Nia Johnson had known nothing but struggle. At nineteen, she was already exhausted—working double shifts at the diner, coming home to a sick mother and hungry siblings, praying the landlord wouldn’t kick them out before she could scrape together rent. So when elderly Reginald Harrington, with his fine suits and eerie calm, offered her a way out, she took it.
“Marry me,” he said, “and your family will never want for anything again.The wedding was quick, quiet. No white dress, no celebration—just a courthouse, a signature, and a diamond ring that felt like a shackle.Harrington Manor was a sprawling, gothic thing, all creaking floors and shadowed corners. Mr. Harrington was polite but distant, disappearing for hours into his study. The housekeeper, Mrs. Peabody, watched Nia with cold, knowing eyes.For ten days, Nia wandered the too-quiet halls, jumping at every whisper of the wind. Then, on the tenth night, a storm rattled the windows, and she heard it—a thump from the attic.Curiosity dragged her up the narrow stairs. The door was slightly ajar. Inside, beneath layers of dust, sat an old chest. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the lid.
Newspaper clippings.
“Bride of Wealthy Businessman Vanishes on Honeymoon.”
“Third Wife of Reginald Harrington Declared Dead—No Body Found.”
Nia’s stomach twisted. She was his fifth wife.
Beneath the clippings lay a leather-bound journal. She flipped it open, her breath catching at the scrawled words:
“The ritual requires a young bride. Her vitality will sustain me. The transfusion must be done under the full moon.”
A floorboard creaked behind her.
Mr. Harrington stood in the doorway, a curved knife glinting in his hand. His eyes, once dull with age, now burned with something hungry.
“You weren’t supposed to find this yet,” he sighed.
Nia ran.
The house seemed to twist around her—doors locked, hallways endless. Mrs. Peabody appeared at the end of the corridor, grinning. “He always likes it when they run,” she crooned. “Makes the blood richer.”
With nowhere else to go, Nia crashed through the door of the forbidden east wing—and froze.
Three women sat chained to the walls, their skin sallow, their eyes hollow. The youngest lifted her head. “You’re the new one,” she whispered. “He doesn’t kill us. He feeds.”
Nia’s hands shook as she fumbled with their chains. Outside, thunder boomed. The full moon was in three days.
yesNia’s fingers slipped on the rusted chains as she fought to free the other wives. The oldest one—Cora, with sunken cheeks and wild eyes—grabbed her wrist.
“The knife,” she rasped. “It’s not steel. It’s bone. His first wife’s thighbone.”
Nia recoiled, but Cora’s grip tightened. “That’s why the locks won’t hold him. That’s why he never dies. He’s been feeding on us for decades.”
A floorboard groaned downstairs. Heavy footsteps.
Mrs. Peabody’s voice floated up, saccharine sweet. “Mr. Harrington? She’s in the east wing with the others. Just like you said she’d be.”
Nia’s pulse roared in her ears. The youngest captive—Lila, no older than sixteen—pressed a rusted nail into her palm. “When he comes for you,” she whispered, “aim for the left eye. It’s still human.”
The door burst open.
Mr. Harrington stood haloed in candlelight, but his shadow… his shadow stretched wrong, twisting up the walls like smoke. The bone knife glowed faintly blue.
“You’ll last longer than the others,” he murmured, stepping forward. “I can taste your fear. It’s exquisite.”
Nia lunged.
The nail found its mark.
Harrington screamed—a sound that shook the house to its foundations—as black sludge poured from his eye socket. The wives shrieked as his skin began to slough off, revealing something glistening and pale beneath.
Mrs. Peabody staggered back, her pleasant mask finally cracking. “You bitch,” she spat. “Do you know how long it took to—”
Cora’s chain whipped out, wrapping around the housekeeper’s throat. “Longer than you’ve got left,” she snarled.
The house itself began to groan. Portraits bled black tears. The floorboards split like rotten fruit as Harrington’s true form emerged—a hunched, hairless thing with too many joints, its mouth a gaping m
needle teeth.
Lila laughed hysterically. “He’s pretty when he’s hungry!”
Nia grabbed the bone knife from where it had fallen. It burned her palm, whispering in a dozen women’s voices.
Harrington lunged.
She plunged the blade into his remaining eye.
The house screamed.
Walls cracked. Windows shattered. The attic chest burst open, releasing a storm of newspaper clippings that swirled like vengeful ghosts.
When the dust settled, Nia stood amid the wreckage with three skeletal women clinging to her arms. Their chains had crumbled to rust.
Mrs. Peabody’s corpse stared at the ceiling, her throat a ruin of blackened flesh.
Of Harrington, there was no sign.
Only the bone knife remained, now stained crimson.
Cora licked her cracked lips. “Well, girl? You’re the mistress of the house now.” She nudged the knife with a bare foot. “And we all know what this can do.”
Outside, the storm broke.
Somewhere in the city, Nia’s mother sat up in bed, suddenly breathing easier.
And deep beneath the ruined manor, something old and hungry stirred.
The Blood Bride’s Reign
he townsfolk whispered about Harrington Manor long after the storm passed. Some swore they saw shadows moving behind the boarded-up windows. Others claimed the old gate would swing open at midnight, inviting the desperate inside.
Nia never returned to her family.
Instead, she wore Mrs. Peabody’s keys around her neck and kept the bone knife in her sleeve. The other wives—now plump with stolen vitality—painted their lips black and smiled whenever rich men came calling.
“We don’t turn anyone away,” Nia would say, pouring tea laced with belladonna. “After all… we know what it’s like to be hungry.”
The attic chest filled with new clippings.
And deep below the house, the thing that had once been Reginald Harrington waited, its hollow voice slithering through the walls:
“You’ll need more than bones to fill me, daughter.”
Nia just smiled, sharp as the knife in her hand.
“Don’t worry, Father.”
“The moon’s almost full.”
