Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25170312-20140817035754

"This is kinda creepy. Where are we going?" I asked, hoping we weren't going back to the 'Montauk Project'. These guys always seemed to drag me somewhere in the dark and, in the case of the 'Montauk Project', high places. Being afraid of heights, and wandering strange places at night, any fun we had was always bittersweet. Why couldn't we just drink and smoke somewhere that's not scary? I've even been dragged to graveyards. It's a bit of a buzz kill to be surrounded by dead people.

"We're going to an abandoned house," said Mike, to my severe disappointment. People had often tried to get me to go to an abandoned house, but I would always refuse. At least those other houses were near a main road, but wherever we were going was far off the beaten path. We had been driving for a while in the pitch black. I couldn't see in front of us either, since the car we were following was blocking the view, and Mike was driving pretty close.

Jeff was in the passenger seat. He turned his head towards the three of us in the back seat.

"It's not really abandoned," he said. "It's just empty. It was built recently but I guess they haven't finished some stuff, like the wiring, and the locks." He chuckled about the locks, since that's why they could get into the house. But why would anyone build a new house in the middle of nowhere? There was literally nothing but trees on the road we were on, and it was a long road.

I was relieved to hear that the house was new. The reason I was afraid of abandoned houses was because they were usually old and falling apart. They always reminded me of places you should never go. Places where horrible things lurk in the corners and under the creaky floor boards. Where I live there are a lot of scary houses, and I never once wanted to go inside.

We finally arrived at the house, and the first thing I noticed was the uneven ground all around it. Nothing says 'unfinished home' like piles of dirt, unfilled holes, and a view of the foundation. Once both drivers shut off their headlights, all I saw was black. We filed out of the cars, and a couple people with flashlights led the way up to the house. Mike opened a sliding glass door, and in we went.

The first floor was just a kitchen and a huge room with a two-story ceiling; the second floor overlooking it. The only furniture was a ratty couch and a broken armchair that both looked like they came from a junkyard. They sat in front of a fireplace, with small stacks of papers strewn around them. By the looks of it, someone had been squatting there. I figured it was Mike and his friends, but they later mentioned that the furniture was there when they discovered the house. The stacks of papers were new.

After we lit up in the kitchen, a few of the girls started exploring the house. Creeped out by the darkness, I decided to hang out by the fireplace where Jeff had made a fire. I sat in the cruddy armchair, sipping a beer. Jeff was checking out the papers.

"What is all this stuff?" I asked.

"I don't know. Some kind of medical stuff. Look," he replied, handing me a few sheets. They seemed to be pages torn from medical books; diagrams of human anatomy and such. Maybe they were photocopies, but in the dim light of the fire it was hard to tell. It was odd that someone would bring so many random papers to an empty house in the middle of nowhere, especially if it was a squatter.

I was getting pretty bored. Sitting on trashy furniture, surrounded by stacks of mysterious papers, in a dark house, with people I didn't know that well. I've only mentioned Mike and Jeff by name because I can't remember anyone else's, except Melanie. She's the one who showed us the drawing.

"Guys, check this out! It's so freaky!" she said, holding up an oversized sheet of paper. It was the outline of a child in black marker. I fondly remembered making those drawings in elementary school. A kid would lay down, and another would trace their body with marker. Only in this case, the hands had been colored in red.

Jeff was the first to say, "What the fuck?", but we were both thinking it.

"It was in one of the rooms upstairs," said Melanie. "All the rooms were completely empty except for this." She, along with her two friends, seemed playfully frightened. The kind of frightened you would expect from someone watching a scary movie they know isn't real. I was a little creeped out, but it was the only interesting thing that had happened since we got there.

"The weirdest part is the hands being red," I said. "It's so weird."

"Right?" said Jeff.

"I wanna take it home!" Melanie squealed.

"Why?" I asked. "It's fucking scary. Why is it even here?" We had fun coming up with explanations. Maybe some kids were hanging out in the house and made it. But we couldn't figure out why they would have brought a huge piece of paper. Then we thought it could have been made in school, and someone brought it to the house. We couldn't come up with a reason to bring it, though, much like the medical papers.

Mike and a few of the other guys came over to see what we were doing. Soon we were all discussing the fate of the drawing. We came to the consensus that it should stay, and we laid it on the floor near the medical papers. Melanie and the other girls were going up to the roof and asked me to go. I explained that I was afraid of heights, but she assured me there was no way I could fall off the roof, which quelled my fear.

