A ghost story, kinda

There are some conventions to stories. So for instance when a story starts at midnight, on Halloween, under a full moon, next to a graveyard, as mine does, it must of course include some sort of specter or spirit. Far be it in my abilities to go against such a long standing tradition. Indeed even should I want to ignore convention and attempt to write a story that was ghost free in such a situation it would be impossible, a spirit of some sort would undoubtedly spontaneously appear anyway through pure force of habit.

You could of course ask why it was that Annemarie was out at such an hour, in such an odd situation. My answer would be that she had been working and was very innocently returning home. The graveyard just happened to be in her path and entirely unavoidable. Indeed it is fair to say that Annemarie is still unaware even that she is doing anything unusual. She is still thinking of it as the day before Halloween, not thinking of the fact that the day changes at midnight and the graveyard has become something she has grown accustomed to with habit. It is therefore with a careless frame of mind that she saunters along the sidewalk, which she has to herself at this hour.

Given all of these facts I doubt that my reader would be much surprised if a witch suddenly flew past the moon, or a vampire suddenly reached out and snatched Annemarie. I am happy to report therefore that neither of these things happened. Annemarie simply became suddenly, acutely, aware of what her situation was. It was the full moon suddenly bursting from behind the cover of a cloud that did it. With its light came the epiphany that she was in what could be called an extremely frightening situation for anyone who was even slightly superstitious.

With this realization came a heightened sense of her surroundings, which she had previously been unaware of. There was an abandoned old house nearby, which was light by the moon now, so that the trellises attached house, now in disrepair, gave the house an extra spooky look. Adding that to the graveyard was too much for Annemarie’s sensibilities and her only desire was to get home at this point.

I wish I could say that it was Fate that interfered with her design to get home, it always sounds good to say that something was Fate. However I am given to understand that fate was busy elsewhere at the time, in a sleazy bar across town seeing to it that two destined lovers met. I am therefore forced to conclude that it was Chance that made her meet the lovely woman who walked from the abandoned house. Chance doesn’t sound as good or dramatic, but it can’t be helped.

It would also help my story if the beautiful woman looked somewhat transparent, or mysterious, or ghostly. Unfortunately she looked none of these. She also wasn’t dressed in old fashioned clothing, in fact she was wearing a pantsuit and looked the image of a well to do young business woman.

To be continued...