The house was even quieter now than it had ever been, the quiet of one holding its breath for what must in an instant surely come. Eleanor was in the middle of the grand hall, her dim lantern throwing long, dancing shadows that trembled along cracked walls and tattered tapestries. The others were scattered around her—Thomas Grayson just across from the stairwell, Marcus Flynn pacing near the broken fireplace, Lily clutching herself against the ragged curtains, and Dr. Samuel Whitaker jotting notes in a corner, his customary clinical detachment loosed beneath the weight of this place. Not even Father Callum Reid, his old clerical collar chokingly close to his neck, looked certain; fingers tight around rosary beads in a grip that spoke more of fear than calm.

Slow and quick, her breaths. In this house of whispers and shadows, they had entered hours ago — days, even, possibly — filled with curiosity over Sarah Kendal’s disappearance. Every clue, every spooky whisper, had brought them to this moment.

“It’s here,” Eleanor whispered, hardly daring to shatter the oppressive silence. “The truth. I can feel it.”

Out of the dusk at the further end of the hall there stepped young Agnes Blackwood, her figure attenuates and wizened. Her eyes, still bright after all those years, fixed on Eleanor with what seemed to be a combination of pity and warning.

“You are close, child. The curse… it knows you. It’s not just Sarah you seek. It’s what the house has waited for.”

The words made Eleanor shiver. She swallowed the knot of fear rising in her throat. She had to know. To understand. To shine a light on the evil that had taken her friend — and dogged her dreams for years.

Suddenly, the air was heavy and cold, as if the manor let out a sigh so frosted it chilled to marrow. The lantern flickered wildly. And, on the edge of their hearing, a thin whisper curled— a voice inconceivably far and yet unimaginably close.

“Eleanor…”

Her name. It came back, more faintly this time, a haunting lure traversing through the silence like a snare spun from unseen fingers. Turning with pounding heart, she saw a wrenched form coalesce out of the darkness—a shadow-swathed shadow with eyes that glinted like expiring stars.

It was Evie Sinclair.

Neither fully here nor beyond, a lost soul, her presence served as a bridge between the living and the dead. There was guilt and longing in her pale face as she extended a shaking hand out to Eleanor.

“You have to listen,” Evie pleaded, faint-voiced as a leaf caught in a gust. "The Shadow speaks only to those that it wills... to those who have the burden.

“Sarah,” Eleanor’s voice cracked. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

Evie’s gaze clouded. “She is of the darkness now but not lost. Not beyond reach. The curse… it hungrily consumes whispered names in the night—the lost, the dreaded, and the forsaken. Your friend’s soul is imprisoned in the darkness devoid of light.”

There was a sudden crashing sound from above, and everybody jumped. A look of somber recognition darkened Thomas’s face.

“It’s time,” he said solemnly. “We’ve got to face it, once and for all.”

Marcus, shaking off his default to cautiousness at the evident terror swallowed heavily. “There’s no explaining this. Well, whatever it is, it’s real —and it’s dangerous.

Father Callum advanced, holding his crucifix aloft. “We have among us great spirit and purpose. We need to confront this evil or, if we don’t, we will be consumed by it for forever.”

Forged by the ailing form of Evie, they climbed the squealing stairs; each step another reverberation of unspeakable horrors and untold truths. At the far end, a door was half closed and shed some faint light that went up, not down. They had the weight of the manor’s history on their shoulders—the whispered curses, the lost souls, the rumblings that whispered people’s names in the night.

Eleanor put her fingers up, touched the chilled wood. Suddenly, the full force of her memories crashed over her: the pledge she made to Sarah as a child; Agnes’s simple urging to “Run”; Thomas’ whispered assurances about a secret bargain with darkness—a ritual that held at bay an ancient evil only ever referred to as The Shadow.

Entering, the air changed, became thick with despair and want. Faces danced through the shadows — names without homes, lives -without-lights danced to the verses of manor’s phantasmaly. The Shadow’s being curled about them like something living, whispering, teasing, calling it names.

“Say my name,” it whispered, voice containing a thousand inflections.

Eleanor took a steadying breath. “Sarah Kendal.”

There was a scream ripped through the room—a sound that seemed as though it could have come from any normal human and yet wasn’t. The room was momentarily filled with light as Evie’s form pulsed, her white light rising up like a beacon.

“This is the end,” Dr. Whitaker whispered. “The point where fear meets fact.”

With a single voice, forged from hope in the depths of despair, Eleanor and the others intoned the names of those who vanished into nothingness, of whom they lost all memory, and by speaking each name cast off a part of their curse. The Shadow coiled, a blindness consuming its own wails, relinquishing the hold it had on the souls trapped with in the manor’s cruel fist.

All at once, Eleanor felt a hard pull —a whisper under the galaxy of all the whispers—pulling her farther in past where all the others ended.

“Eleanor…”

Not her name, not called in terror and threat, though with recognition — an echo of love; sorrow; release. And in that moment, the barrier was pierced on both sides—and a final horror all-bitter revealed: the Tragedy, the one terrible truth that spawned their curse--the choice to protect at any cost but with this decree…with ANY with such choices was equal payment demanded!

Sarah’s disappearance was no accident. She had entered that threshold knowingly, prisoner turned saviour and then confined to keep The Shadow at bay.

In a final howl of protest, Eleanor declared that she would suffer for it, bear the manor’s dark secret in her heart, and be its voice whenever the whispers longed to escape.

Anticipation began to quell the air as dawn broke over the historic estate. The house sighed and let go of the living. Evie’s light went out, smiling her thanks, the rest of them moved in, bruised but unswervingly set.

The last truth was hard, and cruel and bitter, but it was also a place to start from—a faint hope in the darkest night. Eleanor knew that when her name was called, the moment would not be so much the end as a beginning and that the drawing on of life—a time between times where she might look back in one direction and forward in another—was itself dangerous; perhaps deathly dangerous.

The clear film of the morning removed itself after curling about Blackwood Manor like a serpent, and the whispers were silenced…at least for now.