This is based on a poem I wrote called "White Dress" and I decided to turn it into a horror-ghost story. I got inspired by stories I've read of The White Lady ghost, so this is the result.

This has more than two genres: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery, Tragedy and Romance.

Sonic Boom Universe. All characters belong to their rightful owners.

White Dress

"Where is it? Where is it?"

Amy Rose says to herself while browsing through shelves of books at the library. She already searched through the first three History sections, though none seems to have what she's looking for. Now, she's in the fourth section. For the next ticking minutes, Amy skims and reads through the books' bindings, both paperback and hard-covers. The smell of old paper fills in her air, bringing her more indulgence for knowledge and more cravings for reading.

Skimming towards the end of the shelf, Amy finally finds the book she's looking for. She softly gasps while taking the desired book out of the shelf. It's seven inches tall, five inches wide and contains at least 200 pages. She studies the black, faux leathered hard cover and the title.

"Bygone Island's Most Haunted Stories and Their Spine-Chilling Mysteries."

The title's words are in crimson Gothic font and the book contains a blood-red ribbon bookmark, set somewhere in the middle of the pages. Underneath the title is a grey image of a cemetery with a gleaming moonlight. On top of the book's binding is an image of a skull.

After studying the book's appearance, Amy skims through its table of contents and then flips through the pages in a quick second. She lets out a smile before closing it. "Perfect."

What's Amy Rose doing with a macabre book? Since when she's into history about ghosts and haunted areas? Normally, the history-buffed pink hedgehog is more into archeology and ancient history. But, why ghosts and dead things?

Taking the book, Amy goes to the front desk. She hands the librarian, Fastidious Beaver, the book and her library card. He scans her card and then the book. He places a paper card—that informs her when the book is due—in its back cover before returning her library card. Once it's checked out, Amy thanks the beaver and then exits the library.

She strolls back to her home, holding the thick, black, macabre-looking book into her arms. She couldn't wait to get back home and read it. Not only for an avid reason though, to fill her inquisitiveness.

By the time she passes by Meh Burger, she sees her friends sitting at a table enjoying their ordered foods without her: Sonic is having chili dogs (obviously), Tails is having French fries, and both Sticks and Knuckles are having burgers. Amy gets temporarily distracted when she perceives them; part of her is telling her to join them and the other part is telling her that she shouldn't. She went with the second part. She wanted to get started with the book. Hoping they could understand why she couldn't join them, Amy faces to her direction and resumes walking home.

Inside her home, she's inside her room, sitting in her desk. Amy has the book open and she begins to read, along with other history books that she actually owns. She even has blank papers neatly stack at the side of her desk and some pens and other writing utensils inside a little pink heart-shaped pencil cup. Aside with her books, papers and pens, Amy has an ivory mug—that says I Heart Books—filled with coffee to keep her focused. For the next minutes, which turned into an hour or maybe two, she reads and researches through her books—in hope to find what she's looking for.

Exactly four hours later, Amy has her head down on her desk and apparently, the coffee isn't strong enough for her to stay awake. She dozed off at approximately two hours ago. Her face is planted on top of the book, like she's using it as a pillow. She's snoring very softly while holding the book closer to her face.

Just then, four of her friends are seen entering her room, barely making a sound when they first walked through her front door. They can see Amy sleeping at her desk; Sonic silently leads them to her, trying their best to stay quiet until they stood right behind her. When they got there, they can tell that she has been doing a lot of reading, which suddenly led to her sleepiness. What Amy didn't know was that they saw her passing by Meh Burger, where they were just hanging out and eating their meals, and they were planning to ask her to join her, though they decided to just leave her since she looked busy to them. After their hangout, a few rounds of volleyball and then a movie, they now decided to check up on her.

Knuckles and Sticks first had a plan to scare her awake as some kind of joke, while Tails humorously thought about slamming a big book shut right next to her. However, Sonic warns them that it's not a good idea. The last time they scared Amy as a prank, she instinctively almost bashed every one of them with her Piko hammer, which wasn't a good idea.

Sonic decided to just calmly wake her the normal way. He places her hand on her shoulder, "Amy…" He sing-songs to her in a whisper.

