Waiting for Sunrise

“Hannah? Hannah!” Jake threw a wadded-up hamburger wrapper leftover from dinner at my face. His aim was perfect, as usual, but what did you expect from the starting quarterback of the high school football team? He had it all. Great grades, the looks, and girls falling for him left and right. He never let any of it get to him though. He was just the same down-to-earth guy I’d grown up with always hanging out in his parents’ basement when we were bored.

I lifted my head from my hand, not blinking. “Yeah?” My elbow had been propped up on the arm of the couch for far too long. I wasn’t sure which was more draining, the heat or the boredom, and I found myself sleepy even in the relatively early hour of 1am. Early for us, anyway. I shook my arm and rubbed my elbow gingerly. I was the weird one of the group. Goth with a bit of nerd.

Tyler chimed in, “We decided to check out that house by the lake. You know the one!” Always the adventurous type, you’d find Tyler getting into trouble at every turn. Through no fault of his own, ever, according to him. He was never without Lauren, either. They’d grown up together and knew each other since elementary school before things started getting serious in high school.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Seriously. It’s dangerous. The place is probably falling apart inside. It’ll crash down on our heads.” I said nonchalantly, not really taking them seriously.

“You’re just chicken,” Lauren added. “You’re scared of the ghost.” She was always the most excitable of the bunch, and ready to jump into whatever crazy shenanigans the group came up with. She made a perfect match for Tyler.

“Me? You think I’m afraid of ghosts?” I questioned her, raising a brow in slight amusement.

The house had sat abandoned for decades and no one ever really knew why. The previous owners had apparently just up and left, according to the older folks, but no one could really remember them. They were quiet and kept to themselves, so when the house was empty and the people were gone, no one cared enough to look for them.

It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of ghosts. In fact, I believed in them and fervidly believed you could communicate with them. “If… and that’s a big if… there’s a ghost in that house, I just feel we should respect their space. Don’t you?” I tossed the hamburger wrapper at the garbage can and missed. “Seriously.”

Still, I found myself in the passenger seat of Jake’s dad’s beat up sedan as we drove the half hour to the lakefront. The drive was dark, with very few streetlamps to light the way and only the headlights to illuminate the signs guiding us. Luckily, we knew these streets well having grown up in this rural town rarely worthy of a map dot.

Our flashlights cut through the night haphazardly as we stumbled out of the car and into the tall grass surrounding the small, one-story house. We had all seen it hundreds of times passing by, but this was our first time standing in front of it.

It stood with faded and peeling paint that we only knew was light blue from memory. White trim was nearly gone. The metal roof was rusted and bent in several places. A tree had recently fallen and caught the corner of the screened in porch, the screen worn and falling where it was still visible. The two windows, one on each side of the porch, were broken.

I felt sad for the people who had lived there before, although I wasn’t sure why. This had been their home.

“Come on, let’s go!” Jake whispered loudly as if there were someone around to hear and waved his hand to beckon us forward. We all trudged through the overgrown grass and weeds, stepping on glass and garbage as we did.

The inside was even more of a mess, with a mattress half leaning, half fallen against one wall in the living room, barely legible graffiti, and with more glass and trash strewn about the floor.

“What a mess. I’m going to check out the other rooms.” Tyler whispered and grabbed Lauren’s hand. I was pretty sure he just wanted to make out. They headed toward the back while Jake walked into a room to the right.

Once I was alone in the living room, I got an uneasy feeling. My stomach felt weak as I walked toward the fireplace that was starting to crumble and felt it get cold. Unnaturally and unnervingly cold. “Hey, guys! I think we really oughta–”

Then the doors slammed shut with a loud, simultaneous thud. I heard banging on a door from the back and Tyler yelling out, “Hey, what gives! Jake, did you do this?”

“It’s not me! It just happened! This is weird, man!” Jake responded.

The room got even colder and the air stirred. “You aren’t allowed to leave, are you?” I whispered. The air whipped up a little stronger.

I placed a hand around my necklace and had an idea. “Hey, everyone? I need you to stay calm, okay? Just listen to me. I have an idea.”

“Stay calm? Are you nuts?” Lauren banged on the door again.

“Yes. Stay calm. And trust me. Seriously.”

Everyone got quiet as I used my shoe to brush away some of the debris from the center of the floor so I could sit and I took off my necklace. The brass pendant swung in the light from my flashlight, and I took a deep, cleansing breath. This was worth a shot.

I steadied the pendant in one hand and propped the opposite elbow on my knee for balance. Making sure it was still, I asked the first question.

“Is there someone here?” My voice was shaky.

