Towers of bones, mostly human, rose to a deep blackness from the river. It was slow-moving and in it were the faces of long ago, stained deep red with the decayed blood of a thousand lost souls and ruins of ships, temples, shrines, and cities long lost to the world. On this river of death floated a great longboat like those of the days of Vikings adorned with a great dragon, its wings forming the sails.
That was all I saw at first, but then, as the ship approached, I saw HIM. He was dim as a wraith and dressed in a cloak of shadows. All that could be seen were his bone-thin and bleach-white hands and the lower half of his face.
"Hello, Elizabeth Dracuul," he said to me as the ship neared the shore. "Have you said your goodbyes? Are you ready to board?"
He extended a long, bone thin arm to me, though I responded, "I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot come. I cannot leave my sister, my brother, my mother and father… my Alexander."
His pale, thin lips twisted into a smile beneath the shadow of his hood and he replied, "But, my dear, you have already left them." With that, he began to laugh, and it resonated through the dim lit cove. As it echoed, the ship began to depart and the cove filled with a fog, dark and green, and all the light that had been went out with the ship.