A Victorian Ghost Story

In the days that followed their arrival at the house, which now seemed all the more cavernous and isolated on its shrouded moor, rumors flew from one set of lips to the next among the staff.

The master himself seemed a kind enough man; he was handsome, charming, but meticulously attentive, even subservient, some said, to the real subject of their speculation: his wife, a woman of such delicate constitution that she was rarely seen risen from her sickbed. Her fragile condition demanded she take her waking hours only in the night, to protect her failing eyesight and pallid complexion, and the master was more than happy to attend her in this. Often, the only new resident the daytime servants would see was the new mistress's personal nurse, a tall, dark-haired woman who peered around corners and walked with footfalls no louder than a cat's; but the night staff was well acquainted with the new master and mistress as well (it was unclear whether the nurse ever slept).

To those few who spoke to the mistress, her manner was gentle and mild, as befit any lady of breeding. But from time to time- though not often, for he was loath to leave his invalid lady- the young master would take leave, for hours at a time, or even days. Clearly, many said, the mistress was simply an unfortunate soul in the thrall of some form of hysteria, for in his absence, she would walk the echoing halls in the dead of night, her hair floating about her head like the aureole of some wild-eyed saint, her supposedly-faltering vision able to spot far more in the deep shadows than the reasonable mind could even guess at. Swathed in her white gown and a trailing shawl, lit only by the hissing gutter of a kerosene lamp, she was every inch an unearthly apparition.

But of all the rumors that loosed themselves in that time, none would speak of the occasional day-long bouts of anaemia suffered by the chambermaids who had attended the mistress's room the previous night. Nor would there be talk of her cold touch; the unsettling gleam of her eyes that seemed almost bestial in the dark; nor the unmistakeable tip of a fang barely visible inside her tiny, livid, doll-like mouth. Those words- and the terror behind them- remained in shadow as dark and deep as the ones that haunted the corridors at night.

Oh look there's some writing that went with this one! Please be kind- this is a rare venture for me.
Claris, swooping creepily around her and Leland's mist-shrouded manor house on the English moors. Because this is what's done when you're a creature of the night. XD