In a Purple House By the Sea

The house had always been purple. A deep, moody shade that shifted with the light—almost lavender in the morning, a dusky plum as the sun set over the sea. The locals called it the Widow’s House, though no one could remember why. Some said the woman who built it had lost her husband to the sea, his body swallowed by the waves that now clawed at the shore. Others whispered she had been the one to drown him, her hands steady as she pushed him into the abyss. Either way, the house stood as a monument to grief, its color a reflection of the sorrow that clung to its walls, refusing to fade, as if the very wood and stone had absorbed the tears of the lost.

Annabelle and I moved in on the first of September, drawn by the promise of quiet. The kind of quiet that comes from ocean waves and wind through seagrass, rather than the honking and sirens we were used to. We wanted a new beginning, a place to be just ourselves, without the weight of who we’d been. But the quiet here was different—it was heavy, suffocating, as if the air itself were holding its breath. Annabelle had been my closest friend for years, the one person I could always count on, and I had been hers. When her husband died, I was the one who held her as she cried, who stayed up with her through the long, sleepless nights. And when she suggested we leave the city, I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t let her face this alone.

Annabelle had been through so much—her husband’s sudden death, the relentless ache of loss—and I wanted this place to be the sanctuary she deserved. I had my own reasons for leaving the city, reasons I didn’t talk about much. Grief has a way of making you cautious, of teaching you that new beginnings often come with old ghosts, shadows that linger just beyond the edges of your vision. But more than anything, I wanted to be there for her, to help her find some semblance of peace.

The journey to the house was long and winding, the coastal road narrowing as we approached the edge of the world, as though the land itself were trying to push us into the sea. The house appeared suddenly, its facade stark against the gray sky, like a bruise on the horizon. Annabelle stepped out of the car and breathed in the salt-heavy air. "It’s perfect," she gasped. But as I watched her, a strange unease tightened in my chest, a cold knot that refused to loosen. There was something about the house, something in the way its windows seemed too dark, too knowing, as if they were watching us, waiting. The wind carried sounds I couldn’t quite name—whispers, perhaps, or the faint echo of a song.

We spent the first day unpacking the remnants of our old lives. The rooms were spacious but felt oddly cramped, as if the walls were leaning in to watch us, to listen. As we unpacked, we explored our new space. We sat in the bay window and took in the view, the endless gray expanse of the sea stretching out before us. We wandered to the garden with the white fence, its paint peeling like dead skin. Eventually, we found ourselves in the attic, both curiosity and a need for storage space leading us there.

The attic was cluttered with decades of forgotten belongings—broken furniture, stacks of yellowed newspapers, and piles of dusty boxes. It was under one of these piles that we found the trunk, tucked away in the farthest corner as if someone had gone to great lengths to hide it. The trunk was old, its leather cracked and worn, and it was buried beneath layers of junk, as though it had been deliberately concealed. We had to move aside boxes and furniture to reach it, and even then, it felt like the house didn’t want us to find it. The air grew colder as we pulled it free, and the faint scent of saltwater and decay clung to it, as if it had been waiting for us all along.

Inside, we found relics of the house’s past—a faded photograph of a woman in a white dress, her face blurred as if she were dissolving into the paper; a locket with a picture of a young sailor, his eyes hollow and distant; and a music box that played a haunting melody when opened, its notes lingering in the air like a ghostly breath. The items seemed untouched, tucked away as if someone had hidden them, waiting for the right moment to be discovered. Annabelle held the locket in her hands, her fingers tracing the engraving on the back: Lenora and Thomas, forever.

“Do you think they were happy here?” she asked, her voice soft, almost a whisper.

“I hope so,” I replied, though the words felt hollow, swallowed by the oppressive silence of the attic.

Upon further digging, we uncovered an old journal. The pages were brittle, the ink faded but legible, as if the words themselves were fighting to be heard. The name inscribed within was Lenora Hartwell—the woman who had built the house. Her words wove a story of love and longing, of Thomas, the sailor lost to the sea, and of the certainty that he would return to her. The last entry was dated the day she vanished: I hear his voice on the wind. He calls to me from the sea. I will go to him, and we will be together again, in this kingdom by the sea.

That first night, we slept fitfully, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore keeping us awake. The sea was anything but peaceful; it seemed enraged, as if it were trying to claw its way into the house. I woke to find the back door wide open, swinging on its hinges as if someone had just stepped through. I locked it again, chalking it up to the wind, but the next morning it was open once more. Small, damp footprints trailed from the door to the staircase, their shape too small to be mine or Annabelle’s, the edges blurred as if they had been made by feet that were not quite solid.

“You think we have a ghost?” Annabelle asked one night, laughing softly, though her fingers twisted in her lap, betraying her unease.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Or maybe the house doesn’t like being alone.”

For a while, it was perfect. We spent long mornings on the wraparound porch, coffee in hand, watching the tide draw itself forward and back, though the waves seemed to move in patterns that were almost deliberate, as if they were trying to tell us something. Annabelle painted as she always had, though her brush strokes grew looser, dreamier, the colors darker, as if she were painting not what she saw, but what she felt. I wrote, though more often, I found myself watching her, searching for something I couldn’t name, something that seemed to be slipping away.