Amy stirs a little on the book. She lets out a lethargic-toned moan. Then, she picks her head up when she felt a familiar hand touching her shoulder. Amy looks back to see her friends standing behind her.

"What are you guys doing here?" She asks, very tiredly.

"We were just checking up on you," Sonic answers. Amy sat straight up on her chair. She rotates on it to get a better look at them.

Sticks tells her, "We missed you at Meh Burger."

Tails examines the pile of books on her desk, "What have you been reading?"

Amy plans to come up with a lie since this is something that she wanted to keep to herself. However, she knows that she's terrible at lying and covering it up will bring more suspicion to them. So instead, she decided to come clean. Amy rotates towards her desk, closes the black book with the red ribbon bookmarking her current page, and rotates back towards her friends. She shows them the book she borrowed from the library.

She informs them, "I have been researching through some history about something."

Sonic takes a book from her hands. He reads the title out loud to the others, "'Bygone Island's Most Haunted Stories and Their Spine-Chilling Mysteries?'" The others look at the book's mysterious cover as well.

Knuckles says, "Doesn't this have a lot of ghost stories?"

Amy answers, "It does."

"Since when you're into ghosts now, Ames?" Sonic asks. The pink hedgehog nearly flushed when he called her by her nickname.

"I wasn't at first. But something came up to me before I borrowed that book from the library." She informs.

"Did you suddenly gain any paranormal abilities?" Sticks randomly asks her. "Because if you do, then that would mean you get to contact any ghostly spirits."

Amy chuckles softly, "No, Sticks. It's not that. Although, that would be cool."

"So, what is it?" Tails asks.

Amy sighs, with her face turning solemn. She asks them, "If I tell you, will you guys promise me not to assume that I'm insane."

"We already have an insane one here," Knuckles jokes, pointing at Sticks.

Sticks is offended, "Hey!"

Sonic remarks, "We promise."

Gathering up her audacity, Amy says, "First off, do any of you guys know that cemetery located at the outskirts of the Village?" They all answered no, assuming that they never knew they have a cemetery located anywhere in Bygone Island. "Well, just the other day, I passed by there and…" She swallows, calming her nerves down, "I saw something that no one ever saw before."

The four are perplexed. Amy resumes, "Actually, I meant to say 'someone,' not 'something.' And by that—I think I saw a white ghost wandering around. I was curious about the possible wandering spirits in that cemetery, so I searched through this book to find out."

She braces herself from being laughed at or being judged. There is no laughter. There are no judgmental opinions. After Amy notices there blank reactions, Sonic wonders, surprisingly intrigued, "What have you found out so far?"

"So far, I got the story, but sadly not enough information about the wandering spirits." An idea pops into Amy's mind. "Do you think it's best if I can take you all there?"

Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Sticks thought about it. They all suddenly agree to do so, despite the doable trepidation at the macabre scenery. After all, it's a good time to see what the cemetery looks like in the Village. Maybe it's also a good time for a new type of adrenaline rush, other than going on epic adventures through forests, canyons, caves and frigid areas.

Traveling by foot, Amy leads the team to the outskirts where the cemetery is. The skies are turning grey with dark clouds blanketing over the bright blue. During their group stroll, Amy is holding the book into her arms, like an avid-reading schoolgirl. The stroll feels like hours, even though it's only been about fifteen to thirty minutes.

Finally, they made it there. Amy stands by the giant front metallic black gate. She tells them, staring up at the top of the gate, where the metallic image of a skull appears, "Here we are."

The rest of the gang can feel their spines chilling when perceiving at the skull and the gravestones through the gate. The gate also has two posts with small statues of gargoyles with glaring red eyes standing on top. Tails says, "This is creepy."

Sonic answers him, "You can leave if you want."

"No. I kind of want to see this." The fox remarks at his best friend. "Although, I worry that those gargoyles would come to life any time."

The whole team persists staring through the gate to check out the gravestones from where they are standing. They avert their eyes, searching for the ghost that Amy claims she saw when she passed by this place. There isn't any—just yet.

Sticks asks Amy, "Are you sure we can come here? This doesn't look safe."

Amy examines the gate; there aren't any locks or chains that prevent any trespassers from entering unless if you're a close loved one visiting a deceased. She answers, "I guess we can."

