Locked In ((working title))

Remembering a Promise

Twenty-one year-old Lily  sighed with dread as she gazed at the date on her calendar.

Saturday, March 4, 2017.

The date was marked with a big, bold, red X - a glaring reminder that she couldn't, under any circumstances, forget the daunting task she had to complete today.  Not that it would be too daunting, right?  I mean, after all, it was the only date marked in the calendar, so-

Wait, what??

Yeah, you read that right.  This day - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - was the only date marked in the calendar in front of her.  And why, you may ask, would someone do such an odd thing as this?

Well, to someone like Lily, this was no ordinary calendar.

As annual traditions would have it, normal people would usually buy calendars when the new year came around, marking any and all dates that they didn't wish to forget, all of them rather mundane.  But this calendar - this calendar was special; not mundane at all.  Lily had crafted it herself several years ago, for the express purpose of reminding herself to do a particularly important thing she had promised - both to herself and to several others - that she would do on this very day.

It's obvious at this point that Lily was no ordinary person.  But, depending on the type of person you are, the reason why she was like this will either likely cause even more bafflement on your part, or a turning of the gears as you see the pieces coming to fit together.  And that reason was this.....

Lily was a time traveler.

Okay, not a time traveler in the sense that this was a regular thing.  Not at all.  Actually, she had never taken a trip back or forward in time in her life, for any purpose.  But she had made a certain promise at the age of fifteen; a promise that she would go back to a certain night in her life, that for some reason held significantly powerful meaning to her, and figure out, once and for all, what the identity of the presence she'd felt that night really was.

Thinking back on that night - the night of the school lock-in - she remembered divulging her convictions to the others who had been with her when it happened; they had all mirrored back the same unearthly feelings of awareness that she had shared.  They had all felt a presence that wasn't theirs inside that building.  And it shook her to the very core of her being.

During the events of the lock-in, they had all made different guesses as to what that presence could've been.  One of them, an emo kid, had said it was probably a ghost or a demon, or some other creepy thing; one of the populars, devout in his Christian faith, was sure that it must've been God watching over them.  And still, others thought it was just an unknown spiritual presence.  Either way, they all knew two things: 1) it wasn't something that was from here, and 2) whatever reason it was there for, it was an important one and it needed their attention.

Needless to say, they all unmistakably felt the strong, implicit urge to find out what it really was; they knew this wasn't something they could just ignore.  And so, the eight of them made a pact: they promised each other that no matter what the circumstances, they would all go back to that night, if for no other reason than to detect the presence that had haunted them all.

In all, there had been eight minors present at the lock-in.  Minors.  Lily still wasn't sure how things had worked out in her favor back then, but she had somehow made it possible for there to be no adult supervision whatsoever during the event.  In all honesty, she wasn't really much of drinker (actually, she wasn't even a drinker at all), and she didn't smoke or take drugs; she had no interest in doing such things.  But she still had a pretty independent spirit and wanted nothing more than to have an entire night to herself and her peers, free of any adults monitoring their every move.  And as luck would have it, that's exactly what she got.

If only she had known what that presence had actually been, maybe she would've thought differently.  Or maybe not; because what they were about to discover was something far more powerful than any authority figure, and far more wise than any well-intentioned friend.  What they were about to discover, what they would come face-to-face with that night, was themselves.