The Silent Dancer

In the woods at the top of the hill there’s a house where no one lives. It is a tall and once- beautiful house, a Victorian era house made of wood and stone.
         But now, the stone is crumbling, the wood is all but decayed, the roof nearly nonexistent. Almost all of the windows are broken, and cobwebs and dust fill the air. It smells of must and mold here. The once-beautiful carpets have been chewed away by mice. Most of the furniture is gone now, stolen by petty thieves or rotting, broken, where it had been placed so many years before. The curtains are now torn to shreds and stained from years of neglect.
         There is a magnificent ballroom, with huge windows, nearly all of them cracked, broken, or gone now. Spider webs cling to the rusting chandeliers. Mud and dust smear themselves across the crumbling marble floor.
         In a corner of the ballroom, there is a stage where a great orchestra once played. You can almost hear it now, can almost see the people in beautiful gowns and masks they had bought specially for this masquerade ball.  Almost hear their laughter.  As if by magic, you can see the house as it once was. Beautiful and majestic and royal. The marble floors gleam with reflections from the beautiful silver and glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. From the corner of the room you can hear the wondrous orchestra play. You can see the dukes and counts and heiresses dancing in their magnificent garb and masks, laughing. You can see the servants dressed up in their best, serving little desserts and drinks to those of a higher rank.
         Suddenly the illusion is gone, and you are back in the deserted old house. A new illusion dances before your eyes, one that hadn’t been there before.
         A young woman in a tattered old dress dances in the middle of the ballroom. She is very beautiful, but she looks mournful. Like she has been left alone to slowly vanish, out of sight, out of mind, as the house was left. And maybe she had been.
         She is singing, silently. She fills up the whole house with empty words. The words of someone who has seen more then you can imagine. The wisdom of decades and decades, generation upon generation.
         You realize that she is the spirit of the house, of it’s secrets and stories. Of every thought that has been thought in this house. Every action that has been taken here. All of the happiness and sorrow. Every laugh and tear.
         You watch her dance for a while. You see that she is so graceful, her dance is so… sorrowful. Like she is mourning the demise of the house, which has seen so much.
         Suddenly she stops, and looks right into your eyes.  She outstretches her pale arm toward you, and opens her mouth as if to speak. Her bottomless eyes, full of secrets, seem to bury themselves into your very being.
         You panic and run, dodging broken furniture and support beams from the ceiling. You sometimes lose your footing and fall, getting your clothes filthy with dirt and grime, but you keep running. Through doors of all shapes and sizes you run, until you are out. Through the woods into town, you tell everyone of the house with a being of its own.
         Unbeknownst to you, the poor ghost woman watched you run away, and when you were out of sight, she turned to a window. With those deep eyes, she looked to the darkening sky.
         Unable to leave the ruins of this house, she had always danced here, waiting. Waiting for someone to notice her again. She has been waiting for generations for someone to find her.
         She casts her head down, away from the never ending sky, and wipes a ghostly tear from her bottomless eye. She had always waited for someone to take her away from this ruin…
         Maybe it could have been you.