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They Say – Friday Fictioneers
Well, it’s Friday Fictioneers time again. First of all, my apologies for not being able to read very many stories last week. I was out in the mountains for most of the week and even though I had a smart phone, it is very difficult to read a lot on it as well as write meaningful comments. I will do better this week.
Copyright Rich Voza
Teenager, blue hat:
“They say the house’s invisible; only the doors are visible.”
Teenager, smoking:
“I heard it’s haunted.”
Teenager, red hair:
“My brother’s friend knew a guy who said the red one leads to Hell.”
Blue hat:
“I heard if you say ‘bloody skull’ in front of the white one at midnight, a witch appears.”
Red hair:
“They say they glow on Halloween.”
Smoking:
“They oughta know.”
Old man, long scar, approaches:
“I got caught in the white door when I was young. There really is a witch there.”
All three:
“Shut up, old man. You’re such a liar!”
The Mystery of the Abandoned Farmhouse
This is a true story. It happened yesterday. I feel I should put that out there right away, since this is a fiction blog. But even in real life, interesting things can happen.
This weekend, I went up to the Seoul area with my wife. We went up to find an abandoned mental hospital that’s been closed for about 20 years, which is apparently one of the creepiest places in Korea. We were planning on exploring it at night. However, when we got there, we found the road leading to it blocked with a pretty imposing gate and barbed wire.
I think I can jump that.
However, we had traveled many hours to get there and we decided to try a more lateral approach. A little ways up the road was another road that branched off into a small valley parallel to the one the hospital was in. It had rained heavily and the road was more or less a rushing stream. Our shoes were quickly damp.
We soon came to a farm, which we realized pretty quickly was abandoned. After an abortive attempt at climbing over the ridge to the hospital, we went back and looked around the house.
It was odd, to say the least. It was clearly abandoned–the front door was smashed in–and there was a lot of weather damage inside. Still, it looked as if the people had literally just gotten up and left. There were family photos hanging on the walls, clothes in the closet, dishes still sitting in the drying rack by the sink.
The house was totally furnished, but totally abandoned at the same time.
I didn’t try on any of the clothes.
It would have felt like we had just broken into someone’s house, except that it was clear it had not been used in a long time. The calendar on the wall said January, 2011.
I took a picture of the mirror to see if a ghost would appear in the photograph. But alas.
We speculated about why the house had been left like this, although most of my theories were too mundane for my wife’s liking. It seemed to have belonged a retired couple, the husband of which had been a lawyer, based on all the law books around. Of course, why they came out to a farm, I don’t know, especially one with a huge warehouse of old mattresses, couches and chairs in it. And why didn’t they take things that would have had sentimental value, like this huge family photo over the fireplace? Even if they had both died, you would think that their children would have taken care of things.
It showed a lot of moisture damage. Then there was this long-dead houseplant.
In the end, we didn’t touch anything or take anything, just looked around and left. As much as I would like to know what had happened there, that would take a lot more poking into the piles of documents and other things that had been left and that would have seemed strange. The juxtaposition of the almost completely furnished house and the totally abandonment of the place made it seem both like we were in a ruin and in an occupied house. But who knows? If I ever find out the story, I’ll let you know.
(I also made a video, which I will share tomorrow, if I can get a chance to post it.)
Tecumseh’s Pariah – Friday Fictioneers
copyright Renee Heath
Tecumseh’s Pariah
I haven’t returned to Tecumseh, Michigan since. That hydrant and its sour-sick memories still haunt me: the night 16-year-old me staggered home from partying and crossed the abandoned tracks.
The sudden rush of a steam engine. The scream of a whistle. Hot, sooty wind.
I cowered behind the hydrant—felt it suddenly twist and grasp at me with steely arms. All I could do was scream.
The police found me, jeans wet and hysterical. No one believed me. “Been drinking?” they asked.
I became “that kid”, the one who pissed himself over ghosts.
Sometimes all you can do is leave.
