Francis Brandywine By Eden M

Francis Brandywine

By Eden McLeod

On a cold Chicago night, I hear the rattle of a train as it passed my dusty bedroom window.  I was sitting at my small oak desk, rolling out my Quetico Park map.  Quetico Park takes up hundreds of acres of land with trees, campsites, tracks, and lakes.  I adored Quetico Park.  My family and I go camping there every year but we won't be going back anytime soon after what happened there last year……

Francis Brandywine was a dark haired, reckless, 17 year old girl who loved to be alone. Francis and her parents had been camping near one of the deeper lakes in the park. The very centre of this particular lake was rumoured to be around 300 feet and created by a passing glacier.

One night, Francis waited eagerly for her parents to go to sleep. An hour later, Francis was planting her quaint feet into her leather brown boots. So she left the shore, walked out on to the rickety pier and jumped into the old rowboat. She planned to find a quiet place in the middle of the lake, lay on the bench of the boat and write in her journal underneath the star- soaked sky.  She rowed for about 20 minutes and when she was satisfied that she was over the lake’s deepest spot she lay down on the bench, and looked up at the night sky and put a cigarette to her mouth. The stars were very bright tonight. She felt very peaceful.

She threw her smoke into the dark water beneath, then she heard something strange.  It was like a knock. Two gentle taps on wood. She sat up guessing that the boat had drifted to shore and run aground but she looked around the boat and she saw that she was still half a mile from shore. She leaned over to see if she could see anything but she saw nothing, no logs, no rocks, nothing. So she lay back down and told herself that it could be a number of things a frog, a turtle, a stick that had drifted to the side of the rustic boat. She relaxed and soon fell into a contented slumber. She had just closed her eyes when she heard the knocks again. Three crisp clean knocks. The horrid noise seems to be coming from underneath the boat. Now she felt terrified. She leaned over the side again. It had to be an animal, but what animal would knock like that? Her mouth went dry. She held onto both sides of the boat and waited for it to happen again.

The silence stretched out and just as she started to relax and think that she had imagined it all, the knocks then came louder. She had to leave. She lunged for the oars, knocking her lantern into the dark, murky water. The lake was calm so she  should have made good progress but, after rowing quickly, she realised she wasn't moving anywhere. Something was keeping her exactly where she was. She kept trying to row on the verge of tears, but she was going nowhere. Her muscles ached and she was exhausted. Her deep, raspy breaths, filled the air. She curled up in a ball and cried. She sobbed. Once she had calmed down she realised that all was silent. For 10 minutes, then 15, then 30. Again, she tricked herself into thinking it was just her imagination. But just like before, just when she was beginning to think she was safe and beginning to get a grip on herself, the knocks came again, this time as loud as a bass drum. The floorboards of the boat shaking vigorously with each knock. She made a questionable decision to dip an oar into the black water, and try to dislodge herself or at least, feel what was keeping her down. As the oar broke the surface however, a strong grip dragged it under water. She screamed and jumped back and hit the last remaining oar into the murky depths below. Now she had no options all she could do was sit, hope and wait, wait for morning to come and hope that whatever was going to happen, happen.  

The petrifying knocks went on through the lonely night. To pass the time she doodled in her journal about the knocks and everything. It is only because of this journal that we know what happened that night. Francis can’t tell us. She was never seen again. The boat was found on shore the next day, and in it, her notebook. Frantic pictures and entries in her distinctive handwriting, all pages but the last, which looked like it had been written fast with a muddy finger. And on this page, that truly make this a horror story, were the words “I DID KNOCK FIRST”

By Eden McLeod