She could feel the snowflakes melting on her skin as she stood on the steps leading to the old house. She shuddered as she cleaned the snow from the hem of her skirt. The snow was crimson and she felt a stab of the familiar grief. She missed her husband. She hadn't been back here, at her late husband's ancestral home, since he died.

The house was the same gloomy place she remembered it to be. It had the same sad feeling to it as it had then. Not that she had expected anything else. This was not a happy home, hadn't been in ages.

She took a breath and let it out slowly as if gathering her courage. She turned the key in the old lock and gasped in surprise at how easily it opened. With a frail, wrinkled hand she pushed the door completely open. She staggered a bit when the smell hit her. Rotting wood, red clay and dust. It was familiar.

She knew that ghosts existed, she had known since she was a child and her mother had warned her about this place. With the same certainty she knew that if she entered the house now, she would never come back out.

That was the reason she had come here. She knew that her story had come to an end and she wanted to end it here. She was bound to the house as she was bound to her husband.

It was time to end this. With a smile she stepped inside and closed the door after her. The sound vibrated through the house alerting all the inhabitants of her arrival. She could hear the shadows whisper.

One voice was clearer than all the others.

"Edith." Oh how she had missed that soft voice. It had haunted her dreams for years.

"Thomas." She smiled at his ghost. She loved him still. It had never changed. It hadn't mattered what he had done in the past, she had forgiven it all a long time ago.

With a heavy sigh she sat on the chair beside the empty fireplace. The cold was starting to seep in her old bones and she was getting tired.

She gave a soft sigh she relaxed into the chair and closed her eyes for the last time.

She died in her own terms, when she was good and ready. She knew that her husband would guarantee her the piece she needed.

So ended the story that was Edith Cushing-Sharpe, but the story of the house would live on. Long after the house itself had succumbed and sunk into the red clay, people would open the book and read about Crimson Peak.