Illusion

The chill of the old mansion seeped into Feng Huiyin's bones, mirroring the icy dread in her heart. Just a week married to Wang Qing, the man she believed would be her salvation, she now found herself adrift in a sea of unspoken truths and chilling suspicions.

She watched as Dayu, her younger brother, clung to Qing, their easy intimacy a stark contrast to the cold distance between husband and wife. Every shared glance, every soft word exchanged between them, twisted a knife in Huiyin's gut.

The drive to the Hood River Valley, supposedly to care for their ailing Grandpa, had only intensified her torment. The once-beloved family home now loomed like a haunted relic, its decaying grandeur a grim reflection of her own crumbling dreams.

Dinner was a silent ordeal, punctuated only by the clinking of cutlery and Dayu’s sudden, dramatic cough. Huiyin’s gaze lingered on her plate, a sinister satisfaction swirling within her at the thought of the secret ingredient in Dayu's mashed potatoes.

But the cough passed, and Dayu, oblivious, launched into a chilling tale of the mansion's 'cursed' history – a story of tragic death and restless spirits. As he spoke, the shadows in the room seemed to deepen, and a shiver ran down Huiyin's spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Later, in the moonlit silence of her room, the chilling details of Dayu's story replayed in her mind, mingling with the phantom cries of a baby. The house felt alive with unseen presences, each creak and groan a whisper of its dark past. Huiyin closed her eyes, seeking refuge in sleep, but even there, the phantom cries pursued her, dragging her into a waking nightmare.