I was hiking the trails of the Kyawonga Nature Reserve, like I do every Saturday morning in the summertime. I got up before dawn, packed my gear, chugged a protein shake, and made the hour and half drive to the Park to avoid the crowds. Let me tell you, it’s all worth it to see that gorgeous golden sunrise over the awe-inspiring Atlantic. There’s a certain feeling you get when you bathe in the glory of nature that just makes you feel … small, like the world is full of beauty and mystery that we as humans just barely manage to comprehend. I hiked to the clearing at Tillman’s Point, just before the restricted area of the Park. It’s the best spot to get my weekly dose of sunrise. I heard the tantric waves lapping on the rocky shores and the cool breeze rustling in the colossal pines. I hopped the barricade and took a seat on overhanging rocks and caught the first glimpse of the rising sun as it painted the horizon in a brilliant medley of orange and pink. I felt truly at peace.
That feeling came to an abrupt end when I saw her floating alone out there in the water. A girl, maybe eight or nine years old, was bobbing wrong-side-up several meters out in the ocean. I couldn’t believe it at first. No one, especially not kids, were at the park that early. I looked around, there were no parents, no other people, just me. I had to do something.
I carefully climbed down the rocks and out towards the shore. The tide was low, exposing several meters of the sea floor, slippery with reddish mud and sea-grass, on which I stood to get a closer look at the thing in the water. My eyes were not playing tricks on me, there definitely was a girl out there. I took off my backpack and hiking shoes and waded into the chilly water. The further I walked, the deeper the water became and soon I couldn’t touch the bottom. I began swimming out towards the girl. Luckily the sea was calm, it only took me a few minutes to reach her but I wasn’t sure if I had been too late to save her.
Her hair was long and matted, covering most of her face and neck. Her skin was sickly pale. Her lips were bloodless blue. Her entire body was tangled in a mass of seaweed. I put my arm underneath her and propped her up on my shoulder, she was much lighter than expected. I paddled hard towards the shore and dragged her up onto the dry land.
I was a camp counselor back in my day. I used to teach watercraft safety lessons here at the Kyawonga Summer Camp. The pay wasn’t great, but what I learned from Camp Kya definitely came in handy that day. I checked the girl’s pulse, it was weak. I laid her flat on her back, tilted her chin up and pinched her nose. Her skin was ice cold. I took two deep breaths into her mouth and saw that her chest did not rise. I started chest compressions. She seemed so frail, I was scared I might break her ribs. After a few rounds of breaths and compressions, she started to cough. Out came two lung-fulls of sea water of which she spat up directly into my face. CPR is not as glamorous as they make it seem on TV, but it worked, the girl was alive.
She was scared, as expected. She lurched back as she saw me leaning over her, she didn’t seem to know where she was or how she had gotten there. Panicked, she stumbled on the wet rocks when I reached out a hand. She recoiled and glared ferociously at me like stray cat. Hunched over in a defensive position, I could tell she wanted to sprint away from me but she was too weak, her legs were shaky and she could hardly stand.
“Woah, woah, easy there,” I said as I reach out to her again. She swiped at my hand. “Hey, kid! I just saved your life. The least you could do is say ‘thank you.’” That’s when I noticed her arms, they were covered in tattoos. They looked like runes or hieroglyphs or something. They were crudely drawn in black ink and the skin around them was red and irritated. She noticed me looking at them and tried to hide them with her hands.
“Are you ok? I’m just trying to help you.” I stepped back to give her space but she still remained silent and reticent. I saw the fear and mistrust in her eyes. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she just knelt there, staring daggers at me. I thought maybe she didn’t hear me or maybe she didn’t even speak English.
“What is your name?” I asked very slowly, pointing at her. “My name is Gerrard,” I pointed at my chest. “Do you understand me?” She nodded her head. “You almost drowned, but I saved you. What are you doing out here all alone?” She darted her head back and forth frantically as if she was looking for something, or as if something was looking for her. She turned around and stared at the cliff-face. Her gaze lingered in the direction of the sea caves past the barricades, she must have been scared of something over in that direction. “Did you go into the sea caves? You know you’re not supposed to go there, they are very dangerous.”
The sea caves at Tillman’s Point have been off-limits to the general public since the Fifties. I learned all about it at summer camp. Tourists used to visit the sea caves all the time until one year a mother and her young kids died in there. They lost track of time and the tide came back in and sadly, they all drowned. Their bodies were never found and some people say they can still hear or even see them wandering in the caves at night. It’s just a local ghost story that the councilors tell the campers to scare them from going in there. The county police barricaded the whole area but there’s always that one cool kid every year that is stupid enough to go into the caves alone and never come out –alive anyway.
