Lost

Chapter 7

I couldn't remember my family. I couldn't remember my home. I couldn't remember anything. But I did remember that Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She mysteriously disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, neither her plane, nor her body, ever to be found again. The whole world heard of Amelia Earhart. People searched for her for two years before finally giving up and declaring her dead. And here I had found her. I realized with cold certainty that this island was not of my world. Otherwise, it would have been discovered years ago. I slowly bent down, picking up the scrap of paper which had fallen from the decaying plane. Dust puffed in the air as I unfolded it, smoothing out its yellowed edges.

"What does it say?"

I whirled around, only to come face to face with Drew.

"...uh...um..." I gaped, clutching the paper to my chest.

"Seriously. You shouldn't leave the group. You could get lost." Alex stepped out from behind Drew, her long ponytail swinging.

"Yeah. 'Cause I totally am not lost right now. Not at all." I muttered, glaring at them.

"So? What does it say?!" Irene leapt out from behind me, her eyes sparkling.

"Anyone else come to spy on me?" I craned my neck, scanning the jungle.

Someone grabbed my shoulders from behind, making me jump, "you've been pranked!" Will shouted.

Why did I have to be stuck on an island with idiots? Why couldn't it have been a continent? At least a country?

Finally, Isaac stepped out from the bushes, smiling sheepishly.

"No one else?" I asked again.

They all stared back at me expectantly.

"Fine." I looked down at the blotched handwriting covering the aging paper.

'Find the pit of a thousand lost souls Take the treasure which shows you the way
Follow the path of the untold
There is naught that you should say
At half past three, here the silence shall strike
Avenge me, the lost Amelia Earhart, with all your might'

I read aloud, squinting at the looping letters.

Silence met me as I folded the letter and stuck it in my pocket.

"Well? What do we do?" I asked.

"Forget about it. Burn that paper. This never happened." Irene switched from overly happy to serious in a split second.

She made a grab for my pocket but I dodged her, my mind reeling.

"She's right." Drew frowned at me, "it isn't worth it."

It was a rare day when Drew agreed with Irene.

"I don't get it. Isn't this poem cool? It's full of clues! It could lead to... I don't know... buried treasure, I guess?" I dodged Irene again, staring at my friend's stony faces.

Will started arguing with Isaac about what they should do with the letter. Burn it? Eat it? Irene started shouting about monsters and nightmares, while Drew tried to explain everything over the noise.

Suddenly, Alex's patience snapped.

"Everyone shut up right now!" She screamed. Everyone froze, mid sentence. A flock of birds flew up, screeching, spooked in the sudden silence.

"This isn't worth it! None of this is worth it! Going to all this trouble, just to get our miserable lives back! We might even die! And for what?! A lost existence! They're still after us and they won't stop like last time. If we don't stop, it won't end until they kill us." Alex stopped, red in the face, "now please...just...put that letter back, carefully, and we can go back to our lives."

"Not until you explain to me what's going on." I narrowed my eyes, hand over my pocket, knowing full well they could overpower me at any second. They weren't coordinated enough to think of it and work together as a group to take me down.

"Fine. We owe you that much." Alex folded her arms, frowning.

"...well? What's all this about dying?" I glared at them.

"Last time we thought about escaping the island, they came after us," Isaac said, his voice low, "the creatures. They were so...creepy." He seemed unable to describe them any further.

"We were planning to escape that night," Drew picked up where Isaac left off, "then they attacked us. We thought it was coincidence but the next time we planned to leave the island, they attacked again."

"What are they? And...what can they do?" I asked, my voice sounding strange coming from my mouth, like it was someone else's.

"They can kill. They killed Brandon, another lost soul. The rest of us got wounded." Will soberly rolled up his shorts to expose a jagged white scar.

"They're huge and black and they have two tails, one covered in razor sharp spikes and the other one covered in tentacles. They have no eyes, just blank faces, and a huge mouths, covered with teeth." Irene shuddered, remembering.

"...so..." I pulled the paper from my pocket, "this is a way to escape the island?"

"Yeah. My guess is that Amelia Earhart was a lost soul," Drew pulled at his dark curly hair, "she probably crashed here and lived here for a long time. She probably found out how to get off the lost island. But as she wrote down the clue, sitting in her plane, the monsters killed her. That's why she wrote, 'avenge me'."

Things leapt out at me, catching my eye. The long scratches around the airplane door. The dark stain on the seat and the floor. The dark flecks on the inside of the window. The way the last line of the poem was written in shaky handwriting, the ink blotched and the words hurried. The dark smear at the bottom of the paper, which I had thought was ink, was definitely something else.

I contemplated what I should do. Only one answer seemed to repeat itself. Burn the paper. Live. Who knew what these beasts could do? But I couldn't seem to bring myself to do it. I could have tore it into a million pieces, lit the match I had in my pocket and burnt the fragile paper to a crisp. But I didn't. All six of my friends were staring intently at me, urgency bright in their eyes.

I sighed and put the paper with Amelia Earhart's dying words written on it, back in the plane on her dead lap.

"Don't want the monsters getting suspicious," I muttered, "let's go back to camp."

Relief was spelled out on all their faces as we made our way back to the comforting shelter of the camp. I shot one last glance over my shoulder at the long lost aviator, her life terminated far too early.