"We're here."
My roommate Kristen woke me up. I had been snuggled with my pillow and fuzzy autumn leaf blanket in the back seat. We made it! Phew. I had driven most of the way from San Diego to Visalia that night, but after getting lost with terrible directions from the internet and not sleeping well on the trip, I had Jason drive the last bit for me. It was a precautionary measure so I didn't careen the us and the van off the road into the "methane-y" dairy farms we had been driving through in my yawn imbued stupor.
Giuly blinked several times next to me and stretched. I looked around. Outside the grimy van windows I couldn't see a thing. Jason turned around from the driver's seat.
"Thanks a lot, Becky. Five minutes of driving, you fall asleep and I hit a wall of fog going 85 miles an hour."
I blinked.
"But no worries. We're safe. I only drove for about 45 minutes."
We grabbed our stuff from the back of the van and followed Kristen into Clayton's home. Clayton had gotten married that day (or should I say previous day since it was currently 2 am) to our now former roommate Heather and his parents had offered us a bed in their home for the next two days while we helped with the reception in Visalia. We met Kristen at the front door. She had already gotten her stuff to the bedrooms we would be using that night. She had been texting Virginia, Clayton's Filipino mom, as we'd traveled. She must have met Kristen at the door while we were gathering our bags. We walked through the whitewashed, wrought-iron gate on the porch and into the bonechilling cold house.
"Brrrr. Why is it so cold, Kristen?"
"Virginia apologized because she forgot to turn the heat on. It is California, they don't usually need the heater."
San Diego hadn't been the tropical paradise we had envisioned either. It was chilly and breezy and cold. The sun wasn't much help because it hid behind the clouds all afternoon during the picture taking at the temple.
Kristen, Giuly and I moved our stuff into a bedroom with two twin beds and a trundle. We let Jason have the bedroom with one bed. While attempting to acclimatize to the temperature I looked around the bedroom. The closet was open and I could see books and luggage stored away. There were names written on the items and they were NOT Virginia or Randall Lemons, Clayton's parents. I numbly turned to Kristen.
"Are we sure this is the right house? Did you talk to anyone?"
"No I didn't talk with anyone. I didn't want to wake anyone up. Virginia said she left the door unlocked."
"Oh man oh man oh man we're in someone else's house!"
"But this is the right address, right?!?"
"Jason!!! Would you go check the address on the mailbox?"
"Yeah and Virginia said the house is green. Will you check to see that this is a green house too?" (In our stupor we forgot how dark and foggy it was outside.)
While us girls huddled together in the middle of the room in the who-knows-whose-house-it-was, Kristen went over the text messages from Virginia again.
"Jason, she said they put the garage door opener in the mailbox!" she whispered loudly to Jason as he slipped out into the hallway.
Shivering from cold and from the fear of being imprisoned in a state miles from home we waited for the news Jason would bring back. We listened to any sound that may have come from elsewhere in the house. No matter what shock we were experiencing, it would still not be a nice surprise for someone to wake up at 2 in the morning finding four young adults trying to squat on your property, actually inside your home. For the normal noises a house makes the air was eerily quiet.
The front door opened and we all gasped almost silently. Footsteps came through the hall.
"This is definitely the right address. The house number is the same and there is a garage door opener remote in the mailbox. I think we can safely say we're in the right house."
Jason's tone calmed us down. He was certain. I slowed my heart with deep breathing exercises and got ready for bed as quick as possible. We knelt down on the trundle to say a prayer of gratitude (the floor was absolutely too cold).
I drifted to sleep rather quickly considering how much adrenaline had been running through my system in the prior 15 minutes.
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I was awoken by Kristen nudging my left shoulder.
"Turn it off."
There was a sound wafting from the window by my head. I half sat up, leaning on my elbows and looked back. Light emanated from the windowsill. Giuly's cell phone. I hit the pile of blankets on the bed above me to my right.
"Giuly, your alarm..." I tried to get her attention. No repsonse. I blinked some sleep out of my eyes and focused on the bed. No one was there. Just a bunch a blankets.