“Where are your parents?” I asked. She turned to look at me then struggled to her feet. I caught her by the elbow and helped her stand. She reeked of seaweed and salt water. I saw that she wasn’t just tangled in the seaweed but she was wearing it. She had fashioned herself a makeshift poncho out of aquatic plants and wore no other clothing. The more I noticed about her the more I got the feeling that she had been out in wilderness for quite a while. She was malnourish and unkempt –almost feral.
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. She seemed as if she wanted to tell me something but she couldn’t for some reason, like she had forgotten how to speak. I walked with her a few meters and sat her down on a large muddy rock. I told her that I was going to get help. I left her on the rock to retrieve my cellphone from my backpack. In the earlier commotion, I had unwittingly placed my backpack too close to the shore, everything inside was soaked, including my phone which wouldn’t turn on. I went back to the girl and gave her my extra sweater to wear, a sip of water from my bottle, and a protein bar to eat; they were all bit soggy but she seemed pleased none the less. She even cracked a frail smile.
I told her that she was too weak to climb the rocks and that I can’t risk carrying her so she would have to stay right there while I climbed up to get help. She nodded along in agreement until she realized that I would be leaving her alone. She looked terrified again. She grabbed my arms and shook her head in disapproval. She did not want me to leave her alone. Again, she tried to speak but she couldn’t make any sound.
She looked at the rocks underneath her and started to drag her index finger in the mud; she was writing something. E – M – M – A, she spelled out in the mud and then pointed at her chest like I had done earlier. “Emma, is that your name?” She nodded: yes. This girl was smarter than I thought. I wasn’t sure if she was just a mute or if she had caught laryngitis from being in the cold water for so long.
“How long have you been out here?” I asked. She looked and me and shrugged her shoulders. She then drew a “?” in the mud.
“You don’t know?” She shook her head again, this time she started to cry. I tried to comfort her and wipe her tears. I carefully moved her wet hair from in front of her eyes revealing another crude tattoo in the center of her forehead.
“ϒ”, like a fancy letter “y”, raw and infected, was engraved into her forehead. It looked like it was carved with a dull knife and dyed black with dark grey ashes. I felt terrible for her. She must have been a victim of a domestic abuse –or the pranksters at the summer camp are getting way out of hand. “Who did this to you?” I gestured to the markings on her body. She began to write in the mud again.
W – I – T – C – H
“What? I – I don’t understand.” I tried to ask her another question but she was suddenly distracted. Her attention curiously drawn back towards the sea caves. She sat there, engrossed, as if she had sensed something’s presence nearby.
Just then I realized the weather had taken a turn for the worse. The sky had darkened and the wind had picked up. The waves began crashing violently against the shore. That beautiful sunrise was gone and replaced with dismal grey clouds. It was the strangest thing. I’ve never seen the weather change so quickly. That storm was not in the day’s forecast when I checked it the night prior. Before I knew it, the sea was lapping at my ankles. The tide had risen much sooner than expected.
WHHHEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I heard a terrible, high-pitched howl emanating from the direction of the sea caves. Emma jumped at the sound. She clambered over the rocks and tried to hide herself behind them. She pleaded with me in silence, yanking on my arm, trying to get me to take cover. She was terrified, clearly she was suffering from some post-traumatic stress. She must have associated the sound with the horrifying experience she had that morning.
“It’s ok, it’s ok,” I said, “That’s just the sound that the wind makes when it blows through the caves, it can’t hurt you.” She closed her eyes tight and covered her ears. The sea caves exhaled the sound again. It was louder and higher than before, more of whine than a howl, and it was … closer!
AHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee
Okay, that’s weird, I thought. I looked around but I could not see anything nearby that could possibly make a noise like that. A dying animal, maybe? Regardless of what made the noise, we had to get out of there quickly, the sea was rising all around us and soon we would be standing in knee-deep water. I grabbed Emma by her arms and pulled her up straight. She fought against me, she wanted to stay hidden. “We have to leave now or else we will both drown. I will carry you, okay?” She nodded and hopped onto my back, her arms wrapped around my neck and her legs across my abdomen.
I scanned the cliff-face to find the easiest ascent up the rocks. I carried her a couple hundred meters or so, across the shoreline to where I found a path that the rocks didn’t look too steep and visualized the steps I would take up the cliff. By then the water was at my ankles, the ocean had swelled; surrounding us. We were trapped in a natural alcove, with the raging water behind me and a wall of solid stone to the right, left and front of me. I knew I had only one way to go: up.
