The Curse of Enchantment Hill

The first time Alice saw the curse, she was nine, and Bill was seven. She was playing princess with her dolls, and he was trying to pretend his stick was a sword. And then they hit the well.

They had been exploring, just like they always did. Exploring had always been their favorite thing to do. They would take their sticks (or sticks they found) and pretend they were swords, or bows and arrows, or whatever else they could think of that day. The woods near their house were great for pretending. There were plenty of rocks to pretend were castles and caves and other rock things, and there were lots of trees that looked like monsters or giants when you looked at them the right way.

They loved exploration. That day, they had decided to find a new place in the woods to play in, so they climbed up this hill with all these weird plants on it, which usually would have made Bill a little bit afraid, because his mom said not to touch strange plants because sometimes you can get sick from them if you do (Bill's mom knew a lot about plants), but today he wasn't afraid at all because he liked looking at the plants and remembering what kinds of things Mom said about them when he touched them (not that he ever listened).

It didn't take long for them to find a hole in one of the rocks on top of the hill. It wasn't very big, but both Bill and Alice thought it would be a good place to hide in case any monsters ever came into their kingdom of pretendy rocks below. "You go first," Alice said to Bill as she hopped down into the hole after thinking really hard about how awesome queens were and how being a queen was her dream job even though she wasn't old enough yet. "I'll go next."

"Okie-dokie," Bill said as he jumped down into the hole after her. "It's dark in here," he said as he picked up his stick-sword and tried his best to use it like a torch so he could see what was around him better. "But I'm still gonna look for monsters."

"Don't worry about monsters," Alice said. "We're safe here in my cave."

"Your cave?" Bill asked her incredulously as he kept waving his stick around trying to make it work better as a torch (it didn't). "Well I don't know who gave you your cave, but... it's my cave too now!" He waved his stick around some more until finally he found something: A small box sitting on top of a pile of rocks right next to where Alice was standing! "Look! A treasure chest! I bet there's gold inside!"

As soon as Bill touched it, though, everything went dark. "Bill!" Alice yelled out into the darkness. "Are you ok?" It took her awhile before she heard Bill answer back: "Yeah! I'm fine!" she heard him say from somewhere in front of her. But as soon as she heard him speak again another voice started talking too: It sounded like an older woman's voice but it also sounded kind of funny too: Like somebody whose mouth is full of something sweet or mushy or wet or something like that instead of saying words properly like normal people do (Alice knew this because her mom used to talk funny when she had gum stuck between her teeth). Before Alice could figure out what that meant, though, the voice started talking again: "Oh hello! Who are you?" it asked Bill in that funny-mushy voice that sounded funny even though it didn't mean to be funny (at least Alice hoped it didn't mean to be funny).

"Uh... me? I'm... uh... William?" Bill replied uncertainly in return.

"William? Oh my goodness! You're such a handsome young man!" The woman replied excitedly (which made Alice feel kind of grossed out; not just because this lady sounded funny when she talked but also because now Bill sounded grossed out too). Then suddenly she began giggling loudly for no reason at all (which made Alice feel grossed out even more than before; not only because this lady sounded grossed out now but also because now Bill sounded even grosser than before) while making very loud kissing noises with her lips that made Alice feel so grossed out by both Bill and this lady that she wanted to throw up all over herself all over them both (but since neither one smelled bad enough to throw up on yet - except maybe the lady's breath - both Bill and the lady just kept getting more grosser with each passing second without either one noticing at all).