The Painting on the Third Floor

In the autumn of 2016, my colleague Elias and I booked a weekend at the Penmarch Manor, a sprawling Victorian estate turned boutique hotel on the windswept coast of Cornwall. The manor had been recently renovated, its façade gleaming with fresh white paint, but its reputation was as old as the cliffs it stood on. Locals whispered about the tragic history of the Penmarch family, who had perished in a fire in the 1920s, and about the subsequent owners who always left within months, citing ‘unsettling occurrences’. Elias and I, both rationalists, scoffed at such tales. We were there for the architecture and the sea views, not ghost stories.

Our first evening was uneventful, spent in the ornate dining hall with its gilded mirrors and crystal chandeliers. We retired to our adjoining rooms on the third floor, which were connected by a heavy oak door. The rooms were opulent, with four-poster beds and velvet drapes that smelled of dust and old wood. I fell asleep quickly, but was jolted awake at some ungodly hour by the sound of Elias knocking on the connecting door, his voice thin and urgent through the wood.

‘Nadia, there’s something in my room. A man. He was standing by my bed, staring at you through the door.’

I grumbled, ‘Elias, we’re scientists. We don’t believe in ghosts. You’re just having a bad dream from the sea air.’

‘No, I saw him clearly. He was pale, wearing an old-fashioned suit. He pointed at you, then vanished. I’m not staying here.’

I sighed, ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll keep the door open if you’re that scared.’ But I didn’t open it. I just turned over and pulled the duvet over my head. Elias kept knocking every few minutes, his voice growing more frantic. Finally, I shouted, ‘Elias, for God’s sake, let me sleep! We’ll talk in the morning.’ He fell silent, and I drifted off again.

When I woke at dawn, the sky was a bruised purple. I felt a chill in the room despite the heater. I called out to Elias, but there was no answer. I knocked on his door, but it was locked from his side. I used my emergency key, and pushed the door open. The room was empty. His suitcase was gone, but his toiletries were still in the bathroom. On the dresser, I found a note in his handwriting: ‘Nadia, I can’t stay. That thing wasn’t a dream. I’ll call you. -E.’ I tried his cell, but it went straight to voicemail.

I was annoyed, thinking he’d had a panic attack and taken the first train back to London. I went down to the breakfast room, but the staff were oddly evasive. The concierge, a gaunt man named Mr. Thorn, asked about Elias, and when I said he’d left early, Thorn gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. ‘The manor has a way of making guests uneasy,’ he said. ‘But I assure you, it’s just the wind in the old walls.’

That day, I explored the manor to distract myself. The hotel was nearly empty, and I had the hallways to myself. On the third floor, at the end of a corridor that seemed to have been forgotten in the renovation, I found a door slightly ajar. It led to a small, windowless room that hadn’t been touched by the restoration crew. The wallpaper was yellowed, with faded roses, and the floorboards creaked. On one wall hung a large, oil painting, shrouded in dust. I wiped it with my sleeve and gasped. It was a portrait of a man in an old-fashioned suit, with pale eyes and a gaunt face. He looked exactly as Elias had described.

My heart began to race, but I told myself it was a coincidence, a trick of memory. I took a photo with my phone and went to find Mr. Thorn. ‘Who is this in the painting?’ I asked, showing him the photo. He studied it for a long moment, then said, ‘That is Mr. Penmarch, the patriarch. He died in the fire. The painting was thought destroyed. Where did you find it?’ I told him, and he shook his head. ‘I’ve worked here for ten years and never knew that room existed. We should have it moved to storage.’

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the painting had something to do with Elias’s disappearance. I decided to search the grounds. The manor sat on a cliff, with a narrow path leading down to a rocky cove. As I walked, the wind howled, and I saw a figure in the distance standing near the edge, staring at the sea. My heart leapt. ‘Elias!’ I called, but the figure didn’t move. As I got closer, I realized it was a mannequin, or something like it, dressed in a suit. It was placed on the cliff as a warning sign, perhaps, but it was uncanny.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the painting and the way Mr. Thorn had looked at me. I decided to go to the hidden room again, hoping to find clues. When I pushed the door, it was locked, but the key was in the lock. I turned it and stepped inside. The painting was still there, but now it was different. The man in the portrait seemed to be looking directly at me, and his expression had changed from neutral to a sinister smile. My blood ran cold. I backed out and ran to the front desk, demanding to see Mr. Thorn again. The night clerk, a young woman, said he had gone home. She gave me his number, but it was disconnected.

The next morning, I packed my bags, ready to leave. But when I went to check out, the staff said they had no record of my reservation or Elias’s. I showed them my confirmation email, but they dismissed it. Furious, I called the local police, but they said they couldn’t find any trace of a man named Elias having been at the hotel. My phone showed no photos of the painting, no text messages from Elias. It was as if he had been erased.

I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. I returned to the hidden room one last time, thinking maybe I was losing my mind. The painting was gone. In its place, a single brass plaque was mounted on the wall. It read: ‘In Memory of All Who Have Lingered Uneasily.’ I touched the plaque, and it was warm.

As I turned to leave, I heard a faint knock on the wall behind me. It was rhythmic, like a heartbeat. I pressed my ear to the plaster and heard a muffled voice. ‘Nadia, I’m still here. He won’t let me go.’ It was Elias, unmistakable. I pounded on the wall, screaming, until my hands were raw. Then silence.

I ran from the hotel, never looking back. I never heard from Elias again. For years, I tried to find traces of the Penmarch Manor online, but every search came up empty. It was as if it had never existed. Yet sometimes, in the quiet hours, I hear that knock again, and I see that painted smile in my dreams. I know now that the hotel had a way of keeping its guests, not through chains, but through art, through whispers in the walls, and through the one thing I had always prided myself on ignoring: the truth that some places are hungry.

I have since become a folklore researcher, desperate for any mention of that name, but the only thing that remains is the memory of that brass plaque. And sometimes, in the reflection of a window, I catch a glimpse of a pale man in an old-fashioned suit, standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around again. I never do.