Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.
The Lady in the Purple Dress, by J. Christopher VanVlair.
Narrated by Otis Jiry.
Thomas Sloan had died in his sleep.
When his relatives arrived two days before the funeral, his servant, an old name by the
name of Ramsley, said he had mentioned something about a woman in a purple dress before he
went to bed that night.
His son, Richard, looked up with a look of disturbance on his face.
"I remember a purple-dressed woman."
As his family crowded around, he told his mother and his relatives the tale by memory:
It was a night when the thunder and lightning shot out from the heavens, shaking the very
foundations of the house.
The house was lit by lamps and a few candles, and they cast eerie shadows throughout.
I was sitting with Dad by the fireplace across from those giant glass windows.
I heard a noise and looked out, and saw a car come up through the gate and park in the
drive.
The door opened and a young woman stepped out.
I had never seen someone like her before.
She had long, silvery blonde hair and her eyes were blacker than pitch.
Her face was so unusual; she looked almost like an etching in the flesh.
She came up and rang the bell and my father let her in.
He told me to go to bed but, curious about this strange woman, I instead hid on a love
seat that had its back to the fire and peeked over at them.
The woman wore a purple dress like you would expect to see on a woman from the 1930's,
not the 1980's.
I wasn't sure if my father was having an affair with this woman or something.
They didn't act like a romantic couple; my father just put on an old album of swing music
and the two of them slow danced with this melancholy look on both of their faces.
Eventually she left and my father retired to bed, at which point I snuck upstairs, pulled
on my pajamas, hopped into bed, and went to sleep.
For the next year and a half, this would happen once a month.
She would come over and dance with my father, always with this sad, lonely look on their
faces, while I hid and watched.
One time my father stepped out to answer the phone -- who was calling that late at night,
I have no idea -- and suddenly the woman walked over to the love seat and looked me in the
eyes.
I panicked because I felt I would get in trouble for sure.
Instead, she gave me a peck on the lips and put a finger to her lips, and she smiled.
I ducked back down and watched as she walked back as my father reentered the room, looking
like he had been given grave news.
They danced for the next 40 minutes and then she left, but before she did, she took my
father's hand and put a gold ring on it.
That was the last time I ever saw her, and I think it was the last time my father saw
her as well, because every night he would look out those giant windows as if expecting
her, but she never came again.
I simply forgot about her, except when I would catch a glimpse of the gold ring on my father's
right hand.
After Richard finished, Ramsley came forward and said, "As it so happens, master Richard,
your father gave me a note in addition to his will, saying that the ring was to go to
you."
He pulled the ring out of his pocket and handed it to Richard, who promptly placed it on his
left hand, and then began to speak with his family about who the strange woman could have
been.
His brother suggested that she was their father's mistress.
But that didn't seem likely, as Richard had pointed out they never did anything but dance.
His uncle suggested she was an old friend from the University, since Thomas had always
been more at ease around women.
Eventually they decided to put it out of their minds and focus on the funeral.
That night Richard awoke to the sound of footsteps in his room.
He opened his eyes and saw the woman whom he had described to his relatives earlier,
but she looked exactly the same as she had 30 years prior.
He went to make a sound, but she placed a hand over his mouth and once again placed
a finger to her smiling lips.
She then kissed him for the second time in his life, but this was a longer kiss filled
with lust and hunger.
As he returned the kiss, he heard in his mind, "You are mine always, my little one."
After that, he blacked out.
In the morning, Richard woke up alone.
He looked around and saw his room as it had been the night before.
He decided the memory had sparked a dream, shrugged it off, and then got dressed and
went downstairs to join his relatives.
But for the rest of the day, he felt a slight burning sensation coming from the ring on
his finger.
After the funeral ended the next day, all the Sloane family departed and went their
separate ways.
Richard felt a sharp burn from the ring, but after clasping his hand over it the pain stopped.
He walked to his car with Ramsley.
Had either of them looked behind them, they would have seen, standing on a hill, a woman
with pitch black eyes, blonde hair and a purple dress.
Many people heard the story from Richard's relatives and it became something of a local
legend.
Whoever she was, no one knew, but some say that if you walk past Richard's home at night,
you may see him staring out the window or hear the beating of his father's dead, broken
heart.