The Veil of Death

That's the only title I can come up with for the nightmare I had last night. In it, I was a young woman with two others, searching for Gothic, Halloween-type clothes in a second-hand store. Up on the first floor, hung haphazardly on rails or lying in piles on the dusty wooden floor, were the old clothes. One of the girls grabbed a black lace dress and a white veil with clusters of black and white feathers on either side of the head part. Somehow, I knew there was something evil about the veil and I begged her not to buy it, but she did, and later that evening she was killed.

Then I knew that the veil brought death and that it chose its victims, always young women because its previous owner had died a virgin on the morning of her wedding day. In the dream, I was lying in bed and heard a whispery, slithery sound and saw the veil sliding under my bedroom door. It was coming to get me and I was to be its next victim.

In horror, I grabbed the thing and hurled it out of the window and blocked the gap beneath the door. Thinking I was safe, I returned to bed, went to sleep and awoke to hear that sinister slither again and there was the white veil sliding like smoke through the air vent in the wall.

I woke up, heart thudding, to find the sound was my silky bedspread sliding off onto the floor. But what a dream! I think I might be able to make a short story out of it. It took me right back to a horrible, spooky experience I had years ago on the Greek island of Spetses, but then, it was dark, shadowy fingers coming through the slats in the shutters, not a white veil. And the Vampire of Spetses is another story...