The Mourning Dress - Part 1
The Dress That Remembered
The Trunk and the Lace
The house smelled of dust and lavender when Elena first stepped inside. Not the sweet lavender of sachets or soap, but the dry, brittle scent of something left too long untouched — the kind that clings to air and memory alike.
She had come on a whim, drawn by the estate sale notice and her lifelong fondness for forgotten garments. Restoring antique dresses was both her craft and her comfort — the quiet art of giving old beauty a second breath.
The Ravenscroft estate had been sold off in pieces over the years, its furniture carted away, its portraits forgotten in the attic. Now only the smallest treasures remained: a chipped teacup, a music box with a missing dancer, and a cedar trunk sitting beneath the tall, blind windows.
Elena hesitated before it. The auctioneer droned somewhere behind her, his voice flat and tired. But the trunk — the trunk was whispering. Not in words, but in a feeling: a soft pull, like the hush of silk across skin.
She knelt, brushing her fingers over the worn brass latch. It gave with a sigh.
Inside lay a single dress, folded with impossible care. Black lace shimmered faintly even in the weak afternoon light, intricate as spiderwebs in shadow. The bodice was hand-stitched, the sleeves long and tapered, the skirt lined with heavy velvet that drank the light whole. A faint shimmer of soot dusted its hem.
She brushed at it absently, but the black smudge lingered on her fingertips — soft, dry, and oddly warm, as if it still remembered fire.
Elena drew in a breath. The scent rose — lavender again, laced with smoke. Her pulse quickened, though she couldn’t have said why. The dress seemed to breathe against her fingertips.
“Lot forty-two,” the auctioneer called. “Trunk with contents — no appraisal, as is. Who will give fifty for it? ”
She looked around. No one else was bidding. Perhaps no one else saw it the way she did — the beauty, the sorrow, the weight of a story still caught in its threads.
“I’ll take it,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, distant.
As the gavel fell, a thin draft rippled through the room, stirring the lace ever so slightly — as though the dress had exhaled.
The First Fitting
Elena waited until twilight to unwrap the dress.
Something about the fading light made it feel magical — as if the moon could protect her from the strange pull that clung to the garment.
Her apartment was small but warm, filled with the scent of rosemary and old books. She set the dress upon her bed, smoothing its lace as though tending to a sleeping thing. The black fabric caught the light of the single lamp, swallowing it whole and giving nothing back.
For hours she busied herself with small, pointless tasks — washing a teacup, folding a blanket, glancing toward the bed only to look away again.
It wasn’t fear, exactly. More like reverence.
When she finally lifted the dress, it was heavier than it looked, cool against her palms. She slipped into it slowly, breath catching as the bodice drew snug — perfectly, impossibly so.
The lace whispered as it settled across her shoulders.
She turned toward the mirror.
For a moment she didn’t recognize herself.
The reflection was familiar, yet distant — her own eyes framed by a face slightly too pale, lips tinted as though kissed by frost. The dress fit her as though it remembered her.
A faint scent drifted up — lavender, yes, but beneath it something darker. Charred wood. Ash.
She reached for her brush, meaning to fix her hair, when a sound stirred the air behind her: a soft rustle, like skirts passing over wood.
She turned sharply. The room was empty.
The curtain swayed though the window was closed.
“It’s just the draft,” she whispered, forcing a smile.
But when she looked back at the mirror, her reflection was still turned away — gazing over her shoulder, toward the empty room.
The Research and the Haunting of Names
The following morning dawned gray and hollow, the kind of light that turns the world to faded paper.
Elena hadn’t slept well. Each time she closed her eyes, she dreamt of someone else’s hands — gloved in black silk, resting gently on a coffin lid.
She told herself it was nothing more than imagination, stirred by too much work and too little rest. Yet when she opened her wardrobe, the scent of lavender met her like a sigh.
The dress hung there quietly, but its shadow reached farther than it should.
Trying to shake the unease, Elena carried her tea to the desk and opened her laptop. She typed Ravenscroft family history into the search bar.
Most results were dull property records — marriages, births, the usual fading lineage. But one article caught her attention:
“Tragedy at Ravenscroft Manor — 1891: Prominent Merchant Perishes in Fire.”
Her tea cooled as she read. According to the report, Mr. Thomas Ravenscroft had died when a late-night blaze engulfed the family home. His wife, Lillian, had been away visiting her sister. By the time she returned, nothing remained of the manor but ash and scorched stone.
Other accounts followed — quieter, more personal. A funeral notice. A journal excerpt. A rumor recorded by local historians.
“Mrs. Ravenscroft never recovered from the loss,” one line read. “She wore her mourning dress day and night, refusing comfort or food. It is said she mixed hemlock into her tea and drank it beside the last scrap of her husband’s coat.”
Elena stared at the screen, her hand tightening around her cup.
The article included a faded photograph — a young woman in black lace, eyes sunken but strangely luminous. The same dress, the same pattern of embroidery that hung now in Elena’s wardrobe.
She closed the laptop, heart pounding.
Outside, the wind shifted — carrying the faintest trace of lavender and smoke.
She watched the steam rise from her teacup, curling and fading into the air. Smoke and ash — beginnings and endings woven together.
Maybe that was what the dress remembered most.
The Thread Tightens
Days passed, though Elena could not have said how many. The world seemed softer at the edges, as though she were viewing it through gauze.
She went about her work half-aware, sorting fabrics, replying to messages, but her thoughts returned again and again to the Ravenscroft dress.
It had begun to feel less like a possession and more like a presence.
Sometimes she caught herself glancing toward the wardrobe mid-conversation, certain she’d heard the faintest rustle. Once, she found herself humming a melody she didn’t know — low and mournful, the kind that would suit a widow’s parlor more than a twenty-first century apartment.
When she tried to sleep, she dreamt of needle and thread. Her fingers worked endlessly, stitching something black she could never quite see.
And when she woke, her hands ached as though they’d truly been sewing.
That afternoon, she noticed her reflection behaving strangely again.
In the mirror, her eyes looked… older. Tired, but not hers. And around her throat — though she wore no jewelry — a faint red mark like the shadow of a high lace collar.
She pressed her hand to it, and the air seemed to shift — warmer, scented with smoke and lilac.
A whisper brushed her ear: “You wear it well.”
Elena froze.
The voice was soft, almost kind. But there was a loneliness in it so deep it hollowed the room.
She turned, trembling, whispering, “Lillian?”
Silence. Only the steady tick of the wall clock and the faint sway of the wardrobe door.
And yet, when she looked back at the mirror, the reflection had changed again.
Behind her stood a woman in a high-necked black gown, smiling faintly — a gloved hand resting on Elena’s shoulder.
The lights flickered once. Twice.
Then the room was empty.
Only the faint scent of lavender remained, and one black thread lying across her pillow — as though pulled loose from the gown.
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The lace still whispers, the mirror still waits. Step into Part II — The Unbinding to follow Elena into the final dance between grief and release.
Offer whatever name you wish to be known by at the hearth today — real or imagined — we look forward to welcoming your words into the circle.