I followed her up to the second floor, and we squeezed through an open window onto the roof, where the other girls were smoking a bowl. The middle of the roof was flat, surrounded on all sides by upward slants. There was indeed no way to fall, unless you did it intentionally. Melanie walked up one of the slants to a peak so she could look down.

"Hey, can someone come here for a sec?" she said. One girl went up to join her. The two of them looked down towards the spot where the cars had been parked. Melanie shined a flashlight around while asking, "Isn't that where we parked?" The other girl agreed, and the two of them seemed dumbfounded for a minute. We all rushed downstairs, and the three girls started panicking.

"Guys! Did you move the cars?"

Mike seemed confused. "No. Why?"

"We looked down from the roof and they're not there."

Mike and the other driver looked at eachother with skepticism, but went outside to make sure. The cars were not where they were supposed to be. And after circling the entire perimeter, it was confirmed they were gone. Everyone started shouting and cursing. How were we supposed to get home? The girls started to cry. Not only were the cars gone, but we were going to have to walk a great distance in the dark. It took some time before we gave up trying to explain it. Eventually we faced the fact that we if we didn't start walking we'd be there all night.

Everyone was quiet. The only sound was from our footsteps and the chirping of crickets. There was just enough moonlight to see the barren trees arching over the road. It was going to take a few hours to get anywhere that had streetlights, and we were all exhausted.

"Hey, can we stop for a minute?" asked one of the girls. We collectively decided it was a good idea, even though we had only been walking for about twenty minutes. There was a sense of denial that we were still so far from home. Jeff packed a bowl and we passed it around.

"Did everyone get a hit?" he asked, making sure no one got shafted. As everyone looked at eachother and nodded, Mike noticed something.

"Hey, where's Melanie?" Suddenly, everyone realized that she wasn't there. The flashlight holders scanned the area but there was only trees and dirt road. The girls called her name several times, but it just echoed into the night air.

"This isn't funny, guys. Where's Melanie?" We spread out a little, all calling her name. If she was playing a joke on us, it wasn't funny. Everyone was frustrated and bewildered by the disappearing cars, and this wasn't helping.

"Fuck!" Mike shouted. "Where the fuck is she? We can't keep going if we don't know where she is."

"Dude, let's just leave her," said one of the guys whose name I can't remember.

"Are you stupid?!" shouted one of the girls.

"Maybe she went back to the house," I said. Everyone stopped talking for a moment, contemplating the possibility that she did, indeed, go back. I wasn't really serious, though. What idiot would go back to the house without telling us? And why? After more grumbling, cursing and arguing, we decided that a few of us would go back to the house while the others waited in case Melanie really was playing a joke. I volunteered to go because I knew that waiting for an unknown length of time would be worse.

On the way back to the house, the two girls, Mike, and myself, joked about the whole situation. The anger of the missing cars gave way to self-deprecating humor. We had come to an empty house in the middle of nowhere to party, only for our transportation to vanish. We had to laugh at ourselves in order to feel better. As we finally arrived back at the house, we saw that the sliding glass door was open.

"Did we leave the door open?" asked Mike.

"I'm almost positive someone closed it," I replied. If there was any reason for it being open, it had to be that Melanie went back inside. As we entered the main room, I noticed that a lot of the loose medical papers were in the fireplace, and the outline of the child with red hands was gone. We searched the kitchen while calling for Melanie. It was clear she wasn't on the first floor, so we headed upstairs.

"I'm going to be pissed if she's not here," said Mike, "because then we came back for nothing." Just to be sure, I split off to check the roof. She wasn't up there. I went back to join the others who were looking at something in one of the rooms.

"What's up?" I asked. The three of them looked at me with blank expressions as Mike shined the flashlight on a spot on the floor. There were two jumbo-sized sheets of paper, taped together to make one larger sheet. Drawn in marker was the outline of a person, with only the hands colored in red.

''[ This story was inspired by true events. Everything before the cars disappear really happened the way I said. Everything from the cars vanishing until the end is all fictional. There's no mention of anyone calling for help on their cellphones because the truthful parts happened about 20 years ago. This is the first time I've ever tried writing a story where I took something from my actual life and built upon it. Let me know what you guys think! ]'' 