The Waiting

In the crooked hills where mist coiled around the abandoned house like the grip of forgotten hands, there stood a place no one dared go near. It was said that once, long ago, a woman lived there, thin as winter’s breath, waiting by the window every dusk for someone who’d vanished without a trace. Her name was Evelyn, and in town, they spoke of her as if she were still there, lingering between walls and whispers, a presence woven into the house’s rotting bones.

Once, she’d been a singer, her voice thick with longing, an instrument made for dark corners and shadowed halls. She sang for a man, a drifter who blew in one cold autumn evening like a raven on the wind, eyes wild, stories deeper than the night sky. He promised her things too precious to name, tales too rich to be real, and she believed him. In that fragile way lovers do, Evelyn gave her heart to his fierce, fractured soul.

Then, as often happens with ghosts and wild men, he disappeared. Days turned to years, and she remained, clutching his absence like a bone-deep ache, her songs growing faint and low, her voice dissolving like fog into air. The town watched her with a mixture of pity and dread, for though they never saw her after, they felt her presence in that house, a thing drawn like blood through stone.

One night, years later, a weary traveller with eyes heavy with his own grief passed through the village…