A Question of Ghosts

        I was frozen in place – not with fear, you understand, but with surprise. I have fought all manner of things, both man and beast, but never before had I been confronted with such evidence of the otherworldly. I knew, of course, the tales of ghosts, ghouls, all such creatures. I just never gave them much credence, supposing them to be the work of weaker minds, easily influenced by superstition. And yet here, in front of me- Surely she must be a ghost? I knew of no other reason for the apparition. It never occurred to me that I might be mad. I knew I wasn’t. It wasn’t until she turned, walked to the door, and disappeared – not slowly, like a mist, but suddenly, as though she had never been there at all – that I moved. My hands left their vice like grip on the lectern, and I descended. My legs felt weak and I was breathing unsteadily. I checked the altar, the carpet, the door, for any sign that she had visited, any sign of her reality. There was nothing.

        I did not sleep that night. I wondered upon the spirit’s purpose. All the stories I had heard spoke of weeping lovers, or scorned, vengeful demons. The lady I had seen had not seemed to be either. Her breathing had been laboured, and perhaps sorrowful, but it was not the mournful wailing that was so often parodied at a roadside campfire. She certainly hadn’t seemed angry. There had been no air of menace, no sense of threat. She had been walking the Church with no more sense of purpose than I. I resolved to think no more of it, but to simply observe, and watch the next night for her coming.

        She did not appear the next night, nor the one after. She did visit again, when I had given it all up as a chance occurrence. I still believed quite firmly in her reality – my dreams never came with such precision. I had thought that perhaps she had become aware of my presence and I had scared her away. The second time she appeared I was above, looking at the pipes. Again, I heard her before I saw her. That same rustle, magnified so that even my ears could hear it. That sobbing breath. I looked down over the railing, and she was there, shining, drifting down the aisle. She seemed different – the light did not penetrate quite so deeply as it had before, and while I could see the carpet through her skirts, they were dull, as though seen through a great bank of fog. I ran to the stairwell, to get a better look, but by the time I reached the ground, she was gone.

        I saw her often after that. She appeared irregularly, at strange intervals. Never when I had company. Never, I noticed, on the night of the full moon. No one else knew the Church to be haunted. When I asked the Father, he asked if I was losing my nerve. I did not ask again, for fear that he might suggest that I leave. The lady did not scare me, she intrigued me. I was rapidly becoming obsessed with her. I wanted to know who she was, why she walked the church in silence, why she wore a dress of white. Was she a bride? Was she here to guide us? Or for evil purpose? I still did not sense malice in her presence, but I wanted to be sure. After all, she seemed to be growing less transparent each time I saw her. I searched the Church’s history, the old texts and tomes of its past, and found nothing. I tried to ask the locals, discreetly, you understand, but heard nothing reliable. It took many weeks of frustration before I realised the one source of information that I had so far overlooked. The woman herself. I must simply ask her.

        The night after I came to this realisation, she did not visit, nor the night after that. I began to wonder if she had become aware of my increasing boldness, and did not approve of this next step in my plan to uncover her secrets.

        She returned on the third night. I had not expected her. The moon was full and bright, lighting the chapel with a thousand glass stained colours. She wandered the aisle, as she did every time before. Her skirts were dappled with the red of a cloak, the gold of a halo, the blue of Our Lady’s dress. She approached the altar, and as she stood, bathed in the glass light, blue, green, a vivid, royal purple, I stepped silently out of the shadows. She turned to face me, and for a moment, the light pooled strangely over her veil, and I had the strangest impression that there was no face underneath. The vision soon dispelled, and I suspected that beneath the fabric was a face of such loveliness that I must know its likeness, and immediately so. I approached her slowly, and reached to touch her. Her hands were cold, like a gravestone in the shade. I could see her watching me from beneath the veil, her eyes large and dark and lovely, but she made no sound, and did not move. I asked her name. She did not reply. I asked if I could see her face. She did not reply. In the face of such meekness, I became bold. I took hold of the veil, and raised it myself.

        Never before have I felt such fear. An intense, cold feeling, like frost fire in my bones. I shrieked and let the fabric fall. Such a sight I had never seen – there, under the bridal veil, was a devils face, leering, eye sockets empty and dark, skin stretched so tight that the face was the face of a skull. I could see too the reason for her strange, sobbing breath – the bottom of her face was fallen away, hanging down onto her chest in a gaping mockery of a mouth.

        I am not ashamed to admit: I ran. I ran from that place as though Satan himself were on my tail. I still have not given Father Micah reason for my departure. Let them wonder. Let them think me a trickster, they will soon know the truth of it. For the most horrific thing I saw in that creature’s face was not the empty eyes, not the pallor of the skin, or the inhuman gape of the mouth, but the evil that I could see, bright and sickening in every pore. I could smell her hatred, her malice, her intent. I know what she will do.

        That brings my story to a close. I have, at the time of writing, decided to return to the Church. Father Micah will need me if he is to fight her devilry. There may be a moment, when I ride close, and I see the spire, its wicked dark silhouetted against the moon, and I have a change of heart. I do not know what I will do in the face of such fear. I have never done such a thing before. I do not know what kind of a man I am, but what I do know, with a certainty that I feel in the very heat of my blood, in every beat of my fearful heart, is that I must at least try to find it out.