The Veil-Taker at the Umbral House: Part One

A Serial Horror by Avaline Rose Quinn — Part One

The rain had been chasing Lenora Finch all afternoon. She had journeyed on a day that smelled of rain and keys. By the time she reached the crooked lane that led to the Umbral House, the sky had collapsed into bruised clay and the hedges leaned as if the wind had been combing them raw for hours.. The house waited at the end of it—three stories of blackened stone and narrow windows that looked more like withheld breaths than glass.

Inside, the air had the patience of a church. Footsteps unspooled into the hall and did not quite come back the way they were given. A long mirror—gilt frame gone dull as old coins—leaned along the staircase wall at a tilt, as if it had been listening.

Lenora set her single suitcase by the bannister and tried not to notice how the house seemed to recall the weight and shape of it, as though the suitcase had stood there before, gathering dust in the same rectangle of light.

That night, the first knock came.

It was not a knock one hears when a visitor arrives with a damp hat and an apology. It came from the wood itself, the way a cough comes from the chest—hollow, deliberate, unembarrassed by echo.

Three taps.

Not loud. Not frantic. But made of intention.

The clock on the mantel read 2:17.

Lenora lay still and listened to the dark for the rest of its thoughts. None came. She slept, but not deeply; when the morning found her, it smelled like wet stone and the pale sweetness of the hedges, and the mirror on the stairs caught her in passing. Her reflection lagged—half a heartbeat late—then hurried to catch up as though ashamed of the lapse.

“It’s an old house,” she said aloud, absurdly, to the mirror itself. “And I’m a tired woman.” The mirror listened.

Return tomorrow—at 2:17 AM EST sharp—for Part Two of The Veil-Taker at the Umbral House.

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