by William King
I awakened without a sign of ever moving from the spot where I had fallen asleep and when I looked over at Elizabeth. I noticed that she had begun to awaken from her peaceful sleep. I knew that she would be extremely hungry, and that I would have to redress her wounds that she had the misfortune of getting from the giant owls talons. Therefore, I prepared some chicken noodle soup and some hot tea, got out the first aid kit, opened it up, set beside her, and started taking off the bandages.
However, once the bandages were off, I was shocked to see that every one of her wounds was healed. But the strange thing was, it was if they were never there, which baffled me even more.
“I guess that my preparations will not be necessary after all Elizabeth.”
“What do you mean Mason?”
“Well Elizabeth, I do not know exactly how put this, but your body had sustained massive wounds to it two days ago, and I had to clean them and bandage them up. I did not know if you were going to make it.”
“Mason, are you absolutely sure of this? Are you certain that these terrible things did not happen within your own subconscious mind?”
“Elizabeth, I have only one piece of tangible proof to offer you. Your mother had placed a cross over my heart for my safety.”
I pulled up my shirt just enough for the cross to be visible and asked, “Can you see it, is the cross still there Elizabeth?”
She looked into my eyes with sorrow, afraid that if she looked for the cross that it would not be there. After a few minutes had past, she dropped her gaze from my eyes and finally let her eyes wonder to my chest where I said the cross would be. I watched in uncertainty as her face turned pale as chalk, her eyes closed, and her body staggered as she fought to keep herself upright.
“Elizabeth, can you see the cross or not, is it still there? Please, for god sakes, let me know. Please tell me that I am not losing my mind here?”
She sat down next to the fire, and her continued silence had already fastened itself into my subconscious mind, causing a great deal of animosity towards an unseen force that infiltrated my very being. I grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her violently as I asked again, “Elizabeth, in God’s name, did you see the cross on my chest, or not?”
No confirmation was necessary, I knew as she looked at me with hurt and despair showing vividly in her eyes. Suddenly my mind filled with an evil laughter, mocking every attempt that I had made to fight for control, as I slowly lost consciousness.
I came too sometime later to find that my shirt had absorbed all of Elizabeth’s tears while her head had been resting on my chest. The feeling of fear was now gone, and the torment that had left my body in a convulsive state had long since ceased. Elizabeth was holding on to me as if it was the last time that we were ever going to see one another. Trying to comfort me and sooth away my fears, as one would sooth away the fears of a small child when I said, “Elizabeth, while I was unconscious someone repeated the riddle to me that Bastelet had recited to us just the other day.”
There was a warn and haggard expression on her face as she replied, “Mason I did not tell you this before because I honestly thought Bastelet had only told us about the riddle to infuriate me about the fact that she had a child by my uncle Laurence.”
“Elizabeth, what in God’s name are you trying to say?”
“Mason, when I was a small child, my uncle Laurence told that same riddle to me. I remembered it, and though I constantly searched to find out where it had originated. I never found the answer to that question within my own mind. I had always felt as if the riddle would someday have a meaning in my life. Then the years passed, and over time, I had forgot it, that is until the day Bastelet had recited it to you.”
“Strange is it not that after all these years Elizabeth that you should be the one to try and unravel its true meaning? Perhaps it was destined to play some part in the final act of our never to be reenacted drama, as any number can play, but only three shall have the leading rolls.”
Elizabeth’s voice held no amusement as she asked, “Now what is that supposed to mean?”
“Only that in my mind the odds point towards you, me, and the Devil’s Child as the ones that are playing the leading roles in this horror film.”
I had no doubt left in my mind that Bastelet was about to stir up our imagination with deception, and that only upon her request we would embark upon that journey to find this Devil’s Child. The truth is, we had been deceived into coming to Devil’s Island in search for this child and never even knew it. Three more nights had passed and my nightmares took a rather strange twist. I unzipped my sleeping bag and sat up, vividly remembering the sounds of a crying child, which I had truthfully expected to be with Elizabeth and I when I awakened, but was not the case. All I could think about was how vivid this dream had been. It was the wailing of a girl or boy, but I did not know for sure, maybe two or three years old. I let the thought linger for a minute within my mind, but I was still not sure.
Had the dream been only a coincidence, or had it been purposely placed there to coincide with the bizarre riddle that for some reason had been recited to me by that evil bitch Bastelet? My head throbbed profusely as I tried my best to remember the temple. I had only one choice, and that was to go back to a dream state and wait for the terrifying dreams to reoccur within my subconscious mind. However, I would not fight them this time. I would simply go to my dream state and let the dreams control me, to invade that private place that represented only me, and continue until I found out what I desperately wanted to know. It did not take very long for the dreams to begin. There was a light being casted only by the moon, as I stood silent within the shadows, just watching the events unfold before me. Events that had taken place more than a century before my own life had begun.
