Cody jolted awake, the remnants of a dream clinging to his consciousness like cobwebs. His chest heaved as if he had been running, and for a moment, he lay disoriented in the darkness of his room at Blackwood Manor. He had been awoken, by what he was unsure. Then, slicing through the silence like a knife through flesh, came the cries.
They were distant yet unmistakable—the anguished wails of a woman in distress. Cody’s heart hammered against his ribcage, and he strained his ears to discern direction or source, but the sprawling mansion muffled and distorted the sound. How could it be any one? People had to leave the grounds by dusk.
His room felt colder than usual; his breath misted in the air as if the night itself had crept in through unseen crevices. The cries echoed again, longer this time, threading through the corridors and seeping into the marrow of his bones.
Cody swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. His hand reached for the Colt revolver that always rested on the bedside table—a habit from years of living on unpredictable frontiers—but tonight it offered no comfort. He realized then that his fingers trembled.
Outside his window, a gibbous moon bathed the grounds in an eerie silver glow. The neglected garden below twisted into grotesque shapes, casting shadows that seemed to writhe in silent agony.
The cries ceased as abruptly as they had begun, leaving a suffocating stillness in their wake. Cody’s eyes darted to the locked door across from his bed. A grandfather clock in the distant hallway chimed, its sonorous tones marking each hour with the weight of a funeral dirge. One… two… three… In their aftermath, Cody waited for the cries to resume, but there was only silence—a silence so complete it roared in his ears.
A cold draft caressed his neck, raising gooseflesh along his arms. The manor seemed to breathe around him; floorboards creaked with phantom footsteps, and somewhere a door whispered shut. He thought he saw movement—a flicker of something just beyond perception—but when he blinked, there was nothing.
Cody knew he should remain where he was; Baron Blackwood’s instructions had been clear—no wandering at night. Yet every fiber of his being screamed to investigate, to protect… to confront whatever horrors lurked within these walls.
Silence, thick as molasses, smothered the room, its oppressive weight bearing down on Cody. His ears rang with the absence of sound, a stark contrast to the woman’s desperate cries that had torn through the stillness moments before. He waited, muscles coiled like a spring, for any sign of life beyond the walls of his chamber.
Without warning, the door shuddered, the forceful banging a brutal assault on the senses. The sudden violence of it sent Cody’s heart into his throat. He leaped to his feet, revolver in hand, as the solid oak quaked under unseen fists. The knocks were frenzied, urgent—a relentless plea that seemed to claw at the very fibers of the wood.
Then her voice pierced the night once more—a keening wail that twisted around him like a cold wind. “Help me!” she cried, a raw edge of terror fraying each syllable. “Please, help me!”
The plea was a siren call to every protective instinct within him.
He steeled himself against the chill seeping into his bones and edged closer to the door.
With each desperate bang, each heart-wrenching sob from beyond his barricade, the air grew colder still until his breath hung before him like a ghostly apparition.
Cody swung the door open, the brass handle cold beneath his grip. The hallway stretched before him, a desolate expanse of antique rugs and flickering wall sconces. No woman. No assailant. Just the whisper of curtains somewhere in the distance, as if the night itself had slunk through the corridors of Blackwood Manor.
He stepped into the void, revolver poised, his gaze slicing through shadows in search of substance. The manor held its breath around him, as though it too waited for some horror to unfold. He could almost feel the house watching, its ancient timbers groaning with untold secrets.
Cody closed the door behind him, a shiver clawing up his spine. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the erratic beating of his own heart—a staccato rhythm that seemed too loud in the oppressive quiet. He shook his head; it must have been a dream, a phantom of his overwrought mind in this place that toyed with sanity.
As he turned back toward his bed, ready to dismiss the incident to restless sleep and an overactive imagination, violence erupted against the door. Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound was deafening, a desperate fury that resonated through wood and bone alike.
The door shook on its hinges, each thunderous knock a herald of unseen dread. Cody spun around, eyes wide with disbelief and adrenaline spiking through his veins like ice water. This was no dream;
He approached once more, hand outstretched but hesitant. The knocking ceased as suddenly as it had begun, leaving a void where terror had been. A tremor passed through Cody’s body—a primal warning that whatever haunted these halls was beyond mortal understanding.
He grasped the handle again—cold, so very cold—and flung open the door with resolve born of desperation and duty.
The woman who staggered into view when Cody flung open the door was a pitiable specter, a tragic composition of blood and dirt smeared across pale skin. Her dress, once perhaps the color of springtime blooms, now clung to her in tattered shreds, as if she’d been chased through brambles and thorns. Hair, dark and matted with the refuse of the earth, veiled her face in unkempt curtains. One of her legs was clearly broken and her right arm certainly needed to be put back into its socket.