The badger continues, feeling paranoid, "What if one—or all—of us suddenly get possessed by the evil spirits lurking and roaming through these fields of skulls and bones?" She gasps, "What if these bones buried underground suddenly turn into the living dead and there could a war being the living and the dead? That could be the sign of the new apocalypse." Everyone, barring Amy, laughs at Sticks' theories.

"Doubt that will happen, Sticks." Amy answers solemnly.

The female hedgehog is about to open the entrance. Sonic stops her, "Wait, Ames." She turns to face him. "Before we can go inside—that is if they have the guts to do so," He arrogantly points at the other three, much to their small offense, "Think you can tell us what you have so far about the tale of this place?"

Amy opens the book right where the red ribbon bookmarked the pages. She skims through a little before reading out loud to her friends. "I'm not sure if you want to hear it though, but okay."

"Sweet," Knuckles comments, "Story time." He childishly sits down on the ground whilst Sonic, Tails and Sticks did so as well, leaving Amy the only one to stand. She's like the pre-school to her young students.

She fixes her eyes back on the book. Amy begins:

Centuries ago, there was a beautiful young woman who lived a tragic life. At such a young age, approximately during her mid-adolescence, she witnessed both of her parents dying in a horrid accident during a house fire, leaving her poor and orphaned. By the time her house was burned into ashes, she reluctantly started a new life living in the streets.

Growing up with deep depression and living in the streets, she tried to find ways to earn herself a living by begging, but to no avail. She was abused, both physically and emotionally by countless inhabitants around her. She was raped several times. She was once pregnant by one of her rapists and since she wasn't good enough to care for it, she decided to abort it. The woman was often prejudiced by many others due to her lower-class status, her homelessness, and the way she was allegedly sexually active, despite that she was only raped by atrocious men. Her prolonged depression was too much for her, she attempted suicide multiple times: she tried hanging herself, she tried slitting her wrists, and she even tried to jump out of a great height. All of these attempts failed, much to her chagrin, so she must reluctantly continue her life until her real fate comes.

Apart from her abuse, depression and suicide attempts, one thing that she ever wanted in order to escape from this mess—is love. The woman had her heart shattered innumerable times whenever she attempted to find one true love. There was one man—a tall, dark and mysterious—who was there for her. Even though he's in the higher class, he wouldn't want the lower-class woman suffer so much pain out in the cold streets. He allowed her to live with her for as much as she desired. In his wealthy home, he begins to care and nurture her until she was properly nourished. The woman had never been this optimistic before in her life. She was glad enough to have someone—and a proper home—to aid her and then drain all of her sadness away.

Suddenly, the man's aid for the woman became more than just care and nurture. It turned into love and romance. So just when she was about to leave his home after six months of staying, he urged her to stay with him forever. He even impetuously proposed to her, despite their romance was only half a year. Unknowingly, she accepted the hand in marriage. Just when things couldn't get any better, the woman couldn't feel any happier with her new life away from her parents' deaths and living as a homeless, victimized vagrant. She believed she will never die alone.

Unaware to the woman, her happiness wouldn't last that long. Exactly one month after her proposal, her rich fiancé told her that he had to go to war and he wasn't not sure when he will return. Before his departure, he told her to wait for him until he comes back from battle and by the time he returns, he would take her away into marriage. He promised her, and she accepted it. After their final moment together, the man left the home and the woman began her waiting, just as he said, while gazing through one of their windows.

She waited… and waited… and waited.

She waited for so long, two years passed by and still—he hasn't returned. Heartbroken, the woman gave up her waiting; she assumed her fiancé died in battle. Instantly, her happiness faded away and she was back into her prolonged depression. One day, while she was drowning her sorrows with tea, she received a telegram pertaining to her fiancé. She read the letter and it was bad news for her.

Her fiancé never died in battle… NOR was he in any war. It was revealed that he was married to somebody else rather than her—over two years ago, exactly on the same day he left her. It became crystal clear that he has been betraying her all along.

