The Girl In The Corridor

Steadily checking the corridors, I caught a glimpse of a little girl skipping down the stairs. Following her ghostly tune, I walked down the hall passing the portraits of my late parents and ancestors. Suddenly stopping to admire the beauty of their greatness during the time they ruled. Getting back on track when the little girl started humming again. Continuing down the hallway and tip-toeing down the staircase into the main room. Looking around to see if the girl was still here, she appeared before me stumbling her words.

“I can’t seem to find my doll,” she mumbled. I leaned over resting my hands on my knees, “Well, where's the last place you saw it?” I asked her, confused on how familiar she looks and yet I’ve never seen her around before. I turned to look at the giant picture in the center of the wall between the double staircase connected to both the left and right main halls. It was a picture of me, my parents, and a girl holding a porcelain doll. I turned to face the girl and she was gone. Asking around to see if anyone else has seen a little girl roaming the floors.

Giving up I headed back to my room to rest my head, when I noticed a diary that I haven’t touched since grade school. The last page I wrote in dated back to 1864. The page read, “Dear diary, mother and father didn’t come back yet. I’m worried something might have happened to them on their trip back from Elly’s school. Elly is my youngest sister, she’s quite smart as well. She’s only 5 and she speaks better than the rest of her classmates. She can easily answer questions that no other kid in her class can answer. She always carried a porcelain doll, it was her favorite thing in the entire world. She never let it leave her sight. Someone’s at the door, I think it's my parents. I wonder what mom will cook for dinner.”

I start to recall what happened that day. It wasn’t my parents, it was a man coming to deliver a letter regarding their death. My parents died in a crash that day, the horses were startled causing the carriage to collide into a tree. The bodies of my parents and my little sister were found but they couldn’t find a reason for what frightened the horses. When I heard the news I was devastated. I isolated myself in my room for a long time before accepting that they were gone. Looking back to the funeral, I remember Elly telling me one day that she’d never part with her doll. She even wanted to be buried with it. Remembering this little detail I recall my sister frantically looking around the corridors for her doll before leaving for school. She never found it. It hit me suddenly when I realized that the girl I was speaking to earlier today was my sister.