There was a man and woman looking strangely at something on the ground. I had to ask myself what it was. I strained to listen to them speak, but no one ever spoke a word that I could hear. Then the woman bent over and raised the head of another woman. I had to get a closer look so I moved to the edge of the clearing until I was directly in front of them, hidden only by the jungle underbrush. The woman on the ground began to moan, and then I heard a voice saying, “Laurence she’s alive,” which came from the voice of the other woman! The two began to vigorously work over her, and as they changed positions I realized that the woman on the ground was pregnant, and shortly afterwards had gave birth to two beautiful little baby girls. Then I heard the man say that both of them were still born.
Suddenly these people were surrounded by natives, and they began to chant. I did not know where they had come from, but the man began to speak with them, and shortly after their talk, they took the two babies into the jungle and out of sight. Then I heard a woman’s voice calling out saying, “Laurence, you cannot do this to these babies. It is against every law of nature. Just bury those poor children, and let them rest in peace.”
However, the man grimly smiled at her and walked into the jungle out of sight as the woman on the ground cried out and asked Cassandra, “Where have they taken my babies?”
Cassandra took the woman’s hand and softly spoke, “Hush Bastelet, everything is going to be alright.”
The words clumped up Cassandra’s throat as she tried to speak, knowing what she had said was further from the truth than she cared to admit. Cassandra knew that Bastelet was dying, so there was no need to cause her any more pain than was necessary. It was clear that Cassandra had hated Bastelet tremendously for being her husband’s mistress, but under the dire circumstances, she had somehow found enough pity not to tell her the truth, after all, they had been through a lot together.
Cassandra had been a childless woman through no fault of her own, and the children that Bastelet had carried all these months were to be given to her and Laurence from birth. The only bond that Cassandra and Bastelet would share would turn out to be so strong that even their hatred towards one another could not be severed.
Cassandra listened as the babies star
ted to cry. She knew that she could have stopped this madness and that she should have, but her own selfishness for a child had stood in her way. Both of the baby girls were brought to her as she watched the natives carry Bastelet off into the jungle. Cassandra then dropped to her knees and started praying for her forgiveness for the sins that she helped to commit, and promised that she would give the two girls the very best of care to make up for the awful things that she had let happen.
Poor Cassandra, she had no idea that the events that would soon take place in the future would be controlled by no one except the Prince of Darkness himself. She did not know the agony that each would suffer without a hope or prayer of ending it for centuries to come. I watched in my dream state as Cassandra bathed and used hollowed bamboo shoots to feed the infants. I had pity for her because I already knew a small part of the outcome that she did not know would come. Cassandra could not afford to think about how the dead had been suddenly brought back to life, nor did she ever want to. All she knew was that the emptiness from deep inside herself had now been filled. She now felt as if her life was complete, and erased all other thoughts completely from her mind.
I watched from the shadows as I heard the chanting of the natives, willing Bastelet from inside a circle to heal her wounds, and come back to life. Then Bastelet sat up, her eyes glazed with a glass like appearance and her body like that of a Zombie. She looked at Laurence and gave him a smile, but the smile could only be described as sinister. I thought to myself where have I seen that evil looking smile before. I screamed because I vaguely remembered, and this was not the Bastelet that came to mind. They had been the same person, but the memory of that night in England brought much fear back into my heart. It seemed that the natives on this evil and dreadful night had given Bastelet immortality, by assuming one of her daughter’s identities.
Basteletknew that she needed to stay close to the MacDougal’s and Cassandra so that she could make them suffer her anguish. Eventually I began to think that the strange things that had begun to happen were in some way caused by the reincarnated Bastelet. Had it not been for the natives she would have gone back to the darkened depths of hell from which she escaped at her first death, and now she will be haunted by the memories of being in the darkest depths of Hell from which she had come from.
“Oh God, please stop this dream this instance. I do not want to remember or see any more of this.”
I sat up, now fully awake, and squeezed the sleeping bag up against my chest, as if it would protect me from the atrocious dreams. I could still feel the clamminess on my skin from my cold sweat. I had at last learned another one of their closely guarded secrets, and then something else begun to churn within my subconscious mind, something that the black-eyed woman had said to me in a long forgotten dream. I tried feverously to remember how she phrased it the best I could. However, all that I could remember was, “Mason I should have loved you enough to have left you in the hands of God as a baby.”
My thoughts and fears were now left lying naked in the dark shadows. My mind was full of memories that made me fearful of sleep. However, I soon realized that my worse fear was in not knowing, so I laid back down to sleep. As I fell into my dream state for a second time I heard a man’s voice, and I wondered if it was God?
“Do not despair Mason, for I have told you that you are not the one that Bastelet searches for. I brought you back to serve a purpose, and that was to put an end to the battles of Good and Evil that had started thousands of years ago. I knew that you would relish a second chance at life, and I myself had placed an inner light within you that would forever shine, and that light is your inner wisdom. I knew that this light would make you choose your paths in life wisely, and protect all that I had created.”
I asked the voice why I had been chosen, but received no answer, and all was dead silent.
I slept for some time and then the black-eyed woman spoke to me and said, “I will now reveal the last of the story to you Mason Williams, as much of it as I know.
