It all started off perfectly. John, Edward and I were having a complete blast. However, within a couple of hours, everything took a sharp turn for the worst. What was supposed to be a fantastic experience turned into a horrendous nightmare. In fact, if I weren’t lucky enough, I wouldn’t be able to document this tale. Here’s how all the events unfolded.
My friends and I, John and Edward, took part in an insane general knowledge quiz. The prize for the winner was a vacation in a remote but magnificent looking island. It was completely uninhabited, and had never had any visitors. When the results of the quiz came out, my friend Edward came first. As John and I were his lifelong buddies, he invited us to accompany him. We were overjoyed, and immediately got to packing as we were to embark the next day. Our parents weren’t going to join us. Once the big day came, Edward’s dad dropped us off to the shore. There we were greeted by a middle aged man who introduced himself as Peter. He would be staying with us and taking care of us. We bade our farewells to Edward’s dad before hopping onto a large boat with our belongings. While rowing the boat, Peter informed us that the journey would take at least half an hour and that he had prepared a cabin for us. However, other than that, he was quite a loquacious person.
Once we arrived, we were taken aback. The island was stunning. It was surrounded tall trees and bushes, and it was surprisingly manicured. Peter tied the boat to a large rock and we finally stepped foot onto the island. In the middle of the island lay our cabin, which was overshadowed by the tremendously large trees surrounding it. If I’m being honest, our cabin’s location kind of gave me the heebie jeebies, but we had been assured that apart from the four of us, not a single other soul was staying there.
The cabin was pretty decent I guess. It had two bedrooms, two toilets, a kitchen and a dining room. Once we unpacked, we decided to explore the island. For some reason, Peter was unwilling to accompany us. He hadn’t really said anything at all during the journey. However, we just brushed it off as him being a bit socially awkward and we began roaming around.
After approximately an hour of roaming around, we eventually reached the outskirts of the island. After another good few minutes, we reached the rock where our boat was tied to. However, we noticed something odd. Our boat wasn’t there.
Initially, we thought that we had probably tied it to some different rock. But after walking around the entire circumference of the island, the boat was still nowhere to be seen. The thought of an unknown presence in the island struck us. We hurried back to our cabin to inform Peter, but he wasn’t there. We thought that he may have started wandering off as well, but we found a note on his bed. To our astonishment, it read:
‘ You have no more than 3 days to escape or death shall fall upon you. ‘
We believed that he might just be pranking us. Therefore, I yelled, “ Alright! Joke’s over. You can come now Peter. “, but I received no response.
We started searching outside the cabin for Peter, until John spotted a note laying beside a tree. I grabbed it, and it read:
‘ Turn around. ‘
Then all hell broke loose as a mutilated body was thrown in front of us and 2 gunshots were fired! The three of us sprinted away, completely unaware of where we were going. Once we ran far from the gunshots, we tried calling the police one by one but there was no service. My mind was flooded with questions. Has Peter been killed by whoever else was on the island, or is Peter the one who fired those gunshots and threw that body? If so, what was his motive?
We took a moment to process what just happened, but then we heard faint footsteps coming from all directions. That’s when multiple vague figures began looming out of the trees, none of them looking human. Terror stricken, the three of us darted away. We ran for quite a while before stopping to catch our breaths. But then all of a sudden, we heard a deafening gun shot. John shrieked in pain. He had been shot on the arm! Edward and I quickly carried him over our shoulders and hid behind a bush. We then saw a figure wearing a mask and holding a gun. He must be the one who shot John, I thought. I gasped as I realised that this guy must be Peter. He looked just as tall and bulky. We remained dead silent, our hearts palpitating out of our chests. I grabbed a twig and threw it in a random direction, which distracted the man and we ran away.
We ran for at least another 15 solid minutes before collapsing on the floor, completely listless. We huddled together behind a large bush and contemplated on what to do. A man with a gun, and a group of non humanoid creatures were after us.
" What the hell just happened! " cried Edward. " What's happened has happened! Now we have 3 days to escape this hell hole! We don't have a boat, and we don't have service so we can't call for help. So how in God's name are we gonna escape? " said John. We all just sat and thought for a while, before coming to the realisation that our only option was finding the boat. However, we had explored about 80 percent of the island after our frantic sprinting, and we hadn't spotted the boat anywhere. But we were left with no choice. Before moving on though, we needed to catch our breaths. And thankfully, no one was following us.