The woman's depression and heartbreak was so horrendous, she destroyed and dismantled everything the man owned inside his house out of rage. Then, she exited the house out in the cold, snowy, wintry day—and then intentionally set the entire building ablaze without even looking back at the damage she has done. She was back to where she started from the very beginning; back to sleeping in the streets, being buried in the snow, and risking herself into hypothermia. All she had one was her white dress that she has been wearing since she left the destroyed home. Her rage vanished quicker than she thought albeit her pain and agony was still so persistent.

The woman traveled to Bygone Island by boat, where the cemetery is located; this is where her parents were buried in their graves. She wanted to take one last look of her dead parents before making her heart-shattering decision to end her misery. After looking and saying her final goodbyes to her parents, Edmund and Lucinda the Hedgehog, she turned to the cemetery's large lake.

Gazing at the barely-frozen waters of the lake in the snowy graveyard, she thought about her own fate. She wanted to be found and she wanted to be noticed as soon as her fate comes. She didn't care who would find her someday, man or woman. But mostly a woman since she believed that all men are nothing but forsaking, heartless and atrocious creeps. Right before making her choice, she sang herself a little poem:

The white light is here,
The cold winter is permanent.
I need someone to hold me tight,
But the problem is...
I am around no more.

The snow is getting deeper,
I need someone to keep me warm.
Can anyone see me?
I'm in the mist, I'm hiding
Somewhere in the ivory forest.

I'm nowhere to be seen,
I'm floating in the cold air.
I feel so lost and I feel breathless;
I am the phantom,
I see you, though you can't see me.

I am unseen, I am unheard, but
I still need a second heart,
I still need a second soul.
If anyone needs me and
In case they perceive...

I'll be the girl with long black hair,
The girl with pale, snow skin,
The girl with eyes of coal,
And...
The girl in the white dress.

And with a second heart and soul,
I can travel deeper into the light.
I can sleep for eternity in peace,
And I can say goodnight...
To my old life.

Remember me, as the phantom girl
Hiding in the ivory forest,
Wandering around the snow,
Looking for a heart and soul,
And wearing a white dress.

Hope you can find me soon,
But for now...
It's time for me to say goodnight.
Hope I can see you,
Hope you can see me again.

After singing her poem, she closed her eyes. Lastly, she…

The story ends here. Amy looks up to her friends. They all have those what-happens-next looks on their faces.

"And?" Knuckles asks, inquisitively.

"What did she do?" Tails asks with little patience.

Amy temporarily closes the book with her thumb bookmarking her current page. She apologetically tells them, "Sorry to say this, but—there's a page missing on this part."

"What?" Everyone whines while standing back up. She opens the book again to prove it. She's right; there's a torn edge at the binding, showing that the page has indeed been ripped off.

Amy resumes, "This is why I couldn't find more about the ghost that presumably roamed here in this graveyard. The book didn't even mention the woman's name or how she died. That's why I wanted to find out. I was going to do this by myself, but with you guys here, I guess that would mean I can't do this alone." She smiles at them.

Sonic asks, "Is there, at least, a picture of what she looked like?"

Amy flips back a few pages to find it. She shakes her head.

Tails informs, "We actually don't need to know what she looks like. The book pretty much explains it all. I mean, white fur, white dress, black eyes, black hair; she seems like that ghost girl with a croaking voice from a horror movie."

They knew what he was talking about. They all shudder when they suddenly thought about "The Grudge."

Knuckles exclaims, "So what are we waiting for? Let's get this started!" He turns to the gate's entrance and immediately has his hands grasping onto the bars.

The gate's doors open, letting out a loud screeching metallic sound. Knuckles, Tails, Sticks and Sonic all step in. Before she joins them, Amy pulls the ribbon to bookmark the page and then closes it. Then, she holds it closer to her chest, locking her arms around it. Just when she sets foot through the entrance, she can hear some wailing coming from behind her.

Amy gasps. She turns around to see. There is nothing. Even if there is nothing to see, she gets distracted anyway. It must be the wind.

"You coming, Ames?" Sonic looks back at her, while the others are already ahead. Amy faces back towards Sonic. She answers him with a nod. She resumes walking with them—and Sonic has been standing by her side during their stroll through the graveyard.

With ticking minutes of walking on the trails, Amy is now leading the team to a doable spot of where the ghost might be. They already checked the gravestones. They examined the mausoleums. No sightings of the phantom girl yet. They decided to just continue their walk.

