Lonemoon Midnight

The first thing grandma taught me after I came to live in this mansion was not where the kitchen was, or how to work the stove. It was the rules.

Shut every door and window before evening. Never open them until morning. Never walk outside at night. And never, ever go into the forest after dark.

Grandma never said why. So her words came out more as a warning than just a rule.

Then again, me and my dumb head took a whole ass week to notice that every single rule was related to night.

I found it absurd. I mean, the mansion was secluded, completely cut off from civilization, the only human construction for leagues around. So I told myself it was just an old woman's quirky survival habit.

Until the sound began….

On the very first night, something was scratching the back door slowly. Grandma heard it too. She only turned up the radio.

Then the next morning, when I went to the backyard, I found some prints in the wet earth. Each one was bigger than my palm.

This gave me chills.

What kind of animal has paw prints bigger than a human palm?

The estate was surrounded by a fourteen-foot wall, but the back gate, the one facing the forest, was rusted half off its hinges.

Still, nothing should have been able to climb that wall. So why did grandma lock every door as if something already had?

I didn't know. The more I thought about this, the more I felt uneasy. I've heard myths of vampires and werewolves. And this mansion being situated by a forest at Transylvania didn't help.

Not that I believe them or anything. But anyone would fucking lose it if they hear the wolves howling next to a large run down mansion.

This mansion was called Villa Belladonna. It has belonged to the ancestors of my paternal grandmother.

She never left the house even after all her sons found jobs and wealth abroad. And with time, she became one of the few people living there…

Oh yeah, that was only until last week, before dad decided to send me here. I stared at the old ceiling designed with eerie arts.

Surely, the person who built this must have spent a good fortune though… no doubt about that.

Though I won't approve the place they choose to build this anyway.

On my third day here, I was strangely drawn to a room in the attic. Out of a mansion with fifty-odd rooms, I decided to become the resident ghost and moved my belongings up there.

This was also one of the few rooms that were out of late renovations, and still had the old paintings on ceilings and carvings on the bed posts.

The balcony was overlooking the backyard and the side of the mansion. And I realised that in one of the corners, there was a single cross enclosed by an already cracked concrete square.

A graveyard.

I went down to have a look.

Rest In Peace

Susanna Conti

1700 – 1723

Susanna Conti? An Italian origin. She had died at the age of 23. Same age as me now.

Was she the previous owner of this mansion? It must have been. Granny's ancestors bought this mansion in the early 1830s.

Until then, it had been an abandoned mansion. That's what I heard.

During the last three days, I had been observing the mansion and the surrounding.

And a horrible realization came to me. The paw prints that I saw on my second day were actually leading towards this grave…

I didn't wait around to see what visited it. By sunset, I was locked inside my room, refusing to even peek through the curtains.

At some point while I had been lost in thoughts, wolves had already begun howling somewhere in the forest. I closed my eyes and sighed.

A knock on the door suddenly had my eye balls pop out of the sockets in shock. I threw away the phone and slid out of the bed.

“Coming!”

Nanny was outside the door of my room. She was the only living creature here except for me, Grandma and the pigs in the backyard.

She always wore long black dresses. And a white apron. And held her grey hair in a knot on the back of her head.

What was this?

1950s?

But it's not like I can say that to her face of course, when she was the only person who had been looking after grandma all these years.

“Mrs. Thorne.” I whispered.

The old woman nodded and signed me to come downstairs. This was the sign the dinner was ready.

I couldn't care less. Her cooking wasn't bad. I was just about to hurry down when she pulled from my wrist.

“Slippers. It's cold.”

Oh…

I wore the slippers that were by my bedside and followed the nanny down the stairs.

Grandma was already sitting at the dining table. She barely looked up when I entered, and I took my usual seat across from her.

Dinner was ready. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the old clock and the occasional clink of cutlery.

Honestly, eating here felt less like having dinner with family and more like being a guest at a funeral.

I stabbed a piece of meat.

“Grandma, do wolves often come this close to the house?”

She didn't look up. “They live in the forest.”

“Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, do they come right up to the back door?”

“Not usually.”

Not usually?

I stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate, but she had already returned to her food.

Great. Another wonderful conversation with my grandma.

“Have they ever attacked anyone around here?” I asked.

She finally stopped chewing. Took her sweet time looking at me.

