Haunting Beauty by Erin Quinn

standing graveside in the exact place she’d stood with Sean that morning. Only this time she was by herself, abandoned even by her own hallucination.
    She looked around with wide eyes, taking in the harsh and rocky wall that tumbled down to the ocean, the bed of sweet grass beneath her feet, the unending horizon. It was the same sweeping view she’d seen on the website just moments ago.
    Valley of the White Ghost.
    In the distance, she saw a strange monument of some sort. Three enormous boulders held a fourth on top, like soldiers carting their wounded on their shoulders. Something gold glinted from their surface, but she was too far away to see what it was.
    Lightning snaked from the bruised sky and the air took on the scent of sulfur. The powerful tide crashing against the rocks made the ground beneath her feet tremble. Rain pelted her face in cold splashes.
    She looked down, blinking as the drops came faster and the cold reached her bones. The grave was filled in now, the dirt rusted red, an angry welt in the green pasture. Warring emotions fought inside her. She was glad the grave no longer gaped, no longer revealed the twisted bodies at the bottom, but a part of her wanted to drop down and claw at it, dig until she could see again her own face and that of the teenaged boy lying beneath.
    In the distance, a flock of sheep bleated and grazed, moving like the clouds, obeying a directive that she couldn’t see. Then suddenly one of the fluffy white animals stood on its hind legs and stared back. As she watched, the air around it shimmied with a silvery current that crackled and sparked. Danni tried to back up, but her legs felt wooden, nailed to the spongy ground beneath her feet.
    “I want out,” she said aloud. “I want out. Now.”
    But she had no guide this time. No one to grant her wish. The landscape before her didn’t fade, didn’t falter. And whatever world she’d entered held steadfast. She clenched her eyes, silently praying for escape, willing herself back home.
    She felt a shift in the air that was at once alien and familiar. Slowly, with dread pulling her lower than the sinking earth, she opened her eyes.
    A woman stood before her. Dressed in white from head to toe, she had silvery hair draped over her shoulder and down past her knees. It rippled and twisted in the wind. With a cold smile she pulled a sterling comb from her flowing white gown and ran it through her hair, all the while watching Danni with pale and narrowed eyes. Each stroke of the silver comb made her hair sparkle like tinsel. She paused then and held out the comb.
    Danni stared at it, saw strange concentric engravings on its rim that teased the eye and exacerbated her fear until it threatened to swallow her whole. She was shaking her head, now muttering the chant “I want to go home” even as her hand lifted and the desire to take the comb brought her fingers closer. A luminescence gleamed from the white woman and the comb seemed to shudder from a power within. It lured Danni, taunted her to touch it.
    Then suddenly the woman lifted her face to the hostile sky and keened, her voice a weapon that crashed with the tide in a rush of churning chaos.
    Danni clamped her hands over her ears and screamed to block out the horrible sound, but the white woman wailed louder and harsher. The milling sheep stopped and turned toward the biting sound. Even the wind ceased to compete.
    Danni fell to her knees in surrender. The mud from the grave seeped through her pants and sucked her deeper, becoming a quick-sand that wanted to gobble her up. With the death of her resistance, the keening stopped and silence rang loud in her ears. She realized with horror that her legs were deep in the grave.
    A pair of shoes stepped into sight, and like a lifeline, Danni focused on them, traveled up from them to slender legs and a wrap-around skirt. She paused, recognizing the pattern and the fabric even as her mind rejected the possibility. And then she was looking