'The Haunting Story of Queen Loretta'

"A CABIN IN THE WOODS HAD BEEN ABANDONED FOR YEARS, BUT ONE NIGHT A CANDLE BURNED IN THE WINDOW", was the headline of every newspaper in New York City, a day after this year's Halloween. Thousands of tourists were crowded around the newsstands so that they could purchase the trending story about this one man who claimed to have seen the spirit of the 1998 Queen of Englandé standing with a candle in the cabin window yesterday while on his morning jog.

The New York City Diner

Angela, an academic scholar in paranormal journalism and string theory enthusiast, was reading The New York paper at a local Manhattan Diner on page 5 titled cleverly, 'The True Haunting Story of Loretta'.

Maybe this was the hard evidence that scientists can finally use to prove to the world that multiple universes are actually real and do actually exist, she hypothesized to herself.

According to the newspapers, it's saying that paranormal experts are agreeing with the local jogger that the woman he saw in the window of the cabin was in fact, Englandé's Queen Loretta's spirit. They made this bold statement due to the image he took of her when he saw the spirit and the location of the cabin itself.

Then the article went to explain that rumors said that experts believed this was the cabin where Queen Loretta and King Francés took their last vacation before their disappearance in 1998. Not another soul has been allowed to trespass the cabin's territory since it was announced a murder-crime scene 24 years ago; after they found her body floating in the lake behind the cabin wearing her favorite white dress with a poem she wrote that she must have pinned on the tree before jumping in; and a book titled "Telephone".

Angela remembered reading the original published story of the King and Queen when they first went missing in 1998 because of how much it had the world's attention; much like this one right now. However, something was different about the story published now. Loretta's background story had changed, making her sound like the villain when she was originally portrayed as the victim in 1998.

New evidence surfaced, I guess? Angela thought to herself. The story of Loretta in 1998 told the story in the perspective that the King had an affair with someone else, but now it's saying the opposite, and that she was actually the one who had the affair.

Either way, it was completely unacceptable and taboo for a King or Queen to create such an adultery move, which is why they had to get away for a bit to let the media ease down and dissolve from all the attention.

Angela studied the newest and updated poem that experts are now claiming to be the one that was found with Loretta and what it actually said, which was this:

They Call it Fate.

She trusted you,

So share her story right.

She was a Queen in 1998.

She slept with the knight.

So, her prince consort, told everyone that,

He didn't love her anymore.

But really, he met someone knew...

She fell in the lake to her own demise,

He said.

Share this to your friends,

Or be on your doom.

Trust me.

He said."

Angela scribbled down the poem quickly on one of the dining napkins so she could refer to it later when she was looking deeper into it for a peer review she was going to write on it later. She grabbed cash out of her wallet to pay for her meal, leaving it on the table for the waitress to find.

She was about the leave to go back home and work on her laptop for the rest of the night when a woman with long black hair and a white dress walked by her, going towards the restroom.

The woman looked like she had just came out of a shower with her dress on and her hair dripping on the floor leaving puddles behind her as she walked. Angela noticed the woman seemed lost but didn't think much of it because, most people are lost in the big city. Right before the woman walked into the bathroom she dropped what looked like a small black change pocketbook on the floor.

She probably has important things in there, Angela thought to herself. Anyone who's been to New York City knows that if you drop something of value on the ground you'll be sure not to see it again because someone will swoop it up before you can ever get to it. She rushed over to grab the pocketbook off the floor and followed the woman into the restroom.

The Bathroom

"Hey, you dropped this on the floor," Angela said while holding up the pocketbook in the air. The restroom was completely empty with only one light flickering above the stall and cobwebs everywhere along with disgusting New York City trash left on the ground everywhere.

It smells like pure New York City streets here with a hint of a dead rat mixed in! Angela said to herself trying not to puke up her dinner of what she just ate. She turned around to leave and give the pocketbook to a restaurant employee incase the woman came back for it.

When she grabbed door handle of the bathroom door her hand got completely soaked in something clear and and wet on her hands. "ICK!" she said out loud in complete disgust. She rushed to the sink to wash the mysterious New York City liquid off and then dried her hands.

She focused on the mirror where a glowing green light caught her eyes. The green light was glistening lightly in the corner of the mirror like a diamond and where someone had drawn a broken heart and F + L next to it on the mirror in sharpie. The glowing green light evaporated and she rubbed her eyes thinking she was seeing things that wasn't actually there.

The heart, initials and the light were all gone when she noticed she made herself look like a raccoon with her mascara. She ran the water again to clean off her mascara that was running when she noticed the woman with long black hair and wet white dress standing behind her and looking directly at her.

Angela observed how gloomy and sad the woman's eyes were while she was staring at her through the mirror. Probably because she thinks I stole her pocketbook, she thought to herself.

"Oh, you dropped your purse earlier. I tried to catch you in time but you left the bathroom before I could get to you" Angela told the woman.

The woman kept her gaze on Angela's eyes and didn't say anything. Her face started to become more and more sad as the seconds went by. Blood started slowly dripping down her face from her despaired eyes. It started sprinkling down her face faster and faster covering both of her cheeks, and then her body. The sides of the depressed woman's mouth on each end started to droop down lower and lower towards the floor eventually meeting half way down to the ground. It was completely not human-like.

