Page 13 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

Because the person behind that smile… was the saddest person I’ve ever known. And he only smiled to makemesmile.

I wiped a tear from my cheek and reached for the iron gate. Overgrown rose roots wrapped around the rusted bars like veins. I pushed it open. The hinges groaned as I stepped onto the dusty path, the grass on either side damp and thick with fog—even though it was nearly noon.

Gloomsbury Manor sat atop Bloomy Hill, the only house for miles, surrounded by a sprawling yard, two side gardens, and a single stone wall enclosing it all. Only one gate. Only one way out.

The manor rose from the center, an old Gothic building with dark brick walls, a steep black rooftop, and oval windows barred with iron. It had three floors. On the first: the kitchen to theright, a long hallway lined with black and white tiles, dark green walls, and faded family portraits. A dark wooden staircase split the space down the middle, leading to the second floor. To the left was the living room, with a large stone fireplace and two cracked leather sofas, still sitting where they always had.

The second floor held the bedrooms—six in total. And out of all of them, they chose the attic for Dorian. Like he didn’t deserve a real room. Like he belonged somewhere forgotten.

We weren’t the manor’s first owners. According to legend, or at least what Father said, it was built in 1894. The original owner hanged himself after discovering his wife had drowned their two children in the upstairs bathtub. People said their ghosts still haunted these walls. Father called them history lessons.

And now the manor belonged to me.

Along with all its ghosts. All its curses.

And the truth? I believed in every single one of them. But I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to run. No matter how close I got to anything, I was always too far away. That was my curse—never finding love. Always circling the edge of something almost. Stuck in the endless loop ofwhat ifandwhat could’ve been.

And that’s the worst kind of pain: wondering.

I wondered all the time. What if I’d stayed that night? What if I hadn’t let him go? Would I be dead in that same accident? Would I haunt these walls too?

But most of all… I wondered what if he had come with me. If we’d escaped together, just the two of us. In some other universe, would we have been happy?

He told me he’d survive if I left. That he could handle it. But deep down, I think he was waiting for me to say I’d wait forhim. That I wouldn’t choose anyone else.

And now, I know the truth:we were both chasing a happy ending that never existed.

Maybe in another life, he found his happiness.

His happy ending.

And maybe, in that life, I told him what I couldn’t say in this one—that if he had asked me to stay, begged instead of letting me go… I would have.

If he had told me he couldn’t live without me, that he would wait, that he wouldfight—maybe I would’ve said it too. No matter where I went, no matter where I was, he was always the last thought before I fell asleep and the first one when I woke up.

And yes, this house was haunted.

But not by ghosts.

It was haunted byhim.

They say the places where we lose someone never truly let us go. They stay in the walls, in the air, in the quiet. And being here again—back in this town, in this house—only fills me with morewhat-ifs. More wondering. But what it doesn’t give me… is a way back. A way to live it all again.

So I stepped into Gloomsbury Manor.

Its shadows reached out to greet me. Its walls whispered in silence, and the darkness closed around me like a secret I had once buried.

The moment I crossed the threshold, a wind brushed past me. A sharp gust hit my face, cold enough to catch my breath in the air like smoke.

And I realized then—I wasn’t just someone returning.

I was just another ghost who came home.

FOUR

LENORE

Theysayahousecarries the memories of all the people who lived in it. But what if those memories are horrors? What if the house remembers? What if itknows? What if it makesyouremember?

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