The shadowed passage rested at the heart of a forgotten manor,
Past the majestic hall and beneath the stairs,
Where time had left its mark in cold and dark layers,
Thick with decay and secrets, it bore.
A single candle’s dim light flickered,
Casting grotesque shapes upon the ornate walls,
Forms that moved and twisted eerily,
With a life of their own in the shadows’ thrall.
As one ventured deeper, chills gripped the bones,
The oppressive silence was broken by a drip,
The uneven floor, worn smooth by countless feet,
Whispers rose like cold breath to nip.
In the heart of the passage loomed a door,
Marred by scratches from desperate attempts to flee,
Pushing it open revealed a small, dark room,
Dusty shelves and a chair facing the dark sea.
From the depths of shadows, a figure emerged,
More an absence of light than a form,
Gliding silently with eerie grace,
Its face was shown briefly with sorrow forlorn.
Suddenly, the door slammed shut,
The candle’s light extinguished in the obscurity,
The whispers crescendoed into a cacophony,
The figure reached out, and then it all went slack.
The noise ceased as quickly as it had begun,
The room remained empty save for a faint, eerie trace,
The passage, once silent and foreboding,
Now hummed with echoes of a haunting embrace.
A chill swept through the manor’s very bones,
As if the walls themselves were breathing deep,
Ancient echoes as remembrances of forgotten moans,
In the shadows where the restless spirits slept.
The ceiling’s beams, aged and cracked, groaned faintly,
Their weight seemed almost unbearable,
Casting elongated, spectral and unsettling shades,
A spectacle of the eerily intangible.
In the far corner, a mirror stood covered in dust and fear,
Reflecting only darkness and fading light,
Its glass was a gateway to another time,
Where memories twisted in the heart of each night.
Steps lingered in the silence, slow and measured,
Each echo was a relic of the passage’s curse,
A place where past and present were forever tethered,
A labyrinth of sighs, haunted and immersed.
Esther Elizabeth Racah
