Let me start from the beginning: I was once in love with a beautiful girl. But the girl was of a lowly status – I was born the son of a duke, and one who must marry accordingly. But my heart was given to her before I even set eyes on her, so our fate was to be one of tragedy.

It was not to be – my father refused the betrothal and forbid me from seeing my beloved. There was naught I could do, and so released the girl from any duty to me, thinking only of both our well-beings. In a fit of despair, the poor girl hanged herself in her home, killing whatever hope her parents might have had for her. They buried her in the cemetery, next to the two plots her parents had reserved for themselves. ‘Tis a terrible ordeal when a parent must bury their own child, to replant the seed that would have begot a lineage. I myself turned to drink to drown my own sorrows and to help me sleep.

And so this is where you believe my story ends. A short tale of love killed before it might come to fruition, the narrator turned a drunkard in response – alas, I wish it were so. For that is when the dreams began.

The girl – my girl, my love – began to visit me in what I believed then were dreams. I would lay my head down and fall into slumber, and there she would be but a moment later – dressed in sheer white, her golden hair tumbling down in curls, and the color in her face speaking of a life that we might have had together. She would come to me, lie down beside me, and draw me to her with sweet kisses and words, tender to me in my sorrow.

I believed them dreams, and woke each morning with the same ache. The ache I believed to be my heart, but it was more than that. It was in my body, my soul – my whole being was exhausted from what I believed to be a night of sleeplessness. But it was never ending – throughout the day and the days thereafter, the ache never ceased. The girl continued to persist in my dreams, and soon I grew weak from my dream-love’s attentions. My father blamed the drink and threatened to disinherit me, but it was for naught. It soon seemed I was lying on death’s door.

One night, fearing for my own life and fighting sleep as it dragged me down, I brought a spool of silk ribbon from my mother’s weaving. It was a bright red color, and full – what I imagined to do with it only my drink-addled mind could tell me, but when she appeared, I nearly forgot it. At the end of our love-making, as she lay next to me in her own stupor (driven mad by her draining of me) I slyly tied the end of that spool to one pretty ankle without her being any the wiser. I assumed my dreams were simply becoming more and more twisted with this particular brand of lunacy, for what did I think would become of it? But in the morning the spool was empty and caught in the frame of the window. I dressed quickly to follow the length in that early hour, my curiosity piqued at the strange sight.

It led down the street, and my feet trod over cobblestone streets towards the worse part of the city, through noxious air filled with shouts and sounds of the city, smells of vendors and of beggars – into the sudden, unnerving and appalling calm of the cemetery. Holding myself up for a moment with the gate and catching my breath (for I still felt as weak as ever, and the drink never left my mind in a decent state) I saw the ribbon bending in the wind as its length was caught between the gate of the cemetery, moving through around tombstones and further into the lot. Catching it in one hand, I drew on its length and followed it to a grave where I fell upon my knees where I saw it enter into the dirt. It was that of my love, the one who had died so horribly, the one who still haunted me in my dreams.

How could it be?

My mind struggled at the impossibility and still it refused to believe. I vowed to stay in the cemetery that night to prove to myself once and for all that this was merely the cause of my drinking, and once proven so I would quit the obsession immediately. Soon I found myself passed out in tombstones near to hers. But when the night fell, I awoke as a scratching sound could be heard. Peering up, I saw with my own two eyes what would drive most men mad – the sight of their own beloved, already lost at death’s door, clawing her way through the dirt and into the calm graveyard air. She was dressed as she always was, in sheer white – I should have known, the burial gown, the shroud that softened all the cribs of the underworld – but it was dirtied with mud. But that was not all, for she went to the freshest grave in the yard and dug through the dirt easily, withdrawing the coffin and the inhabitant therein. She took from the corpse its own heart, still dripping, and brought it to her mouth for sustenance! I near fainted at the very sight, and loosed a rock that made a sharp noise against one of the markers. She started and looked up, but could not be completely drawn away from her nightly meal.

I ran.

