"As I stumbled bleeding onto the mansion's moonlit lawns, I dared a glance back at that accursed portrait of Eliza Grey, her emerald eyes now seeming to glow with a sinister light. And as a cold wind whipped through the empty galleries, I could have sworn I heard her ghostly voice utter a final warning: 'All who look upon my face shall know the cold hand of death upon their shoulders...and mine shall be the last face they ever see.'"
I stumbled upon the Greylock Estate completely by chance, while searching for a secluded place to spend the summer writing my new novel. As an author struggling with writer's block, I hoped the solitude of the old mansion deep in the countryside would help inspire me. Little did I know what I would uncover during my stay, and the horrors that would awaken inside Greylock’s walls.
When I first arrived, I was struck by the estate’s beauty—the sprawling gardens, the towering oak trees, the elegant curving staircases inside the stately stone mansion. It looked like something out of a gothic novel, both romantic and eerie at the same time. The real estate agent told me its last occupant had died over fifty years ago, and since then the house sat forgotten,home only to dust and memories.
The agent also mentioned, almost as an afterthought, the story of Eliza Grey. She had been one of the mansion’s inhabitants during the late 1800s. A stunning oil painting of her still hung in the upstairs portrait gallery—a beautiful, arresting image of a young woman with long golden curls and piercing green eyes. According to legend, Eliza vanished from the house without a trace while still a young woman. No one knew if she had run away, been murdered, or simply disappeared. Her fate remained a mystery to this day.
In my curiosity, I eagerly toured the portrait gallery when I first moved in. The massive room held paintings of Grey family ancestors dating back hundreds of years. But it was the portrait of Eliza Grey that drew me in. Her emerald eyes followed me as I walked past, giving me an unsettled feeling in my stomach—almost like she knew me. Or wanted something from me.
I laughed at myself for being spooked by a silly portrait and got settled into the master suite just down the hall. I hung up my clothes, set up my laptop on the antique writing desk, and gazed out the window at the gardens below. It was perfect. I brewed a pot of tea, eager to outline ideas for my new novel’s characters and plot.
That first night, I dreamed about Eliza Grey. In the dream, I stood with her in the overgrown garden, surrounded by roses in full bloom. But Eliza kept glancing back at the house, wide-eyed with fear. When I asked what frightened her, all she said was, “Someone’s watching...” Before I could see who she meant, I woke with a start, moonlight filtering through my curtains.
Shaking off the unsettling vision, I descended to the kitchen for breakfast. To my surprise, I found a silver platter laid out with scones, butter, and an ornate tea set. Confused, I called the estate agent to ask if he had come to the house this morning. But he had no idea what I was talking about. Uneasy, I started to wonder if I was really alone in this empty old mansion. As the long-forgotten Eliza had warned...someone was watching me.
I decided to throw myself into my work and forget the strange events. But over the next few days, more incidents continued. Doors opened and closed by themselves. Books fell off shelves. And every night I dreamed about Eliza—always frightened, always tries to warn me away from Greylock. One dawn I awoke to find muddy footsteps in the kitchen...ending at the wall, as if the intruder had vanished into thin air.
Terrified, I decided I had to leave. But each time I tried, a winter storm would inexplicably blow in, trapping me there for days. It was summer, such weather made no sense. Unless something wanted me to stay.
I stopped sleeping, stopped eating. During the days I wandered the mansion, jumping at every creaking floorboard. At night I pored over old documents I found in the attic, learning things that turned my blood to ice...terrible secrets about the Grey family history. Disappearances, illnesses, deaths under mysterious circumstances. And Eliza’s face watching me everywhere, eyes pleading.
One night, close to breaking point, I grabbed a fire iron and smashed her portrait. Eliza’s mouth twisted into a scream as shards rained down. A strange energy pulsed through my hands into me—a ghostly wind swirling around the room, extinguishing lights. A darkness crept over my vision...and suddenly I was Eliza, cowering as huge male hands reached toward my throat—
I collapsed, coming back to the present. I lay gasping among the wreckage of the painting. Now I understood Eliza’s fate. Someone had murdered her here...and trapped her spirit for eternity.
I told myself I had to flee the mansion the next morning. But I woke to find myself in a four-poster bed from another century. My modern clothes replaced by a Victorian nightgown. No electricity, no laptop...no way to reach the outside world. The frozen winter storm raged outside.
Footsteps creaked down the hall toward my room—a tall, looming silhouette of a man holding something. As terror gripped me, I knew I was no longer fully in 2019. The ghost of Eliza had pulled me back into her world—a world where a killer roamed these halls. I was now Eliza, reliving her last moments. The only way to escape was to avoid her fate...or history would repeat itself yet again.
*****
The doorknob turned slowly. I leapt from the four-poster bed, frantically looking around for an escape or weapon. Heavy boots creaked on the wooden floor as a tall, broad-shouldered man entered, face obscured by shadow.
"Eliza," he said, voice low and calm despite the panic on my face. "Do not be afraid, my love. I would never hurt you."
He stepped into a shaft of moonlight and I recoiled in horror. His handsome face seemed normal, even kind, but madness glinted in his grey eyes. In his hands he held a long velvet robe, trailing to the ground.
"Tonight is a special night," he crooned. "Here, let me dress you."
He approached with the robe held open. I backed away, throat tightening as I hit the stone wall. I had nowhere to run. The man frowned.
