Haunted

Haunted

         Have you ever wondered about the unknown? Really wondered? People, especially the ones I know, act like they know everything. These same know-it-alls also have other less than pleasant personality quirks. One is general stupidity. Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way.
         Jake, me and Cord, were out for a drive. Jake was driving. Perhaps getting in a car with Jake is an indication of stupidity on my part to. But anyway, there we were driving through the back roads.
         See, my parents had just uprooted our family, for reasons I couldn’t figure out, and transplanted us in the middle of rural nowhere. Half the people are related, whether they admit it or not. And finding out a engaged couple are cousins is only shocking to my family, apparently.
         Driving random back roads is one of the few available activities on a typical Saturday night. This one was no different, at first.
         That night Jake decided to show me the old Henderson place. And like many old places associated with family names, the Henderson had been gone for a long time. I found out as Jake pulled onto the unmentioned drive that what happened to them was unknown. A family tried moving in after the property was taken for back taxes, but they did not stay long.
         As with most area stories, I nodded, acting like I believed the story about the Henderson family disappearing into the night sounded plausible. That tends to work better then being skeptical, regardless of how ridiculous a story sounds.
         Jake continued on about the Henderson family, their various oddities, and stories associated. Apparently, it was believed, at least by Jake, that the Henderson family had gone home from a Church event on a Friday night more then a decade ago. When they did not show up for Church on Sunday, a concerned deacon came out to check. The car sat in front of the house. The doors were locked. No one answered the door. He called the Sheriff who came out and looked around. He saw no signs of foul play and said they had to wait and see. A couple days later, he had a locksmith get him in through the front door. Nothing appeared out of place. They simply did not appear to be home. Food filled the pantry shelves and the fridge. Coats hung in the coat closet above their shoes. While their was no evidence anything had happened, the fact that the Hendersons were gone and showed no indications of having left, the Sheriff opened an investigation. It went nowhere. In fact, the Sheriff quickly found out that he could not even prove they existed to begin with. Their birth certificates and IDs proved fake. Mr. Henderson’s sales job, which took him out of town during the week, did not exist. The house was legally owned, but the Sheriff was unable to trace where the money came from to buy it. The case remains technically open. There was no resolution after more then ten years.
         Then Jake opened the door and stepped out of the car onto the weed-covered drive in the dark. He grabbed a couple flashlights from under his seat. Cord climbed out next and held out his hand for a light. I couldn’t believe they were serious.
         We were trespassing on a piece of property, Jake said was not maintained, at midnight. It was cloudy, masking most of the moonlight. No one knew we were there. If something went wrong, no one would know where to look. And of course, I was too much of a teenage male to admit to any of those concerns. It was uncool.
         Sadly, my desire to be accepted overrode any common sense I might have had that night. I followed my friends, who in retrospect, were not as smart as I originally thought, around the Henderson place. It would not occur to me until later that Jake had not offered me a flashlight. I would not be able to find my own way around.
         The back of the house was overgrown, but oddly without trash. Jake claimed teenagers used the place to drink and other forms of partying. The lack of trash did make me wonder if he had the right house.
         It did not take Jake long to uncover the basement entrance. It had flat, slightly angled doors a few feet from the back door. There was no lock. With Cord’s help, he pulled the doors open. A rather dusty set of concrete stairs led into the basement. The lack of spider webs gave me hope that someone had been through here recently and the structure was solid. Again, not wanting to be uncool, I did not voice my observations.
         We climbed down the stairs. Jake led with Cord right behind him. The fact that I could not see anything except where their flashlights were shining, not even my own feet, was seriously disturbing.
         In an attempt to figure out why we were there, I asked Jake what we were looking for. He asked me if I was scared. I told him no, but wanted to know why we were in an abandoned basement in the dark. What should I have expected? He said he wanted to show me something.
         I should have backed out then. Something did not feel right. I can’t explain the feeling. It was as if a part of my brain I was unfamiliar with was telling me to get out of there. And get out fast. But, being a guy, and being with other guys, and not wanting to look like a wuss, I stayed.