I started the ascent. Emma held on with all her strength, her face pressed firmly into my shoulder, shielding her eyes from the danger all around. With every step my legs would tremble, the extra weight on my back was difficult to keep balanced. I stuck my hands into fissures in the rock and held firmly. The sharp edges sliced into my fingers as I pulled with all my might to lift my body upwards. I placed my feet in the same cracks and slowly but surely, Emma and I were climbing to safety. Every movement I made was deliberate and calculated, fighting against the whipping wind and ocean’s spray; there was no room for error. Despite my strenuous efforts, the tide was still gaining on us. I needed to move faster to get to the top of the cliff before my strength failed me or before I was knocked off the rock wall into the furious sea below.
We must have been twenty feet above the sea floor, with only a few more feet to the summit, when we heard that horrendous shriek again.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
It was right beneath us, ear-piercingly loud, like a police whistle set in front of a foghorn. I winced in pain, I could not cover my ears lest I risk falling to my death. Emma panicked! Like a spooked horse she lost her composure at the sound. She released her grip to cover her ears. Rearing backwards she set me off balance and slipped from my shoulders.
She managed to grab hold of my pant leg before she fell too far and was dangling helplessly from the cliff. I had to thank the adrenaline in my veins and the durability of my belt, for without them I would not have been able to haul that little girl up with one arm until she had gotten a firm grip on the overhanging roots of a nearby pine tree. I got a hold of the bottom of her foot and hoisted her up to the summit. With one last feat of strength, I dragged myself up using the tree roots like a rope ladder, sending a small avalanche of dirt and pebbles cascading into the blue-grey tumult below.
I collapsed from exhaustion on the dry, flat earth atop the cliff. My face in the dirt, I chuckled with relief at the peril I had just barely survived. I laid there a moment, catching my breath then turned to peer over the precipice of the cliff. I wanted to locate the source of that sound but over the edge I saw nothing but rocks and waves. I could’ve sworn there was something down there.
It was very strange, as quickly as that storm arrived it vanished just as fast. The clouds parted and the sun poked through. The wind was calm and even the waves slowed their barrage against the rocks.
I turned my attention from the cliff to check on the safety of my new friend. Emma was gone. I searched everywhere for her. I scanned the tree line and looked for footprints in the dirt but I couldn’t find her, she disappeared without a trace. I walked along the hiking trail, calling her name but still –nothing.
I hiked all the way to the park ranger’s station. I told them about the girl; how I found her; about the marks on her arms and face. I even told them about the freak weather change and the strange sounds I heard. They told me that kids have been going missing in the park for years. Many of them are found months after they disappeared, dead and bloated on the shores near Tillman’s point. They said that the legend of the Backwater Banshee had kids daring each other to explore the caves and get a glimpse of the ghost of the woman that died seventy years ago. The rangers obviously didn’t believe in this legend and assured me that everything I had experienced had a logical explanation.
However, the rangers told me that there may have been an open missing person’s case regarding a girl named Emma that was filed a few years back. They took my information and they said they would call me if they had any more questions. In the meantime, they would send out patrols in search of the girl and that I was free to go home.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her the whole drive home. Why did she run away from me? How could she just disappear? What was she so afraid of in those caves?
That evening I told my wife about what happened to me at the park. I left out some of the more sensitive details, I didn’t want her to worry. I was drained after my experience that day and headed off to bed early. I needed my rest and I tried very hard not to stay up over-thinking about the girl –or about that that dreadful sound. That is, until I heard it again that night.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I jumped out of bed, nearly touching the ceiling. That sound – that scream, was coming from right outside my house. It had followed me home –whatever it was. I ran to the window to investigate. From it, I could see the lonely street lamp on my sleepy suburban road nestled in shrubbery and partially covered by a large elm tree. The lamp illuminated a dark and solitary figure; hunched and motionless, with disheveled hair and clothing, lanky arms and spindly legs. It appeared to be an elderly woman, though it didn’t move like one, for when it saw me in the window it dashed with inhuman speed behind the elm and out of sight.
“WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?” I yelled angrily out the window at the figure. There was no reply. I saw no one out the window after that, nor anyone when I went downstairs to check it out from the front door. My wife urged me to return to bed and insisted that I was just hallucinating from the stressful day I had. I stayed up a bit longer before my weariness took me, the image of that old hag burned into my mind; the sound of that scream still rang in my ears.
The next morning, I went to check my yard for signs of the thing I had seen the previous night. To my utter shock, I found a scrap of seaweed underneath the lamppost where it had stood. I was not hallucinating. I don’t know what that thing was or what it wanted but I did know that it had something to do with the girl in the water, for when I turned and faced my house from the street I could see its foul artwork.
“ϒ” was painted, large and bold, in red blood on my front door.