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THE BRICK SHED



Olivia Carbonero and Tyler Rodgers Mr. Wright 1A 3 May 2012 The Terrible and Troubling Tale of Admiral Swail

The Admiral gazed out the large dining room window at the tranquil blue sea through a giant window in his study. His salt-bitten hands were folded across his broad chest as he sat in a large and faded leather chair. His stubbly white beard molded around the grim curve of his mouth. He was dressed in a stiff military uniform.

He turned around and hunched over the old mahogany desk and squinted his eyes at the tattered book before him. He read the words slowly and methodically. His house was eerily quiet, and only the raspy breath of this middle-aged man could be heard. He was still wide-awake, even after a day of visiting houses of the sick. Since he despised ill people so much, he took it upon himself to personally take them to the local hospital. Here they would either get better or die. Either option was satisfying to him.

His favorite and most read book, “The Life of Poseidon,” was before him. The townspeople always said that he loved Poseidon more than his own family. But that was just chitchat of course. One particular story that Admiral Swain was especially fond of was about the story of how he became a god. Poseidon started as a mere official in the world of underwater dwellers, known as mermaids, but he prayed to the stars that he could rule them all one day. One night he heard a voice telling him that in order to become ruler of the ocean, he had to kill his favorite daughter, Piscina. He agreed without hesitation and murdered her. He got his wish, but at a price: he could never have a daughter again.

The admiral’s daughter walked into study, disrupting his reading. “Hello, father,” she said.

He replied with a nod and waited for her to continue. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to be down by the river for a while.”

“Thank you for informing me of this. Be back for dinner.”

She began to walk out of the room when he called out; “Annabelle!” The Admiral’s voice stopped her, like a vocal lasso, pulling her back into the conversation. “Please, daughter, tell me the truth. Are you sick?”

“No sir.” She stated back formally. Her eyebrows were raised slightly. Her lips overemphasized the words. She dared not look into his eyes for fear that he would see that she was lying. The truth was, she was sick. And it was getting worse, fast. It all started a few weeks ago when she went into the forbidden shed…

* * *

The door of the little brick shed had seemed so innocent before. It was a tiny building on her father’s property. She could look out of the window right now and see it, its small black silhouette in the fading light of dusk. One of the other children had told her that the door was always locked because it was the entrance to a hole. Although the hole was dangerous, it was rumored to lead to a series of fantastic and gigantic caves. Annabelle had been curious. So she stole her father’s keys, which was another thing in which she regretted, now that she thought about it. Her father had noticed they were missing, and became suspicious.

So Annabelle had stolen her father’s keys and snuck out one night, to try them on the lock of the door. Sure enough, one of them fit the lock, and she swung open the door to reveal a series of stairs leading down into a sort of passage. She only ventured about twenty feet into this earthy corridor, before her nerves became too much, and she ran back up the stairs, locking the shed again and retreating into the house, adrenaline gushing through her veins.

The next day, the symptoms began to appear. She had sneezed, and a rusty red smatter of blood stained her hand. This was only mildly alarming however, compared to the sudden hallucinations that seemed to come out of nowhere. During these attacks, she didn’t know where she was, or even who she was with. Mostly she would find herself back in the cave, running from something large, always breathing down her neck and about to catch her. She would wake with a start, emerging from these horrible daydreams, not knowing if she betrayed herself during them by screaming or running around the room. She was terrified that her father would find out.

* * *

Knowing that the eyes of her father will still on her, the daughter strode out of the dining room, into the kitchen, and up the back stairwell, up to her room. She closed the white door slowly and then threw herself onto the bed.

She was fifteen, yet the weight of the world was on her mind. “He knew I was lying.” The thought reverberated in her brain. She was scared of him. She hated him. Another fact intruded into her mind. “I should have never gone into the cave,” She thought.

It was now a week after she had lied to her father. In this short amount of time she had become to ill to hide it anymore, and he had found out. It was late one night that her father stood at the edge of her bed silently stared at her. She was sobbing at the pain in her body. She was scared. She wanted him to say something, but he didn’t His cold, grey, glassy eyes bored into hers. She didn’t recognize this man she had loved her whole life. He was now gone. Taken in the middle of the night by some mysterious thief.

She began to wheeze and cough. She curled up in her bed and painfully yakked up mucus. Her father backed away from her, yet his eyes were still staring at her the whole time. She went quiet, then looked up at him. “Daddy?” she mustered from her enflamed throat. But he just gave her a disgusted, hateful look and quickly left.

She knew that look. It meant bad things were coming. This psychotic man was not even close to her caring and loving father. No, this new person was a monster. Annabelle coughed again. She laid there, unmoving, as she faced her grim reality. She was not able to fight for herself…for her life.

Annabelle searched through her memories to pinpoint exactly what her father was going to do to her, but she came up blank. She had no idea what he was capable of. The only thing reassuring her at this point was the fact that she knew he father had never hurt a woman or a child before. And luckily she was both. But then that hateful look came back into her mind and she gave up hope once more. Tears streamed down her hot, red cheeks and stained her bed sheet. Annabelle sobbed for the rest of the night, miserably awaiting her fate.