The Blair Witch Project it ain’t, but still…
One of the fun bonuses of teaching English in Korea is the chance to teach English camps. I’m only partially sarcastic there. While it does mean more classes to teach once the vacation has started (often with no extra pay), the camp curriculum is often more relaxed and as long as they are well planned, they can be a lot of fun. The one I just finished was at a middle school where the kids were very enthusiastic and a lot of fun to teach. On the second day, we went through movie genres and a few sample scripts and then I got them to write their own movies. They wrote the scripts, practiced them, and then I recorded them on my phone and edited them later. Their English level isn’t super high, but they tried hard. Anyway, here for your viewing pleasure are two of the movies they made. They are about a minute long, each.
1. Number 1: This is a ghost story about a top student who has died and comes back to haunt the 2nd place student in school.
2. Stupidman and the Zombies: This is a zombie comedy where apparently the zombies and normal people can switch quite quickly. I can’t say I totally understand it, since they didn’t explain it to me.
The production values aren’t great, but it was a good activity and gave the students more fun and a better sense of accomplishment than just doing grammar exercises. I had them vote for the best movie in several categories. “Number 1” won hands-down for best acting, all for that scream. There was a third movie too, done by an all-boys group, that had to do with gambling and a lot of people getting shot, but they didn’t want me to post that one.
Visual Fiction – Phantom Mountain
Jun-Young’s breath caught in his throat as he stepped outside and saw a mountain rising out of the mist, where before there had only been fields. It was Gwishin-san, the phantom mountain, which appeared every century, for one day only.
He had to leave soon. He had less than twenty-four hours to reach the peak.
taken in Wanju, Korea. (click to enlarge)
Wine and Spirits
The third in the Open Prompts series. The story prompts are:
- 200 words ( my suggestion but I cheated: it’s actually about 570 words)
- a (possibly) haunted house (suggested by Tessa Sheppard)
- someone with an OCD problem (suggested by Amy at The Bumble Files)
- a rare bottle of wine (suggested by Christopher De Voss)
- the mention of an alien/terminator (suggested by Ripley Connor)
- a shift in tone from funny to sinister (suggested by Sharmishtha Basu)
It was Halloween and the mansion of Lord Fufflington was crowded with party-goers. The sommelier, Roderick, was busy in the private dining room of the lord.
“Oh, Roderick, can you recommend a good wine?” Lord Fufflington asked. “Maybe something white.”
Roderick sighed inwardly at hearing his entire profession boiled down to one of two colors.
“Sir, I recommend a 2001 Chateau d’Yquem.” The lord waved his approval and Roderick headed for the wine cellar.
He passed a female Terminator and a smaller alien on the stairs and shooed aside a decapitated Spongebob, who was smoking in front of the wine cellar door. Inside, he found Sailor Moon making out with Captain Jack Sparrow. After kicking these out, he found the right bottle of wine and was about to leave when he noticed something that made him gasp. It was the rarest bottle in the cellar, a bottle of 1953 Domaine de la Romanee . . . on the wrong rack.
It was a travesty. He had only been the sommelier of the manor for a month, but he had totally reorganized the wine cellar in that time. The old system had been some jumble of arcane nonsense instead of his new way: reverse alphabetic order by the last name of the vineyard’s original owner. Some party-goer must have moved the bottle. He carefully restored it to its correct place, aligned the label correctly, and brought the Chateau d’Yquem upstairs, locking the door behind him.
As soon as he reached the dining room, Lord Fufflington called him over. “We’ll need another bottle, it seems, Roderick. Lord Kigglistump has just arrived.” He motioned to an obese man whose body was straining against the neoprene rabbit costume he was wearing.
Roderick returned to the cellar and got another bottle of Chateau d’Yquem. On his way out, he saw that two other bottles had been moved. On the side of one dusty magnum was a note rubbed in the dust: Wine must be arranged by phenolic content only! – Diogenes, the butler.
So the butler did it! It was obvious. Roderick stormed upstairs, intent on informing Lord Fufflington. However, the wine requests kept pouring in and he was kept busy running to and from the wine cellar all night. Every time he entered, more bottles were moved and more notes were left in dust, in the dirt, or scratched in wood. They demanded that he return to the old system and threatened him grievous harm if he didn’t. The last even threatened to stab him in the throat in his sleep if he didn’t stop arranging the bottles in his own way.
