• Something wasn’t right. Something here just didn’t fit. Was it the fact Elizabeth had gotten lost while the tour went on, or was it because, those things lurking in the shadows were watching her. Maybe, maybe not. But Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t be there. She could feel their presence very near.

    A creak of floorboards sounded. Happy that it might have been the group of people she went missing from, she ran farther away into the dark halls. “Elizabeth, where are you?” called out a voice. She kept running down the halls screaming, “I’m here, I’m coming father!” But the more she ran, the more she felt their presence.

    She stopped. Lost in the maze of the tower, she cried. “Poor child.” rang a voice from above. She looked up and saw nothing. That is when she noticed what room she was in. It looked like a medieval torture chamber. There were maces, Iron Maidens, and all sorts of nasty looking instruments on the walls.

    She looked around at the strange collection of items. Some of them made her sick to her stomach. As she started for the door, she had to squeeze past a table and a wooden rack. She bumped her toe on something that was sticking out from underneath the table. When she bent down to see what it was, she discovered a wooden box. On closer examination, it looked like a small coffin. It was adorned with black iron hardware and scrawled across the lid in what looked like blood was a sign that read, “Beware the spirit within”. A little shiver ran down her spine. As she went to push the box back under the table, she noticed something else that made her blood run cold. The lock on the box was broken open.

    Despite the warning, Elizbeth suddenly had to see what was in the box. With a shaking hand, she reached over and removed the broken lock. As she reached to open the lid, she thought she heard a voice whisper, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” She looked around guiltily. It must be her conscience. Still, she had to see what was in the box. Carefully, she lifted the lid of the box.

    Expecting to find the bloody corpse of some dead body, she was quite shocked at what she saw. It was a doll. What was even more bizarre was that it was a boy doll. This doll looked to be a young man with sleek black hair and pale white skin. He was dressed in a Victorian suit of black silk with a white lacy looking scarf tied around his neck. Around his neck, laying stark against the white lace was a thick gold chain with a medallion on it. She wondered what it was for. Probably a family crest or something.

    As she continued her inspection of the box, she noticed strange writing on the inside lid. It was written in some other language. It was probably Italian. Slowly, she sounded out the words. “*Svegli il mio servo, faccia come dico. Rovini il giorno e mai il vostro svegli.” she whispered. “I wonder what it means in English.” She found a piece of a candy wrapper in her pocket and wrote down the words, vowing to ask her father to translate them.

    Knowing she had stayed too long, she closed the lid of the box and started for the door. Just then, the box started shaking and rattling. A hideous noise came from the box like someone writhing in pain. Elizabeth covered her ears and let out her own scream before turning to run for the door. She was almost to the hallway when it felt like something had reached out and grabbed her angle. She fell to the ground with a thud.

    She turned around, paralyzed with fear at what she saw there. Behind the box, two long black shadows oozed out from under the table. They raised into the air about ten feet and turned to face her. Their eyes glowed red like fire as they hovered in the air over the box. “We warned you not play with our box.” they said sinisterly.

    Suddenly it went quiet. The box stopped rattling. It stopped screaming. It stopped jumping. Elizabeth stared at the box with wide fearful eyes. The lid flew open and the doll sat up. His green eyes fixed on Elizabeth. “Run, child, Run.” he yelled, rising out of the box to stop the shadow creatures. They swooped around them and before she could crawl to the door, the shadows were upon her. They swarmed around her body, cutting off her breath In a few moments, she fell to the floor, her lifeless eyes staring.

    * * * * * *

    The next morning, the police found the little girl. Or, at least her corpse. They couldn’t figure out what had happened to her. Her body had no blood in it, but there were no marks on it or anything that looked out of place and no sign of the b lood. Was she murdered? Did she die of some unknown disease? They didn’t know. Elizabeth’s parents sobbed and weeped that their little girl had been taken from them.
    The guards who worked in the tower speculated over what had happened. That room where she was found had always had an evil presence in it. There were strange stories surrounding it. The death of the little girl spooked everyone so bad that they closed the tower to the public.
    Venice Italy, 1995