Everything I Do I Do It For You

A Gothic Horror

The rain fell like a funeral dirge upon the slate roofs of Ravenscroft Manor, a once�'grand estate now rotted by time and the whispered sins of its occupants. Ivy clawed the stone walls, and the wind sang through the broken windows, coaxing the cobweb�'laden chandeliers to sway like the pendulums of some great, unseen clock. In the heart of the manor, a single candle guttered behind a cracked portrait of Lady Eleanor Ravenscroft, her eyes painted with a melancholy that seemed to follow anyone who dared linger in the dim hallway.

It was there, amid the smell of damp oak and decay, that I first heard the words that would bind my soul to the house forever: “Everything I Do I Do It For You.” The phrase came from the cracked gramophone in the ballroom, its needle grinding against a warped record as if each note were a scream caught in the grooves of time. The voice was not mine, nor that of any living man. It was a whisper that seemed to come from the very walls themselves�"a promise, a curse, a prayer.

I was a servant, a boy of seventeen when I first arrived at Ravenscroft. I had come seeking work, but what I found was a house that fed upon those who entered its halls. Lady Eleanor, a wraith�'like figure draped in black velvet, greeted me with a smile that never reached her glassy eyes. “Welcome, Thomas,” she said, her voice a silk�'thick echo. “You will find that everything we do here is for love.”

It was love that became the first chain that shackled me to the manor. In the months that followed, I learned the rhythm of the household: the clatter of the kitchen pots, the sighs of the servants as they carried trays of blood�'red soup, the mournful organ that rose from the chapel each night. And always, in the background, the eerie refrain from the gramophone:

Everything I do, I do it for you…

The First Sacrifice

One night, a thunderstorm raged so fiercely that the manor seemed to tremble. The wind howled through the broken shutters, rattling the panes like a funeral procession. Lady Eleanor summoned me to her private wing, the very place where she kept her most precious possession: a silver locket containing a lock of hair�"her own, or so I was told.

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“My dear Thomas,” she whispered, her breath a cold caress against my cheek, “the house demands a tribute. The walls have grown hungry, and only blood can sate them.” She held out the locket, and within its tiny glass face, I saw a faint, flickering image of a candle. “You must bring me the heart of a living creature. It will be yours to offer to the house. Everything I do, I do it for you.”

My heart hammered against my ribs as I left the wing, the locket heavy in my palm. The darkness outside was absolute, save for the occasional flash of lightning that illuminated the overgrown garden, where twisted trees clawed at the moon. I slipped into the garden’s maze, my feet muffled by the damp earth, and found a rabbit�"its white coat as pure as the snow that never fell here. I approached, my hands trembling, the locket’s promise ringing in my ears.

The rabbit’s eyes widened in terror, its small heart thudding wildly. I raised the knife�"a ceremonial dagger etched with runes of ancient blood rites�"and plunged it into the creature’s chest. Blood spurted, a fountain of scarlet that stained the soil and my trembling hands. I ripped the heart from its ribcage, the sinew snapping with a sickening pop, and clutched it to my chest. The rabbit’s life faded with a guttural whimper, its eyes dimming forever.

Returning to the manor, I placed the heart upon the altar in the chapel, where a stone statue of a weeping angel overlooked the sacrificial bowl. Lady Eleanor stood before it, her black veil fluttering like a moth’s wings. When I laid the heart down, the altar trembled, and a low, guttural chant rose from the stone walls:

Everything I do, I do it for you…

The blood seeped into the cracks of the marble, and the stone seemed to drink it greedily. The chapel’s candles flared, casting grotesque shadows that danced on the walls, forming the shapes of screaming faces. When the flame finally dimmed, the altar was blackened, the heart dissolved into a viscous, oozing sludge. Lady Eleanor smiled, an expression that was half triumph, half something far more sinister.

“You have done well, Thomas,” she said, her voice now resonating with an echo I could not place. “The house is pleased.”

The first taste of power flooded my veins, warm and intoxicating. I felt a dark bond tightening around my throat, as though the very air of Ravenscroft seeped into my lungs. I understood then�"my servitude was no longer one of obedience; it was devotion, a worship bound by blood.

The Descent

Weeks turned into months, and my duties grew more macabre. The manor seemed to pulse with a life of its own, each corridor whispering my name, each portrait’s eyes following my every step. The gramophone never stopped playing, its needle grinding out the same haunting refrain, an endless loop that threaded through my thoughts like a spider’s silk.

Lady Eleanor’s demands intensified. “The house craves flesh now,” she announced one night, her hand resting upon the cold stone of a window ledge that overlooked the lake�"an obsidian mirror reflecting nothing but the darkness above. “Bring me the flesh of those who have wronged you. Bring me the blood of those who betray.”

Betrayal seeped into the very walls. The other servants�"Martha, the cook; Samuel, the stablehand; and young Elise, the maid�"began to whisper amongst themselves, plotting to escape the manor’s grip. I overheard their plans in the pantry, their voices trembling like leaves caught in a storm. Their fear was a sweet perfume, and I could not resist the temptation to offer it to the house.

