The Waiting One

I am the waiting one it seems

Well, let me explain

When I was five years old my parents moved to their dream home in the country. For some reason they wanted the solitude they couldn’t get in the cul-da-sac we lived in. They found it in a two-story house on a 3 acre patch of land surrounded on every side by woods, even across the street. For them it was perfect, but for an only child it seemed like a life sentence of boredom.

The day we actually moved to the house in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t even try to hide how upset I was. As they spent the day unloading our things, I sat in the vehicle determined that they were going to bring me back to our old home in the cul-de-sac with my friends. Even at 5, I knew that wasn’t going to work. I would eventually have to pee and the car didn’t have a toilet, but I stuck it out as long as I could.

My resolve vanished when our only neighbors that lived a quarter mile down the road came to welcome us. They were a couple around my parents’ age and they quickly hit it off with my parents, most likely because they finally had neighbors they could hang out with. But it was their daughter with her blond hair tied back with a pink ribbon that got me out the car. Her name, as I found out, was Haley, and we hit it off as well as our parents. By the time they left for home there was no place I would have rather lived.

As I said they lived a quarter mile down the road and that’s not for at all, but when you’re five it seems like halfway across the world. Besides at that age we weren’t allowed to leave our own homes without supervision so the only time we saw each other was when our parents got together. Thankfully being the only two houses in the area that happened most days.

During those years I grew attached to Haley and she too I. When we grew old enough for our parents to allow us to go over to each other’s houses we were seldom ever apart. Every morning or every day after school, after our homework was finished, one of us would follow the path we made across the patch of woods between our homes to the other.

Eventually, our imagination out grew our homes and the woods became ours. For the longest time we stayed near our path, but the older we got the bolder we became. Slowly over time, we’d travel farther and farther out to the point I decided it best to carry one of my dad’s hunting knives; which I luckily never had to use. We knew it was dangerous, but like our parents, we like the solitude; just the two of us.

Then one day out of the blue, when we were both thirteen, we made a discovery: an old two-story house. When we laid eyes on it, it was a total “How the world did this get here?” moment. Throughout our years of exploring the woods we never saw any signs that humanity had ever been out here, not a road, not a trail or even a deer stand. It didn’t make sense for it to be there, but there it was.

Haley and I weren’t sure what to do, leave before the owner found two kids on their property, or check and see if anybody even lived there. Curiosity got the better of us. Being the guy I automatically chose to lead the expedition. Upon mounting the porch, with my hand on the handle of my hunting knife, we discovered the door was unlocked. Peeking inside it was obvious that the place hadn’t been inhabited in decades with all the furniture to be seen covered in sheets and the dust on the floor undisturbed. Without any signs of life we proceeded less carefully into the house. After checking every room we finally rested assured that the place was completely abandoned.

The next day we returned with as much cleaning supplies as we could sneak past our parents and could carry however many miles it was to the house. We were there all day dusting, sweeping, and wiping down. And to our amazement neither of us found any sign of rot or termite damage; the house was as perfectly preserved as everything inside.