Funk-N-Fiction

Welcome to the first story of this year’s festivities!!
We’re starting off with an excerpt from an upcoming release, RAVENFIELD HALL, from one of our favorite storytellers, Leanna Renee Hieber.

An Excerpt from RAVENFIELD HALL by Leanna Renee Hieber

A Gothic Historical Young Adult Romance + Horror novel, set on the coast of Southern Maine in 1874, RAVENFIELD HALL is inspired by real history, the novels of Daphne du Maurier and the Brontë sisters. Releasing 2/16/27 from Union Square / Hachette – https://tinyurl.com/Ravenfieldpb
© Leanna Renee Hieber 2027

From Chapter Fifteen, in the first-person narrative of Agnes Alder, an eighteen-year-old writer, hired tutor, intermittent Spiritualist and companion to Charlotte Delacourt, the ailing sister of Mr. Matthias Delacourt. Sparks have begun to fly between Agnes and the lord of the manor.

*********

I awoke with a start to the same commotion that had overtaken the house the day prior.

Something in my room felt off. Different. I looked around many times until I realized what it was. The armoire door in my room stood ajar. It had most certainly been closed when I went to sleep.

Peeking around the side carefully, as if afraid I’d startle something that had crept inside, I came face to face with a breathtaking black gown that definitely hadn’t been there before. Glistening jet beading lined the sloping neckline that was far bolder and more revealing than any of my workaday dresses. A structured bodice supported full, capped sleeves that came tight down the arm to a graceful point at the back of the hand. The skirts were full and doubled, all in a gleaming onyx satin with a looping ribbon trim around the lower hem. It was finer than anything I’d ever seen, let alone touched.

A small, type-written note was tucked into the bodice that read:

For You

X

My heart fluttered. Surely, Matthias had left this for me, and with an X for a kiss, no less. That he’d crept into my rooms to leave this thrilled me, a secret gift. I’d do as he requested and find an unobtrusive moment to slip down and find him. We’d dart off into any number of shadowed corners for a waltz and perhaps more…

The creak of footsteps sounded on the upstairs landing and so I closed the armoire door, shutting the dress away from view. That finery was for Matthias and I to know and enjoy privately.

I wondered what Mother would think about this turn. I thought about how much it had pained her to sell my only fine ball gown, a dress I’d truly loved. But I’d said no word of protest. Anything nice we’d ever owned was sold to keep a creditor at bay and keep a roof over our head. The clothes and small niceties I’d retained were well-kept for someone scraping by; things far more appreciated than all the finery considered disposable by those accustomed to it. I’d never forgive the haughty attitudes of Peabody and Winslow, a woman who enabled a man who had done everything in his power to wrench hard earnings out of other men’s families, living on the sins of his father and grandfather, and he didn’t even seem to appreciate any of it—he just wanted more. I’d have a lot to say about all of that in my articles on the other side of this employment.

I’d stay out of the way as I’d been ordered to, but I made a pledge to open my channel to the spirits while watching the goings on below. We would haunt this ball, in our own way. To put thoughts of caution, of foreboding, in other minds, just like I’d tried to do with my séances in Manhattan. To make the greedy worry that fate would reckon with them all.

In that black dress, I’d be a bit of a raven, I supposed. I’d lurk near casements and stare out in judgement.

Perhaps in one of Matthias’ more brooding, Poe-like moments, I could be his lost Lenore and murmur that ever-infamous word from the poem, just to see what a nevermore might provoke. And yet, I didn’t want to taunt him, I wanted to delight him. I wanted to banish any turn toward melancholy for good; I wanted to demand he rise to his own challenge of a future free from the cloying tendrils of this place. A blazing memory took me, then, as I thought of his passionate murmurs at the cabin… was that just two days prior? Time was as slippery as the rocks after the tide receded.

I closed my eyes, my head lolling back as I relived his kisses against my ear, phrases of petit extase as he dragged his fingertips over my collarbones before he’d plant his lips there. I had to lean back against the wall a moment as a shudder worked its way down my body. It was as if I felt again how his hands raked across me before we nearly entirely lost control.

Needing air, I went out to the small sitting area alcove along the exterior wall, set between my room and the servant stair. There, a bay window larger than the one in my room looked out over the green forest. I opened the casement and swung it wide to breathe deeply. Impulsively, as the wind was rising, I called out into the trees: “Nevermore…”

There was a rustle of leaves, cawing in branches far above me, a few dark shadows hopping about from one branch to the next further towards the shore. And then… something echoed me. It was the oddest, most eerie sound. A “nevermore” came back to me, in a low, almost raspy tone, deeply unsettling and almost human… but not. Then more echoes took it up. Suddenly the forest around me was awash in the word that drove Poe’s narrator mad.

“She taught that word to them.”

Jumping in fright, I whirled to find Mrs. Peabody standing right behind me, and I scrambled back. The woman had a long blue cloak draped over her arm, the one Charlotte had requested.

“Lord, Mrs. Peabody, I do wish you’d announce yourself.” I almost said “you’ll be the death of me” but I stopped myself because she’d have enjoyed the compliment and would have hoped it proved true.

“I’m sorry. I just thought you’d want to know.” In that slightly aloof way she had about her, her only other mood than cruelty, she turned and floated away towards Charlotte’s room.

I thought, for a moment about asking which “she” taught “nevermore” to the ravens, but there was only one answer. Rachel.

Someday, her name would be stricken from my narratives, but until then, nevermore.

—-

End of Excerpt from RAVENFIELD HALL by Leanna Renee Hieber.

© Leanna Renee Hieber 2027