Violet Eyes, by James Renner

Chapter Eight: Something Is Fucky with Stella, Too

On the edge of the University of Akron campus is a beautiful Victorian mansion, former home to the Humboldt family, once the city’s wealthiest patrons. Years ago, Stella Humboldt gifted the house to the university under two conditions – that two young women would live there for free during the school year and that they never, ever bring men inside after dark.

Humboldt House is also the sight of an old local mystery – eighty years ago, young Blaire Humboldt disappeared along with the son of the family’s servant. The police believed they were murdered, possibly by Blaire’s eccentric uncle, but he claimed they left so that they could live together in sin. No bodies were ever found.

Enter our protagonist, a young woman finishing college, who has just moved to Akron. She is nameless, like the narrator of Rebecca. And mysterious in other ways – she has violet eyes and one of them is glass. When she accepts a position to live at Humboldt House, she thinks she has lucked into a wonderful arrangement - free room and board inside a giant mansion. But then the piano begins to play at night and round marks appear along the walls of the kitchen, leading to the locked basement door and she begins to suspect she should have stayed in the dorms.

There are ghosts here, and not all are human.

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