I opened my eyes, and it was pitch black. We had all dozed off while resting! I activated the flash light on my phone and scanned my surroundings with it. We were safe, but something was terribly wrong. John wasn't around.
I shoved Edward and woke him up. A wave of fear surged through his quivering body when he noticed that John wasn't there. We immediately leapt onto our feet and started looking for him. We didn't call out his name, afraid it would alert the 'bad guys' ( I'll just refer to them as the bad guys from now on ). Eventually, we turned off our flashlights too and didn't say a word to each other, afraid we'd give ourselves away. Though we could barely see anything, we kept looking. That was until we stopped dead in our tracks upon hearing a twig snap behind us. We turned around, and obviously we couldn't see nor hear anything, but we felt an uncanny presence coming near us. The feeling made us transfixed for a few seconds. It felt like sleep paralysis but we weren't sleeping. Eventually, we felt the presence of the figure right in front of us, to the point where I could hear it breathing. I figured it could be John as it wasn't attacking us, so i stuttered, "John?". A few seconds of awkward silence proceeded, before an excruciatingly painful feeling dominated my forehead and I shrieked in pain. Edward and I bolted out of there immediately. We could hear the thing's footsteps picking up pace behind us. After a few minutes, the thing stopped. Edward and I were out of breath, so we stopped for a few seconds too. I turned on my flashlight and aimed it at the thing chasing us, and gasped in astonishment and disgust when I saw it. It was a person wearing a mask. But it was no ordinary mask. The vile monster removed the skin on John's face and wore it as a mask! I was completely nonplussed, and Edward had to drag me for a few second before I started running myself.
We ran as fast and as far as we could from there, before collapsing in exhaustion. I couldn't believe what that beast did to John, and the feeling that it could've been me in his place still haunts me. I felt like giving up. John had been brutally slaughtered, and without him Edward and I were nothing. We sat there shedding tears for some time, until we started hearing something. It sounded like a group of people chanting. We silently approached the sound, and we found over a dozen people wearing red cloaks and crucifixes while chanting something. " Is this some sort of cult? ", I thought, discombobulated. I then realised that they were surrounding something. I peered over to get a closer look, and my jaw dropped in horror. It was John's body, and I won't describe how it looked.
I only saw it for a fleeting moment before grabbing Edward's arm and bolting the hell out of there. As much as we were sad about losing him, we couldn't let ourselves end up in that state. We began looking for the boat. But we only did so for a second before noticing something. A person. The one who killed John, and had been chasing us. He was going in the direction of the cult. Edward and I knew that he was probably going to inform them that he had found us, and we couldn't let that happen. So, after building up every last bit of courage, Edward and I each grabbed a sharp twig and sneaked behind him. He was walking fairly slowly. When we were right behind him, we shoved our twigs through his shoulders and covered his mouth. I then grabbed the weapon he struck me with. It was a long and sharp knife. I pressed the blade against his throat and said, " Lead us to the boat. "
He did as we told him to do. It turns out it was just lying beside a tree, but given how profoundly huge this island was, we couldn't find it. Anyhow, we forced him to help us lift it to the shore. We then rowed the boat out of the island, with him on board. Edward rowed it, while I kept his blade pressed against his neck. Then all of a sudden, he flung my arm out of his way and dove into the water. We had been rowing for quite some time, so he was gonna have to swim a long distance, but we weren't gonna swim after him. We just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Eventually, we arrived. Edward called his dad and told him about what transpired. It was midnight, but he came to pick us up nevertheless. Whilst in the car, Edward's dad called the police and told them everything. We then informed John's parents about what happened to John, and they were utterly devastated. They rebuked Edward and I for not keeping an eye on him. We didn't blame them. We shouldn't have just dozed off. But again, it could've been me or Edward in his place.
The following day, the police searched the island. They were able to retrieve John's body, but his killers were nowhere to be found. Our cabin had also been demolished, but that was the least of our concerns. This island was now all over the news. John's funeral was held not long later. The people who hosted the general knowledge contest weren't charged, as they claimed to have no idea that the island was inhabited by some evil cult.
So this is how what was supposed to be a thrilling experience turned into a deadly one. It has been a week now, and John's death still brings tears to my eyes. It always will. Edward and I haven't even met since then. I don't know when I'm gonna get over all this, but I really do hope that no one else will ever have to experience something like this.