The Crimson Imposter

The fire hissed softly in the grate, the last of the brandy clinging to the curve of Sloane’s glass. She hadn’t moved since she found the drawing slipped loose beneath the portfolio. Her fingers still held the page, edges trembling, the words written in a child’s uneven scrawl echoing in her mind:

She has to open it. Not him.

Theo hadn’t moved either. He stood nearby, eyes still on the sketch. The flames carved shadows along the sharp planes of his face, but his expression was unreadable.

Finally, Sloane spoke. “That’s my coat. My scarf. But I didn’t draw this.”

Theo’s voice was low. “No. But it’s your hand.”

She looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen that shape in your lines. The way you sketch tension into the doorframe. The tilt of the stairs. The motion of fear.” He paused. “Even if you didn’t draw this, the house knows your hand.”

She set the page gently on the low table. “Then it’s not just showing me what’s happened. It’s showing me what will.”

Theo reached beside the table again and pulled out a second item from the leather folder. It was slim, bound in deep red linen, the corners worn with time. He hesitated before handing it to her.

Her breath caught the moment she saw the title:

The Crimson Letter By Isla Ward

She stared at it, her hand hovering. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it last year,” Theo said quietly. “Tucked behind the books in the library’s upper shelf. I didn’t know what it was at first. Just that it felt… wrong.”

Sloane took the book with slow hands and opened it. Her heart thudded as the pages revealed themselves, it was her structure. Her phrasing. Even her signature lines. But thinner. Hollow. Like someone had drained the blood out of the bones and left the shell.

She flipped to Chapter Eleven. There it was:

She stepped into the dark, not knowing whether she’d be swallowed or remade.

It was hers. But not.

A faint note was scribbled in the margin in ink too smooth, too elegant to be hers:

“She’ll never see what’s beneath.”

Sloane’s voice tightened. “She stole it.”

“She came here,” Theo said. “Isla Ward. Five years ago. Said she was researching the house for a gothic novel. No one paid her much attention. But I remember her spending almost all her time in the west wing.”

Sloane looked up, fury flickering beneath the surface. “She used my story. She took it, hollowed it out, made it palatable. She erased what scared her.”

Theo nodded once. “She wasn’t meant to tell it.”

She flipped more pages. There were underlines. Edits. In the margins:

“Omit the child.”

“The staircase too abstract — readers won’t follow.”

“No door. No descent.”

And then, halfway through the book — nothing.

The story stopped mid-sentence. A chapter titled The Descent.

Exactly where Sloane’s original manuscript had ended.

Theo knelt beside her, voice softer now. “You said you couldn’t remember how your version ended. What if it wasn’t finished because it wasn’t ready? Because you weren’t ready?”

Sloane traced the final line with her thumb. “Or because it had to be lived before it could be written.”

She closed the book. Her pulse roared in her ears.

Theo reached forward, gently touching the edge of the book still in her lap. “There’s something else.”

He pulled away a folded piece of paper tucked behind the back cover, brittle, stained with age.

Sloane opened it slowly.

Another sketch.

The spiral staircase again. The child. The door. And this time, the woman’s hand was reaching for the knob.

At the bottom:

She has to open it. Not him.

The fire behind them snapped once, louder than it should have.

They both looked up.

Across the room, the mirror above the hearth had fractured.

Not shattered. Just one clean break down the center, splitting their reflections in two.

Sloane rose to her feet.

“She’s not angry at me,” she said. “She’s angry at the lie.”

Theo stood as well, gaze on the glass. “She showed you the story. You were supposed to finish it. Isla tried to steal it, dilute it, turn it into fiction.”

Sloane’s voice hardened. “But it wasn’t fiction. It was memory.”

She turned to face Theo fully. “That’s why I couldn’t finish the manuscript. It wasn’t stolen. It left me. It came here, where it belongs.”

Theo stepped closer. “And now it’s come back to you.”

Their breath mingled in the warm hush between them.

He reached for her hand again, slower this time. She didn’t pull away.

“I’m not sure how this ends,” she said quietly.

“Maybe that’s the point,” he replied.

Outside the drawing room, something creaked — a door, distant but deliberate.

The house shifted around them.

The story wasn’t over.

It was waiting.