The Silver Necklace

The Silver Necklace

By: Christopher Cronkite

“Change of clothes?”

“Yes.”

“Bathroom appliances?”

“Yes!”

“Sleeping bag?”

“Mom! Can’t you see it for yourself? It’s right there in front of you!”

“I’m sorry, honey. It’s just that…Oh, you’ll be all right on your own. You’re sixteen now.”

“Thank you!” Derek was very grumpy. For the past week, he had received a grand total of twelve hours of sleep. Now, his mother was trying to pack his bag for him. He hated her, along with his annoying little sister. He could not wait to be rid of them!

“Now, Derek,” his mother continued, “I need you to take good care of your sister. She might get a little scared being with older children, but…”

“What?” Derek asked incredulously. “What do you mean she’s coming with? She’s not even a teenager yet! This will be so embarrassing! We’re going on a plane to California! Not a road trip to Spokane, Washington!”

Derek’s mother continued as if she barely heard any of what he had said, “Which reminds me, I need you to be very careful on the plane. There are thousands of things that can go wrong…”

“Mother!”

“…and I need you to sit next to Jenny. You know how scared she gets when she rides a plane. Oh, and when she tells you her little ‘visions’, just ignore them. You know she’s trying to just draw attention to herself.

“When you drive to the airport, remember to give your keys to the attendant at the SeaTac Parking booth. I have asked her to…”

“Mother! Stop it! Why can’t I sit with the other guys in the airplane? Why Jenny? This is going to be the worst camp ever!”

Derek marched up the stairs and into his own room. The walls were covered with posters of rock bands and girls that he considered hot. He sat down on his bed and put his hands on his face. He closed his eyelids over his bright blue eyes, his highlighted brown hair reaching to his nose. This was going to be the best camp ever.

Camp Stinkwood was located in southwest California by the ocean. Derek and his youth group from his church, Crosspointe, were going to Camp Stinkwood for two weeks. He had been so excited ever since March when he realized he had enough money to go. Now in the second week of July, he was heartbroken. Jenny had to come, too.

Derek opened his eyes and brushed his hair aside. His mom had told him a million times that he needed a haircut, but he liked it long. It curled at the end both naturally and because of the hat he always wore. He stood up and grabbed a white hat. He walked downstairs and put it on his head. He smiled for the first time today and turned it backward.

Derek was just about to pick up his luggage to put in the car when he heard Jenny running down the hallway. He could not see her, but the noise of her feet was so light, you could not mistake it. “Derek! Come on, let’s go! I’ve been waiting for so long!”

And I wish you would have to wait longer, Derek thought. He put his backpack over his shoulders and rolled his suitcase to the front door. Jenny was ahead of him, and he saw her kiss their mom on the cheek. She was wearing a small, white shirt under a jean jacket that matched her tight jeans on her legs. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach her mother who was only five-four. Jenny was skinny, too.

Jenny opened the door and stepped outside. Her older brother walked past their mom without paying any attention to her. She watched her son exit the home and began to cry.

The two siblings arrived at a nearby airport parking lot and parked in one of the last spots available. Derek did not give the lady his keys but stuck it in his backpack. He smiled to himself again. It was good to be finally away.

Derek and Jenny passed through the SeaTac airport security without a problem. The only stop was when Jenny’s necklace fell off when she bent down to put her shoe on after the security. Derek grabbed it before it hit the ground and glanced at it. He recognized it at once.

Their father had given it to Jenny before he went away on a business trip. His airplane had crashed and killed every passenger. Jenny and their mother had cried forever when they realized what happened to him; Derek just held it all in and used it as bitterness.

They entered the underground to the S stations. When they started, Jenny almost collapsed onto the floor. ‘Jenny, stop doing that!’ he said in his head. Derek helped her up. Everybody in the tram was looking at them. “Jenny, why did you do that?”

Jenny looked up at him and answered, “You know, Derek. I just saw a vision! The plane is going to crash!” She said that a little too loudly. Everybody traveling in the underground either laughed hysterically or shifted in their seats in fear when they heard what she had said.

“Jenny,” Derek scolded, “you need to stop these stupid ‘vision’ daydreams!” Her look of annoyance was obvious. “Mom told me to tell you to shut up when you said you saw a vision, so shut up!” Jenny just looked at him with hard, unblinking eyes for the rest of the ride.

