Some houses are haunted.
This one remembers.

The rain had battered Velvet Hollow Manor for three hours by the time Eleanor Hollow turned onto the estate road.

The estate appeared beyond the trees. Its turrets pierced a sky bruised purple with storm clouds. Ivy strangled the walls from foundation to eaves, and the bent railing of the widow’s walk looked as though something heavy had leaned against it.

Eleanor had promised herself she would never return.

Then her father died, leaving behind a brass key and one final warning:

“The house feeds on the firstborn daughters of the Hollow family. Your mother was chosen. Now it wants you.”

Somewhere upstairs, metal struck wood. Once. Twice. Three times...