The phenomena grew more frequent. Shadows moved in the corners of rooms, disappearing when I turned to look, their edges flickering like candle flames. The music box would play on its own, the melody drifting through the house like a whisper, though no one had touched it. Annabelle began to hum the same tune, her voice distant, as if she were remembering something she had never known, her eyes unfocused, her movements slow and deliberate.

One evening, as the sun bled orange over the water, she stood at the edge of the garden, eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

I listened. Waves, wind, the sigh of grass. "Hear what?"

“A voice,” she whispered. “She’s waiting.”

The woman in white first appeared at the edge of the garden, just barely visible through the mist. I thought it was Annabelle, and for a moment, I nearly called out to her. But then I blinked, and the figure was gone, leaving only the faint impression of a shape in the fog. I turned to Annabelle, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the horizon, her face pale, her lips moving silently, as if she were reciting something only she could hear.

That night, I woke to find her gone. Panic filled me as I ran through the house, calling her name, my voice swallowed by the darkness. The back door hung open, its hinges creaking softly, as if it had been waiting for me. I found her at the shore, the tide around her ankles, her nightgown trailing in the foam, the water pulling at her as if it wanted to claim her. "Annabelle," I called, my voice trailing off in the vast night. She turned to me, her eyes unfocused, her face pale as the moon, her lips parted in a silent cry.

“Annabel Lee,” she whispered, her voice unrecognizable, as if it belonged to someone else. “She’s always been waiting.”

After that, the changes deepened. Annabelle wore a white dress I had never seen before, its fabric aged, the lace delicate with time, as if it had been pulled from the trunk in the attic. Her hair, once loose and wild, was twisted into an old-fashioned coil, as if she were trying to become someone else. She stopped painting. She stopped speaking, except in murmured fragments of poetry, lines I did not recognize but felt I should, as if they had been whispered to her in the night. One night, I found her in front of the mirror, gazing at her reflection with eerie stillness. Her reflection looked otherworldly. The face in the glass bore Annabelle’s features, but the eyes were darker, older, filled with a sorrow that seemed to stretch back centuries. Lips moved in a silent whisper I couldn’t decipher. And then—just as quickly—it was gone, leaving only Annabelle, her face blank, her eyes empty.

The fever dreams came next. At first, they were soft—gentle pullings at her consciousness. But then they grew more vivid, more insistent. Annabelle would wake, soaked in sweat, her hands clutching at the sheets. “I hear them,” she’d whisper, “they’re calling me.”

The sea seemed to respond to her cries. The wind would shift, and the waves would carry whispers to her in the dead of night. I could never make them out, but they had the same haunting rhythm, the same pull that kept Annabelle staring into the abyss, her body trembling as if she were fighting against something I couldn’t see.

One afternoon, I found Annabelle standing on the porch, staring into the distance. She spoke in a low voice, as if reciting something that had become part of her: “I’ve been dreaming of her, of Ligeia. Her face, her voice—it’s becoming me.”

The ghostly presence of Ligeia seemed to invade her thoughts in a way I couldn’t explain. In those dreams, Annabelle’s body would twist, her movements controlled by something I could not see, her face contorted in pain or ecstasy, I couldn’t tell which. The feverish dreams blurred with reality, her longing for the sea and its whispers becoming an obsession. She had become a vessel for the spirits, and it was clear they were taking hold of her, one by one, until there was nothing left of the woman I had known.

The night it happened, the sea raged. Waves pounded the shore with violent insistence, and the wind howled through the house, rattling the windows, as if the storm were alive, furious. Annabelle stood on the beach, her dress billowing, her hair loose and wild once more, as if she had undone the coil herself. She turned to me, eyes distant, voice laced with something ancient, something that did not belong to her.

“It was many and many a year ago,” she recited, the words lifting into the wind, “in a kingdom by the sea…”

“Annabelle!” I lunged for her, but she stepped back, her bare feet sinking into the wet sand, the water rising to her knees. “Please.” She didn’t hear me. She was already gone, claimed by the sea and the woman who had been waiting, her body disappearing into the waves as if she had never been there at all.

I sat on the shore for hours, my clothes soaked, my body numb. The house loomed behind me, its windows dark, its door shut. And on the porch, the woman in white stood watching, her face sad but not unkind. I was too exhausted to cry. She had waited for Annabelle. But her gaze never left me.

“It’s not over,” she whispered, her voice carried on the wind. “It will never be over.”

I walked back, my steps heavy, my heart heavier. The door creaked open for me as I approached, and I stepped inside, breathing the salt-thick air. The house had claimed Annabelle, but it had not finished with me.

The house had always been purple. A deep, moody shade that shifted with the light—almost lavender in the morning, a dusky plum as the sun set over the sea. And now, it held me as it had held her, its walls whispering with the voices of those who had come before, its windows reflecting the endless, restless sea.

I could still hear Annabelle’s voice, though it was faint, like an echo carried on the wind. And somewhere, in the silence between the waves, I knew she was waiting too, her voice mingling with the whispers of the house, the sea, and the woman in white, who would never let us go.

As I stood in the doorway, the truth settled over me like a shroud. Lenora, Annabel Lee, Ligeia, the woman in white—they were all the same. A single spirit, shifting forms, weaving herself into the fabric of this place, into the lives of those who came here. She was grief itself, eternal and unyielding, her presence a reminder that some losses never fade. She had taken Annabelle, just as she had taken Lenora, and now she waited for me, her many faces merging

into one, her voice a chorus of sorrow that would never be silenced.