• Although her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, Adrianna could see nothing but pitch black. The midnight air was chilling her though the open window, but she refused the urge to shut it. The last few nights had been terrible and, in the dark, it seemed that willing herself to stand up was impossible. Sounds of autumn were leaking into Adrianna’s mind and she calmed herself as the crickets chirped and the wind pulled her door open and then closed it again at a steady pace. She immediately picked up a melody to accompany the beat and as she hummed, her eyes slowly drooped down into dreamy sleep again. Right before her mind shut back down, her bed sunk in significantly near her legs. However, it was too late to react, she had fallen back into unconsciousness.

    “Get up for school!” a voice echoed through the house, and then following the disembodied voice was a short blond woman with an impatient look overtaking her usual calm. That’s just how Adrianna’s mother was. Adrianna had never known her to be any other way.

    “I’m up! Leave me alone. I’m getting dressed.” Adrianna sat up from her futon and slowly reached for a pile of clothes beside her bed. Satisfied, her mom closed the door and proceeded to talk to Adrianna’s grandma. Equally satisfied, Adrianna retreated her hand from the laundry and slammed her head back into the pillow for another ten minutes of rest.

    Unfortunately, sleep became impossible as her closet doorknob turned just enough to rattle the loose strike-plate against the hollow wooden door. Suddenly, waking up didn’t seem like the hassle it had seemed like five minutes ago. Neither did getting on the bus, or sitting in class. The doorknob rattled once more and Adrianna felt the color drain from her face. She grabbed her clothes and quickly made her way down the hall to the bathroom.

    The bus ride was calming, as always. All the noise seemed to melt together and run through her. The hum of chattering children took her to a state of deep meditation. There, she thought of the biggest problems she needed to face. Her parents were starting to argue again, her grandma was nagging more intensely, and then there was the most frightening dilemma: The apparitions that made nightly visits to her home.

    A scream rang through the bus as a boy jumped from one seat to another. Adrianna snapped back to reality, sighed, and rested her forehead against the cool glass as she observed the darkening clouds fading toward the town.

    As the bus approached, a girl with long, dark hair sat against the school’s wall. Adrianna stepped off the bus and gave a bright smile. The girl’s willowy figure stood straight and waved her arms widely.

    “Did you take long enough?”

    “Yup, Jasmine, I think that wait was sufficient” Adrianna smiled, “I paid the driver twenty bucks to circle the school a few times.”

    “So you paid a bus driver twenty dollars to look like a creeper.”

    The laughter continued as they walked into the lobby of the building. Almost as quickly as it had begun, the playful atmosphere dissipated. Adrianna’s chills began to interfere as they always did at random intervals.

    “Hello?” A hand waved in front of her face and Jasmine was observing her curiously. “You just completely zoned out! Are you okay?”

    Adrianna looked at Jasmine and could feel the sincerity radiating from her. Feel it radiating? That seemed odd and Adrianna didn’t like odd. She was more concerned with blending in than digging into anything unusual.

    “Write me a note about what’s going on. I want in on whatever it is.” It wasn’t a request being made; Jasmine was demanding this from her.

    “Kay, but you have to promise not to show anyone or talk about it. It’s too weird.”

    As they came to an agreement, the bell rang and they went their separate ways. Adrianna’s mind was buzzing. She knew she wouldn’t get anything out of trying to pay attention, so she began writing the note for Jasmine.

    “I know you wont believe me but… my house has something in it that is like a walking shape changing shadow. I mean, no moving lights or things but shadows will move across the room without being on a surface or anything! It sounds really, really crazy but you know me! I’m almost as serious as it gets! If I didn’t completely crept you out, talk to me about it after school.”

    Adrianna folded the note in half three times and wrote the “to” and “from” in a backward writing, then stuck it in her messenger bag. She wouldn’t be seeing Jasmine for a while, so all she could do was try to pay attention to school.

    The concentration was a failure and after she gave Jasmine the note at lunch, Adrianna’s mind was exploding with the worry of how her friend would take the information. After school, she waited downstairs for Jasmine. She paced the sidewalk along the school’s wall several times and constantly hummed or checked her phone for the time. The wind had picked up since the early morning bus ride and the rain blew east toward Adrianna’s face. As she observed this, she noticed that she didn’t feel as much of the air as she should be. She stood just barely under the awning, trying to investigate why she didn’t feel all the wind. As she tried to observe where the raindrops were going, Jasmine pulled her into the building. The students were filing out of the lobby trying to hurry to their cars. As the initial crowd cleared out, Adrianna and Jasmine sat on the steps to the office.

