Bastien stared at the canvas, the brush frozen in his grip. The black smudge on the painted face pulsed, not with light, but with an absence of it, a hollow that seemed to drink the very air from the room. A draft seeped through the warped window sash, prickling his skin even though the studio air hung dead and still. This wasn’t a trick of the light or a flaw in his technique. This was a statement. “A person,” Léonie whispered, her voice a thin, reedy echo in his mind, laced with an awful wonder. “Not a shadow. A person stood there.” He dropped the brush onto the paint-splattered palette with a clatter. “Someone pushed you.” The words tasted like ash. The painting, a window to a forgotten horror, solidified the terrifying truth Léonie had only hinted at. He had seen the fall; now he saw the hand that began it. “I don’t remember,” she said, the words strained. “Only the cold, the suddenness. And then… the floor.” Fragmented images tore across his peripheral vision—a flash of violet cloth, a tilt of the ceiling, a wet snap against marble. He winced, rubbing his temples. “We need to find out who pushed you,” Bastien said, setting his teeth. “And who *you* were. There has to be something in this house. Letters, a diary, anything.” “My room,” Léonie offered immediately, a spark of something like purpose in her voice. “The one with the stained-glass window. It overlooked the north garden.” He nodded, pushing away from the easel. The painting of the fall, of the obscured figure, seemed to watch them as they left the studio, a silent, menacing sentinel. They moved through the silence of the corridor, each plank groaning under Bastien’s boots like dry timber under a pry bar. Léonie’s presence felt like a constant, gentle pressure behind his eyes, guiding him. He felt her shift, a subtle pull towards a less used wing of the second floor. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light piercing the grimy windows, illuminating peeling wallpaper and faded tapestries hanging from the lath like rotted hemp. “Here,” Léonie breathed. Bastien stopped before a door of dark, unvarnished oak. The wood was deeply gouged near the handle, as if something had once tried to claw its way out. He pushed it open, revealing a room shrouded in a thick pall of dust. The air was stale, smelling of old paper and forgotten things. The stained-glass window Léonie mentioned was there, its intricate floral pattern muted by years of neglect, casting weak, colored lozenges onto the warped pine. He stepped inside, his boots crunching on fallen plaster. The room was sparsely furnished: a heavy wooden bed frame, stripped of its mattress, a small, elegant dressing table with a tarnished mirror, and a bookshelf overflowing with mildewed tomes. On the dressing table, beneath a film of dust so thick it looked like grey velvet, sat a small, locked wooden box. And beside it, a slim, leather-bound book. “My diary,” Léonie murmured, a ghost of a memory stirring within her. “I kept it under the loose floorboard, but… it’s out now.” A tiny ripple of unease passed through Bastien. An intruder had pried this open; another hand had lifted it into the light. He picked up the diary. The leather was supple, surprisingly well-preserved beneath the dust. Its pages were delicate, yellowed. He opened it carefully, the faint scent of dried lavender rising from the brittle paper. The handwriting was neat, flowing, the ink a faded sepia. The entries were mostly mundane: observations about the weather in Brumeport, descriptions of new wildflowers in the garden, a few melancholic poems about the sea. Then, he found it. A page, near the middle, where the ink bled slightly as if the pen had been pressed too hard. A name, written over and over, sometimes underlined, sometimes circled with a furious, desperate hand: *Héloïse. Héloïse. Héloïse.* The pattern repeated on subsequent pages, interspersed with increasingly frantic-sounding questions: *Why won’t she listen? What does she want? She knows. She knows.* Bastien felt a prickling sensation on his neck. “Who is Héloïse, Léonie?” he asked, his voice low. “Do you remember her?” Léonie’s presence faltered, a desperate scramble of confusion. “Héloïse? The name… it’s like a bell. Ringing. But… I can’t grasp it. Just a feeling of… closeness. And then… betrayal.” Her whisper became a frustrated wail in his mind, a sound of profound loss. “I can’t see her face.” “Don’t push it,” Bastien advised, closing the diary. “It’s enough for now. Héloïse. A name connected to you, and to distress.” He tucked the diary carefully under his arm. This was the first concrete lead. This was a thread they could pull. Night fell with the typical Brumeport swiftness, cloaking the manor in impenetrable darkness. Bastien had retired to his makeshift bedroom, the diary safely hidden. The air grew progressively colder, a deep, penetrating chill that no amount of roaring fire in the hearth seemed to alleviate. It was a cold that settled not on the skin, but in the bones, a psychic frost that made the hair on his arms stand on end. He drifted toward sleep until a scream sheared through the dark corridors. It was no phantom whisper, nor the settling of old joists. It was Céline. Raw, terrified. Bastien swung his legs off the cot and hit the cold runner at a run. He flung open his door, the cold air rushing in like a solid entity. He sprinted down the hallway, navigating the drafty corridor by memory, the bare wood freezing against the soles of his feet. Another sound, a choked sob, guided him to Céline’s door. He burst into her room. Céline was thrashing in her bed, tangled in her sheets, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her stare fixed on the empty corner of the ceiling, glassy and blind to the candle-glow. Tears streamed down her face, and her small hands clawed at the air as if trying to push something away. “Céline! What is it?” Bastien cried, rushing to her side. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly, feeling her tremble violently. Her skin was clammy, ice-cold. “It took them,” she whimpered, her voice a fragile reed. “My memories… the colors… it took them. It was so cold, Bastien. So dark. It was everywhere.” She buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing, her words a jumble of fear and confusion. “The picnic by the river… the old boat… it’s all gone. Just a blank space.” Bastien held her, rocking her gently, a fierce protectiveness rising within him. He felt the insidious cold radiating from her, a chill that had nothing to do with the external temperature. It was an internal void, a heavy hollow settling behind his own ribs. And then, Léonie’s voice, clear and chillingly certain, cut through his mind. “That’s what it feels like… That’s how I died.”

A Touch of Malice