That was the last straw. Roderick stormed upstairs and into the dining room, interrupting Lord Fufflington in the middle of a bawdy anecdote involving a hang glider and the constellation Andromeda.
“Sir, I must insist that the butler stop interfering with my organization of the wine cellar. He has been rearranging wine bottles all night.”
“That’s impossible, man,” Fufflington said. “The butler has been away all night at a private function.”
“He must have returned early then,” Roderick said. “In any case, tell Diogenes to stay away from my wine cellar.”
“Diogenes?” Lord Fufflington said. “The butler’s name is Ramses. Diogenes was the old butler. He died ten years ago tonight. Why, Ramses is at his memorial right now. I saw, Roderick, you’ve turned all pale and—I say! You just dropped that expensive bottle of wine on the floor. Are you sure you’re really cut out to be a sommelier?”
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 4)
Read the original: Isabelle’s Island
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)
(This final installment picks up at the end of both “The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 3)” and the end of “Isabelle’s Island”)
Just as the man was going for his boat, the monster rose out of the water and tore the boat to pieces. And just like that, the man was there with her on the island, just the two of them. Isabelle was overjoyed.
The man let out a cry of horror and rushed to the small boat he had taken up to the beach. The larger boat, the one with the sail, was lying mostly under the water a few hundred feet from the beach. The monster had disappeared back into the water.
“You can’t go now,” Isabelle said, leaping forward. “The monster just sank your boat. You have to stay here with me.”
The man whirled around and there was something strange about his eyes, as if he were seeing but not understanding what was happening. “Who are you anyway?” he asked.
“My name is Isabelle,” she said and gave him a small smile. “What’s your name?”
The man turned and jumped into the small boat, rowing it frantically out to the wrecked ship. “There’s a monster there, so be careful,” Isabelle said, but trailed off as he ignored her. “You have to protect me from it . . .”
Isabelle watched as the man dove into the water and began pulling up waterlogged bags and containers and throwing them into the inflatable boat. All afternoon, he worked, salvaging things and bringing them back to pile up on the beach. Isabelle watched him uncertainly. He looked like he was planning to stay, but still he wasn’t paying any attention to her.
As the sun was setting, the man built a fire and heated up something from a can. Isabelle approached the fire and sat down to one side, looking at him.
“What’s your name?” she asked softly.
He looked up. “Tom. Tom Nedimyer.” Then, indicating the pot over the fire, “You want some?”
“What is it?”
“It’s food—beans. Are you hungry?”
“I—I don’t know,” Isabelle said, in confusion. Tom shrugged and spooned some onto his plate.
“What was that thing, anyway—that thing that crushed my boat?” Tom asked. “I was afraid it would be waiting for me down there, but I didn’t see any sign of it.”
“That’s the monster,” Isabelle said. “It’s always around, threatening me. I’m glad you’re here to protect me from it.”
“Why would it sink my boat though?”
“It wanted you to stay here”
Tom gave her a sudden, hard look that startled Isabelle. “How the hell would you know what it wants? What is it anyway?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Isabelle said, thrown into confusion by his tone and language. “It’s just the monster. It wants to hurt me.”
“Does it? Has it ever hurt you?”
“No, but . . .” She didn’t know how to finish.
Tom began to eat. “Are you here alone? When I first saw you, I thought you were here with a cruise or something.”
“I live here,” Isabelle said. “I came with my family but I can’t find them now.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked. “I mean, just look at you.”
“Why? What about me?”
“Well, the clothes, the hair. How do you do it?” He saw her look of incomprehension and with a noise of irritation, he pulled a mirror of his survival kit. He held it up so she could see.
Isabelle looked into the small piece of glass and saw herself for the first time since she had been on the ship with her family. She looked just as she remembered herself, a thin, pale face with dark hair pulled back into a neat braid. It took her a moment to understand and then she felt a sudden sense of horror sweep over her. She looked so clean and neat—every hair was in place and her face and clothes looked as scrubbed and spotless as if she were on her way to church. Yet she had not touched water since the day she had climbed out the pool she had fallen into.
