From the Shadows

The pale silver of the moon shone upon my window. As any other night, this brought a sense of peace, tranquility. 

No other friend had I so devoted and steadfast as the moon in all her incandescent splendor. Nightly, my companion she was as I lay fitfully upon my bed. Sleep did not often find me easily. And if she did grace me with her presence, she did not stay long. 

What had awoken me? I could not yet tell. 

In silence I lay, listening intently for a change, then a sound met my ears. It came, yet again soft with fervent pleading. A voice, an echo, as if from the soul, a soul whose voice I somehow recognized yet could not place. 

The house lay silent. No breath did stir as from my bed I rose. 

I could not disregard the pleading hope of one so near my home. 

The halls I walked, no person found. Shadows and darkness wrapped around me as comfort from a friend. 

I found myself then nearing the front hall, the vast expanse opening before me as a chasm, a void with no inhabitant found. And then the call came yet again. 

From just beyond my front door. 

This voice I now knew. Intimately so. Yet dread filled me as the realization dawned. This was my own husband, his voice I heard, from just beyond the door. 

Yet how so? It could not be true. His body had been brought home. Laid to rest just last spring, myself and the vicar had seen it done. 

And yet his voice did call to me, here and now, from just beyond the door. 

My mind then raced, my thoughts jumbled. Had there been a mistake? Had the wrong man been sent home in his stead? 

Or, worse still, was my husband truly dead and his soul finally come home to rest? 

Were I to open the door….what should I find? Would a corporeal form I see? Or would I encounter something more ethereal, more spirit-like from further beyond? 

The hope I harbored, long thought dead, that he may return to me. And now here I stand upon my own threshold wondering what will become of me. 

I must open the door. I must see him myself. Whether man or spirit he be. 

I cannot deny the man who gave his all for me.