The Voice of Blackwood Manor

"When the room went dark, she heard her name."

The wind, an unseen sculptor of the moor, howled its nightly lament around Blackwood Manor, rattling windows in their ancient frames. Willa Remington paid it little mind, her focus absolute. The grand, decaying manor, perched like a gargoyle on a forgotten hill, was her solitary world. For the past three months, it had been her prison and her sanctuary, the repository of the very history she sought to unearth. She was here for Freya Blackwood, the infamous ‘Madwoman of Blackwood,’ whose journals, locked away for centuries, Willa was painstakingly translating.

The oil lamp on the large oak desk cast a warm, flickering circle of light, struggling against the growing shadows that clung to the high ceilings of the study. Despite its fragile stand, the room faded into deep darkness, broken only by the faint sparkle of dust motes drifting at the edges. Willa shivered, not from the cold—a roaring fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth—but from the words written on the yellowed parchment before her.

“The whispers began softly,” Freya had written in a hand that became more erratic with each page. “First, the wind. Then, the house itself. Now, my name. From the darkest corners. It knows me.”

Willa rubbed her temples, a dull ache throbbing behind her eyes. Freya’s paranoia was contagious. Every creak of the old house and every gust of wind whistling down the chimney seemed to carry a new, subtle threat. She had always considered herself a pragmatist, grounded in logic and facts, but Blackwood Manor had a way of eroding those beliefs. Its isolation was complete; the nearest village was miles away, reachable only by a treacherous dirt road, and her mobile phone had long since lost all signal.

She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner, its heavy pendulum hanging silently. It was two o’clock in the morning. She knew she should rest, but Freya’s story had captivated her, pulling her deeper into its unsettling core. The entries grew more desperate, describing shadows that moved when she wasn’t looking, the feeling of being watched, and the constant, sneaky calling of her name.

A sudden, sharp crack tore through the air, shattering the quiet of the study. Willa jolted, her heart pounding in her chest. It sounded like a branch had snapped nearby, or maybe a shutter had finally given way to the storm. The oil lamp, which had been burning steadily, flickered at that moment, its flame shrinking to a tiny dot of light before blazing brighter than before. The old wiring in the house was unpredictable, always causing frustration. So Willa had resorted to using the oil lamps.

Willa gripped the edge of the mahogany desk, waiting for the residual vibrations to cease. She let out a slow, steady breath. Just the house. Just the storm. She told herself. The place was a sieve of ancient timber and frayed copper; any significant shift in temperature or wind pressure could cause the entire structure to groan, shudder, or snap something crucial.

The renewed, intense light from the lamp—now throwing hard, yellow shadows across the shelves—was almost worse than the sudden darkness. It gilded the spines of her leather-bound books and highlighted the dust motes dancing in the disturbed air.

She rose, pushing her heavy reading glasses up the bridge of her nose. The study was suffocatingly warm, a consequence of the archaic central heating, but as Willa took a cautious step toward the room’s only door, a prickle of gooseflesh rose on her arms.

The air had changed.

Then, suddenly, the lamp went out.

Not a flicker, not a fade. One moment, the room was bathed in its soft, golden glow; the next, it was swallowed whole by absolute, suffocating darkness. It wasn’t just the absence of light; it felt like a presence, thick and heavy, pressing in from all sides, deeper than any night she had ever known. The fire in the hearth, though still crackling, seemed to diminish, its warmth lost in the sudden, profound chill that swept through the room.

Willa gasped, a slight, involuntary sound. Her hands instinctively reached out, touching the rough wood of the desk to ground herself. Her eyes, vast and vacant, strained against the impenetrable darkness. Her heart pounded against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, ringing silence that followed the snap of the light. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath.

Then she heard it.

A whisper, like dry leaves skittering across cobblestones, but filled with a resonance that vibrated through her bones. It was impossibly close, right beside her ear, a breathy, drawn-out sound that caressed the syllables of her name.

“Willlll-llllllla.”

It wasn’t a question, greeting, or anything else — it was a declaration, a claim.

Willa froze, every muscle tensing. The blood left her face, making her skin feel tight and cold. Her mind, usually quick and sharp, grappled for a logical explanation. The wind? A trick of the old house? Or her own tired, overactive imagination, fueled by Freya’s chilling words?

No, this was different. It was right here. It was for her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, as if the act could summon light. It made no difference. The darkness was complete, a living, breathing thing that had swallowed the entire room. Her fingers, trembling fiercely, fumbled across the desk, desperately trying to find the ornate candlestick and the box of matches she kept there. Her breath hitched in her throat, catching on a silent scream.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, her voice a thin, reedy thing that barely carried beyond her lips. It sounded pitiful in the vast, oppressive black.

No answer. Only the unsettling silence, now louder, seemed to mock her. The fire, she noticed, was no longer crackling; it had dwindled to a few embers, its brief light now gone, as if its warmth couldn’t survive the sudden, suffocating cold.

She finally located the candlestick, her fingers brushing against the cold wax. The matchbox was tucked underneath. Clumsily and with trembling hands, she struck a match. It flared like a tiny, defiant sun, momentarily pushing back the darkness and casting long, dancing shadows. In its brief, sputtering light, she saw nothing out of place. The heavy bookshelves lined the walls, filled with centuries of forgotten lore. The worn rug stretched across the floor. The armchair sat empty by the silent fireplace.

