Why my own father had always tried to gently steer me away from my aunt without really defying me, or ordering me to stay away from her. I will have to remember to ask her about that when I see her again, which I hope is soon.”

“Elizabeth, it seems to me that your aunt Cassandra is an interesting person, interesting indeed. Although I wonder if she really is, what your father has portrayed her out to be. There is one thing that I would have to admit, and that is after being stranded on a deserted island out in the Pacific Ocean for sixteen years, that is called the Devil’s Island, and the only inhabitants were a group of islanders that have never had any contact with the outside world, would be the perfect setting for the supernatural forces that we had experienced back at the Blackwood Manor, wouldn’t you think.

“Elizabeth, do you understand where I am going with this? I hope you know what I mean. Natives, voodoo, shrunken heads, sacrificial gatherings? You can count on me looking deeply into your aunt Cassandra’s past thoroughly. What about your mother Elizabeth, how did she feel about your aunt Cassandra?”

“I always thought that my mother Gwendolyn had felt the exact same way as I did about her. I knew that she cared for Cassandra very much, and I believe that she had felt sorry for her, and did not think that she had deserved the cold shoulder that my father had given her throughout the years. However, still to this day, I do not know the reason for all this secrecy. Nonetheless, back in those days a woman rarely questioned her husband’s authority. My mother was a timid woman, and I do not ever remember a time when she had ever disobeyed my father’s wishes, even if she had a different opinion. Not that my father was abusive to her in anyway.

“As a child, my father struck me as being the kind of man whose wishes were not to be taken lightly. I do not mean to paint that black of a picture of him, but that is just the way he was. I knew that he loved us both, and I believe that he would have done anything in his power to protect us, but yet he was a very stern and positive man at the same time.”

From what Elizabeth had told me, her father was not that strange at all, just a stern man that seemed to be covering something up, something very important. I had to dig a lot deeper to find out why Elizabeth’s father wanted to keep her and her mother away from her aunt Cassandra. In fact, what little information Elizabeth had just told me about her aunt made her seem like she was not so crazy at all.

I must have enjoyed the conversation with Elizabeth as the time onboard the airplane to England passed quicker than I expected. As we heard a ding and looked up at the fasten seat belt sign, and then heard the pilot say that we would be landing within thirty minutes over the intercom. It had been a little more than eight hours since we had boarded the plane, but felt like it had only been a couple.

It was weird. Once our conversation stopped, we both sat there in our seats peacefully for the remainder of the flight with our eyes closed and our heads rested back against the seat. I guess the conversation that we were having took a lot out of us. Although my eyes were closed, and it looked as if I was peacefully sleeping, my mind still worked overtime, but I was no closer to the truth than when I first arrived at the Blackwood Manor. It was so damn irritating to know that I tried so hard and still got nowhere closer to the truth than before. I could be wrong, but I had the strangest feeling that Elizabeth’s aunt would be able to shed some light on the hellish supernatural occurrences that had went on back at the Blackwood Manor.

During the landing, our eyes seemed to be glued wide open, even though we had so much red wine to drink, and had laid back and closed our eyes right before we were planned to land at the airport. Nonetheless, I could not wait to get off this plane, and knew that it would not be too much longer now, as the tires chirped when the plane touched down on the runway of the Castle Mills International Airport.

A sign of relief came over the both of us as we were now on land once again. It did not take very long for the plane to taxi over to the docking port of the airport, and as the flight attendant opened up the door to let us depart, a flood of people rushed towards the exit door of the plane, as if it had been on fire and they feared for their lives. Therefore, Elizabeth and I waited patiently in our seats for a bit, just long enough for the crowd of people to have departed the plane. We both figured that we had already been on this plane for eight hours or so already, so what would a few more minutes hurt.

We departed the plane after the crowd was gone and headed through the airport to pick up our belongings at the baggage handling conveyor belt, and to our surprise, our luggage was just coming around the corner as we walked up. Elizabeth and I were both enthusiastic to see that all of our bags were accounted for, and had not been lost. We quickly grabbed our bags and set off towards the pick-up and drop-off section in front of the airport.