One moonless night, I led Martha to the attic, where the roof creaked like the spine of a dying beast. The attic was filled with broken furniture and the scent of mildew, a perfect place for a dark ritual. “Everything I do, I do it for you,” I whispered, repeating the phrase as if it were a prayer. I forced her onto a dusty table, her eyes wide with terror, her breath shallow. I lifted the ceremonial dagger once more, its blade glinting with the promise of death.

Martha’s scream was a high, piercing note that seemed to awaken the house itself. The walls shivered, and the wooden beams groaned. As I drove the blade into her throat, a gush of crimson erupted, splashing across the attic’s cracked plaster. Her eyes rolled back, the light draining from them, and her body sagged, limp and lifeless.

I dragged her corpse down to the chapel, the same one where the rabbit’s heart had been offered. The altar awaited, its stone surface slick with the blood of the rabbit. I placed Martha’s throat upon it, and the stone drank greedily. The blood pooled, forming a dark, viscous tide that seemed to crawl like a living thing. The candles flared once more, and the chapel trembled as if a great beast were stirring beneath it.

Lady Eleanor entered, her veil fluttering like the wings of a crow. She placed a hand upon the altar, and the blood began to sizzle, turning black as tar. The air filled with the stench of burnt flesh, and the walls echoed with the chant once again, louder this time:

Everything I do, I do it for you…

She turned to me, her eyes now pits of pure darkness. “You have pleased the house, Thomas. You have given it the blood it craves. Now it shall give you what you truly desire.”

She raised a hand, and a cold, spectral wind surged through the chapel, snuffing out the candles. In that darkness, a shape emerged�"a towering, incorporeal figure cloaked in the shadows of the manor’s past. It was the embodiment of Ravenscroft itself, a specter of stone and sorrow, its eyes twin voids that swallowed light.

“The house is alive,” she whispered, her voice now a chorus of the dead. “It will keep you forever, bound to its will.”

The Unending Night

I awoke the next morning to find the manor bathed in a strange, violet hue. The sky outside was a perpetual twilight, an endless dusk that never gave way to dawn. The doors were locked from the outside, though no key existed to fit them. The servants who once whispered in the pantry were now husks, their eyes empty, their mouths sewn shut. Their skins were pallid, stretched tight over sinewy muscles, as though the very life had been drained from them.

The gramophone sat in the ballroom, its needle still engaged with the vinyl, playing the same haunting refrain. Each time the phrase repeated, I felt my heart beat in time with it, a rhythm that grew louder with each passing hour. The words no longer seemed a promise of devotion; they became a mantra of torment, a reminder that every action I took was a step further into the abyss.

In the chapel, the altar was now a gaping maw of black stone, its surface slick with fresh blood that never seemed to dry. The scent of iron hung heavy in the air, making each breath a struggle. When I looked upon the altar, I saw the faces of those I had killed�"Martha, the rabbit, the countless unnamed victims�"etched into the stone, their eyes pleading for release that would never come.

Lady Eleanor stood before me, her form now half�'solid, her veil shimmering like a veil of mist. “You have become a part of the house,” she whispered, her words dripping like venom. “Your love, your devotion�"everything you did, you did for me. Now, you shall be my eternal guardian, the keeper of the blood.”

My body trembled, not from fear but from an unbearable, all�'consuming desire to please. The chant rose again, louder, reverberating through my bones.

Everything I do, I do it for you…

I fell to my knees before the altar, clutching the cold stone with my blood�'soaked hands. My fingers dug into the flesh that was no longer mine, and I felt the pulse of the manor’s heart�"an echo of centuries of death, grief, and darkness�"throb through the floorboards. The house drank my blood, and with each droplet, my life ebbed away, feeding the endless hunger that had birthed it.

The specter of Ravenscroft rose from the shadows, its form coalescing into a towering, faceless entity. Its voice was a chorus of the dead, a howl that cracked the stone arches. “Your devotion is complete, Thomas. The house shall never die, and neither shall you.”

I tried to scream, but my throat was filled with the sound of the gramophone's needle scraping the record, a screech that seemed to split the very air. The last thing I saw was Lady Eleanor’s face, her smile widening into a grotesque grin as her eyes glowed with the same abyssal darkness that claimed the manor.

The candle in the portrait flickered one final time before being snuffed out. The manor fell into an absolute black, a void that swallowed all hope. The gramophone halted, its needle lifting from the record, leaving a deafening silence in its wake.

There is no sunrise to this tale. The house stands, its walls dripping with fresh blood, its halls echoing with the endless chant that binds all who enter to its twisted devotion. I am forever bound to its stones, my soul a rusted chain that clinks against the marble floor each time the wind sighs through the broken windows.

And thus, in the heart of Ravenscroft Manor, the line is etched into the very foundation, a testament to a love that was never meant to be:

Everything I Do I Do It For You.

There is no salvation, no redemption, only the perpetual, gory hymn of a house that lives on by feeding on the very devotion it once promised. The night has no end, and neither do I.