“When Elizabeth’s father Bartholomew had found out what Laurence had done on the island with the help of the natives, he and Laurence had a terrible falling out, which ended with Laurence’s death. It was for that reason that he did not want Elizabeth and Gwendolyn to ever see Cassandra, he was afraid that one day she would tell all that she knew. The second reason was that he was really in love with Cassandra, but she had scorned that love in favor of his brother Laurence.”
“Whatever happened to the other child?”
“Cassandra was left with both of the children while Bastelet went back to Devil’s Island with Laurence. One of the children suddenly fell ill and died. Cassandra, seeing her chance to make a mends for the harm that had been done at the children’s birth took the body and buried it in such an obvious place that no one has ever found it. That is how it all came to be that one child never had to walk in the dark depths of Hell where the other child has walked without peace for centuries.
“Elizabeth’s aunt Cassandra had stayed on the island for a time, but eventually she returned to England. She kept Laurence’s notes and a detailed diary of what had happened all those years. Mason that is what they all search for and you were designated to find the missing child.
“That is the sole reason why Bastelet fought so hard to destroy you. She wants the child to continue to rest in peace, but the Almighty One wants them to be brought back together, and none shall find peace until they have completed their penitence. Each one of them was caught up in their own web of deceit, and could not reveal the truth without admitting to part of the guilt. Go now Mason, and find the grave of that little girl born a long time ago.”
“How will I know where to find the little girls grave site?”
She looked at me, smiled, and then disappeared. I awakened some time later and told Elizabeth the whole story just as it had been told to me. She sat quietly for some time before she had spoken and said, “Mason that is the most incredible thing I have ever heard, and it leads me to believe that we play another part in all this. I know why we were singled out years ago, and that was to start a new beginning for both of our families. God has tested us and found us worthy and capable of carrying out his wishes. Mason, we will find the child’s grave, and then go back to the Blackwood Manor, get married, and start a new life together.”
“Elizabeth, I remembered seeing the most unusual and beautiful bed of flowers at Cassandra’s old house, and I know for a fact that is exactly where we will find the little girls grave. Those flowers are the only flowers of their kind on this entire island.”
“Ok Mason, at first light we will head back to my Aunt Cassandra’s house.”
At the break of dawn, we headed out, and made it back to Elizabeth’s aunt’s house in what seemed to be within no time at all. We tied the two pack mules up and went to the back of the house where I had found the mysterious flowers growing and started digging in the middle of the flowers. As I got within three feet or so down into the earth I came upon an old brown burlap bag, and quickly stopped. Could this be the remains of the little girl, Bastelet wanted so dearly? It must have been her all right, because as soon as I pulled the brown burlap bag up and set it onto the ground, that evil bitch Bastelet appeared out of nowhere, screaming out with such a hideous scream, “Thanks for finding the child I longed for all these years, now move away, she is mine!”
With a loud voice I replied, “I will never let you have the child’s remains, you will have to kill me first!”
“So be it Mason, but the child’s remains will be mine!”
Once I opened the bag, a beam of light came forth, straight down from the heavens and shined upon the child’s remains.
“No, it cannot be” screamed Bastelet.
Her deadly voice turned the beautiful flowers into a black dust that blew away in the wind, but it was too late. The child’s remains suddenly vanished into the beam of light that had come down from the heavens, and an eerie silence came upon the entire island. Then I
heard a voice speak out of heaven saying, “Mason, you have fulfilled your destiny, you will never have to fear Basteletany longer, she will be sent back to the depths of hell where she belongs.”
With a sigh of relief, I could not believe that this horrific ordeal was now over. After everything Elizabeth and I had went through, it was now over, and we had somehow managed to survive the supernatural forces of that evil bitch Bastelet. Elizabeth and I got the pack mules and started our journey back to the trade center. It did not matter how long the ride back to the old trade center was going to take, as Elizabeth and I were no longer fearful of our lives. It seemed as if the heavens were in our favor as the dark grey clouds that once covered the sky over the island were now gone, and the sun shined down upon us. However, when we made it back to the trade center, the look on the Nickel’s, along with Hillary and Lyle’s face could have brightened up the darkest days. Hillary and Lyle ran up to us and gave us both a great big group hug, as if we were their own children.
That evening the six of us had the most remarkable dinner. It was a feast made for a king. The six of us ate, talked, and celebrated life, as we had no worries in the world. This celebration lasted for a couple of days until the Elizabeth Dane arrived two days after we returned to the trade center. The captain along with a few of the crewmembers came ashore to take us back to the ship. The captain was glad to see that we were all packed up and ready for our voyage back to England. He had the crewmembers load our belongings into the ten-man rowboat and out to the Elizabeth Dane. Then they came back to get retrieve the four of us. The six of us said our good buys and then departed, to board the Elizabeth Dane once again, heading back to England. The Nickels stood on the beach waving us good buy until our little rowboat was beside the ship. I do not believe that it had been twenty minutes since we left Devil’s Island that we had already missed the Nickel’s.