         Had it simply been three idiot guys with flashlights in an abandoned house at night, I could have laughed it off later. But we were not alone in the house. It truly was haunted. I was about to learn valuable lessons about life, trusting idiots, being an idiot and mental endurance. Lessons I should not have learned that night.
         The basement had a cellar. A four square foot room with a wooden chest in the corner and no window. The walls were cement and the door solid wood with a workable lock.
         Jake led me into the room while Cord waited outside. Another hint I should have seen this coming. Jack led me over to the wooden chest. He leaned over to open it and his flashlight went out. I waited for Cord to step in. Not expecting Jake to leave me there, although I probably should have, I did not realize the movement I heard was Jake, and not Cord, until the door creaked shut.
         I called out to them. Their response was a laugh. Ha ha, I thought, and found my way over to the door. The handle turned, but I could tell there was a paddle lock on the outside.
         Annoyed, but realizing I had fallen for a bad joke, I pounded on the door a couple times and called out again. It was then I realized they weren’t there anymore. If they were, I would still hear their laughs. I didn’t.
         That’s when the fear creeping in grabbed me. Knowing it would not help if I lost it and started screaming like my sister when she broke a nail, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
         It was then I heard a door pushed open. It sounded like they were upstairs. I kept taking deep breaths and concentrated on the noise the jokers were making above me. Jokes were jokes. I figured they were trying to scare me, perhaps in the most sadistic manner they could come up with. After all, I was the new guy.
         I listened to them wander around upstairs. It was then something occurred to me. There was movement in other areas of the house. I could tell from their footsteps where they were and that they were together. The other sounds were not them.
         I tried dismissing the creak of a board here and there. The house was old. But that only lasted until a door opened and slammed shut. I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like maybe the second floor. Jake and Cord were on the first.
         Their movements stopped. If it was me, I’d be standing real still and trying to figure out what had caused that door upstairs to open and close.
         Nothing happened for a few more minutes, and their movement started again. It sounded like they were moving toward the basement stairs. At least I hoped they were.
         That ended when something heavy slid on the floor briefly. Their movement stopped again. Something shook the house. Followed by a loud crash. I guessed a heavy piece of furniture had been hurdled against a wall. It didn’t make sense. Their footsteps had been in a different part of the house.
         That’s when Jake and Cord made a run for a door. I heard them rattle it, and yell when it wouldn’t open. They must have rammed it with their shoulders because a loud splintering sound followed a thud I guessed was them trying to break the door open.
         All the while, I stood there, eyes closed, trying to keep my breath even. I wanted to believe that this was all part of the prank. That they had gotten some of the other guys to hide in the house and make noise.
         I tried to hold to that belief for what felt like a long time. Without sound or light, time is hard to judge. Any hope that it was all an elaborate prank ended when Jake’s car started. There was a line one did not cross in pranks. Abandoning me, locked in a cellar, with no light, was definitely a line not to be crossed. Something had to have happened.
         I opened my eyes, for whatever good it would do, in the pitch black room. I took the door handle and pushed the door forward. It wouldn’t budge any farther then it had before. I tapped the wood, trying to determine if I had any chance of breaking out. I quickly concluded the wood had to be solid. Unsure of what else to do, I gave a test ram on the door. Even hitting the door with a fraction of the force I could probably have exerted, it hurt my shoulder enough for me not to try it again.
         I was locked in a cellar. My parents knew I had gone out with Jake and Cord for a drive. I was expected to stay at Jake’s house that night. My parents were not expecting me home before noon.
         With no escape options, I found the back wall and sat on the floor with my back against the concrete wall. Although I would never have locked someone in a cellar to begin with, or subsequently left them there, I readily believed Jake and Cord would get me help when they could.
         There I sat on the cold floor with my knees bent, my arms loosely over my knees and my head back against the wall. It did not matter if my eyes were opened or closed. It was still pitch black.
