Re: The Rose Red/Haunted
She was dangerous. All houses were. But, she was familiar. Mr. Sanderson Welty's had been swallowed whole and never even spat out by such as her. It made him careful. Just as much as it made him careless. He was, after all, a ghost. He had halls to haunt. They weren't hers. Not unless she locked the doors she knew she could. Not unless she closed the walls around him as he had done to himself, once upon a time. He hoped she wouldn't.
He sat at the piano. His fingers as they stretched above polished ivory were scarred and without the pucker of fingernails. The house told him he might play a song. He considered. After a moment, he began. He played it far slower than it was intended, but the melancholy captured in notes remained.