The Phantom Elephant

There they were. Elephants. A whole art exhibit of them. There were abstract elephants, realistic elephants, there was even one in a picasso theme. Harry was amazed. Every time he visited the art gallery, he would marvel at all the elephant paintings. Most of the elephant paintings were small, but one, a massive one, interested him. It made him want to steal it, to keep it, to never let anyone else have it. After a few days of Harry inspecting the guards schedules and when most people went to the art gallery, he realised that he needed to steal it in the dead of the night.

Beep, beep, beep! Went Harry's alarm clock. He checked the time. 2 AM. Perfect. Harry snuck down the creaking stairs of his house, making sure not to wake up the rest of his family. As he snuck out the back door and jumped on his bike. He hesitated. Was what he was doing wrong? No. He needed to have the painting. There was something enchanting about it.

He peddled as fast as he could through the dark streets, towards the art gallery. The occasional campervan would come trundling down the road, but mostly there were no cars. When Harry finally got to the museum, it was 3 AM. Perfect.

Silently, Harry dropped through an open skylight and into the dark museum. Suddenly, he heard voices. It was security guards! He ducked behind a door and waited until the guards had passed. As quietly as a mouse, he crept towards the painting. He was about to grab it when…
“No,”
It was a faint, high pitched voice, which Harry could barely hear.
“Please don’t steal me,”
There it was again! Suddenly the elephant in the painting started sliding out of the frame. It was alive!
“If you leave me alone,” said the elephant, “I will grant you three wishes, but be warned. If just one of the wishes goes wrong, you will be haunted by my ghost forevermore,”
The elephant started fading back into the painting, until it was only a painting again.

“This can’t be real, it must be a hallucination, it’s late,” thought Harry.
“Well, just to test it out,” said Harry, “I wish I was back at home in my bed,”
Suddenly, Harry was in his bed, in his house.
“Oh my gosh, it works!” thought Harry excitedly, “Oh, wait. I shouldn’t have used it to get myself home, what a waste!”
“I wish that I had time to think over these wishes,” mumbled Harry sadly.
Harry sighed, realising his mistake with his wish.
“I’ll just go down and wake up Mum and Dad,” thought Harry.

After walking down the stairs a second time that night, he trudged down the hall to his parents room.
“Mum, Dad, wake up,” Harry whispered.
There was no reply. He walked up to his parents. They weren’t moving. They weren’t even breathing. Harry checked his sibling’s rooms, and they weren’t moving either. The clock in the hall wasn’t moving either. Harry came to the conclusion that time wasn’t moving so with his last wish, he started time again.

Everything went back to normal, except every night, Harry had a dream about an elephant.