    “Okay, you read my note, right? Am I crazy?”

    “No, definitely not.” Jasmine looked up. “Why don’t we just look it up?”

    “That stuff is evil, we can’t be doing that! It should all be bull crap.”

    “Obviously, if it’s happening to you, it isn’t bull crap.”

    “Okay, it isn’t bull crap, but it is evil and probably Satanist. I’d rather not give Grandma a coronary failure.” She tried to laugh off Jasmines suggestion, but something sunk in Adrianna’s stomach at the rejection of her ideas.

    The girls looked down at the ground and then back out at the rain. Their deepest thoughts, almost tangible, weighed heavily on their hearts as they eliminated possibilities.

    “I’ve got it!” Jasmine burst, “Why don’t I spend the night at your house! We can look at all the activity and disprove it?”

    “You stole that from Ghost Hunters!” Adrianna smiled at her own stupidity. It wasn’t stupidity for not thinking of that sooner, but for agreeing to go along with these ideas. She felt so retarded for even seeing the shadow man in her house. Deep inside, however, something was locking into place. It was like a key sliding into a locked door. Deep in her mind, it felt like that door was to a house that had been abandoned for a vacation and, only just now, the vacationers were returning.

    Friday night arrived too quickly for Adrianna’s liking. They were already sitting on the end of the bed waiting for the usual times of night that the shadow came. It was sooner than they thought, as Jasmine watched the other end of the bed sink down in one area. Already, they could not disprove what was happening. The bed rose to a flattened state again and Adrianna’s door pushed open slightly. At the same time, the air vents began expelling heat into the room.

    “Th-that one was easy.” Jasmine stammered. “The air pressure pulled the door.”

    Obviously neither one of them wanted to admit to the seating on the bed. An hour went by and the girls’ stomachs began to vibrate in unison. Neither of the them wanted to leave the room for fear of more activity. The hunger grew worse as two more hours passed them. It was no longer a choice to find food in the kitchen; it was a need. Jasmine was feeling sick and Adrianna began to feel dizzy shortly afterward. They agreed to venture through the house.

    The door opened on it own as they walked across the room. They hurried through the doorway and slammed the switch on for the hallway light. This didn’t comfort them as much as they thought it would. Nothing was happening, but they couldn’t help but jump at every creak and squeak. By the time they made it to the refrigerator, they had developed the ability to ignore the little sounds and bumps. They laughed and joked about the paranoia but couldn’t get rid of a disturbing feeling. They were being watched. As they sat at the dining room table at one o-clock in the morning, they felt as though eyes were burning into them. Jasmine became jittery and couldn’t finish eating her sandwich.

    “Addy, let’s get out of here, now. It really doesn’t feel right and I don’t want to be in here anymore. Let’s go back to the room.”

    “I’ll put the plates in the sink.” Adrianna leaned over to grab Jasmine’s plate and then stopped. “Jasmine…” she whispered in a raspy voice, “Jasmine, turn around and look right now.”

    The couch resting against the wall in the living room seemed closer than it had ever been to the doorway leading to the girls. Jasmine’s jaw dropped and her eyes locked onto the deep impression in the center cushion of the sofa. Within the boundaries of the dent, a thick shadow sat. His arms were easily distinguishable and his face seemed to be carved from the darkness from which he seemed to be comfortable.

    The figure’s head tilted, as if to ask what they were staring at. Adrianna and Jasmine backed away slowly, as if the “man” wouldn’t notice the fear pouring from every orifice. Forgetting the previous worries of heresy, Adrianna snatched her computer from the bag in her room and began a rigorous search for anything to rid them of the terror. Jasmine was wide-eyed and hugging her knees in the corner chair. No matter how much she had dreamt of meeting the paranormal, nothing had prepared her. Deep into the night, and for the weeks past, Adrianna and Jasmine dedicated their free time to dispelling the shadow that had confidently appeared to them. Although they have yet to find and answer to their problems, the search has never let up… and never will.