when I was a teenager I was staying over at a friend's house in an Eastern European neighborhood one night my friend who lived in the house who I will call Ava had already passed out from exhaustion while another friend who I will call Abigail and I were still up talking we were getting bored and not tired at all so we decided to sneak out honestly looking back I have no idea what we were thinking our plan was simple we would walk straight follow the road and get to the town's River we started out and no one else was awake the neighborhood was dead quiet we didn't have much of a plan after the river I just figured we'd hang out there for a bit talk about boys and maybe even smoke a cigarette that's exactly what we did when we reached the park near the river we found a secluded spot leaned against a swing set and lit up a cigarette to share we barely noticed the time passing and must have been there a little while at some point I noticed near the entrance of the park a middle-aged man was standing there just staring at us we had our eye on him since he was also smoking a cigarette but as he started walking towards us my stomach dropped I whispered to Abigail that this was probably not a good thing and I nudged her to stand up so we could leave immediately we started walking quickly but not obviously running we tried to pretend like we weren't panicking and that we were just leaving normally I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if the man was still following us but he wasn't instead he just turned around and got into a wide van that had been parked nearby that made me nervous too because it looked like he was waiting for us to leave I noticed the van had pulled out and was following us from a distance it wasn't close but it was enough for me to feel uncomfortable we'd been walking for what felt like forever but I thought that we were close enough to Ava's house by now Abigail who had been leading the way suddenly whispered to me that we were loost L neither of us lived in nor knew the neighborhood too well and we had no idea where Ava's house was now we had no idea where we were I thought that we had been heading in the right direction but everything looked unfamiliar now every corner we turned seemed to lead to more confusion we kept walking turning down random roads hoping to find something familiar but the more we searched the worse it got I kept thinking about the van which was still following us at a distance we knew we had made a huge mistake and as we walked we tried to figure out our next plan of action finally to our surprise we saw a familiar figure in the distance it was Ava's dad he was standing at the End of the Street looking angry but relieved at the same time he had a flashlight with him and had been clearly searching for us he didn't give us much of a chance to explain before he practically dragged us back into the house we were both shaken up and too scared to argue we got the lecture of a lifetime from aa's Dad but honestly I was just glad that we were safe Looking Back Now I can't can't help but feel like we had a guardian angel watching over us that night luckily Ava had woken up in the middle of the night to see that we were gone and I decided to tell her dad I guess she was very worried because she knew we had been gone a while since our beds were cold it could have ended so differently the man from the park who was following us in the van never got any closer he might have been waiting for us to stop or something I don't even want to think about what might have happened if we hadn't been rescued and just kept walking around with that van following us that night we learned the hard way not to play around with things like that I still think about it sometimes and wonder how close we really were to something much worse back in the 9s when I was in high school I was very good with my hands and worked jobs like construction demolition flooring and auto mechanics one of the jobs I did was working for a guy doing remodeling projects like at restaurant resturants bars retail shops and typical commercial projects I went to school during the day of course and would sometimes work after school or weekends for the guy I worked for it wasn't uncommon for him to leave me alone at a site and have a list of things for me to do alone mostly demolition work he picked me up one Saturday morning as I didn't have a car or license yet so he would pick me up and drive me to sites for work and then leave me alone there I rarely worked with his other Crews as they were the more skilled laborers so I would tear up the place before the main crew would come in and do all the remodeling here's the part that was my major downfall to this story I didn't pay attention to where we were going I was too busy talking to him and I think we were talking about cars or something it took a long time to get to the site and as we drove up it was in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert I knew we left the highway and went down a few other two lane highways for a long distance but I had no idea where we were I had a big jug of water with me because the water to the house I would be working at was off when we pulled up to the house I pulled all my tools out of the truck before he left and he then drove to another site that he would be working on he told me that he would be back to pick me up at about 5: or 600 p. m. since it should only take me until then to do what I needed to do that was always his way of saying I'm only paying you till this time so you better get everything done by then it was never unfair and we always had a good understanding on time and tasks he drove away and I was at this property all alone I walked into the house and it was mostly empty my job was to remove all the remaining Furniture contents and appliances remove all the flooring gut the kitchen and bathroom and remove all the wood paneling I was used to being on sights alone and working all night and this was in the daytime on a Saturday but the house kind of gave me the Spooks the house was old dark musty and kind of cool inside the kind of cool that gives you the Goosebumps I started removing all the junk from the house as I normally did on a project I tore up all the flooring next and to my delight everything seemed to come up with ease and it was rip cut and toss I took a big demo Hammer to the kitchen and tore it apart in less than an hour I ended up using the big jug of water that my boss had given me to wash my hands and face periodically so by late afternoon I was down to my last drink and had already ate everything I brought no worries though because I would be getting picked up in a couple of hours I finished all my tasks and even swept the entire place so the next crew could get right to work later that week at that time of year when I was out there it wasn't a typical hot desert day but you know in the desert as soon as the sun goes down it starts to cool rapidly I had a flannel shirt but that wasn't enough and it was starting to get dark my ride was running late so all I could do was wait this was the time before cell phones were common and there was no electricity water or phone service in the house I climbed up to get to the top of the roof of the house to get a better look to see if I could see something in the distance miles down a smaller Road I saw a few homes but those homes were all dark my first thought was to hike down to a neighbor's house and ask them to use a phone I didn't want to leave though in fear of missing my ride especially since it didn't look like anyone was home since no lights were on in any houses I started to think about my options as Darkness approached fast my options were either to stay at the house until morning hike what little water I had a few miles in the desert at night or wait until early morning and Hike out there to some sort of civilization I decided my best option was to just stay and hoped that my ride would show up it also suddenly occurred to me that no one knew where I was except my boss I don't know if he told anyone else where I was either my family wouldn't miss me until maybe Sunday night because they knew me and how much I would work and they never worried about me not coming home as full Darkness was all around me I didn't have a flashlight or any way to make a fire but luckily the Moonlight was bright it was getting cold outside so I went back inside the empty creepy house that somehow seemed even more creepy when mostly empty at about 8:00 p.
m. the batteries on my radio which was my only source of a little light and noise started to die I grabbed an old wooden chair and just sat in the living room of this house doing absolutely nothing except waiting I started to hear the wind and odd noises which I assumed were animals in the distance I started to shiver from the cold and my mind might have started to play tricks on me I saw Shadows moving outside and inside the house I also started to hear someone talking like Whispers or something I was sure was going crazy and got up from my chair and yelled out hello and just as I did I heard something fall on the other side of the house I had enough of this creepy house so I went to go outside again at least in the Moonlight I could see better off in the distance I heard noises and saw movement but couldn't make out anything I had a pile of tools by the edge of the house ready for when my boss picked me up so I ran over there and grabbed a heavy pry bar I was ready to defend myself for whoever was out there I had to keep moving because my under shirt and flannel shirt were not enough to keep me warm the wind was also starting to pick up and as far as I could see there was no lights around me I didn't want to try to make it up on the house again out of fear of falling in the dark but I got up on top of the gate just to try to gain a little bit of hype to see if I could see some house lights nearby or car lights my mind went to the stories that circled around at the time about people who would come up to the Mojave Desert and bury bodies how there were evil groups out here and how people would go missing for no reason every noise had me on edge and every shadow had my heart pounding I knew no one was in the house but I was sure I could hear noises from inside I huddled up on the front porch for warmth looking in the living room window expecting to see someone at any moment by around 11:00 p. m.
