The Ghost’s Nightmare

It was a night when the moon was full. It was also Christmas Eve. The time was around 2:00 am in the morning. I was returning home after seeing off a friend, who thought nothing of dropping in on me at unearthly hours.

I was going to midnight mass when I met this chap. He looked me up and down when I told him where I was going. He shook his head in disbelief and forced me to retrace my steps homeward.  

After staying till the early hours he at last announced his intention to leave. I was relieved.

The only catch was that I had to accompany him half the way to his flat. He insisted that he could not be refused and I reluctantly set out with him.

I walked with him up to a point and wearily trudged back. I was also feeling bad that I had missed midnight mass, though I was not much of a church goer.

A part of the road lay between two cemeteries.  It was a road that I was quite familiar with and had used hundreds of times. But it was the first time that I was on it so late at night.

On my left the wall of the graveyard rose to a great height. On the right was a disused gas crematorium and beyond it a smaller graveyard. The broken gate lay open. There was a bar after the graveyard. But it had closed for the night long ago.

The high wall of the graveyard cast a long strip of shadow on the road.

Since it was winter I had wrapped a dark shawl, while the colour of my trousers was also dark.

I was halfway down the stretch when I heard it. Rapid footsteps around a sharp bend on the road. Since the night was still, the footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. So far I had been walking briskly intent on getting home as quickly as possible. My footsteps slowed as I remembered where I was.

I passed the disused crematorium. Since it had not been used for ages, there were no lights. The spire of the crematorium stood up like an ominous finger against the sky.

There were no street lights either. There were some at one time, but after the bulbs were repeatedly smashed by miscreants, the authorities thought of dispensing with them.

The clack, clack of the footsteps drew nearer, but the walker was still invisible beyond the bend.

I came to a standstill and pulled the shawl even closer to my head as it was cold. For a moment I visualised spooks leaning over the graveyard wall looking at me. I glanced up and thought that my imagination was getting the better of me. I was motionless as the footsteps neared the bend.

A little while later, a white form rounded the bend. I let my gaze travel up its form. The blood in my veins froze and my heart must have skipped quite a few beats. I stood rooted to the spot as the apparition came closer and closer.

When he was very close I saw that it was the figure of a man fully dressed in white with a white muffler covering his face up to his eyes.

His hair was invisible in the dark making him seem like a headless apparition.

Immensely relieved I stepped out of the shadow of the wall into the moonlight and started walking again.

I had not realised that in my dark clothes and shawl, I was invisible in the shadow of the wall.

The man took one look at what seemed to have stepped out from it and took to his heels with a piercing shriek that echoed and re-echoed down the empty road.

I walked on with a light heart thinking that perhaps I would feature in the ‘ghost’s’ nightmare for some time to come.