To my surprise, I found myself somewhat on edge as I walked through the graveyard under the light of the full moon. I had never considered myself a superstitious man, but there was still something unsettling about the statues and tombs around me. Compared to the simple, unadorned cemeteries back home, it looked like the setting of a horror movie. I spotted one particularly life-like marble sculpture of a crying girl, which was so realistic that I almost imagined that I could hear her weeping.
Suddenly, I realized that I COULD, in fact, hear weeping. Then, the statue moved.
It was a young woman, about twenty years old or so. No woman alive could have skin that pale, and when she looked in my direction, her sorrowful gaze revealed eyes from beyond the grave. There was no doubt that I was looking at a ghost.
My eyes widened. This couldn't be happening, could it? I was face to face with the living dead. The hair on my arms stood up, and I shivered, but the girl did not seem inclined to attack me. If anything, she almost seemed scared of me.
Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I did the only thing I could think of: I held out my hand to the grieving girl. "Hi, I'm Adam. Are you OK?"
The girl stared at me. A smile briefly graced her lips, before she reached out to shake my hand. Her touch was like a cold breeze. "I'm Krystyna," she said, her voice a strangely echoing whisper. I found her soft accent curiously alluring. "You are the first man I can remember who does not run away at the sight of me."
"I don't make a habit of running away from pretty ladies," I told her, earning me another smile. "Is everything alright?" I asked. Stupid question, I guess – she was dead!
"I… I cannot rest," she admitted, staring mournfully out across the cemetery. "I was foolish in life, and I still pay for it in death."
"Foolish how?"
She stared at the ground at her feet. "I never listened to my parents. Always thought I knew better than them. Never took their advice." Her eyes moistened again, and she blinked rapidly to clear them. "They told me not to go to the party when there was a storm coming, and I went. They told me to at least wear a jacket, and I did not." There was a pause, before she managed to continue. "That night, tired and cold, with a bottle of liquor in my hand, I passed away on the cold ground."
She shivered at the memory, and I instinctively took my jacket off and placed it over her shoulders. That seemed to wake her from her daze, and she grinned as she handed it back.
"Clothing does not warm the dead," she pointed out. "But thank you. You are a good man."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
She seemed thoughtful. "I was never sufficiently punished for my disobedience – for my foolishness. I was sometimes bent over the knee for my mother's spoon or my father's belt, but not often enough. If I was, I would not have behaved like that. And I was never punished for my final misbehaviour." Her eyes brimmed with tears again.
"You froze to death," I pointed out. "Sounds like you've been punished more than enough."
She shook her head. "No. That is not the same as loving discipline – that was just cold and careless consequences. I need to be taken in hand, to be corrected and cared for." She looked at me, examining me for a few seconds before making her decision. "Adam, will you take me over your knee and spank me?"