She turned away quickly and felt her hands trembling. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked again. “Do you remember the date?”
She thought about it. The time on the ship, the time on the island—it was just time, with no demarcations to separate it out and make it countable. “I can only remember one date,” she said finally. “My birthday.”
“When is that?”
“July 26,” she said. “July 26, 1789.”
There was a silence as he stared at her. It made her afraid. “What’s wrong?”
“Today is August 14, 1996,” he said at last. He moved a little away.
“No . . .” she said. “No!” But she knew he was right. With rising terror, small details that she had not understood or had not thought about came back to her. Without another word, she got up and fled into the jungle.
That night was the worst that Isabelle could remember. It began to pour in the middle of the night. She hid under an outcropping of rock where she always did when it rained, shaking and trying to keep the rain off her. Now, though, her mind kept screaming at her and she could not quiet it.
I’m . . . I’m . . . She could not even bring herself to think the word. There was no other possibility though. Her appearance had not changed, she could not remember eating or drinking anything since she had fallen into the pool that night, not even sleeping for that matter. Why had she not thought of it before? Her mind was such muddle of fear and loneliness. And if what Tom had said was true, that it was over two hundred years after her birth . . .
I’m . . . dead.
The pain and fear welled up inside her until she broke down in sobs, covering her hands with her face. Then she stopped suddenly and pulled her hands away from her face. She had no tears. She felt hollow, a shell of the person she had been.
Her family was truly gone. Some part of her had known that when she had seen the graves and decaying houses, but she could not accept it. The rain pattered on the leaves all around her, embodying the ethereal prison she now felt trapped in.
Over the next few days, Isabelle watched from hiding as Tom hauled wood to the beach and built outriggers onto his small boat. She watched as he loaded it with fruit and coconuts and containers of water. She watched him prepare to go and leave her. She did not try to stop him. She did not really want him, or Louis for that matter. She wanted her father and he was gone.
She was worried about the monster though. She was worried that it did not want Tom to leave and that it would sink his small boat if he tried. For the first time, she wondered what the monster really was. She had always thought of it as her enemy, but then it had become her ally against the scary and annoying people who had come to the island. And it had kept Tom on the island. But now . . .
The next morning, before dawn, Isabelle watched as Tom pushed his boat out on the high tide. The full moon was sinking down towards the horizon and shone with a ghostly light on the water. Tom jumped into the boat and then looked back. Isabelle raised her hand in farewell and he returned the salute.
Tom turned back towards the open ocean and started to paddle. He was about a hundred feet from shore when Isabelle saw what she feared the most: the monster, rising out of the water just behind the boat. Tom did not see it; he was concentrating on paddling between the rocks near the shore. The monster was going to smash the boat and maybe drown Tom. It hated Tom for leaving Isabelle there alone.
She had to stop it, somehow. “No,” she said out loud. “Leave him alone!” She felt the monster hesitate and she said it again. For a while, she held it there, in the water just off shore, as Tom’s boat got further and further away.
Suddenly the monster gave a roar that echoed off the rocks near the beach. Isabelle had never heard it make a sound before. It turned and leaving the water, it charged up the beach straight for her. She could not control it now. It would not stop. She turned and ran into the jungle.
For the first time since she had seen the monster first step out of the jungle, she was truly terrified. She heard it crashing through trees and breaking rocks behind her as it pursued its furious course after her.
Whether by accident or unconscious desire, Isabelle realized that she was heading for the lagoon on the far side of the island. She reached it as the eastern sky was lightening with the dawn. The rowboat was still there, and the man as well, but he was not fishing now. Instead, he was sitting up, looking intently in her direction.
“Help!” Isabelle cried. “The monster is coming. You have to protect me from it.”
“I will,” he said, “but you must come here. It’s right behind you. Once you’re in the boat, you’ll be safe from it.”