As they approached gate S3, Derek noticed that everybody from their group had already arrived. He quickly loosened his belt and nudged his pants down a little bit. He inconspicuously lifted his shirt a little bit and put it down when he was satisfied he saw enough boxers showing. This trip might be good after all!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Good morning everybody and thank you for flying Northwest Airlines. My name is Jonny Wendleton, and we will be heading to the Sacramento airport in southern California. Please pay attention to the screens as…”

“Hey, Derek,” asked Tommy, one of Derek’s best friends, “would you like to sit by us? There’s an empty seat? Come on!”

“I’m sorry, but my…” He stopped short and smiled, remembering that his mother was not here and he could do whatever he wanted now! “Sure! That’ll be great!”

Derek squeezed himself to the center of the three seats in the airplane. As he did so, his pants almost fell off, but he sat down before everyone noticed. ‘I need to get some more practice at that,’ he thought. He looked over at Jenny. She was sitting all alone with a book in her lap. ‘Take that, mother!’ he screamed in his head.

“You okay? You’re acting really strange today, you know that?” Tommy looked over at Jenny and asked, “Is that your sister?” Derek pretended like he did not hear. “She’s pretty cute!” Derek jerked up in surprise.

The plane took off and was flying smoothly in the air. Derek and Tommy were listening to each other’s ipod when the plane took in some turbulence. It was a small plane, carrying mostly Crosspointe Church passengers. No one paid any attention to it – not even the pilots.

A couple of minutes later, the plane jerked up so suddenly, the stewardesses almost got run over by their carts. “Passengers,” the captain said over the speakers, “this is your captain speaking. We are just about to enter California, though a giant rain cloud pushed its way into our path. Please fasten your seatbelts and hold on. Just for safety precautions, please find your nearest exit. Thank you.”

That was probably the worst thing to say. All the girls screamed – including Jenny. All of the guys just sat there, stunned. Taylor, Derek’s friend sitting in the window seat, opened the window cover. A giant flash streaked across the sky next to the plane. It was pitch dark outside when it was past noon.

The plane lurched again. This time, a streak of lightning hit the wing of the plane on the right and it started to go down. Everybody – including the boys – screamed and stood up. “Passengers of flight six-twenty, please remain calm!” The captain’s voice could barely be heard over the screams of the passengers. “I repeat, please remain calm! Please sit back down and go into your crash position! Flight attendant, prepare for landing!”

Another streak of lightning hit the tail of the plane. It started to fall faster now. Derek looked at his sister, sitting all alone across the walkway. She was obviously very frightened. Her hands were clutching the necklace around her neck, obviously praying. As Derek looked around, he saw almost everybody praying, even Tommy. Folding his hands and bowing his head, he asked God, “Father, please don’t make this trip like my dad’s trip! Please! I want to…”

The sudden force of impact against the ground was greater than anyone expected. Several bodies were ripped out of their seatbelts and thrown against the front of the plane. Derek shut his eyes tight and held his breath. He opened them and looked out the window. Derek noticed with a start that they were on a steep hill. ‘Not good,’ he thought. The plane started to roll down the hill.

Everybody left alive screamed in terror. As the plane turned upside down, people slipped out of their seats and fell onto the ceiling. The plane turned back upright and the bodies fell onto others. Derek tried to see Jenny, but there were too many people in between. When he could get a glance at where she sat, she was gone. Tommy was gone, too. He shut his eyes again as he felt the plane start rolling again. “Lord!” he screamed out loud.

Derek opened his eyes and saw fire. It danced its way through the main cabin and devoured bodies in its bright flames. A tree smashed through the plane in front of him, cleaving the plane in two. He screamed again. The sheer terror of this happening seemed too unbearable for him.

Almost too suddenly, the plane stopped. Derek received a painful whiplash as he was thrown toward the window. A body of the youth pastor flew right by him and smashed into the side of the plane with a sickening crunch. He could hear nothing except his own breathing. Looking down at his seatbelt, he saw that it was still miraculously secure. He was the only one still seated.

Derek undid his seatbelt and noticed his hands and arms were covered in blood. Fire still ate through the plane, devouring both human flesh and cotton seats. His face hurt tremendously, as did his torso and legs. Everything he wore was ripped. Derek looked around and saw his friend – and enemies. All of them were dead. A single word floated in his head as he whipped his head back and forth: Jenny!

Blood from the dead flowed freely on the floor of the upright plane as Derek searched frantically for his beloved sister. If only he had done what his mother had asked and sat next to her! Where was she?

A pile of bodies lay on the floor in the back of the wrecked plane. Derek moved the bodies aside unceremoniously, looking only for Jenny. He gasped as he saw her. He bit back tears that came to him. Suddenly, they flowed out of his eyes and onto his dead sister.

Jenny’s face had been flattened. Blood still spilled out of her open mouth. Fire wounds decorated her body in red, orange, and black. Her clothes had burned off almost all the way. He stared at her for what seemed like days, his tears washing away the blood. Derek noticed the necklace around her neck. It still shimmered its silver glow; no blood had distorted its color.

Derek took the necklace off of her neck and looked at it closely. It was a simple silver-laced network of tiny bands of silver. In the center was a sapphire birthstone in the shape of a dragon, the Chinese year of her birth. He sniffed and put it around his neck for safekeeping. The fire around him glinted on the necklace, giving Jenny a living look on her face. Derek stood, opened the emergency door, and stepped out.

It was still dark outside from the giant thunderhead cloud above. Lush forests surrounded the ruined plane. Lightning flashed through the sky and rain battered on the tops of trees. Derek stepped out of the wreckage, his eyes red and his body scratched, bruised, and burned. His clothes were in shreds from repeated attacks of ripped metal from the plane and other sharp objects. Jenny’s necklace was the only thing on his body that looked nice.

Derek started walking away from the mass grave and toward the forests surrounding him. The fire created a light for him as he walked to the unknown. He realized that his bags were unsalvageable and grimaced when he realized his keys were in his now burnt bag. But he kept on walking the same direction. The fire crackling behind him was the only sound he heard. He did not look back.

He was just about to exit the range of light from the fire when he saw something in the distance. Derek cried with happiness when he realized it was in the shape of a house. Thanking the Lord for his fortune, he ran towards the house, cutting himself even more with branches.

As he approached the house, his spirit sank. It was abandoned. The old three story building looked as though no one had lived in it for decades. A marshland surrounded the sinking house, and the paint on the house had all faded away. The balconies on the second stories had sunk and the railings were broken. The trees surrounding the haunted-looking house cast spooky shadows from the fire behind him. It was a scary sight.

Derek started walking toward the house and he sank above his shin in stinky marsh. “Well, I guess I could call this Stinkwood because it stinks and it’s in a wood,” Derek said aloud. He heard a creaking noise and looked up, expecting someone to be there. No one was near. ‘This is spooky,’ he thought. A wind passed by him, and he heard the creaking noise again. He looked closer at the spooky house shrouded in mist and saw something moving. He took another step into the mud.

Derek looked up at the front balcony where he saw the movement and recognized it as a rocking horse. He let out a held his breath slowly. He turned to the right of the house and saw a faint glimmer of light. ‘Naw,’ he thought, ‘just a trick of the fire.’ He still looked closer, though. It looked like part of a cathedral. He closed his eyes, rubbed them, and took another look. It was still there. “This is way too freaky,” Derek whispered in a scared voice.

Another gust of wind rushed through the woods, shaking the leaves of the trees. He looked up to see them flow off the tree in the same pattern, going up, then down, and back up again. He looked up at the trees again and thought he saw the shape of a witch. The phantom shape flew above the house and disappeared into the darkness of the trees. Derek just stared at where the figure had just been.

Derek looked behind him at the silent plane. The wind and water had put out the flame. Then how could he see? The cloud was still above him. He looked up and saw a faint light. “The sun!” he screamed. But no, the clouds parted and showed the moon, bright and full. “What is going on?”

The lone youth just stood where he was in the tangle of forest. The plane that was carrying him and his youth group to California had crashed somewhere in either California or Oregon, his sister and youth group had died, he had found a haunted house, he had begun to see things, and the day had turned to night! What was happening to him?

Jenny’s necklace suddenly became very hot. The silver glowed white. Derek screamed out in pain as it burned his flesh. It started to lift off of his neck as if attached to a string. The pain, though, still continued.

The moonlight shined down on the desolate house and the young boy in a shroud of mist. He looked up when the pain surpassed and the necklace was all the way off of his neck. Expecting something, he stared at the house and the shimmering cathedral to its right. He was right: something was happening.

Out of the cathedral, a glowing white thing appeared. It walked – glided more like it – towards the house. In its wake, light danced as it faded into the darkness surrounding it. The necklace hung in the air, an unmoving item, waiting for its turn to come. Derek’s eyes were wide as he watched this event happen.

The glowing specter turned toward the front of the house, lifted off of the ground, and glided to the rocking horse on the second story. The white ghost, as Derek realized what it was, sat on the horse. It started to rock, back and forth, creating a creaking noise as it did so. The necklace flew toward the ghost. Suddenly, Derek was struck with a memory.

Jenny had had a rocking horse just like the one he saw on the house. That was before they lived in Washington state and lived somewhere on the border of Oregon and California. That was before their father had died. After he died, though, they had left their nice home and moved to the greater Seattle area.

When they moved, though, Jenny had left the rocking horse behind. It was given to her by their father when she was born. She had said that the necklace had grown hot when they left their old home. “It was if they were a part of each other,” Derek said aloud.

The necklace had almost reached the ghost and rocking horse when Derek realized something. Jenny had said she had a vision of seeing the horse again, and the necklace was connected into the horse. The ghost turned to look at Derek. He gasped for the umpteenth time that day. The ghost was his sister.

It all began to make sense now. The horse and the necklace both belonged to Jenny. With the silver necklace being so hot, all it had to do was touch the wooden rocking horse and it would create a natural home for the almost melted silver. But what would happen after that?

The flying necklace neared the ghost of Jenny and the horse. As the necklace began to embed itself into the old, wooden rocking horse, something unexplainable happened, something that Derek never even tried to explain in the future years of his life.

The house began to take its original shape again. The balconies fixed themselves into the way they were when Derek’s family had left. The windows restored themselves to their original color and texture. The marsh around the house reformed itself into a sparkling pond with beautifully colored fish swimming in it. The chimney replaced itself. Thousands more indescribable events happened that restored the hideous house back to its original beauty. “Just like home,” Derek whispered.

But something was missing. Jenny’s ghost still sat atop the freshly painted rocking horse with the silver necklace looking as though it had always been there. It was then Derek realized the greatest revelation of his life. When their family had first heard on what had befallen their father, Jenny immediately had a vision that nobody paid attention to. She had said that she saw her father alive again.

Jenny’s ghost stepped off the rocking horse. It began to rock again on its own free will. The necklace around its neck began to glow red hot. It rocked faster and faster until it flew up in the air. Then, it began to spin. It spun so quickly, the blur of it seemed almost nonexistent. Still, Derek and Jenny watched.

The floating object began to reshape itself; it began to grow. The rocking horse’s rockers became arms, the oblong horse’s head reshaped into a human-like head. The body lengthened. It was a human male. Derek watched in amazement as the humanoid slowed and started to drift back to earth.

Derek, however, did not see the man touch the ground. He was watching his little sister. Her glow lessened; the whiteness of her flesh became a rosy peach color. Her feet touched the ground and looked up. Jenny was alive again.

Both the now-revived Jenny and the astonished Derek turned their attention to the man that was now standing on the ground. He was wearing glasses over his deep blue eyes, his short, black hair combed neatly over his head. A blue dress shirt was tucked into his black slacks, the silver necklace around his neck. It was their father.

The three reunited members of each other’s family turned their heads in the direction of the ruined plane. Silhouettes of humans came in their direction. Derek stared wide eyed as he saw Tommy leading his youth group toward him. He turned and looked back at his family members. Both were smiling at him. The last thing he remembered of that day was the moon transforming itself into the sun. He smiled at it and fainted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derek and his family moved back into the house in southern Oregon. The story became well told, and many new houses were built around the once-haunted house. Derek stopped being rebellious, and the family became a family again.

Derek graduated from the Walter Cronkite School in Arizona, majoring as a journalist. He still, however, wrote many stories, both scary and comical, though he never wrote about this event. Only those close to him knew the story, and his three children, all girls, never stopped wanting to hear about the story of Camp Stinkwood, the wooden rocking horse, and the beautiful silver necklace.