"Follow me; or be at your own demise" the terrifying woman demanded in a deep grunting-tone. The woman in the white dress walked towards the exit of the bathroom without taking an eye off of Angela and vanished mid air into the wall.

Angela's throat felt like she swallowed an entire watermelon and it was stuck there making her unable to breathe. Her heart began to race as she thought about where to go next. She ran out of the bathroom and into the restaurant where the woman was nowhere to be seen.

The only people in the dining room were some drunk young adults and an older man who's head was in his oatmeal completely fallen asleep. It was 2AM and Angela ran to go to run to her house where she could escape from the chance of possibly running into the woman again.

She ran onto the New York City night street that had no one there except a few homeless people on the streets and a hot dog stand with the worker who fell asleep with a half eaten one in his hand.

"He said... She said... She read the poem... She died... She died..." sung an older homeless woman while Angela was running to her apartment.

"They told you not to read it. Now you dieeeed" the older woman belted out.

Mad old woman, Angela thought to herself. She turned the corner onto 98th street where her apartment was and got home safely and quickly.

Angela's Apartment on 98th Street

Angela put her keys and bag down on her microwave and rushed to go on her laptop and start researching more on the Haunting Story of Loretta and what people have seen themselves.

On ReadIt, some people claimed the story was a gimmick just for other people to make quick money on, and others claimed to have seen the spirit of Loretta themselves.

Some explained nothing happened to them when they read the poem, others said she haunted them for the next 7 years after reading it; and some said it was after they listened to it or someone told the story of Loretta to them and that she'd usually appear very fast after reading, listening to, or telling her story; but sometimes she appeared weeks after.

Angela scrolled through the stories of people's first interactions with Loretta which always described her with long black hair and a wet white dress which made her look like she just came out of the shower. Strikes of a feeling of tiny pins pierced throughout Angela's body and her throat felt like it was closed again. She had seen the spirit of Loretta tonight, she thought to herself.

The light in the kitchen went out making the apartment pitch black with one or two beams of light seeped their way passed the curtains to give a slight light. She walked towards the kitchen and took out a candle she had and lit it so she could see.

A firetruck zoomed by on the street screaming it's sirens trying to get to it's fire location and Angela jumped startled by the unexpected noise, even though this happened all the time. She dropped her candle on top of her books on the counter she had from the library, catching them on fire. She panicked and quickly grabbed a small towel and patted it down to turn it out. Thank God the fire detector is broken right now, she said to herself.

She went to clean off the ashes from the small fire off the counter with a wet paper towel when the water turned on by itself. She quickly turned it off as her heart started to race. The apartment was cold and quiet. Odd, for a New York City apartment to be this quiet.

In the corner of her eye, she saw a dark figure in her bathroom walk by and looked like it was going into the shower with a little girl's laugh. Angela took her phone for a flashlight and a to-go knife she had from a take-out order from a few nights ago and tip-toed to the bathroom to see what it was. "I saw you! Who are you?" Angela said bluntly.

She heard the laughing again but this time it sounded like it was coming from the sink of the bathroom. The faucet handle in the kitchen lifted up by itself as if someone turned it on to wash their hands but no water came out, because Angela's landlord hasn't been over to fix it yet. She pushed down the handle and the apartment went silent again.

The little girl's laugh chanted out loud again as her doorbell rang. Angela's heart pounded. It could be the neighbor again trying to have a conversation with her again, but he creeped her out, he was into Satan worshiping and stuff like that.

She opened the door to a bouquet of a dozen roses and a teddy bear with a green ribbon on it and right behind it in front of where Angela was standing, someone had painted red paint of a pentagram. It was probably her neighbor again, she said to herself. She saw the same woman with long black hair and the wet white dress bowed down and hunched over hugging her own knees and looked at a candle in front of her.

"Lies... Lies... Lies" she chanted in an eerily creepy voice. Angela backed up into her apartment so the woman didn't see that she saw her. It was silent for a moment like no one was there when a swarm of green beetles crawled by her room. She closed the door in disgust leaving the flowers and teddy bear where they were.

Angela was finding it hard to breathe. She wanted to call someone for help to get this woman to stop following her but all of her family members were over 2.5 hours away in Connecticut.

She thought about calling the New York Police Department to report a strange woman but figured she'd sound crazy if she explained what was going on. She locked the door behind her in hopes the woman didn't see her. A knock slammed on the door behind her as if someone wanted Angela's attention immediately. Angela jumped, not wanting to open the door, especially because the apartment didn't have a peephole to see who was there.

Her laptop lit up and her email dinged telling her that she has a new email to read. When she opened it, it was an email from Loretta, telling her it's Angela's time for demise. She should have never read the story, because it was a lie. In five minutes, she would make her presence.

Angela felt a cold drip of water fall on her head from above her. She looked up and it was the woman from the hallway. The woman stared back at her with sad eyes and asked "did you read it?" to Angela.

Angela swallowed her saliva in her mouth and the woman's face began to droop low again like it did before in the diner bathroom. Blood started dripping down her eyes slowly, and then quickly.

Her head began to spin in circles as she told Angela she had to "tell my story right... Read it starting from, He Said."

"That is the correct story. Bring the King to his demise". She stopped spinning her head and looked to Angela, where they met eyes. They knew this is actually where the story began from here.

It was fate, they said.

. . .