The Blue Ribbon

I was sixteen, three years ago now, and my parents had gone on a month-long research trip to a remote observatory, leaving me and my eldest brother, Cole, to hold down the fort at our crumbling rural farmhouse, ‘The Hollow’. The first week was uneventful, but then a gnawing pain blossomed in my side, low and hot, like a demon trying to claw its way out. By the third day, I was doubled over, unable to stand, and Cole, along with our neighbors, rushed me to the county hospital. They diagnosed acute appendicitis and prepped me for surgery, but the sterile white walls and the thought of being cut open without my mother’s hand to hold terrified me. I refused, insisting on waiting for my parents. They gave me painkillers and a warning: ‘If it bursts, you’ll be in a world of trouble.’

I stayed with my older sister, Lena, and her family at their renovated mill house, which was supposed to be safer, closer to the hospital. The pain dulled to a throb, and I spent my days on the porch, watching the old waterwheel turn, mostly ignored as Lena’s kids, Maya and little Ben, played in the overgrown garden. One afternoon, Lena announced she was taking the kids to the county fair, leaving me alone with strict instructions to rest. The house settled into an eerie quiet, broken only by the creak of the wheel. I dozed off, and when I woke, the light had shifted to a sickly amber. The pain was sharper, and I felt a strange, cold presence.

I stumbled inside to get a glass of water, and that’s when I saw her. A girl, maybe twelve, standing at the end of the hallway, wearing an old-fashioned blue ribbon in her hair, the color of a robin’s egg. She didn’t move, just stared, and when I blinked, she was gone. I dismissed it as a hallucination from the pain, but then I heard a giggle from the kitchen. I found a small, porcelain doll on the counter, its hair adorned with a similar blue ribbon. I hadn’t seen it before. My skin prickled.

Determined to shake off the unease, I went to the library—Lena’s husband was a collector of old local histories—and found a book about the mill’s past. It mentioned that the house had been built over an old well, and that a girl named Elsie had drowned there in 1902, wearing her favorite blue ribbon. The book warned that her spirit was said to linger, bound to the property, and that those who saw her would soon follow her into the well. I laughed nervously, but my side throbbed in response.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The pain was relentless, and I kept hearing the sound of dripping water. I got up, following the sound to a locked door in the basement. I found a key on a rusted hook and opened it. Inside was a small room with a stone well in the center, covered by a rotted wooden lid. The air was damp and cold. I leaned over, and the pain in my side exploded. I saw my own reflection in the dark water, but behind me, Elsie’s face, pale and bloated, with that blue ribbon floating around her head.

I stumbled back, but a force pushed me down to my knees. Elsie rose from the well, her wet hair dripping, and she whispered, ‘You have something of mine.’ I realized she meant the doll, which I had kept in my room. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. Her cold hand grasped my ankle and pulled me toward the well. I clawed at the ground, but it was slick as if wet. The last thing I saw before the water closed over my head was that blue ribbon, now around my own neck.

They found my body the next morning, face down in the mill pond, a blue ribbon tied neatly around my wrist. The doctors said my appendix had burst, that I drowned in my own delirium. But Lena swears she saw me smile as they pulled me out, and that the ribbon was not one she had ever owned. The mill house has been sold, and no one lives there now. But sometimes, if you pass by at dusk, you can hear a young girl giggling, and the smell of fresh water, and the faint, terrible feeling of being pulled down.