... I fear you have reached the point of no return."
she smiles slowly exposing her fangs...
entrancing you with her eyes...
beckoning...
for you to follow her...
She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she had been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary. and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.
Walter Horatio Pater
1839-1894
*You approach the old gothic style Mansion with some apprehension... The gravel underfoot crunches like brittle toffee... A chill wind whistles around the bare desolate landscape, devoid of life... and bites at your extremities... A cold shiver runs up your spine... From a chimney you see smoke... belonging to a warm, crackling log fire... You look up at the doorway... old stone and wood lie before you... and an evil looking gargoyle leans leering over the parapet...*
"Come along, do not be a'feared, the fire is warm, and there is a soft chair at the hearth... come... There is plenty of mead... let us warm your cold and weary bones..."
*She says lightly... leading the way up the steps to the old oak door... but something about the woman does not seem to fit her kindly words... 'do not be a'feared'... But this place is eerie enough, a place of stories, of ghosts and ghouls...*