In order to break the group's silence, Knuckles decided to bring something up to Amy. "So there's something I don't get about that poem in the story."

"What is it?" Amy asks, not looking back and keeping her eyes focus on the path.

"The poem says 'ivory forest,' even though this is a bone yard. Why did they put it as forest?"

Sonic answers, "It's probably just a metaphor, Knux. Most poets do that when it comes to writing poetry."

"Meta-what?" Knuckles is confused.

Tails says, "A metaphor is a figure of speech where you compare one thing to another irrelevant thing without using the terms 'like' or 'as.' It's a creative way to identify with a hint of subtleness."

Amy informs, "They're right. An ivory forest is a metaphor for a cemetery. Trees are the gravestones. Ivory indicates a snowy winter. And a phantom wearing a white dress indicates that she's hiding around the gravestones and through the snow, making it complex for her to be seen despite that she wanted to be found."

There's silence again. Knuckles is more perplexed. "I still don't get it."

Amy rolls her eyes, "You have a lot to learn." She continues the lead. She remembers some of the clues of where the mysterious ghost could be. An idea pops into the pink hedgehog's mind.

The team made it to the cemetery's lake. Standing a few away from it, they awed in amazement at the sight because the waters of the lake are large and gleaming. They also couldn't believe that a pretty lake like that would be somewhere in a dark, macabre area. Amy skims through the book before closing it again. She turns to a different direction and walks away while the rest continue to stare at the water. It's as if they're mesmerized.

"Guys, over here!" Amy calls out. Sonic, Knuckles, Sticks and Tails face towards Amy. She's by a large gravestone that fits for two, crouching down and staring at the engravings.

They join her. Sticks ask, "What did you find?"

Amy points to centuries-old monument, showing them what it says. She read out loud, "'Edmund and Lucinda the Hedgehog.' They're her parents. 'Tragically died in flames and ashes. Loving parents of…'" She's unable to read the rest of the monument. The bottom of the gravestone is covered with moss, making it too complex to read the rest.

Everyone groans when they still couldn't find out about the woman's name. Amy stood up from the ground, facing towards her teammates. What's even more disappointing—there are still no sightings of the phantom girl.

"Everyone else think this is starting to be a lost cause now?" Tails asks them.

"Maybe coming here was a big mistake," Amy disappointedly says. "I'm sorry that I had to bring this up to you all. Guess I led my curiosity for spirits get the best of me."

Sonic has his eyes avert to somewhere else. "Maybe it's not."

"What do you mean?" Amy asks.

He points at something, "Look over there." Everyone follows to where his finger is pointing at.

It's a house—a two-story house that locates at the end of the cemetery.

"What about it?" Tails asks.

Sonic informs, "Maybe someone who lives in there may have some kind of source. We can go over there and ask if somebody's home."

"I don't know," Knuckles says, "That place looks creepy, alright."

Sticks cuts in, "It could be haunted and full of other wandering spirits. After all, it's right in the cemetery."

"Only one way to find out," Sonic begins his stroll to the house. "Come on. Let's go and see." This time, Sonic is the leader; everyone else follows him.

Amy, once again, becomes the last one to follow. Her stroll abruptly gets interrupted when she heard something behind her. Déjà vu appears when the same wailing sound is heard. Like before, she temporarily turns back around to see. Again, there's nothing, so she turns back around to resume her strolling. Amy could've sworn that she heard someone—more likely, a woman—speaking or making some kind of an eerie call. When catching up to her friends, a white mist passed by her. The haze appears out of nowhere and it just flew by.

She stops walking again. She is completely distracted. She gazes around to see where the white mist is coming from. All of the sudden, it just vanished into thin air. Amy is beginning to have a strange feeling that she's seeing and hearing things. Her heart is starting to beat rapidly. Although, she remained strong; she shakes her alleged imaginations out of her head. Her focus is back to her teammates and she's already falling behind.

Without letting anything else intervene with her, Amy catches up to Sonic and the others. They continue their stroll to the house.

Within yards away…

A ghost of a female white and black-haired hedgehog, wearing a long white dress, is standing by the lake, staring at the Sonic Team.