The Cold Breath on My Neck

My cousin Marcus had always spoken of our family’s decaying estate as a place of echoes. He claimed the walls held memories, and the floorboards remembered every footstep that had ever crossed them. I, a skeptic with a fondness for logic, agreed to accompany him one autumn afternoon to the old Highmore House, a sprawling Victorian relic nestled in a valley that seemed to swallow the sun. Marcus handed me a worn flashlight and a small, leather-bound journal—not the Bible I’d imagined, but something far older, filled with faded script and pressed leaves.

As twilight crept through the broken windows, casting long fingers of shadow across the dusty parlor, Marcus began to tell me of our great-uncle Theo, a reclusive artist who had vanished in the house in the 1920s. ‘They say he never left,’ Marcus whispered, his eyes darting toward the dark hallway that led to the west wing. ‘They say he still paints, and if you listen closely, you can hear his brush against the canvas.’ I laughed, dismissing it as family folklore, but a cold draft slithered up my spine, raising the hairs on my neck.

Marcus decided to search for old photographs in the library, leaving me alone in the parlor. I wandered to the hallway, its walls lined with peeling wallpaper that depicted faded scenes of hunting dogs and herons. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the groan of settling timbers. Then I heard it: a rhythmic scratch, like nails on wood, coming from the far end of the corridor. My heart hammered. This was real. I called out to Marcus, but my voice was swallowed by the house.

Driven by curiosity, I abandoned my flashlight and the journal on a nearby table, and I crept down the hallway, the darkness deepening with each step. The scratching grew louder, more insistent. I reached the end of the corridor, where a large, ornate mirror hung, its surface clouded with grime. There was nothing there—just my reflection, ghostly in the dim light. But then the temperature plummeted. The air turned sharp and cold, like a sudden plunge into a frozen lake.

I stood frozen, my breath misting before me. I felt a presence behind me, a weight of cold air against my back. Then, breathing—slow, raspy, on my right shoulder. The mirror began to clear, not wiping from the outside, but from within, as if the glass itself was exhaling. I saw a figure—a tall, gaunt man with long, strangled hair and eyes that were empty, black pits. He was not my reflection; he was something else, wearing a tattered painter’s smock stained with dark pigments.

I wanted to run, but my legs were rooted to the floor. The figure lifted a hand, its fingers long and brittle like twigs, and pointed at me. A voice, not spoken but felt, resonated in my skull: ‘You’ve come to see my work.’ The mirror began to show images: a woman screaming, a child crying, a man clawing at his throat—all painted in thick, blood-red strokes. The figure’s lips curved into a grin that split his face too wide, and I felt his breath, cold as a grave, spill over my cheek.

I shut my eyes, my hand reaching for the cross I wore, but it was gone. In desperation, I thought of the journal, left behind in the parlor. With a surge of terror-driven strength, I wrenched my body around, and I saw the figure standing just inches from me, his face a mask of despair and hunger. ‘Why do you flee?’ he hissed. ‘Stay and behold the truth.’ His fingers reached for my throat.

I stumbled backward, my foot catching the edge of a rug, and I fell hard onto the cold floorboards. The figure loomed above me, then vanished, as if swallowed by the darkness. I scrambled to my feet and ran, not looking back, my hands scraping the walls until I burst into the parlor, where Marcus was waiting, his face white as chalk. ‘What happened?’ he asked. I could only shake, pointing toward the corridor. Marcus grabbed the journal and opened it to a page I hadn’t seen before. It contained a self-portrait of our great-uncle Theo, and beside it, in a spidery script, were the words: ‘He has chosen. The cold breath on my neck is his embrace.’

We left the house that night, but something followed us. In the days that followed, I felt the cold breath on my neck wherever I went—in my car, in my bed, in the middle of a sunny street. I knew the artist had marked me. I couldn’t lose him. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes for good was the mirror in that hallway, and my own face, aged and hollow, with those same empty, black pits.