She must be in the bathroom, I thought. I'll turn it off anyway.
I fell asleep within seconds of silencing the phone.
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My left shoulder was prodded again. This time by Kristen's foot or leg. She was getting out of bed.
"Good morning. Did you sleep well, Kristen?"
Groggily she squinted at me and said something that sounded like "sure."
She took a breath and said, "Virginia said last night she was going to make us breakfast and she just texted me saying she's getting it ready in the kitchen."
Jason knocked on the door and walked in. "Breakfast?!?" Wow, men and their love affair with food. "I'll go see," he offered.
As we dressed Jason went to go see if he could help. He came back slightly more breathless with wide eyes.
"Guys, no one is here," he paused. "This is an empty house!"
I jumped up. "I'm going to look around."
I first walked across the frigid floor to the kitchen. Light was seeping through the fog and the windows to add a bit of clarity to the house that was so dark and ominous the night before. I peeked around the doorway of the kitchen. Vacant. No smell of bacon, or sound of the toaster popping. Hmmm. Curious. I walked back towards the end of the house where we slept. Back through the front room with an enormous flat panel tv and a drafty wooden floor. When I reached the hallway I turned further into the house. Treading carefully, I peeked into the adjoining rooms. Laundry room. Linen closet. Master bedroom, I'm guessing. Yup, master bedroom. Only it wasn't occupied. As I stepped into the open room I felt my presence echo off the walls. It wasn't just not occupied. It was empty. The wide open closet doors showed bare shelves and clothing racks. The master bathroom seemed to be in the middle of repairs. I walked a bit quicker back to the bedroom to share my discoveries. As I opened the door, Giuly was saying:
"This is a ghost house. I didn't want to say it last night but it has the smell of a house that hasn't been lived in for a while."
I confirmed her suspicions with my facts. We all turned on Kristen.
"Call Virginia now! If this is the right house, where is she?!"
"Find out what's going on!"
"What is she making for breakfast?"
"Are we sure its a green house?"
"Oh man, we're going to get caught! What are the neighbors thinking right now?!"
Kristen fumbled her phone into her hands and began calling. Jason went outside to see what color the house was in the meager morning light. I folded up my blankets and tried to organize what I had spread out the night before. Giuly was working on her bed as well. I tried to make some conversation with her so I wouldn't be trying to control what Kristen said and asked Virginia in my suspense.
"Your phone went off this morning. Why did you set an alarm?"
"No it didn't. It must have been someone else's. I didn't hear it."
"I had to turn it off. I guessed you were in the bathroom."
"I didn't use the bathroom this morning."
"But you weren't in bed."
"Yes I was."
"I couldn't see you and when I padded the blankets in my reach you didn't react." Giuly was my room-roommate back in Provo. We'd shared the same room for over a year. She would wake to anything and I could sleep through anything.
"Strange. I must be getting skinnier. But I didn't hear the alarm. And you did?"
"Kristen woke me up to turn it off."
"Ghost house..." Giuly whispered.
Kristen hung up and Jason walked in.
"Its definitely green."
"This is the right house. Virginia didn't tell me that they own several homes. She's cooking in the home they currently live in. And she said we could come over cuz breakfast is ready."
Several things started to click.
"Now it makes sense why she forgot to turn the heat on. Its easier to forget to turn the heat on in the whole house when you don't actually live there!"
Kristen nodded, "And last night she told me no one was at the house. I thought she meant because we were all in San Diego and there were no kids at home or something."
Since we didn't have internet access or a map to find the house Virginia actually lived in, we hung out in the van running the heater while Randall drove over to show us the way. We blasted the heater trying to get warm. The sun melted the residual fog away. Randall turned the corner and we began to follow him. I turned around and watched the green house grow smaller before we curved around the block. What a night last night! And, I slowly realized, we get to sleep in the ghost house again tonight!
Please no ghosts, no prison, and turn the heater on!
