The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Accursed Night
by Jill Girardi

Ah, this accursed night. I drag my clacking old bones from the consecrated soil in the Old Dutch Churchyard, where I’ve been interred since the year 1685. My withered hands pass through empty space as I scratch a phantom itch on a scalp no longer there. I shake the dust from my coattails, stomp my riding boots twice, and hear a plaintive whinny in response. My faithful black steed awaits me by the church gate, as she does every year on this eve. My pumpkin head sits astride the saddle—I hate to put the rotten thing atop the stump of my neck. My ax hangs from a saddlebag. I mount my horse and leave the boneyard.

It is at the old bridge—named for me!—that I find my first victims. Four drunken teenagers desecrate my sacred territory. They…