Chapter 1: The Inheritance
I should have known something was wrong the moment I saw my name on the funeral registry as the only attendee.
Elena Voss - Granddaughter
The funeral director, a skeletal man named Mortis (and yes, that was his name), handed me the keys to Grandmother Cordelia's estate with hands that felt like ice cubes wrapped in parchment.
"Your grandmother left specific instructions," he wheezed. "You're to spend at least one night in the house before making any selling decisions."
I stared at the ornate brass keys, each one different, each one somehow heavier than it should have been. "That's an odd stipulation."
"Cordelia Voss was an odd woman." His smile revealed teeth like yellowed piano keys. "But the will is ironclad. One night, Miss Voss. Then the house is yours to do with as you please."
The drive through Ravenshollow felt like traveling backward through time. Fog clung to everything like cobwebs, and the Victorian houses seemed to lean inward, as if sharing secrets. My GPS had stopped working twenty miles back, leaving me to navigate by the funeral director's hand-drawn map.
When I finally saw the Voss mansion rising from the mist like a gothic cathedral, my hands trembled on the steering wheel.
The house was massive—three stories of dark stone and twisted spires, with windows that reflected nothing despite the afternoon sun. Gargoyles perched along the roofline, and I could swear I saw one turn its head as I parked.
Stress hallucination, I told myself. You're a psychiatrist, Elena. Act like one.
But as I climbed the front steps, I heard something that made my blood freeze: a child's laughter, distant and hollow, coming from inside the house.
I pushed open the heavy front door, and the laughter stopped immediately.
"Hello?" My voice echoed through the cavernous foyer. "Is someone there?"
Silence.
The interior was a maze of dark wood and red velvet, with oil paintings whose eyes seemed to follow my movement. A grandfather clock in the corner had stopped at 3:33, and dust motes danced in the few sickly rays of sunlight that managed to penetrate the heavy curtains.
I dropped my overnight bag and explored the main floor, noting the library filled with books on subjects I didn't recognize—Theoretical Necromancy, Blood Rituals of the Celtic Druids, Binding Spirits Through Familial Lineage. My grandmother's reading tastes had been... eclectic.
In what must have been her study, I found a leather journal lying open on the desk. The handwriting was elegant but urgent:
Day 23,891: The Hollow Man grows stronger. The binding weakens with each full moon. Elena must be prepared, but how do I make her understand without driving her away as I did her mother? The children of Ravenshollow depend on our family's burden. She cannot refuse. She will not refuse. I will see to that.
The sacrifice demands blood of the bloodline. Mine is nearly spent. Hers is young, strong. It will hold him for another generation, perhaps longer if she proves capable.
Forgive me, my dear granddaughter. But some inheritances cannot be refused.
I slammed the journal shut, my heart pounding. This was exactly why I'd avoided my grandmother my entire life—the woman had been delusional, possibly schizophrenic. My mother had warned me about the family's "eccentric" tendencies before cutting all contact twenty years ago.
But as I turned to leave the study, I froze.
On the wall behind the desk hung a family portrait I hadn't noticed before. It showed a woman who looked exactly like me, same dark hair, same green eyes, same stubborn jawline, standing beside a man in Victorian dress. At the bottom, in faded gold lettering: Cordelia and Mortimer Voss, 1887.
The math was impossible. If this were my grandmother, she would have been over 130 years old when she died last week.
I pulled out my phone to call my mother, but there was no signal. The landline in the kitchen produced only static.
As darkness fell over Ravenshollow, I realized I was truly alone in this house for the first time. And that's when I heard the children.
Not one child's laughter this time, but many. Dozens of young voices, calling out from somewhere deep within the walls:
"Elena... Elena... come play with us... Elena..."
I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and followed the voices down a narrow staircase I hadn't noticed before. The basement was older than the rest of the house, carved from raw stone like a medieval dungeon.
The voices led me to a circular room where symbols had been carved into every surface—the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. In the center stood an altar stained with something dark and old.
And arranged around the altar were dozens of children's belongings: toys, shoes, backpacks. All of them looked recent.
All of them looked like they'd been abandoned in terror.
I backed toward the staircase, but the heavy wooden door slammed shut behind me. The carved symbols began to glow with a sickly green light, and the children's voices rose to a chorus of screams.
From the shadows beyond the altar, something moved. Something tall and thin, with arms that stretched too long and fingers that ended in points. When it turned toward me, I saw it had no face—just a smooth expanse of skin where features should have been.
"Welcome home, Elena," it whispered without a mouth. "Your grandmother has told me so much about you."
That's when I started screaming.