Emilia's drawing

Chapter 10 – Emilia's Drawing

Ava Carter’s POV

Sleep evaded me.

Even after Damon walked me back to my room and lingered at the threshold like he was afraid of what might come if he stayed, I couldn’t shut my eyes without seeing her. The woman. The one who stood at my window. The one who whispered through the cracks in the house. The one who kissed Damon before she died—Isobel.

She was real. She had a story. A tragedy buried beneath years of silence, and now her presence pulsed through the walls, waiting. Watching.

When dawn finally crept in through the slats in the heavy curtains, I dressed quickly and padded down the hallway barefoot. The house was unusually quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm but before the damage is revealed.

I found Emilia in the sunroom, hunched over a stack of paper. Her fingers clutched a crayon with fierce intensity, strokes slashing across the page with emotion far too raw for a child.

She didn’t look up as I approached.

"Emilia?"

She kept drawing, her small hand trembling slightly. Her eyes were hollow, dark circles beneath them.

I sat beside her on the bench. "What are you drawing?"

Still, she didn’t answer. So I gently reached for one of the pages and turned it toward me.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was the nursery. The same broken crib. The same candlelight flickering in a shadowy corner. But in the middle of the room stood a woman—a tall figure with long black hair and empty, hollow eyes. Blood dripped from her fingers like ink.

"Did you dream this?" I asked softly.

She finally nodded.

"She was crying again. And... she was angry. Really angry. She said someone stole her name."

I froze. "Stole her name? What does that mean?"

Emilia looked up at me. Her eyes looked older than they should’ve. "She said I’m not the first one he brought here."

Goosebumps rose across my arms. "Did she tell you her name?"

Emilia nodded slowly. "She said her name was Ava."

My heart slammed against my ribs.

"That can’t be... that’s my name."

Emilia looked confused. "But she said it was hers first."

Before I could ask anything else, Damon appeared in the doorway. His eyes flicked between us, then settled on the drawing in my hands.

His expression darkened.

"Enough, Emilia. Go upstairs."

She didn’t argue. She slid off the bench and walked slowly out of the room, her head down.

I stood. "She’s terrified. Damon, that drawing—"

"I know what it is. And I know what it means," he said coldly. "This house is infecting her. It’s feeding her things she should never see."

"Then why are we still here?"

He clenched his jaw. "Because I don’t know if it’ll let us leave."

"You’re telling me a building has that kind of power?"

"I’m telling you whatever lives in it does."

I stared at him, my heart pounding. I wanted to demand answers, but something in his voice told me this wasn’t just fear—it was knowledge. Experience.

He stepped toward me. "We have to keep her safe. We have to stop giving this house more reasons to latch onto her. And that means no more questions."

"You can’t expect me to just ignore everything."

His voice lowered. "No. But I expect you to stay alive."

Later that day, I returned to the hidden room.

I had to understand what Emilia’s drawing meant. Why the woman said her name was Ava. Why it felt like the house had been waiting for me long before I stepped through its doors.

I flipped through the journal again. The entries were disjointed, fevered. They grew more chaotic as the pages went on.

July 2, 1986.

He lied to me. He said I would be safe. But I hear them through the mirror. They call me by different names now. Sometimes I forget which one is mine.

The mirror doesn’t show me anymore. Just her. Always her.

She smiles when I bleed.

I shivered.

I walked toward the antique mirror propped in the corner of the room. It was cracked down the middle, its frame dust-covered and weathered.

But my reflection wasn’t what stared back.

Instead, it was a woman—eyes hollow, mouth curled into a crooked smile, one hand pressed against the glass like she wanted to push through.

She looked like me.

I stumbled back, heart racing. The image blinked, then vanished, leaving only my wide-eyed reflection.

I turned and fled the room, crashing into Damon in the hallway.

"She’s in the mirror," I gasped. "She looks like me. Damon, she said her name is Ava."

He grabbed my shoulders. "You have to stop going in there. Every time you do, she gets stronger."

"Why me? Why is she using my name?"

His expression twisted with pain. "Because she’s not just any ghost. She’s the one they tried to erase. And I think she was my sister."

I stared at him in shock. "You said her name was Isobel."

He hesitated. "That’s what my parents told me. But the journal... the entries... they never mention that name. And the woman Emilia sees—the one you saw—she’s calling herself Ava."

My blood ran cold. "Then who am I?"

Damon stepped closer, his voice hoarse. "Someone the house called back. Maybe by coincidence. Maybe not. But if she sees you as a threat, she’ll try to take you."

The mirror’s image burned behind my eyes.

Later that night, I dreamed of the mirror again. Of hands reaching through the glass. Of someone whispering my name in a voice that sounded like mine.

When I woke, Emilia was standing at the edge of my bed, clutching a piece of paper.

"She said you have to see this," she whispered.

She handed me the drawing.

It was me. Standing in front of the mirror.

But in the reflection—it wasn’t.

It was her.

The woman who bled from her eyes.

The woman who smiled with my mouth.

The woman who whispered in the dark.

And underneath the drawing were four words, scrawled in jagged letters:

"Let me come through."