Elwood Island

When I got a call from the police, I knew something was wrong. They told me that my parents’ car was found at the edge of the road.

“Your parents have been in a very serious accident. They are at the hospital now,” said the police officer.

“What happened? Do you know who caused it?”

“No ma’am. We will ask them when they are well enough to answer.”

I drove to the hospital as fast as I could. When I got there, they were in emergency care, and I couldn’t see them. After about two or three hours of waiting, I was able to see them, but they had died from the accident. It was my birthday, and so far it had been awful and now it was crushed.

“Ma’am, we would like to talk to you,” said the police officer who had called me earlier, who now had with him a lawyer. “I am sorry about your parents, but I am also sorry to inform you that they have left you nothing.”
* * *

As I walked into my apartment, I was in a haze.

“They have left me nothing?! Had they not had a will for their ONLY DAUGHTER?” I thought.

I was so mad I threw most of the stuff I had. I was so mad, so furious. I started crying and I couldn’t stop. I sat in the middle of my room bawling my eyes out.
* * *

I went to the store later that week and bought all the supplies I needed, got a ticket for the boat ride and headed to Elwood Island, the poorest place in the town of Elwood.

I was leaving my rich town to go to the island 15 miles off the coast of Elwood, Maine.
* * *
When I got there, the boat driver was eager, too eager, to get away from the island. I had heard how it was haunted, but I mean, come on, ghosts aren’t real.

“I am alone on an island I don’t even know.”

When I got to the mansion, it was very old. No one had lived anywhere on this island for a century. The abandoned town on the island was rotted and covered in vines, yet the mansion seemed to have less of it.

“What the….?” I said as I saw, or thought I saw, movement in the window.

“Was that a person?” I thought.

“No, it was nothing. There is NOTHING on this island, right?”
* * *

As weeks went by, I was seeing this thing, this “person” in the shadows moving. This went on for months as I continued to live there. The thing was in one room of the house, then in another room on the other side of the house.

Then one day I saw it, her. A little girl with red bows in her wavy blond hair was sitting in one of the rooms playing on the floor. She was wearing a white dress with a bow in the back. But her dress was flawless, no tears, no dirt, nothing - it was so weird.

“I’m going crazy…”

“No you aren’t, miss.”

“Um, how long have you been here? What’s your name?”

“Emaland, but you can call me Emma, and I’ve been here almost all my life.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They left.”

“Are they in town?”

“No, miss, they died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not?! But they were your parents.”

“They didn’t love me. They left me here all by myself.”

“But why would they do that?”

“Because they think, thought, I was a demon.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Not sure, but one day they had a priest come to have me exorcised, but I ran away, into this house.”

“Did they find you?”

“No miss. I have to go now.”

As she got up from where she had been sitting, she walked around me and started down the hall. I hadn’t even been able to ask her how her dress was flawless.

“Good bye!” I yelled to her as she rounded the corner.

I went to see where she had gone off to because where she had gone I was scared to go. It was a long, dark hallway with only one door at the end of the hall. It was only a second that she had rounded the corner when I got there, but she was nowhere to be found. As I started down the hall toward the door, it opened; I stepped in. The room was so cold that I could see my breath and there was no one in the room.

“Could she have gone through a hidden door?” I thought.
When I turned to leave, there she was at the other end of the hall. I blinked not believing my eyes and she was gone.

“Was that real or am I seeing things?” I thought.
* * *

As I sat in my room, or what I called my room, I saw “The Shadow”, the one that had randomly popped up later after the girl had vanished. The Shadow had been popping up randomly all the time. It seemed to be watching me, following my every move; then it seemed to get bored and go away.
I hadn’t seen the girl in a few days and I was starting to worry.

“Is she ok?” I thought. “Is she hurt?”

“CRASH!”

“What was that!?” I said.

When I got to where the noise came from, where I thought the noise came from, I was right. There were tons of glass on the ground, but there had been no glass, no windows, where there was now broken glass.

“Where did this come from?” I said.

“I’m sorry,” a voice said, making me jump.

I turned to see the little girl standing in the door way, looking sad. But not just that - the girl’s dress was dirty and ripped in spots.

“Why did you do this?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

“The Shadows. I tried to stop them but I couldn’t.”

“What did you say?!”

“The Shadows-”

“It’s real?!” I said, cutting her off.

“Of course.”

“What are they really?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“They are the demons; they are the reason why my parents thought I was a demon myself. They have followed me ever since I can remember.”

“How do you know that it’s a demon?”

“The smell.”

“The smell?”

“Yes miss, the smell of sulfur.”

“Sulfur?”

“Don’t you smell it?”

As I sniffed the air, I caught a whiff of it; it was a rotten egg smell. It was horrible, “How had I not have smelled it before?”

“You shouldn’t have told her that,” said a voice I had never heard before. It was a man’s voice.

I turned to see a man with his head down on the opposite end of the room. He had short brown hair and he had on an old-looking suit. When he looked up, I noticed he had black eyes.
Seconds later I found myself thrown across the room and on to the wall. I couldn’t move, and I found myself in agonizing pain. The girl looked at me horrified, and then she disappeared.
“She was a ghost; she had to be, and he a demon.”
“Sorry my dear, but this has to be done,” he said wearing an awful smile.
“What are…” was the last thing I got out and that was the end.

“What is the end?” the children on the beach asked in unison. The kids had been talking about the island and how it is haunted. I came up to them and told them I had lived on the island for almost a year. They started asking me questions like, what was it like? Was it haunted? And so I told them my story.
“I died…” I turned to leave, seeing the girl with the new red ribbons and a flawless white dress. She held her hand out to me, and I held it, turning back to the kids with their mouths open.
“Don’t ever go to the island, NEVER, and you will be safe. I hope,” I said walking away with the girl.