It took a moment but the pendant, acting as a pendulum, began slowly moving back and forth. I took another breath and steadied it.

“Are you trapped here?”

Again, it started moving back and forth. I steadied the pendant and, to test my theory, decided to ask a question to which I knew the answer would be no.

“Can you tell me your name?”

As I thought it would, the pendant swung from side to side in the opposite direction. Whoever this was had no way of communicating their name. But I had another idea. If this person was trapped here, then that meant…

“Can you show me where you are?”

This time the pendant stayed still a bit longer before swinging back and forth, indicating they could. My heart was racing and I was sweating in the ice-cold room. A part of me wished for the inferno that was the weather outside, but this was important, not only to save my friends from whatever may happen to them trapped here but to save whoever this is and still was.

“I need help though. I need the sheriff here. Can my friends go get him and bring him here while I stay and keep you company? I promise to stay until they get back here.”

The doors slowly creaked open and everyone stumbled out and into the living room. I looked up at the pale, shocked faces of my friends.

“Dang, it’s cold in here!” Tyler rubbed his arms and then put one around Lauren. “Let me guess. We are going for the sheriff?”

“Please? I’m staying here.”

“Oh, no you’re not! Not by yourself.” Jake made a space next to me and sat down. It got colder in the room.

“It’s okay. He’s my friend Jake. We’ll both keep you company until Tyler and Lauren get back. Okay?” The temperature in the room leveled off to a frigid, but tolerable, level. “Go.” I waved back at the other two and turned off my light to conserve its battery while Jake set his face up in front of us to illuminate the room.

“So… this is interesting.” He wrapped an arm around me in an effort to keep us both warm.

“Yep,” I said simply.

We sat in silence for the two hours it took them to get back. We assumed it took some convincing to get Sheriff Lockwood to even come out to the house given that we hadn’t found anything other than a spirit communicating with a necklace.

As I figured, he looked skeptical when he walked through the front door of the house. I turned and stood to face him. “Thank you, Sheriff. Please. Just keep an open mind. Seriously.”

He crossed his arms and nodded his head. I turned around to face the room again, held out the pendant, and steadied it.

“Okay. We’re ready when you are. Are you inside?”

The pendant swung left to right. That was a no.

“We need to go outside.” We all shuffled out and faced the street.

“Are you in the front yard?”

The pendant swung left to right again. I led the way and others shined their lights around the small space that was the backyard, enclosed with chain link fencing.

“Are you able to direct the pendant where we need to go?”

The pendant swung backward and forward.

“Okay. I’ll steady it and then it’s all yours. Take us to you.”

I did as I said, and the pendant moved ever so slightly toward a tree in a corner of the property that had long since fallen and was covered in overgrown weeds. Once I was there, the pendant fell still.

“Is this it?” I asked in a whisper.

The pendant ripped from the chain and stuck firmly in the ground between my feet. I looked up at the sheriff. He looked curious and a bit dumbfounded by what was happening. “If this is some kind of magic trick you kids are playing-“

“It’s not, Sherriff.” The tone of my voice was grave and urgent as I hoped he could sense both my unease and urgency as to what we were about to find.

“Out of the way, kids. And here, hold this light.” He handed me his flashlight, although soon we wouldn’t need it. The sky was beginning to lighten with the upcoming sunrise. After picking up the pendant and handing it to me, he began to shovel dirt away with his hands right where it had been.

After about a foot of digging, “Are you sure about this? I feel a little silly digging a hole like this at the direction of a– hey, wait a minute.” He moved more dirt out of the way and I instinctively leaned closer to get a better look. Instead, he held up an arm to move us away from the hole. “You kids back up, I need to call someone.”

He took the flashlight from me and headed back toward the road. I looked to make sure he was gone and then walked toward the hole, kneeling beside it. I turned off my flashlight and set it down on the grass just as the sun was coming up, its rays illuminating the top of a skull.

“Here comes the sun, Honey. It’s not so cold anymore, is it?” A sultry breeze blew by and then settled just as quickly. I smiled softly and squeezed the pendant hard in my hand as Sheriff Lockwood returned.

“Hey, I told you kids to back away from there.” He had caution tape and started wrapping it around the fallen branches and trunk of the tree, creating a barrier until others could arrive. “I’ve already called your parents. We’ll need to speak with all of you at the station. Get statements.”

“We can give statements, Sheriff, but you’re going to think we’re loony.” Jake said as he walked over to me and slid his hand into mine, intertwining our fingers with the pendant held firmly in our palms.

“At this point, son, I think we’re all going loony.”