But the light was too small, and the shadows were too deep. It was like trying to shine a flashlight into the ocean. The match burned down quickly, burning her fingertips before going out. The darkness rushed back in, thicker and colder than before.

Panic, cold and sharp, started to prick at the edges of her composure. She fumbled for another match, her vision blurry with unshed tears. Her hands were slick with sweat, making them clumsy. She heard a faint sound then, not a whisper, but a soft, dragging noise. It came from across the room, near the door. Slowly, deliberately, as if something heavy was being pulled across the floorboards.

Thump... drag... thump... drag... thump... drag... thump... drag.

Willa’s breath hitched. She wasn’t imagining it. It felt too real, too clear. She tried to tell herself it was just the wooden beams settling, an old house groaning during the storm. But the sound was inside her, not outside. It was in the study, with her.

She managed to light another match. This one burned a bit longer. Her eyes darted wildly, scanning the room, trying to pierce the gloom. The dragging sound had stopped. The room was empty. But as the match flared, she felt it – a sudden, icy gust of air, so cold it burned, winding around her ankles, then up her legs. It was as if someone had opened an unseen window directly into a Siberian winter.

And along with it, a faint, sickening odor. Damp earth, decaying leaves, and something else... something faintly metallic, like old blood.

The match went out.

Total darkness once again. The cold lingered with her, soaking into her clothes and freezing her to the bone.

She lit a third match, her hand trembling so much that the flame flickered wildly, casting a dizzying kaleidoscope of fleeting shadows. She glanced toward the door, then at the bookshelf. She spun around, desperately trying to catch sight of anything.

And then she saw it or felt it—a density in the air, a presence right behind the armchair by the fireplace. A shadow that was too deep, too still. It didn't move, but she sensed its immense gravity and absolute stillness. Cold radiated from it, spreading outward—a silent, predatory hum.

Fear, raw and primal, flooded through her, obscuring all reason. She had to get out. She had to leave the study.

She knew the door was about ten feet to her left. She took a cautious step, then another, slowly moving around the desk, her hand still clutching the fragile, flickering match. Her foot brushed something on the floor—a book. She had dropped it.

As she bent down to pick it up, something brushed her cheek—a faint, airy sensation like a spider's web, but chillingly solid. She recoiled with a strangled cry, dropping the match. It went out with a tiny hiss, plunging her back into total, terrifying darkness.

She shrieked, a raw, ragged sound, as the icy touch shifted to a cold caress, sliding down her neck and resting on her shoulder. The smell of damp earth and decay grew stronger, filling her nostrils and choking her.

“Freya,” she gasped, the name spilling out unbidden—a desperate plea or an accusation, she didn’t know which.

The whispers returned, closer this time, swirling around her—a chorus of hissing voices that seemed to come from the very walls, the floorboards, and the darkness itself. Her name, Willa, wove through them, stretched and distorted, sometimes sounding like a sob, sometimes like a mocking laugh.

'Willa... you know my story..."

The voice was no longer a whisper but a harsh, grating murmur vibrating in her skull. It felt as if it was inside her head, not just in the room.

She lunged forward, blindly stumbling toward what she thought was the door. Her fingers scraped against the cold, smooth surface of a bookshelf, causing several books to fall to the floor with a loud crash. She heard a faint, guttural laugh coming from the darkness.

She reached for the doorframe, her hand trembling as she grasped the doorknob. It was cold, metallic, and smooth under her shaky grip. She turned it and pulled with all her strength.

It didn’t budge.

She pulled again, pushing her weight against it, but it was stuck tightly, as if sealed and fused to the frame. Despair, thick and suffocating, began to overtake her. She was trapped, stuck in the dark with… it.

“You read my words, Willa. You brought me back.” The voice was now unmistakable, singular and deeply female, yet tinged with an ancient, unbearable sorrow. “They locked me here. But you… You opened the door.

Willa pressed her back against the door and slid down until she was crouched on the floor, pulling her knees to her chest as she tried to make herself as small as possible. Tears streamed down her face, hot trails on cold skin.

She remembered Freya’s final, frantic journal entry. The last hurriedly written words, nearly illegible, described how her name was called and how darkness overtook her.

“I am no longer Freya,” the entry had concluded. “I am the shadows. I am the silence. I am the voice that calls.”

Willa’s voice was a silent gasp. Freya Blackwood didn’t just vanish; she was consumed. And now, it was happening again.

The cold was unbearable, a heavy weight pressing down on her and stealing her breath. She sensed an invisible presence kneeling before her, a suffocating closeness she couldn't escape. The smell of damp earth and decay grew stronger, filling her lungs.

A whisper, closer than ever, brushed her hair. This time, it wasn’t her name. It was another.

“Freya.”

And Willa, trembling uncontrollably in the pitch dark, heard it again. A faint echo, not from the entity but from within her own mind—a voice that sounded eerily like her own, whispering back into the cold, damp air.

“Willa.”

The darkness swallowed her, deeper than any night and colder than a tomb. The room grew silent, except for the faint, mournful whisper that now seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere—a whisper carrying two names, forever linked.