Isabelle stopped at the water’s edge. “I can’t,” she cried. “Can you come up to the shore?”
“I’ve come as close as I can,” he said. “It may be uncomfortable, but the water will not hurt you.”
With a roar, the monster burst out of the forest and Isabelle stepped into the water. Instantly, she felt that same clutching panic that she had experienced in the deep pool, but she kept walking, looking straight ahead to the boat. The water rose to her knees and then her thighs and she bit her lip to keep from screaming. Then she reached the side of the boat.
The man put his hands under her arms and, as if she were a child, lifted her effortlessly into the boat. He smiled at her. “You’re free now. You’ll never see that thing again.”
Isabelle lay in the front of the boat, crying softly from exhaustion and relief. She reached up and felt real tears on her cheeks, which made her cry even harder.
“Where are we going?” she asked, as the man began to row.
“Away from here, first of all, then to somewhere better.”
“Will I see my family?”
“Soon enough. Now, just relax. I’ll do the work now.” He began to row, with strong, even strokes, out of the lagoon. They headed east, into the rising sun and slowly, the island disappeared from sight.
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 3)
Read the original: Isabelle’s Island
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 1) (Part 2)
The strength was leaving her hands. “No, no, no. Papa, help me!” Her hands slipped off the root and with a scream, she fell, down, down into the blackness. The last thing she remembered was the sensation of her body hitting water.
.
..
…
….
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Isabelle opened her eyes to see colors and shifting patterns of light. She tried to move her limbs and found that she could move quite easily. Then she realized she was underwater.
She stood up and paddled her way frantically to the surface. The water was deep, but clear as glass. At the surface, she found that she was in steep-sided hole, like a well in the rock. It had vines trailing down its sides from far above, where the high sun made everything glow in shades of emerald and gold.
Isabelle remembered something about falling, although then it had been night. She pulled herself up by the vines, shaking off as much of the hideous water as she could. The very touch of it repulsed her now, as if it were a prison that was still reaching out to capture her.
Her body had become very light, or she had become strong, and she found herself climbing easily up the vines to the jungle floor. The air was still, with only the occasional birdcall breaking the silence.
The path through the jungle was so overgrown that it had entirely disappeared in places. She forced her way to the beach but more riddles were waiting for her there. There were two cabins there now in place of the lean-to but both looked abandoned and dilapidated, with their roof palms rotting and their sides sagging into the sand. On the edge of the forest, she found two graves, their rudely made crosses bleached and overgrown with weeds.
Isabelle tried to think, but her mind was not working properly. Where was her family? Had they just gone away and left her? Her father had promised he would come back for her, but now they were gone and she was alone.
“Papa?” she said. Then, in a scream of terror and despair, “Papa!” She collapsed on the beach, sobbing.
“You have to protect me from the monster, Papa. You said you would. It’s big, as big as a horse and has long fur and sharp claws and I saw it and it’s real you have to protect me you promised you promised you would come back for me please please papa please…”
She looked up, hoping to see her father—anyone—there on the beach. But no one was there. If the monster were real, her father would have to protect her. She could imagine it peering out of the underbrush at her. Then, as if it were perfectly natural, she saw it, just as she had described and just where she had imagined it. The monster.
It took a step out onto the beach, looking at her menacingly. It was real.
“Papa, you have to come save me. See, I wasn’t lying. There really is a monster. Papa, please.” But no one came and after a while, the monster disappeared back into the trees.
For Isabelle, days became a torture of loneliness as she wandered around the island, looking for any sign of her family. Sometimes she thought she heard their voices or saw a glimpse of one of them through the trees. Then the monster would appear and threaten her and she would cry out for help, but help never came and the monster would disappear again. She was terrified of water and spent the nights in the trees for fear of falling into it accidentally.
One day she went so far that she reached the far side of the island. Here she found a long, curving lagoon that formed a natural harbor. In the middle sat a small boat at anchor. Isabelle saw with a shudder that it resembled the rowboat that they had come to the island in, although this one was newer and cleaner. There was a man lying in it with his feet up, fishing. For a moment, Isabelle thought it was her father or one of her brothers and her heart gave a leap of hope. But it was someone else.
