They said a woman once died here. No one remembered her name, only her screams. Her husband had been rich, jealous, cruel, and the house was the last thing she ever saw before silence took her. The townsfolk whispered she still lingered within the walls, her grief soaked into the beams like damp. But Satoru never believed such stories.
He believed in reason. Logic. Warmth. His wife.
The carriage wheels creaked through the fog as he reached the manor, candlelight trembling in the windows. He stepped down first, then lifted his wife from her seat, careful as if the wind might bruise her. The smell of rain and earth hung cold in the air.
“Home,” he murmured. The manor answered with silence.
Inside, the corridors breathed with dust. Paintings watched from cracked glass. His wife trembled once, saying the air felt strange. He laughed it off, wrapped an arm around her, told her she needed rest. But the silence grew each night.
A door creaked open when no one stood near. Wax melted too fast. His wife began waking him at night, whispering someone had been standing by the window.
He sent for doctors. They examined her quietly. “Exhaustion,” one said. “A strain of nerves. Women are delicate creatures.” He thanked them, though irritation burned behind his ribs.
Then came the servants’ talk, maids whispering of a woman in white roaming the halls, a shadow that sang in the cellar at midnight. Rumors followed him even to the city,whispered among clerks when he met with officials who owed him favors.
One evening he returned from town, coat smelling of smoke and brandy, weary from endless negotiations. The first thing he heard was two maids whispering about “the lady’s visitor.”
He slammed the door hard enough to rattle the chandelier. “Enough of that,” he barked, voice low but sharp. “You’re paid to keep this house running, not to spread ghost tales. If I hear another word, I’ll have you both gone by morning.”
They stammered apologies and fled. He stood there breathing hard, jaw tight, unease clinging to him like damp cloth.
Then one bleak dawn, a villager was found dead by the riverbank, no wounds, no struggle, eyes wide open. Rumors spread like wildfire.
The authorities came that afternoon. “A man said he saw your wife near the woods last night,” one officer said. “Might be best if you...kept an eye on her.”
Satoru’s smile was polite, his tone iron. “My wife is unwell, not dangerous. Keep your gossip in the streets and dont make any mistakes to accuse my wife of wrongdoing in my presence.” They left, uneasy.
Days bled together. The house seemed to breathe differently now. The wind carried whispers through the cracks, the same three notes humming in the dark. He began avoiding mirrors. Candles sputtered when he entered rooms.
And his wife grew worse. Her skin pale as milk, her eyes darker, ringed with sleeplessness. She spoke less, but when she did, it was always of her, the woman watching from corners, the one who touched her hair while she slept.
He told himself it was fatigue. A sickness of the mind. Nothing more. But even he felt it sometimes, the wrongness in the air, like someone exhaling behind his neck. Like the house itself listening.
Tonight, the room smells of smoke and fever. Candles tremble beside the bed, flames bowing toward her. She sits upright, hair tangled, hands twisting in the sheets. Her voice shakes when she says something is inside her, whispering behind her eyes. Satoru stares, throat tight. Fear cracks through him.
“That’s enough!” he snaps, standing sharply. “You’re ill, not cursed. You need medicine, not more of these delusions.”
She flinches, face pale in the candlelight. He turns to the door, jaw locked, but regret stings him before he steps away. Slowly, he returns to her side, forcing his tone softer.
“Listen to me,” he murmurs, reaching for her hand, frustration beneath the calm. “You’re just tired. It’s only in your head, love. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.”
The candle nearest them flickers once. Then twice.And the air grows cold.