She came again that night; how could I believe she would not? But she was much changed; instead of greeting me with open arms as usual, a frown graced her pretty face, turning it ugly as perhaps it should’ve been. Her face could not even foretell the anger that would drip from her rosebud mouth – she did not rant or rage at me, instead pushing me into the bed and setting herself atop me. Her eyes bore into me as though reading my soul, my very essence. I could not help but start to sputter in her presence, asking what she wanted of me, begging the dream not to harm me. What had I done, could have possibly done, to incur such wrath?

“You know what you have done,” she replied, in her sweet, low voice. “You know it, and you can tell me. Tell me, my love.” Her hands sunk down into my flesh, pressing against my organs and causing untold pain. I gasped, trying to explain to her that I had done nothing, had never left my room that day, that this was all a dream and there was nothing I could have done!

“If you swear this lie on your own grave, your family will perish by this time tomorrow.” She spoke the words with such conviction, but surely it was naught but a threat. She was nothing but a dream, this was all a foolish concoction grief had created in my head, flourishing by my own selfish obsession with drink.

“Do not forswear yourself so easily, my love. Are you sure there is nothing you have done to displease me so?” I swore it again, so she took of me what she did every night and left me the worse for it.

The next night, my parents departed this life, in a manner not unlike my love’s but certainly not by their own hand. In an evening carriage, the horses had skittered somehow on the streets, turning the carriage aside and over into the nearby path. It struck several passers by and the side of a shop, and my parents both died immediately in the accident. Having no siblings, I was left all on my own, an orphan at the young age I was. Now there was no denying it – these dreams, visions, they were my own and they were real. It was far too much of a coincidence of my parents’ death and my so-called dream stating the fact beforehand. But what could I do? To whom could I turn?

There was, that night, a gypsy caravan traveling through the outskirts of the town and I had heard tell of a fortune teller – an elder, wrinkled with age and jingling with her worn wealth wherever she trod. She invited me to her tent with all the grace of nobility, so let it not be said that the gypsy folk are barbarous. I made use of invitation with great fervor, expounding upon my tale within her tent until I fell to my knees to beg assistance of her, to end this terrible nightmare. She in turn, needing no moment to think and immediately understanding the situation, gave me a lesson on what I should have done. It being too late, she gave me instructions on what to prepare for upon my impending demise. Shaking, I left her tent that night a dead man walking.

Back in my home, I had the servants bring me ink and paper, and soon I had penned a make-shift will depicting what I would have done with my body. I was to be carried through a wall (preferably one with a hole, though not of the window or door variety – a new one must be cut out to accommodate my person) and buried outside of town, at a crossroads. This I entrusted to the head of staff, knowing that my intentions would be carried out to the best of their availability.

That night, she came again. Not for a moment did she lament the passing of my family, instead now threatening my own person as the gypsy fortune teller said. Again I refused to speak of what I had seen that night in the cemetery. (Why, oh, why was I refusing? Something strange compelled me to say nothing! I fought against her will with my own fiercely!) Again she took from me, and the next day, as I lay in my bed, my breath and body expired as, again, the gypsy foretold.

If only they had followed my instructions! If only perhaps I had eloped with the girl in the beginning, none of this would have occurred! Alas, the servants were blamed for creating what was believed to be a farce, and the town officials burned the parchment containing my wishes after my death, declaring it a false document without any investigation, instead burying my corpse in the graveyard – near my own love, of course doing so fully unintentionally. I rose that night, one of the same creatures as the girl who had taken her own life for me.

And there she was, waiting for me, a smile on her lips and arms open wide in greeting, though she did not take me in them. The arms were gaunt and foul-smelling, moist with rot. Her face was likewise, eyes and cheeks sunken, no longer the picture of beauty as she had been when she visited me in my dreams – now I knew her for the truth she was, standing plain as day before me.

“Now, my love, you are condemned as I was – condemned to enact your revenge out on the one who betrayed you, condemned to wander this earth until something should take your place. You are taking mine, o beloved, and now I am freed from this plane. You shall ever wander, lost and damned!” And with that parting monologue, disappeared into the air as though she had never been.

And so, I am. This is what has been struck upon me, what has been left unto me as my legacy. I did not heed the signs that were put before me, thinking it all a dream. And so will you, dear reader, think this is naught but fiction, until you see me enter through your window in the night. Until you feel me pressed against you, feeding from you, until you are drained enough to take my place within this curse!