The man straightened up when he saw her and he put down the fishing pole. “What are you doing?” he called to her.
Isabelle hesitated. “I’m—I’m looking for my family. Have you seen them?”
The man nodded. “You won’t find them on that island though.”
“Do you live here?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Then how do you know?”
He smiled. “Trust me.”
“You know, there’s a monster on this island,” Isabelle said. “It hunts me and I have to run away from it. Come be with me and protect me.” At that moment, there was a crashing in the trees and the monster appeared partway down the beach. “Please, come rescue me,” she said.
The man kept looking at her steadily. “You know,” he said, as if a thought had just hit him, “if you waded out here to my boat, it wouldn’t follow you. If you really want to get away from it, that is.”
“I can’t,” she said immediately. “I can’t go in the water. I’m afraid.”
“You’ll be fine,” the man said. “It’s not much above your waist, even out here. Come on, I’ll help you.”
“I can’t!” Isabelle cried. “I’ll never go in the water again. Who are you anyway? You don’t know anything about my family. I’m going to go find them.” She stormed off into the jungle, not even looking back to see the monster fade from view.
For a long while—days, weeks, she could not tell—she searched the island for any trace of her family. She secretly knew that they were not there, although where they had gone, she did not know. Still, she told herself that they could be on the move. It was a big island—they could be always missing each other. She walked the whole island again and again, except the sheltered lagoon on the far side. She did not want to see that strange man and his penetrating gaze and strange smile.
One day, just as the sun was going down, she caught sight of a figure on a rock across a narrow channel from the island. It looked like her father and her heart flamed with hope. He had come back for her. But as she approached, she saw that it was someone else. He was younger and wore strange clothing. Still, he could protect her and stay with her.
She crept closer to him, getting as close as she could without touching the water. His name was Louis, she found out, and he spoke French. Suddenly she was very glad of her tedious French lessons.
Louis said he would come to the island and protect her but he hesitated to. She made him promise he would come but still she was nervous. The sun was going down and she could not go over to him. What if he disappeared in the darkness, just as her family had done? He was so close, yet so far as well.
Just before the sun went down, the monster appeared, coming down the beach towards her. She screamed for Louis to protect her and he jumped into the water and started to swim. But then he sunk under the water and did not come back up. After a while, the monster disappeared from view.
Isabelle was crushed. Louis had been so close, but then he had escaped her too. Still, she felt hope. She had fallen into water and had come back out of it, so maybe there was hope for Louis. After all, he had promised. Every day, she went to the rocks and looked down into the churning water, hoping to catch some glimpse of him.
Time passed and other people came to the island. Some were groups of men, who sat and drank on the beach or crashed through the forest, making noise and cutting down trees. She hid from these sorts of people—they reminded her of the crew of the ship and she feared what they would do to her if they found her.
Sometimes, couples would come to curl up together on the beach, eating and drinking and kissing. They paid attention to no one but each other and they would never pay attention to her. Isabelle hated these people, especially the women.
But Isabelle discovered a very interesting thing: the monster hated what she hated. When these couples—or other people who made Isabelle feel uncomfortable—came to the island, the monster would crash through the trees or throw rocks into the water. It did this especially at night until the people got scared enough to leave.
But then one day, a man came to the island. He was about her father’s age and he came alone. She looked at him from the jungle and then, for the first time since she had talked to Louis, she decided to talk to him.
He was nice. He seemed kind and wanted to help her, but he had a boat and she knew he was going to leave her again soon. Suddenly, she wanted him to stay there, wanted it more than anything she had wanted since her family had left. She knew the monster wanted it too.
Just as the man was going for his boat, the monster rose out of the water and tore the boat to pieces. And just like that, the man was there with her on the island, just the two of them. Isabelle was overjoyed.
(to be continued)
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 2)
Read the original: Isabelle’s Island
The Other Side: Isabelle’s Story (Part 1)
David and Humphrey helped their father build a lean-to while Isabelle and her mother collected fruit and firewood. They camped that night on the beach and the first mate entertained them with tales and myths from the sea. For the first time since they left England, Isabelle felt happy.
