Author: Rita Pomade, Word Count: 464
Featured in Spooky Archaeological Story Moot: Live Stream – 2025
She sees a shadow on the door.
It slowly glides across the floor.
It comes and sits upon her bed.
It fills her head with mounting dread
and softly says:
“My child you’re dead.”
“Not true. How can that be?
I sense your presence; you’re not me.
I’m in my bed, inside my room.
Outside I see the night’s full moon.”
And still she feels a mounting dread.
And still the voice says:
“Child you’re dead.”
She reaches out, her fingers wide,
to touch what lurks at her bedside.
But there is nothing near the bed.
And still she hears:
“My child you’re dead.”
“Mama, I can’t sleep,” she cries.
But no one comes to her bedside.
And now the voice is in her head,
“Wake up my child.
You know you’re dead.”
She rises three feet in the air,
sees her body lying there,
a cleaver parting her dark hair,
and cries aloud in her despair.
“In spirit I have now returned
to see my killers, killed in turn.”
She plants a kiss upon her wound
and slips outside the silent room.
She finds her mother on the floor,
her sister propped against a door.
Both have blows upon their heads,
both not breathing, both quite dead.
“Oh come with me,” she beckons them,
“to find those cruel, demented men.”
“We can’t, we’re dead,” her sister says.
We’ve suffered blows upon our heads.”
“Your heads are crushed. So what?
It’s true. Get over it. There’s work to do.”
The two of them float to her side,
two wisps of light in ghostly glide.
Still in the house, feeling no fear,
the killers sit drinking beer.
As one picks up his frothing glass,
he feels the chill of a cold wind pass.
The other sees the child’s cleaved head
and cries out:
“Child I thought you dead.”
“That I am, you murderous two.
Now’s my turn. I’ve come for you.”
The two men, spooked by what they see,
drop their drinks and quickly flee.
In their haste to get away,
their car careens into a bay.
And there, swept up inside a wave,
the two knaves share a common grave.
Mother and daughters turn from the sight.
The deed is done. They face the light.
Back home in the realm of ethereal delight
the pod reunites to chart their next life.
Mother and daughters, the murdering thieves,
and even the father, who died from his grief,
have come to the table to plan their new roles,
though none can say how their roles will unfold.
Who will lose and who will win?
Who will love and who will sin?
Who has lessons yet to learn?
Who has passions yet to burn?
Who will stray? Who’ll be found?
The spinning wheel spins round…
…and round.
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