"Do not fight me, Eliza! It will only make this more difficult."
I shook my head, opening my mouth to scream. But only a whimper emerged. Something about him paralyzed me with fear. As he strode forward and wrapped the robe's velvety darkness around me, icy dread coursed through my veins. The soft fabric embraced me like a straitjacket.
"There now, that wasn't so bad!" He smiled gently and took my hand. I wanted to wrench away but my muscles wouldn't obey. Willing or not, he led me into the shadowy hallway. Fear blurred my vision as he guided me downstairs through the empty mansion, our route lit only by the flickering glow of his oil lantern.
At last we came to a small wooden door near the servants’ quarters I had never noticed before. The man pulled a brass key from his frockcoat and unlocked it. A rush of cold, damp air embraced me as he urged me down a crumbling stone staircase. I gasped, emerging into what looked like a medieval dungeon—chains dangling from walls, rough stone floors glistening with moisture, smells of mold and decay. My hyperventilating breaths echoed in the small room.
“Do you like it?” the man whispered. “I prepared it just for us. For tonight.” He lifted me effortlessly up onto a stone slab table in the room’s center. I summoned all my strength to struggle but the velvet robe held me fast. Binding my arms and legs to rings on the slab, he produced a silver syringe from his coat. I thrashed my head wildly but he grasped my hair, holding me still as he slid the needle into my neck. I tried to scream but no sound came out.
Warm, thick blackness seeped into my veins, slowly paralyzing my muscles. Soon I could barely keep my head upright or eyes open. Through the haze I saw him pull up a stool beside my helpless form. He gazed down at me almost lovingly and brushed a strand of hair from my face.
“Oh, my Naomi,” he murmured. “You should not have struggled. But even now, I forgive you.”
Naomi...my real name. Which meant...this killer somehow knew me in the future. A fresh shock of horror jolted through me. I had to escape!
Summoning all my energy, I forced my wrists to twist against the bonds. But I was too weak to free myself. Visions swirled before my eyes—grisly images of the future mixing with Eliza’s last moments. I saw this man hovering over other victims...stalking a woman through modern streets...that woman was me! His obsession had followed me through time itself.
“It did not have to end this way, my love,” he sighed, caressing my face with cold fingers. “I only wanted you at my side eternally. But you left me no choice. We could have been so happy!”
His calm facade finally cracked, mouth twisting with fury and anguish. Gripping a long silver scalpel, he raised it over me. Moonlight glinted off the blade edged with crusted blood.
“Perhaps in death you will finally be mine!”
I stared up as the scalpel arced downward, bracing for the final blow. But just before it met my flesh, a phantom image flickered before my eyes...Eliza gazing down at me from her portrait. Behind those green eyes burned ferocious purpose.
In that moment I realized—she had brought me here to make things right. I now possessed the power she had lacked....the power to change fate itself!
With herculean effort, I forced paralyzed hands upward against their restraints. My fingertips brushed the scalpel as it fell. The blade spun from the killer’s grasp and skittered across the floor, swallowed by shadows.
The man’s look of shock quickly turned to fury. “What trickery is this?” He ransacked a drawer for another weapon, not seeing my hands inch closer to the one I needed most...an iron incense censer on a nearby shelf. I didn’t have strength to lift it, but I could pull it closer...and let gravity do the rest of the work...
With my last ounce of energy, I closed bloodless fingers around its iron handle and pulled with all I had. For one heart-stopping second, it teetered at the shelf’s edge...then toppled straight for the killer’s hooded head. A sickening crack echoed off stone walls as it met its mark.
I watched the man’s body convulse, then go still. Crimson leaked across the floor from the mortal head wound. The ghostly drug was fading now, feeling slowly returning to my limbs. With enormous effort I pulled free from my loosened bonds, every muscle burning. I rose unsteadily to my feet, shock settling in at how close I had come to death in this very room. Eliza had saved my life...somehow she had changed her own grim fate.
I stared down at the killer’s corpse. In different circumstances I might have pitied him. But any vestige of humanity had long since rotted away inside of him. Death was too kind a punishment...yet at least his demon could haunt these mansion halls no more.
I stumbled upstairs into the night air, my only thought to get as far from Greylock as possible. But as I emerged onto the sweeping front lawns, the frozen winter storm was suddenly gone. Warm summer breeze ruffled my hair—I was back in the present! I fell to my knees weeping among fireflies and moonlit rose gardens. I was finally free of Greylock’s living nightmare.
Later in shock, I managed to call the authorities. I told them only part of the truth...that I had found grisly remains while investigating the property’s history. It was enough to bring police to scour the estate. Inside the hidden basement chamber, forensic results showed bones dating back centuries—dozens of victims slaughtered by the Grey family’s legacy of madness.
The killer’s modern identity died with his ancestor’s crumbling bones. No one could trace his acts back through the decades to my brush with becoming another phantom trapped in Greylock’s cursed history.
I soon left rural life behind me. But the nightmares from my stay at Greylock will forever haunt my own legacy now...passed down through my words into stories, immortalized on these printed pages you now hold in your hands. For though I survived Greylock Estate, I fear a sliver of its darkness will always dwell inside me now, never letting me fully escape its grasp...
I pray no one else will ever have to endure the horrors I did at the hands of obsession born from a love turned tragically wrong. Let the ghosts of Greylock remain trapped in the past where they belong, forgotten by all but the damned...