Then the first mate sickened. His leg became infected and despite Isabelle’s mother’s ministrations, he died a week later. They buried him in the forest and Isabelle’s father and brothers set out to explore the island. They went for days at a time, coming back exhausted and discouraged.
Two months later, they had explored most of the island and concluded that it was truly uninhabited. Isabelle’s father masked his disappointment by throwing himself into work, hauling rock to build a better house, making tools from wood and stone and hunting for food. David and Humphrey disappeared on hunting and exploration trips more frequently now and were gone longer.
Isabelle was left back with her mother, who sunk slowly into herself. She would spend hours staring out at the ocean and would break down in tears with no provocation.
One day Isabelle found her father sitting among some rocks, trying to braid rope from plant fibers.
“Can I help you, Papa?” she asked, reaching for his hand. He pulled it back, still concentrating on the rope he held between his knees.
“I don’t have time now, Isabelle dear,” he said. “Go help your mama.”
“I saw something in the forest,” she said. “It looked scary.”
He looked up at her and she saw sudden interest in his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It was big, as big as a horse,” she said quickly. “And it had fur and long claws. I heard it making a weird grunting sound.”
Her father stood up, dropping the rope and picking up the club he had made. “Show me where you saw it.” He took her hand.
Isabelle led him into the jungle a little ways. “It was around here somewhere,” she said.
“Let’s keep looking,” her father said and squeezed her hand in a comforting way.
All afternoon they walked through the jungle and up on the low hills, looking for a monster that did not exist. It was the happiest Isabelle had been in a long time and she hung onto her father’s hand and reveled in his warm presence.
The next day, Humphrey and David returned from a two-week expedition. They carried part of a wild boar they had killed. As they were all eating together, Isabelle’s father mentioned the monster Isabelle had reported.
David laughed. “We’ve been all over this island and I’ve never seen anything like that. She’s just making things up.”
“It’s not true!” Isabelle said. “I really did see it. Papa and I hunted it together.” She reached over and grasped his hand.
Humphrey shook his head. “There’s no way, little sister. You must have seen wrong.”
Her father withdrew his hand from hers and looked at her. “Is it true, Isabelle? Did you really see a creature like that? Tell me now, did you really see it or were you lying to me?”
“I really did see it! Why would you believe them over me?” she cried, bursting into tears. Her mother reached for her, but Isabelle shook her off. “I’ll go find it now.”
Without any plan, Isabelle ran off into the darkness of the jungle—past their latrine, past the place they gathered wood and into the dense underbrush. All she could see was the distrust and disappointment in her father’s eyes. She could hear her family calling after her, but she kept going.
She hit a tree in the dark and bright points of lights exploded in front of her eyes. She kept going, pushing ahead of her with her arms outstretched. Then the ground disappeared beneath her feet.
She screamed as she fell, grasping blindly in the darkness in front of her. She felt tree roots and clutched at them.
“Isabelle, where are you?” It was her father, calling from somewhere above her.
“Papa, help me please! I’m down here.”
“Hold on, Isabelle.” She heard grass rustling and tree branches cracking somewhere above her. Then, she heard breathing and fingertips brushed the very top of her hands where she clung to the roots.
“Pull me up, Papa! Please, I’m going to fall.”
“I can’t, Isabelle. I’m reaching down as far as I can. If I go any more, I’ll fall too. Hold on, I’ll go get some rope.”
“No! Papa, don’t leave me here! Please!”
“I’ll be back for you, don’t worry, dear.”
“Do you promise?” Isabelle asked. Her hands were trembling and her arms ached.
“I promise. I’ll get you out of there. David and Humphrey are on their way too.” She heard him crashing through the trees, moving further away.
The strength was leaving her hands. “No, no, no. Papa, help me!” Her hands slipped off the root and with a scream, she fell, down, down into the blackness. The last thing she remembered was the sensation of her body hitting water.
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(to be continued)
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Giselle: A Short Story
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