Admiral Swail stormed back downstairs and into his study, slamming the glass doors behind him. He sat down at his desk and opened the top drawer and pulled out the Poseidon book and flipped to his favorite story. Soon, he became lost in it, and saw Piscina as his own daughter. The admiral had always wanted to be a greater, more powerful man than he was now, and he thought of himself as Poseidon. He realized that in order to become a greater man, he had to do what Poseidon had done. That was the night Admiral Swain finally lost his mind.

* * *

The last thing Annabelle ever saw from her own house was her mother and sister playing together on the front lawn. As she watched them she realized they were the only things left in her world that she still loved. They were her light at the end of a dark and death-ladden tunnel. She has once loved her father, but recent events had drastically changed how she saw him. He was no longer the loving and fun dad. He was no longer the man that taught her to swim and catch crab in the nearby river. No. He was now just a man who had turned on her in a snap and lost all love for her with a single glance. As she was thinking about her father he walked in. She turned to see him and two unfamiliar men behind him on either side. They were big, burly, and she felt instantly threatened. Her father nodded and they came forward and grabbed Annabelle. She began to scream and tried to shake their tight grips on her fragile arms, but it was no use. They dragged her out of bedroom and took her downstairs like she was a meaningless rag doll. Her cries brought her mother and sister running inside and instantly they began to try to free her. But her father came and pushed them down, and they feared too much to try again. Everyone knew the struggle was hopeless. Salty tears began to stream down her face as she was pulled down the center hall, away from her family. She had lost all hope and motivation. Her body was limp, but her mind was filled to the brim with heightened emotions. The men pushed her down the front steps and she fell into a miserable heap at the bottom. She was bleeding and covered in dirt. They made her climb into the awaiting carriage and before she new it she was miles from her house. Even though the truth was nearly impossible to accept, she knew that this was the beginning of the end.

* * *

Annabelle was taken to a new infirmary, which was just a mile north from the outside of town, in the naval base. The admiral hired the best doctors and they all swore to silence of what went on inside the building. They experimented on Annabelle and tried to figure out what was wrong with her. She never left the infirmary, so the admiral assumed he had gotten the one and only person with this illness.

But he was wrong. Other children on the Navy Base had begun to contract the disease. They all came to her house during the week, because the house also served as a sort of school for the base. A week after venturing into the cave, she had managed to infect ten children. In the following week, thirty-five others had also mysteriously contracted this new contagion. Many of them had parents who worked as doctors at the infirmary, and they began to be frantic, unable to diagnose the disease. Many other families began to leave the base, not wanting their children to catch the virus.

After weeks of experiments and tests on the sick children, Annabelle was the first to die. Instead of a proper funeral, the Admiral set up a ceremony in which Annabelle would be concealed so that even in death she could not spread her virus. At the end of this ceremony, Annabelle was lowered into a half oval tub of water. This was done to insure that she would be with Poseidon in the afterlife. Then she was frozen and incased in cement. Her odd casket was taken to a flat plain of grass behind the infirmary and was placed standing up in the ground. She was the first of hundreds to be placed in this orderly graveyard.

Admiral Swain operated this elimination of diseased people until he was as old and nutty as he could possibly get. His only surviving child, Mark Swain, became the leader of this cult-like business. The admiral’s last words to his son where simply, “Never stop hunting, Triton.” This was the Annabelle of one of Poseidon’s sons and was who he thought Mark truly was. But Mark was not like his father, and within three months of the admiral’s death, he shut down his father’s whole business and never looked back.

PLAQUE

The Admirals’ daughter was the first to become ill with the disease. Her name was Annabelle and she was only fourteen years old. She told no one of how she became sick and it wasn’t until her secret diary was found in the infirmary that people learned of how her fate was brought upon her…

“The door of the little brick shed had seemed so innocent before. It was a tiny building on my father’s property. I was able to see it from the second floor porch. It’s small black silhouette stood out from the fading light of dusk. My older sister told me that the door was always locked because it was the entrance to a hole. Although the hole was dangerous, it was rumored to lead to a series of fantastic and gigantic caves. Naturally, I had been curious. So I stole her father’s keys one evening and snuck across the yard to the shed. I regret this decision with all of my heart, for it has brought terrible things into my life in the past several months.

Anyways, with shaking hands I tried all the keys on the rings until one fit. I swung open the door to reveal a series of stairs leading down into a sort of passage. I only ventured about twenty feet into this earthy corridor before my nerves became too much. Quickly, I ran back up the stairs, locking the shed again and retreating into the house, adrenaline gushing through my veins. My heart was pumping so loud I was sure others could here. I placed the keys back where I had found them and ran up into my room. I decided to never go back there.

But it was too late. The damage was already done. The next day, the symptoms began to appear. The first time I sneezed a rusty red smatter of blood stained my hand. I became worried but brushed it off without telling my family. It wasn’t until the hallucinations started that I became truly scared at what was happening to me. During these attacks, I would see myself in the caves. I was running from something large, always breathing down my neck and about to catch me. When I would come back to reality I always wondered if I had actually been screaming and running around my bedroom. I was in constant fear my father would find out. It turned out that this fear was soon to become reality. This diseased as tried to take me down, but I tell myself to always stay strong. I must be strong…”