Her eyes, wide and brimming with a feral kind of terror, locked onto Cody’s. They were the eyes of a cornered creature, more used to the notion of flight than fight. Yet here she stood, trembling on the threshold of his room, a stranger bearing wounds both seen and unseen.
Cody’s instincts took over. He lowered his revolver slowly, as one might when trying not to startle a skittish animal. The air around them was frigid, an invisible frost that seemed to seep from her very bones.
“Hey now,” he murmured in a voice meant to soothe but carried an undercurrent of his own uncertainty. “You’re safe here. Can you tell me your name?”
She blinked at him, comprehension teetering on the edge of her dazed expression before tumbling back into confusion. Her lips parted; a breathy whisper escaped them—more sound than sense—before she found words.
“Where… where am I?” Her voice was a lamentation, hoarse and fragile as spider silk.
Cody stepped aside, gesturing for her to enter. “You’re at Blackwood Manor,” he said. “Do you remember how you got here?”
Cody came towards her and she stumbled into his arms, he began to lead her into his chamber.
She limped forward, crossing into the room with hesitance in every step. Cody closed the door behind her, cutting off the hollow echoes of the mansion’s cryptic heart.
“I… I can’t remember anything,” she confessed as she wrapped her arms around herself—a feeble attempt to hold together pieces that felt scattered to the wind.
Cody guided her to sit on the edge of his bed. The mattress dipped beneath their combined weight.
“What’s your name?” he tried again, keeping his voice even despite the creeping dread that gnawed at his insides.
She shook her head slowly; desperation flickered across her features—a hauntingly hollow look that spoke volumes of loss and confusion.
“My name? My name…” Her words trailed off into nothingness, a thread unraveling into oblivion.
Cody observed her—the way she clutched at frayed edges of memory with fingernails caked in earth.
Cody’s brow furrowed as he took in the full extent of the woman’s injuries. The moonlight filtering through the window cast her battered form in stark relief, illuminating bruises that bloomed like dark flowers across her skin. Her breathing was shallow, each inhale a quiet gasp of pain.
“You need a doctor,” Cody stated, his voice firm despite the unsettling situation. “I’m going to get you one.”
She nodded weakly, her eyes glazing with unshed tears—a clear pool of suffering in which her torment reflected. Cody scanned the room for something to cover her with, settling on a thick woolen blanket from the foot of his bed. He draped it over her shoulders, and she clutched it close, a makeshift shield against the chill and her own vulnerability.
Before leaving to seek help, Cody crouched before her, trying to piece together the puzzle she presented. “Can you remember anything that might help me? Anything at all?”
But she was a blank canvas, save for the marks of violence etched into her flesh. Her gaze drifted past him, lost in some internal maze from which there seemed no exit.
It was then that Cody noticed the small metal badge pinned to what remained of her dress—a Suffragette badge, the symbol of a movement for women’s rights. The irony of it twisted in his gut; this woman, who had fought for empowerment and equality, had been reduced to a figure of abject helplessness.
He couldn’t fathom how someone could survive such brutality, let alone make their way to Blackwood Manor’s doorstep. There was an unnerving resilience in her—perhaps born from the very cause she championed—that kept her tethered to life by the thinnest of threads.
“Stay here,” he instructed gently. “I’ll lock the door behind me and return as quickly as I can.”
He stood up and moved towards the door, casting one last glance at the woman — The bed where she had been was now empty, the blanket a crumpled testament to her fleeting presence. Cody’s eyes darted around the room, searching every shadowed corner, every possible hiding spot. Logic told him there was nowhere she could have vanished to—not without a sound, not with injuries that severe.
Cody’s mind raced, grappling with the impossible. The cold that had embraced the room seemed to seep deeper into his bones, a chill that whispered of things unseen. The silence was complete, as if the very air had been sucked from the chamber, leaving a vacuum where once there had been the rasping breaths of a wounded woman.
He approached the bed slowly, half expecting the fabric to still hold her warmth. But when he touched it, it was as cold as the rest of the room. His gaze swept over the folds of the blanket—no blood, no sign of her ever having been there. Cody’s heart hammered against his chest; his mouth felt dry as dust.
The woman’s image burned behind his eyes—a ghostly afterimage that refused to fade. Her pain had been palpable, her fear a tangible thing that had clawed at his own courage. Yet now there was nothing but an oppressive emptiness that hung in the air like a shroud.
He turned in a slow circle, revolver still clutched in one hand though he doubted its use against whatever madness this was. A sense of dread settled over him like a heavy cloak, each thread woven with questions that he feared had no answers.
Could she have been a figment of his imagination? A vivid dream conjured by the eerie atmosphere of the manor? No, Cody thought, his rational mind rebelling against such notions. He had felt her weight on his bed, seen the terror in her eyes…
But where had she gone?
He moved to the window and peered out into the night. The garden lay still under the moon’s watchful eye—no sign of life stirring among its overgrown tangles. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes, trying to quell the rising panic within him.
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