Dancers
He was like a little kid at Christmas. Tonight was the night, or so he said, that the Dancers would grant him a single wish. “We can bring her back,” he said and everything fell into place.
The women that appeared out of the stones themselves were all tall and of a beauty that stopped your heart to look at them. There were twelve of them, dressed in gowns of many different colors that shimmered in the moonlight. The eyes were more suited to those of a wolf than a woman.
“The Dancers,” Mike said in a far-away voice. “Soon the music will start.”
“Let’s go back.” I was uneasy now.
“It is only just beginning,” his hand clamped onto my shoulder. Even when I brought my elbow back and slammed it into his ribs, still he did not let go or tear his gaze from the stones.
“They are not dangerous.”
They looked dangerous to me but it was already too late. The women formed a circle and a bodhran drum began to beat out a complex rhythm, joined a few minutes later by a fiddle and otherworldly voices. The music of the Dancers filled his soul.
I used every curse word I knew but he brushed me away, even though I said things I still regret to this day. Katherine was my sister and she must have had her reasons for what she did. His head rocked back as I hit him on the jaw but he did not even stagger.
The headache that had been plaguing me all day roared and the world faded. I lost consciousness, could only have been out for a second but when I looked for him, he was not there.
I saw him step into the circle and they incorporated him into the dance without missing a beat. The honeyed words sounded false to me but he did not seem to think so. He was flattered by the attention. The poor bastard had never had much of that and could not recognize the trap. The music stopped abruptly and then started again, wilder and more exultant as they began to edge him away from the circle.
Cold, skeletal hands gripped my shoulders from behind and I was pulled around to face a pair of grinning skulls. They both blinked and once again became the shining-haired beauties with wolfish eyes.
“Bring him forward”, a tall woman in dark blue robes commanded and I was dragged through the double ranks of dancers.
Michael had disappeared as if he had never existed and the faces changed as I passed them. Smooth skin shifted to bone or rotting, maggot-ridden flesh and I was forced to kneel in the icy fog. One of them put a knife to my throat and held it there.
The leader stretched out a slender arm heavy with gold jewelry. “No,” She said in a voice like an open grave. “We need only one, Sisters, and we have the chosen sacrifice.”
Then the world went black and the last thing I heard was the screaming. There is not a lot more to say on the subject, except to bring the story to a close.
When I came to, I was alone. I found him less than half a mile away, sightless eyes staring at the sky. He had been dead for hours and, from the look on what was left of his face, it was not a pleasant death. Clenched in his right fist was a fragment of dark blue silk that looked as if it had spent centuries under the earth.
I have drifted ever since, rarely staying in one place for more than a few days at a time. It is better that way because I know that They have not forgotten me.