It was around midnight when Xander woke up, and he tried desperately to go back to sleep. He was used to waking up in the middle of the night because it happened to him every night ever since he could remember, so he repositioned himself in the fetal position with a pillow between his legs and his head being supported by his left arm which was underneath another pillow.
After a few minutes of lying there on the bed with his eyes closed, he was just about to fall back to sleep when he heard running water turn on. Assuming that one of his friends had gotten up to use the bathroom and were washing their hands, he closed his eyes once more thinking that the faucet would be turned off in a few seconds, but it didn't.
Xander carefully got out of the bed so that he wouldn't wake up Ryan, who had been sleeping with his back to Xander.
Xander quietly made his way around the upstairs of the cabin, checking for any possible source of the sound, but he found nothing. However, the sound of running water grew louder as he got closer to the stairs, so he thought that maybe it was someone downstairs, and knowing that he wouldn't be getting any more sleep until he turned off the water, he descended the stairs.
As he rounded the corner to the kitchen he could see that the faucet in the kitchen sink had been turned on, which was strange because there was no one there, not to mention that there was no one downstairs at all.
'Someone probably came down to get a snack or something and forgot to turn the faucet off' Xander thought to himself.
Xander felt his earlier drowsiness return, so he just turned the faucet off, ready to get back into bed, but before he was even halfway up the stairs, he was plunged into darkness.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said to himself.
Xander stumbles around in the darkness until he found his way up the stairs and down the hall to his room where Ryan was still sleeping, and was able to grab his phone off of his nightstand before shaking the shorter male awake.
"Ryan wake up!" He said in a hushed whisper.
"Mmm. What?" Ryan replied in a groggy, sleep filled voice.
"The power just went out, I need you to come with me to help turn it back on." Xander said as he turned on his phone's flashlight.
"Ugh. Okay," Ryan replied, throwing the covers off of himself and grabbing his phone as well.
The two boys found their shoes and slipped them on before they left their room.
"What were you doing up anyway?" Ryan asked as the walked down the hallway.
"I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, then I heard running water, and when it didn't stop I got up to find the source," Xander explained.
"What was it?" Ryan asked.
"It was the kitchen sink, I think that someone forgot to turn it off, no big deal," Xander replied.
Ryan didn't say anything else when Xander unlocked the front door and the two of them stepped out on the front porch. As they walked outside Xander noticed that some of his potted plants were out of place.
"Huh. That's weird." Xander said before he moved them back to their proper places.
Once he was done, they walked around to the back of the cabin and checked out the fuse box. The switch was facing down in the 'off' position.
"Justine probably didn't push the switch all the way up, so it didn't get locked into position," Xander mentioned as he pushed the power switch back up and locked the fuse box up with the silver padlock.
"Come on Ryan, I want to show you something that I think you'll like," Xander said, taking Ryan's hand and leading him over towards the lake.
Xander laid down on his back and gazed up at the sky full of stars and a full moon, Ryan did the same.
"Woah," Ryan said softly.
"it's beautiful, isn't it?" Xander asked.
"It really is Xander," Ryan replied, grabbing Xander's hand.
The two males laid on their backs in the grass in peaceful silence for what felt like a few minutes, but in reality it was nearly two and a half hours.
"Hey Xander, what time is it?"
"Oh, lemme check," Xander picked up his phone and looked at the time, "oh geez, it's almost 3:00 in the morning!"
"Really? I could have sworn that we were only laying here for a few minutes," Ryan said as he sat up.
"I guess time flies... come on Ryan, let's go back to sleep" Xander said standing up, and extending his hand to help Ryan up.
Both Xander and Ryan went back inside, and after Xander finished checking the doors and windows, they went back to their room and got back into the bed.
Normally, all of these strange things wouldn't have bothered Xander, but with the text message returning to his mind, having the kitchen faucet left on, the moved plants, and the power outage, he was beginning to wonder if something was going on.
'Maybe Grandma is haunting me, I mean, I always was her favorite, and she knew that I've always wanted to have a paranormal experience of my own,' Xander thought to himself, half joking and half serious.
'What if someone is out there watching us? What if there's someone outside of the cabin that just wants to scare us before they kill us?'
Xander would do this often, the "what if"ing. He didn't do it on purpose, but it's something that his mind had done since he was a little kid, and it really upset him at times, because he didn't like those thoughts that he was having, and when he talked to his mother about it, she told him that it was okay, that just meant that he was a worrier. She also told him that if his worry thoughts ever started to take over, he just needed to think about something that made him happy, and it worked almost every time.
Xander didn't have much time to mull things over in his mind because as soon as he really began to think about things, he was overcome with that same drowsiness from earlier. But as he began to drift off to sleep, he could have sworn that he heard his door open, and someone walk in, dragging something heavy across the floor.
