The story I’m going to tell you is something I heard from my grandmother who heard it from her grandmother. It happened at the end of the 1800’s. Mr. and Mrs. Williams lived on a farm near to the forest. They had a little girl named Rosie. Sometimes the parents went to the village, but they didn’t like to leave Rosie alone so they bought “Prince”, a big dog, to protect the child from danger. On a winter night, Mr. and Mrs. Williams went to a party in the village.
“We are going to come back by dawn”-said Mr. Williams to his daughter who was in bed already.-“Sleep good.”
They both kissed the little girl and stepped out to the cold winter night. As they walked to the horse-carriage Mrs. Williams turned to his husband and started to talk in a worried voice.
“Oh George,”-she said-“I think we should stay home tonight. I have a feeling that something horrible will happen if we leave!”
“Don’t worry dear!”-Said her husband softly.-“You know that Prince can protect Rosie from everything.”
“But what if…”-started the worried mother, but her husband interrupted.
“Everything is going to be ok Mary”-he said holding his wife’s hands protectively.-“You don’t need to worry.”
If Mr. Williams would have known how wrong he was...
*
A few hours after the parents left, Rosie roused from her dream.
“Why is it so cold in here?”-she asked herself.
She got out of her bed, but when she started to walk to the door, something moved under her bed.
“Don’t worry Prince”-she said to the dog who always slept under her bed.-I think the wind opened a window somewhere. I’ll come back after I closed it.”
She was wondering why did Prince not bark after her as he usually does. “He went back to sleep already.”-she explained to herself. The windows were closed everywhere she checked. Then she noticed a sound of water dripping from the kitchen.
“Oh, I forgot to check the kitchen”-she reminded herself.-“But mom always closes the tap.”
As she went closer to the kitchen door, the air got colder and the dripping got louder. She stopped by the wooden door and placed her hand to the door handle. At the moment Rosie saw what’s behind the door, a loud, heart-wrenching scream left her throat, and she started crying. Prince, her dear dog, hanged from the ceiling with a rope around his neck. His body was full of cuts and he had a long cut along his stomach vertically. There was blood all over the kitchen and under the victim there was a pool of blood. She could hear the dog’s blood dripping into the little blood pond, and a blooded knife lay on the floor. At the next moment a loud, heartless, evil, laugh came from the child’s room. She saw a man’s dark figure sneaking out of the door to the cold night. The sadness in Rosie’s heart was powerful. She grabbed the knife from the floor and went after him. What she saw outside, was too much for her little heart. All of their animals, the horses, the cows, the pigs, the sheeps, and the chickens, lay on the cold, bloody grass with a deadly cut through their stomach. She felt that this act can’t remain unpunished. She looked around for the murderer. He was in the middle of the field, running toward the forest. He didn’t think anyone was after him. Rosie started to run as fast as she could, with the bloody knife in her hand. As the little girl got closer, the man heard her feet running on the cold grass, and the murderer had just enough time to jump to his horse and he escaped from Rosie’s revenge.
*
One month after that catastrophic winter night, Mr. and Mrs. Williams gave up their hope that Rosie is alive. They committed suicide. The people in the village were afraid to go near to the Williams farm. They said it’s haunted. But everyone who went in the empty house after that night said that they heard a girl’s surprised, sad scream and a man’s cold, evil laugh.
But Rosie is still alive! She will always look for that man who was under her bed that night. And if she sees anyone hurting an animal, she will kill that person with the blooded knife under the darkness of the night.
By: Dea Kiss
