Inheritance

Inheritance 

It stared at me. Silvered skull hanging on the huge iron gate to the mansion. Its menacing skeleton clacked and danced as the old gate creaked and resisted me. One clawed hand pulled at my red scarf. My stomach knotted. Chills, traced in goosebumps, shot up my arms, the hair at the nape of my neck rigid with fear. Did it want my scarf to match the rose clenched in it’s bony jaws still full of teeth? Perched precariously on the cliff above the oily, roiling lake, an old mansion stood dark with menace. Tall shaded windows cried sheets of rain. Garry oak trees with gnarled and knotted branches creaked in the cold wind that stripped sparse leaves onto a lawn overgrown with weeds and hedges. And still the skull stared, curious about this frightened young woman who insisted on pushing past. Fear dripped from her eyes. What did this old mansion hold for a young woman dressed all in black and red? She stopped. Halfway through the gate her lithe body stiffened. Suddenly she turned. Her red umbrella, wide open, swung viciously. The skeleton was ripped from it’s post. It had hung for one hundred years frightening anyone daring to pass to the mansion. This young woman had shrugged off her fear. Her laughter lost in the storm. “This old mansion is my inheritance and no spooky skeleton will keep me from it.” With that the old gate swung wide without a creak, the wind and rain carved a path in the unkempt lawn to the rotting wood of the veranda. The front door opened and a tall, thin, cadaverous man dressed in black tie and tails stepped out. He held a faintly flickering lantern. In a deep, spectral voice he said  “Welcome home, madame. We have long been expecting you.” 

“We need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts.”

~ Stephen King, Dance Macabre