Five Ghostly Waltzes

I found myself outside the remnants of a graveyard. I say remnants because most of the tombstones and monuments were crooked or pushed over and in a remarkable degree of decay. A crumbling archway with a rusty half-opened gate beckoned me enter the ruins, which I did despite misgivings. On entering the scene immediately transformed. The oppressive atmosphere I'd felt outside the gate gave way to an astonishing array of evocative images within. I looked straight ahead and a young girl with flaming red hair framed in a dark frayed reddish hood stood before me. She glanced in my direction and then turned her back to me as something caught her eye. Floating down a stairway made of splintered pine logs and littered with dead leaves were the whitish forms of four translucent females dressed in what appeared to be shrouds. But what startled me as I watched their garments sway in the wind was that below those ragged knee-length shrouds...I could see no legs.

The spectral figure at the front of this curious parade had pale flowing hair and was, to my gaze, startlingly beautiful. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she leaned casually on a broken wooden fence and stared at the Red Riding Hood girl. Red Riding Hood, not demurring, matched her gaze. This standoff went on for several minutes with neither flinching.

At the top of the stairs stood the ruins of a dilapidated mansion ringed in flames. The wraiths descending the stairs might have been fleeing the structure for all I knew, though they didn't seem alarmed. On the contrary their whitish empty-looking orbs showed calm, maybe even indifferent to the drama playing out above them. But I had no time to dwell on all this for at that moment the spirit leaning on the fence caught sight of me. I gasped. My eyes locked with hers and I feared that in an instant she would be upon me. I took a step backward and past under the archway to the outside of this peculiar graveyard and immediately everything was as it had been before I entered. I was alone once again. The animated scene I'd been privy to moments earlier had vanished.

The wind whistled a sad ghostly waltz. I immediately felt alone and abandoned. What had those visions done to my mind, I thought. Now, against everything rational within me, I found myself wanting to become a part of what I had just witnessed. I didn't care if reentering the graveyard meant losing my life. I'd have a life in death with these mysterious seductive specters. I stepped forward, passed through the gate and once more everything was as I'd left it. My eyes fastened on the beautiful phantasmal girl still at the fence and again our eyes joined. This time I did not waver. With my stare I invited her to approach and she did. Let her do to me whatever she wanted. I welcomed it...