Virtual Bank Line de los Muertos

I was at my parents' house, housesitting. They're due back any minute, and I really have to get weaving on picking up, etc. My parents' house is remarkably unlike real life. In real life their house is decidedly Spanish colonial - chunky wood, leather and tiles everywhere. In my dream, everything was 70s futuristic with black and white plastic and bold geometric shapes.

My parents arrived with my girls in tow and I was forced to sit and look at pictures. There were quite a few taken at night at some kind of party that included tons of dia de meurtos paper skeleton cutouts. I asked about them and was told that they had done a midnight tour of the Palacio Blanco - the White Palace. Everyone (in my dreams) knows that the White Palace is a place where ghosts gather and go dancing every night. I know that, but up until now I couldn't have said what those ghosts look like. I ask if it was at all scary, and my stepmother replied that it was horrifying, although she said it such a noncommital way that I really had a hard time believing it. It was the same tone of voice my kids use when asked "How was your day?" And they shrug and reply "Eh. Fine." "It was horrifying." My daughters couldn't even be bothered to look up from what they were doing as my stepmother talked about it.

I looked closely at the pictures, and I was suddenly inside one of them. Palacio Blanco is on an open plain with cyprus trees lining the walkway that leads from the driveway to the main hall. The trees alternate with benches and I'm sitting on the bench closest to the driveway. Cinderella-style carriages pulled by skeletal horses wearing plumes on their harnesses drive up and disgorge skeleton homres y mujeres dressed in their dancing clothes. But the carriages, horses and people aren't the matte white of paper, nor are they practically two-dimensional. Instead, it looks as though they're made from sheets of sugar - about half an inch thick and glittering in the moonlight. Because they're like cutouts, they're exactly the same from the front as from the back, and as they walk to the hall, they carry on conversations with people behind them as easily as with those in front.

It wasn't completely horrifying, nor was it a non-event. I was riveted. I was captivated. It was beautiful. My dreams are trying to tell me that the season of the dead is starting, and I can hardly wait!