         Somewhere in that long wait, as the cold seeped through my clothes, a soft voice began to sing. An image of a teenage girl came to mind. Tired, scared and wondering if I would die there in the dark, my mind clung to that beautiful voice. I don’t know why, but I never wondered who was singing, or even if it was real. All I knew is she was all I had.
         It would be hours later before anyone realized I was missing. My mother wanted a book I had borrowed. My room was a mess; I am a teenage guy after all. She told my father to call me at Jake’s and ask where her book was. She figured I would not be awake at 9 AM. But his parents should be. They would be getting ready for church.
         Well, my father called Jake’s parents, and his mother said that I was not there. Jake had apparently not informed his parents that I was expected to spend the night. That was not surprising.
         My father asked if she would check to make sure I was not in Jake’s room. She checked and found out Jake wasn’t there.
         Annoyed, but not concerned yet, my father called Cord’s grandfather to ask if I was there. When his grandpa told my dad we were at Jake’s, that’s when he knew something was wrong.
         Not that I would ever mention, but I was very good at telling my parents where I would be and who I was with. I never thought much of it. That consistency went in my favor.
         My father called the Sheriff. After a brief conversation about how I was not known to lie, disappear, or run away, the Sheriff acknowledged a possible problem. He asked my parents to come down to the station. He was going to start making phone calls and see what anyone knew.
         After ten o’clock that morning, Douglas Jenkins, an old man who lived about a mile from the Henderson house called the Sheriff. He had heard through the church calling tree that we were missing. He said he had heard a car going up the road past his house that night about midnight. Only thing past his place was the Henderson’s and a closed state park entrance. That car sped back down the road some time later.
         Reports that I had been seen with Jake and Cord earlier in the night but by a four AM sighting I was not with them, sent the Sheriff, a deputy and my father to the Henderson’s hoping their insistence on leaving my mother, and sisters, at the station had not been necessary.
         A rural paramedic couple, who owned their own ambulance, were called on the way. The Sheriff wanted to be wrong. But it was the only lead they had.
         I was semi-conscious, suffering from cold exposure, when I heard the Sheriff’s car. I was later told I imagined it, but I am sure someone shook me. I know I did not move. I sat there, wondering why the girl had stopped singing, and what the pounding noise was.
         The pounding, which was attributed to me, although I was not able to move, drew the Sheriff, deputy, and my father to me. It would take a pair of bolt cutters to get the door open. I was barely able to acknowledge my father before I gave up the fight to stay conscious, and fell over.
         Two days in the hospital after nearly eleven hours locked in that cellar. Jake and Cord were found after I arrived at the hospital in Jake’s car sleeping off the drunk of their lives. I managed to talk the Sheriff into getting them community service rather then jail time. I figured a few days in jail would have been more then enough.
         Jake and Cord claimed they were chased from the house by ghosts. They believed I was already dead by the time they escaped. The fear of what had happened, and feeling they had killed me, resulted in them drinking themselves into oblivion.
         Honestly, I don’t know what happened that night. Although it was not seriously cold, the basement floor was cold enough to cause hypothermia. The doctor said he was not sure how I came out of it as healthy as I did. I never mentioned the singing girl. I did not expect to be believed. And somehow, she was personal. Her voice, real or not, keep me sane that night.
         Months later, I would return to the Henderson place an adult. My father and I had permission and a key to the door that was still intact. We found the large wooden chair I had heard hit the wall that night. An upstairs door opened and closed while we walked through the first floor.
         An upstairs investigation would show no reason for the door to be able to open and close by itself. There was no wind.
         We then headed downstairs to the basement. I felt a small hand, one I could easily imagine belonging to a teenage girl, on my shoulder as we stood outside that cellar. I heard a soft voice, that my father did not seem to hear, telling me I would be all right. I thanked her in my head for what she had done for me that night.
         My appreciation earned me an unusual friend. She would later tell me her name was Abby Henderson. I do not understand how she followed me from her haunt that day, but she did. She would not tell me anything about her family, herself, or how they died. Just that they had.