“Many years ago, a girl who lived in this mansion was killed by a wolf.”

My fork clattered against the plate. “Excuse me?”

“That's what people say.”

“Wait. A girl was killed here? By a wolf?”

Grandma just kept eating like she was discussing the weather. “People have told the story for years. Some say it was an ordinary wolf. Others believe it was a werewolf.”

I blinked. A werewolf. Of course. Why the hell not add fur and fangs to my miserable stay? I sliced the meat in my plate into pieces.

It was suddenly when I remembered the grave in the backyard.

I felt a cold shudder run down my back. “Grandma, is she someone called Susanna Conti?”

“Yes.”

!!!

My fingertips trembled. “What happened to her?”

“She's said to haunt this mansion.” Grandma's dark eyes locking onto mine. “The room in the attic belonged to her. The one you're staying in.”

Fuck.

I whipped my head toward the heavy curtains covering the dark windows. I could practically feel whatever was out there in the trees, watching, waiting.

I suddenly found myself wondering whether the enormous paw prints I'd seen that morning belonged to something that had been visiting this house for considerably longer than I'd been alive.

“Is that why you make me lock every door and window before sunset?” I asked.

Grandma said nothing.

“Grandma?”

“Lucy. Eat your dinner.”

And just like that, the conversation was over.

I looked at the nanny, who was standing beside the table, quietly arranging the dishes. She'd been listening the entire time, but her expression hadn't changed.

“Mrs. Thorne, is that story actually true?”

She looked at grandma before answering.

“It's a well-known local tragedy around here, miss. People have told different versions of it for generations.”

“And how did it start?”

“Some old diaries were discovered in this mansion generations ago. They were believed to have belonged to the girl herself. Eventually, someone used them to write a romance novel about what happened to her.”

“A novel?”

“Yes, miss. It's quite famous around here. You can still find copies in the bookshops in town.”

I leaned back in my chair.

“So there's an actual book about a girl who lived in my house, fell in love with a werewolf, and got murdered?”

“That's what the story says.”

Great.

I looked around the dining room, at the old furniture, the dark wooden walls, and the portraits of people who'd probably been dead for centuries.

My family had apparently inherited not only an enormous, half-rotten mansion in the middle of nowhere, but also a local murder legend.

Dad really could have sent me anywhere else on Earth.

“Have you read it, Nanny?” I asked.

She was quiet for a second. “Yes. A long time ago.”

“Was it any good?”

“I remember it was a sad story.”

Something about the way she said it made me look at her more carefully. She'd gone back to arranging the dishes, her face as unreadable as ever.

I wanted to ask more, but she seemed to have decided that was all she intended to tell me.

Across the table, Grandma didn't say a word.

For some reason, I felt a little sorry for her then. She'd spent most of her life in this enormous house, with no one but nanny for company, and now she had me, a granddaughter who couldn't even make it through dinner without interrogating her.

I finished my dinner without asking anything else and went upstairs.

But I'd already decided that the next time I went into town, I was going to find that book.

I pushed open my bedroom door and stepped inside, looking around the room.

The old ceiling was decorated with eerie carvings, darkened by age, and the wallpaper was peeling in several places.

The broken mirror by the wardrobe had a long crack running from one corner to the other, distorting my reflection whenever I stood too close.

I wondered how long this room had been here.

Three hundred years? Four hundred?

Though the mansion was renovated several times, still, there had been no renovations lately, at least for the past seventy years.

And had that girl slept here, too? It had to be.

I looked at the enormous bed, the old dressing table, and the faded curtains hanging beside the windows.

It wasn't difficult to imagine someone else living here long before me, waking up to the same ceiling every morning and looking out at the same forest.

Someone who was now nothing more than a ghost story people bought books about.

I shook my head and let out a quiet laugh. Great. Now I was feeling sorry for a dead woman I'd never even met.

I turned away from the mirror, intending to get changed, when suddenly a strange chill crept over my skin.

I stopped.

It was a peculiar feeling, the sort you get when you suddenly realise you aren't alone, even though there's nobody else in the room.

Slowly, I looked around.

The door was still open. The room was empty.

To my left, the curtains moved faintly.

I stared at them, a cold sensation creeping up the back of my neck.

I remembered locking the window.

How is it open now?