph hadn't done the manor justice—or maybe justice wasn't the right word. The building was massive, a Victorian Gothic nightmare of dark stone and twisted spires that seemed to absorb the late afternoon light rather than reflect it. Ivy crawled up the walls like grasping fingers, and the windows stared down at me with the blank intensity of dead eyes.

But it was the third floor that made my breath catch in my throat. Every window on that level had been boarded up with thick wooden planks, as if someone had tried to seal away whatever horrors lived behind them. One of those windows—I counted from the left, trying to match it to my mother's photograph—was where she had supposedly jumped. Where she had supposedly chosen to end her life rather than face whatever waited for her inside these walls.

The front door was solid oak, carved with intricate patterns that might have been flowers or might have been something more sinister. I raised my hand to knock, but the door swung open before my knuckles could touch the wood.

"You must be the new guest." The man in the doorway didn't blink, didn't smile, didn't show any surprise at my arrival. His voice was low and precise, each word carefully measured. "Or should I say—the returning one."

My suitcase slipped from my numb fingers, hitting the stone steps with a dull thud. This had to be Sterling Voss—the photograph from the charity gala hadn't captured the full intensity of his presence. He was tall, probably in his early thirties, with the kind of sharp, aristocratic features that belonged in oil paintings of long-dead nobles. His eyes were gray-green, like storm clouds over the ocean, and they studied me with an unsettling familiarity.

"I'm Wren Thorne," I managed, my voice sounding smaller than I'd intended. "I have a reservation."

"Of course you do." He stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter. "Welcome to Blackthorn Manor. I'm Sterling Voss."

The interior hit me like a physical blow. The main hall had been transformed from whatever Victorian grandeur it once possessed into something darker, more modern. Rich burgundy walls absorbed the light from crystal chandeliers, and leather furniture was arranged in intimate clusters that suggested secrets shared in whispers. But underneath the renovation, I could feel the bones of the original house—the weight of its history pressing down like a held breath.

Sterling moved through the space with the fluid grace of someone completely at home, but I found myself stumbling, disoriented by the strange familiarity of it all. Had I been here before? As a child, maybe, before everything fell apart?

"The manor has quite a history," Sterling said, leading me toward a grand staircase that curved up into shadows. "Built in 1847 by Cornelius Blackthorn. Steel fortune, you know. He had very specific ideas about privacy."

I followed him up the stairs, my eyes drawn to the walls lined with portraits of stern-faced men and women in period dress. But there was something wrong with the arrangement—a gap above the fireplace where a large frame had obviously once hung. The wallpaper was darker there, unfaded by sunlight, creating a perfect rectangle of accusation.

"What was there?" I asked, pointing to the empty space.

Sterling's steps faltered for just a moment. "Former owner's portrait. Rather gaudy thing. We had it removed when we converted the space."

The lie sat between us like a third person. I'd seen that same sized frame in my mother's photograph, hanging in exactly that spot. But before I could press him further, he was moving again, leading me down a hallway lined with doors.

"Your room is on the second floor," he said, stopping before a heavy wooden door marked with a brass number: 203. "I trust you'll find it comfortable."

"What about the third floor?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.

His hand paused on the door handle. "The third floor isn't open to guests. Structural issues, you understand. Insurance liability."

Another lie. I could feel it in the way his shoulders tensed, the slight tightening around his eyes. But he opened the door and ushered me inside before I could challenge him.

The room was elegant in the same dark, oppressive way as the rest of the manor—heavy curtains, antique furniture, and a four-poster bed that looked like it belonged in a museum. But it felt wrong, like a stage set waiting for actors who would never come.

"Dinner is served at eight," Sterling said from the doorway. "I do hope you'll join us. We have so few guests who... appreciate the manor's unique character."

The door closed with a soft click, leaving me alone with my racing thoughts and the brass key burning a hole in my pocket. I waited until his footsteps faded down the hallway, then pulled out the key and tried it in every lock I could find—the door, the armoire, even a small jewelry box on the vanity. Nothing.

Frustration gnawed at me as I moved to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains. The view looked out over what had once been formal gardens, now somewhat overgrown but still maintaining an eerie beauty. Rose bushes lined gravel paths, their blooms so dark they looked almost black in the fading light.

That's when I saw her.

A woman in a crisp uniform was kneeling among the roses, pruning shears in her gloved hands. But she wasn't working—she was staring directly up at my window with an intensity that made my skin crawl. Not a casual glance, not idle curiosity. She was watching me with the focused attention of a predator studying its prey.

I stumbled backward from the window, my heart hammering against my ribs. When I forced myself to look again, she was gone. But something drew my eyes to the ground where she'd been kneeling.

There, scratched into the dark earth beside the rose bush, were three numbers: 308.

My gaze snapped upward to the boarded windows of the third floor. Sterling had said it was closed, off-limits, structurally unsound. But as I stared at those sealed windows, I noticed something that made my blood turn to ice water.

One of the boards had a gap—just a thin slice of darkness between the wooden planks. And through that gap, impossibly, came the faint but unmistakable glow of electric light.

Someone was up there. Someone was in room 308.

And they were waiting.