The estate of Blackwood Manor was a rotting tooth in the jaw of the Mississippi Delta. The moss hung from the oaks like funeral veils, and the air was a thick, humid soup of decay. I have served the Blackwood family for forty years, and I have seen the way the house eats its inhabitants.

Young Julian was the last of the line, a man of fragile nerves and an obsession with the occult. When he brought Clara home, the house seemed to hold its breath. She was a creature of light and laughter, a stark contrast to the grey shadows of the manor. For a while, her presence acted as a balm, and Julian seemed to find a precarious balance.

But the manor does not like balance. It prefers the slow slide into madness.

I watched them from the corners of the rooms, a silent fixture of the architecture. I saw the way Julian's love turned into a desperate, clutching thing. He began to suspect that the house was trying to steal her away, and in his effort to protect her, he began to isolate her. He locked the library; he forbade her from walking in the gardens after dusk. He loved her with a violence that looked like devotion.

Clara's laughter faded, replaced by a hollow, echoing silence. She became a ghost before she ever left.

The afternoon she departed, the sky was the color of a bruise. She didn't scream or fight. She simply walked to the front door, carrying a single suitcase. Julian was on his knees, begging her to stay, promising to burn the house down if it would make her feel safe.

"The house isn't the problem, Julian," she whispered, her voice as dry as autumn leaves. "You are the house."

She stepped out into the humid air and disappeared into the grey mist of the Delta. Julian did not follow. He retreated into the depths of the manor, locking himself in the master bedroom. He spent the next ten years talking to the walls, convinced that Clara was still there, hiding in the wallpaper, whispering secrets to the dust.

I continued to clean the rooms, to polish the silver, and to watch as the mold claimed the ceilings. I remember the way the house seemed to sigh with satisfaction when the door finally closed behind her. In the end, Julian became just another piece of the furniture, a hollow man in a hollow house, waiting for a guest who would never return.

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