Chloe

“We used to live in your house," George said.
"And now, guess what?" Jerry added. "Now we're dead in your house!”
― R.L. Stine, Welcome to Dead House

“At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror suspended from a wall does not reflect a presence; by a sense of unease that will afflict the traveller unwise enough to pause to drink from the fountain in the square that still gushes spring water from a faucet stuck in a stone lion's mouth. A cat prowls in a weedy garden; he grins and spits, arches his back, bounces away from an intangible on four fear-stiffened legs. Now all shun the village below the château in which the beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes.”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“Big production, no story, as they say around the movie lots. I guess Sylvia is happy enough, though not necessarily with me. In our circle that's not too important. There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun, but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared to the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.”
― Raymond Chandler "The Long Goodbye"

“The scullery roof had sprung a leak: she put down a bowl to catch the drips, but the rainwater spread and darkened, to make treasure maps and Whistler nocturnes of the walls and ceiling.”
― Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests