Chapter 17

Saturday 31st October 1998

First things first. The second day of the crazy weekend, on which I woke up to my bedside lamp still on and Dakota in my bed with her feet perched on my pillow. A huge turnaround from the guilt I’d woken up with a week before.

The six of us had barely woken up when Harriet arrived, all pep and cheer, which livened things up… particularly with Lucy, who’s mild hangover was miraculously cured as soon as she had someone new to show off to. More gaming, conversation and messing around ensued, and with Dakota wanting to have a roast dinner, we headed out to buy some ingredients. Kendal was in charge of getting Lucy dressed and keeping her dressed while we visited the local Asda.

Cooking… I am so, so glad we had Harriet. Turns out she’s the world’s best chef.

Bao insisted she cook wearing only an apron. Unsurprisingly, she refused, though there was some blushing and whispering going on too. I imagine “maybe one time when we’re alone” but it’s none of my business.

From there, the day came to a steady end with a hearty dinner and everyone heading home. Dakota hung around the longest, hugging me as she departed. At least she had Clyde and Amelia for company at hers.

“Whew! That was a blast!” Lucy proclaimed with a stretch. “I’m proud of you, bro. You found some cool friends.”

“Thanks,” I answered the only way I could think to that.

“And you wouldn’t believe the things Kendal and I got up to last night-”

I threw a cushion at her. Even if it was true – and there was no saying it was – I really didn’t want to know what kind of things my sister was up to in bed.

Our parents returned at some point after we went to bed, and I awoke the next morning to the start of another school week. I won’t go over that, since unsurprisingly, absolutely nothing special happened.

And then… half-term!

(Which is an odd name really, since a full term would be split into two half-terms… I think it’s technically “half-term holiday”…)

A whole week off in which we could hang out as much as we wanted – save for Kendal, who had now started her driving lessons in earnest and spent a little time away from us. Of course, Bao had Harriet over almost every day, and Lucy invited herself over at one point too (and flirted with pretty much everybody, including Clyde and Amelia when they were there).

Oh, yeah, Clyde and Amelia found a couple of Nick’s lackeys scouting around. They refused to tell us the details of what they did to them… which led to Bao suspecting that they hacked them up or gave them some other kind of grisly demise. I know I’ve not really mentioned Clyde and Amelia much, and that’s down to them not crossing paths with us all that often. They continued to spend most of their time out when we were at Dakota’s. Nick must be hiding somewhere impossible to find, considering they’ve spent over a month trying to track him down now.

And now, the main attraction! Halloween fell on the Saturday, so of course we planned to watch some scary movies. I’ve got to be honest… I’m not super into those. Dakota and Harriet both seemed wary too, but we all relented because Bao, Kendal and Zahid were so insistent.

“Hey Alex!” Kendal greeted me at Dakota’s door, wearing a pumpkin-adorned jumper a little too big for her. “Hope you like popcorn because we’ve got a bag each!”

“I do like popcorn!” I enthused, heading in and letting her shut the door quickly before the numbing chill outside followed me. At least the heating seemed to be on indoors.

“We’re just waiting on Bao and Harriet and then we can get things started!” Kendal explained giddily, before grabbing my hand the moment my shoes and coat were off and dragging me into the living room. Dakota was wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, and she beamed at me as soon as she saw me, so infectiously (as ever) that I immediately smiled back.

“Welcome to fright night!” she declared.

“I’d ask you which type of popcorn you’d like,” Zahid began, entering from the kitchen, “but Kendal decided six of the same was fine.”

“Popcorn’s popcorn! It’s the movies that matter!” our beafroed (is that a word?) friend insisted.

“It’s also the only thing we’ve got to eat,” he continued while taking to his usual armchair. “Unless you fancy ordering something in.”

“You can’t eat a proper dinner while watching movies!”

Kendal was surprisingly stern on this.

“You sit and eat popcorn! Or other stuff like that! You can’t eat a meal!”

“Okay, okay, jeez…” Zahid sighed.

All the while, Dakota patted the space next to her on the sofa, beckoning me over. Perhaps the rhythm she used was like a siren’s song, or perhaps I was just that smitten with her, but I headed right over there without a moment’s thought. Then I barked and rolled over because I was such a puppy for her. (I am joking, so we’re clear.)

“You look comfy,” I observed; she nodded fervently.

“It’s my special super-warm blanket,” she explained. “Mam sent it over recently along with some of my winter clothes.”

“Makes sense. Crazy to think you were only planning on being here for a few weeks…”

“It’s been a lot of fun, though. Almost beats Dundalk,” she teased with another flash of her smile.

It took some twenty minutes for Bao and Harriet to arrive.

“I’m sorry, I totally forgot until Harriet turned up at mine…” Bao apologised, clearly upset with himself.

“How? You were the one who came up with the idea,” Zahid reminded him.

“Yeah, and I was thinking about it loads for the past few days, but then… I don’t even know…” he sighed. Harriet patted his back comfortingly.

“It’s okay. We made it, didn’t we?” she told him with soothing tone. He nodded glumly.

“Anyway… I brought three videos…”

He raised a carrier bag in his hand to prove his point. Suddenly, I felt a twinge of nerves as the prospect of watching multiple horror movies became imminently real.

We quickly fell into debate on where to sit – one person to each armchair still left four of us to squeeze onto the sofa. Well… I say debate, but by unanimous decision (more-or-less, anyway, as I hazily agreed), we wound up with Bao, Harriet, Dakota and I squashed together in that order.

“It’s a shame your blanket’s not big enough for all of us,” Harriet remarked to Dakota, taking advantage of the extra space momentarily available while Bao prepared the first movie.

“I could always get one of the big blankets from upstairs,” the Irish girl pointed out, earning an eager “oooh!” from Harriet.

“Okay,” Bao began, leaning back with the set-up complete. “We’re starting with Dawn of the Dead!”

And with that, he grabbed the remote from the coffee table, flicked off the lights, and squeezed onto the sofa. Harriet promptly snuggled up to him, though that still left less than two spaces in which Dakota and I were left rather close to one another.

And this film…

Watching it was a stressful experience. My heart was racing half the time and I had to squint through a couple of moments (I couldn’t bring myself to outright close my eyes). Harriet screamed at the head-shot early on and never really recovered, making all manner of upset noises. Bao laughed at odd moments. Kendal made numerous remarks at the violence, some approving and some disgusted. Zahid generally seemed impressed with the gore, and claimed that more than one death was “metal”.

But… it wasn’t all hellish. Over the course of the two hours, Dakota steadily moved closer and closer, seemingly using me as a second comfort blanket as she winced and whimpered through the film. Still, she was nowhere near as unsettled as Harriet. I knew I couldn’t put my arm around her to try and soothe her, since that was textbook date material-

Like, yeah, I do have a huge crush on her so it’d kinda be appropriate, but at the time I thought it would be way too obvious if I did that…

Anyway, I opted to pat her knee. Not entirely sure how she took it.

When the movie finally came to an end, Bao sprung to his feet.

“Ready for the next one?” he asked eagerly, before flicking the lights back on briefly.

“Why are you putting me through this…?” Harriet uttered, clearly very tense.

“What’s next?”

Kendal was all but bouncing on her chair. I think the adrenaline rush from watching the first movie had gotten to her.

“This…” Bao began, drawing another video out of the bag, “is the scariest film you’re ever going to see.”

“Right. That’s it. We’re breaking up,” was Harriet’s withering response to that promise.

… I don’t believe Bao ever mentioned the name of this movie. It was in Chinese with subtitles, and I missed the title card so I didn’t manage to catch it either.

I’m convinced the director was deeply disturbed.

Zahid remained impressed, but Kendal was more grossed-out this time (still watching confidently enough, though). Poor Harriet had her face buried in Bao’s chest after the first ten minutes. Her popcorn remained entirely untouched. And Dakota and I all but huddled together, so close that I could feel her heart racing like my own. She even wrapped both the blanket and her arms around me at one point. I’m pretty sure my eyes bugged out when she did that. We’d hugged before, but those were just moments… we were clinging to each other for I don’t even know how long.

Really though… this damn film seemed to be going on for hours…

Our female lead was trapped, cornered and panting in a grotty cubicle, and an axe suddenly went flying for her head when the screen went completely black. The room fell dark instantly, and Harriet screamed bloody murder.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Bao assured her, “it’s just a power-cut I guess.”

“A power-cut with a mean sense of timing,” Kendal added.

“No…” Zahid spoke, followed by the sound of him moving – getting up – in his chair. He moved across the room, up to the curtains, and opened them up, allowing the faint glow of autumnal suburbia in.

“Other houses have their lights on. Maybe a circuit-breaker got tripped or… whatever?”

“There… should be a big torch in the cupboard under the stairs,” Dakota informed him, still extremely close to me.

I said nothing, for a moment. Putting aside the confusion, and my still-racing nerves, and Dakota’s proximity, I focused in on something else. Something faintly bugging me.

“Alex…?”

Dakota seemed to notice. I hope I wasn’t pulling some kind of strange expression…

“Is it just me, or does it feel like… we’re forgetting someone…?” I asked my friends.

“Now that you mention it…” Bao replied affirmatively.

“Ditto,” Kendal chimed in, prompting the other three to agree too. With that, Bao sighed in slight relief.

“I was worried it was just me…”

“And it’s really weird…”

Harriet had moved a little now, no longer burying her face in Bao’s chest. Beyond that, it was too dark to tell what she was doing.

“Why would all of us feel the same thing at the same time?”

… well, I had a good hunch, at least. Making us feel as though we’d forgotten someone – or actually making us all forget someone – didn’t seem outside the realms of possibility for a monster. We’d only encountered a couple of monsters in the past two weeks (one of them could only be described as a massive mop-head creature), so another one appearing wouldn’t be too sudden. Not that I wanted to presume any kind of regularity…

“Let’s think this through, at least,” Dakota began, shifting upright as she focused. “Is there anyone we were thinking of inviting over?”

“Lucy’s trick-or-treating,” I pointed out of my fifteen-year-old sister. “Then she’s going to a friend’s Halloween party.”

“And errr…”

Bao began rapidly tapping his foot as he probed his mind.

“I don’t know if there really is nobody else we would possibly invite or if I just can’t remember them now…”

“Yeah, this is gonna be difficult,” Zahid sighed. “Unless you invited Melody, Alex?”

“Why would I invite her?!” I asked – maybe snapped – in response. If anything, her being there would’ve been more frightening than the films, never mind what was happening…

“Fair point…” he remarked. Don’t say it, then…

“I don’t like this,” Harriet told us. “This is freaky.”

An acute tingling sensation ran up and down my spine. Everyone else seemingly felt the same way, as in my steadily-adjusting vision I could see them all jolting at the same time.

And then… I’m not quite sure if I could explain it any better than calling it an impulse… or like responding to an inaudible sound… we all turned our heads, at the same time, to the doorway leading to the dining room.

It took a moment to register, but a hazy, ghost-like figure was clearly looming there.

Harriet screamed out again, before blurting something that sounded like “this isn’t funny!”, presumably aimed at Bao under the belief that this was a practical joke.

“Upstairs?” asked Zahid with surprising calm.

“Yep. Leg it!” was Dakota’s order. We didn’t need to be told twice: the six of us all but lunged for the other door out of the room, Bao guiding Harriet along. A pink flash signalled Kendal summoning her Lokon bow as she took up the rear. Straight through the door, we barrelled upstairs, coming to a halt at the upstairs landing to keep an eye on what was happening downstairs.

For a few seconds, we remained quiet save for our fast, frightful breathing.

“Wait. Kendal… what’s that?” Harriet spoke up, her confused face illuminated by the pink glow from deep within the Lokon weapon.

“Err… Halloween decoration?” Kendal replied with the most pronounced upwards inflection I think I’ve ever heard.

With somehow-unnatural strides, the ghostly figure steadily walked through from the living room. It looked up at us – at least, it turned its head leftwards and upwards – from where it stood.

“Help me out here…”

Bao gulped audibly before continuing.

“Is he angry that we started movie night without him or…?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Zahid offered.

“Hey, creepy ghost thing!” the shorter guy called down to the hallway.

“Was a joke, Bao.”

The creepy ghost thing kept its absence of a gaze fixed on us, and began drifting towards the stairs.

“Can you talk?” I asked the figure; it remained silent as it continued its steady advance.

“Alex, seriously-” Zahid went to reiterate himself.

“I know, but if it can talk then we can try to communicate,” I insisted.

“And what? Ask it to go away?”

As if to underline his disapproval of any other course of action, he summoned his Lokon axe.

“Wh-What’s happening?” a shaken Harriet asked, backing away from the stairs on the floor, leaving the illumination of Kendal and Zahid’s weapons. As soon as Bao noticed this, he followed after her, keeping low to match her level, soothing as she had been to him.

“Harriet… y’know those Painters on the news…?”

“You…?”

She swallowed hard, clearly struggling to process this revelation.

“Surpriiise,” he confirmed with comforting cheer.

That happened on one side of Dakota and me, while Kendal donned her costume and furiously fired arrows at – and straight through – the spectre as its ascent continued on the other.

“Damn it…” Zahid grunted – he likewise donned his Painter clothes, and took a futile swipe at the figure’s neck just before it reached the top of the stairs. He and Kendal moved back, and along with Dakota and me, retreated again, down the hall with Bao and Harriet.

“Why can’t you do anything?” Harriet asked while Bao tended to her.

“Beats me. There must be a trick to it, something we have to do…”

Zahid spun his axe in his hand all the while, as he often did.

“Maybe it’s a projection?” Dakota suggested while summoning her spear. I took that as an invitation to do the same, feeling my sword manifest in my grasp.

“Or a real ghost!” Kendal offered up. “We’re sorry, Mr or Mrs Ghost!”

Wordless, faceless, the spectre trod closer and closer.

“Hang on…”

Bao stood up, all tension suddenly gone. He squeezed through the rest of us and began to walk towards the spectre.

“Err, Bao?” I queried plainly.

He walked straight through the hazy being, then turned and poked his head over its shoulder.

“It can’t do anything to us, so why are we scared?”

“We don’t know that for sure!” Harriet argued.

Still… he had a point. On any other night, would we be this worked up over a monster like this?

“It’s… just, like, a spooky Halloween ghost. Blackout; ‘hey, aren’t we forgetting something?’; and bam, there it is.”

Bao stuck his hand through the moving spectre’s chest for emphasis.

“It’s like the movies. Scary, but not real.”

The apparition walked on, Bao’s hand disappearing back through it. We remained still, and it continued strolling right on through us.

Harriet, however, continued scurrying back, until she hit the bathroom door.

“I don’t care, it’s still coming for me!” she wailed, trying to find the handle with her back against the door and her eyes affixed to the spectre.

“It’s not real, Harriet!” Bao told her. “Just like a movie! Turn it off and it all goes away!”

“It stays in my head! I have nightmares every time I watch horror movies! And a lot of them are like this!”

I couldn’t tell, with the minimal lighting, if she was crying at this point, but she was certainly sniffling a lot.

Bao began running, parting the rest of us as he did, moving down the hall and right through the spectre. And he took Harriet into a hug.

“Please. Don’t be afraid. I’m sorry I made you watch the movies, I just wanted us to all have fun and…”

Her arms strapped around him tight, and she sobbed into his shoulder. The spectre walked right through them and the closed door behind them.

A mere moment later, the lights flickered back on. The sound of the TV picked up from downstairs. Bao and Harriet remained as they were together.

“So… did we fight that off by being brave…?” Kendal asked the rest of us.

“Looks like it, I suppose…” I replied, a little cautiously.

“We don’t have to watch any more… we can put on anything you want…” Bao assured his girlfriend gently.

“Okay…” she whimpered back.

With that, he eased her to her feet.

“Anything for you, Haribo.”

Haribo. His nickname for her, because he found her so sweet. And, he had joked, because he wanted to gobble her up. Lewd jokes had ensued.

My friend was many things, and as it turned out, when it came down to it, a decent boyfriend was one of them.

He led her back along the hallway, while the rest of us returned our weapons to the loft conversion. The six of us then made our way back downstairs.

“Sooooo,” Kendal sang, “are we putting on a non-horror flick instead? Gotta be a movie because the popcorn-”

The front door swung open with a load thud, unveiling two very corporeal figures with huge cloaks.

The six of us leapt out of our skin and screamed the house right down.

“Sorry, sorry!” Clyde’s voice insisted from beyond the veil, before pulling his hood down. “It was her idea!”

“Your faces!” the hooded Amelia cackled. “I’m sorry, it was too good to pass up!”

We spent a good ten minutes recovering from that scare. Crazy Chinese film director, eat your practical effects heart out.