(015)
“Wanna hear a scary story?” Brad snickers, leaning his can against the tree and covering the back of his phone. He turns the light on, making his fingertips glow briefly while he flips it round and under his face.
“Bwohahahahauha!” George gives his best attempt at a spooky laugh, prompting Brad to howl like a wolf along with him, but rather a wolf that smokes a pack a day, ending in a half coughing, half laughing fit.
“Isn’t this a bit cliché?” Willow scoffs, rolling her eyes and taking another sip from her lukewarm supermarket brand cider.
“Clichés are clichés for a reason Willow!” Brad barks. “And besides, this isn’t cliché because this one is true.” He leans forward as he says the last line, keeping the light under his chin for the full effect.
“For god sake.” Willow shakes her head, a wry smile hidden behind another sip from her can.
“On this very night,” Brad begins, sweeping his gaze over the both of them.
“Of course it was-” Willow interjects.
“Many years ago!” Brad raises his voice to drown her out. “A man was killed exactly where we’re sitting.” He pats the floor between them all, amid more scoffs and puffs from one section of the audience, but Brad charges on.
“He was an immigrant-”
“Ahhhhh!!” George screams in mock terror, causing them all to laugh hysterically, with a few “Dickhead”’s made in jest.
Once Brad has regained his composure, he flips the light back under his face.
“He was an immigrant-” George snorts and almost gets Brad again, but he fights it. “-he was an immigrant who had moved from Africa, and had somehow ended up here.” He scans both their faces again for any further interruptions, but they say nothing.
“He was sitting in the local pub one night, not long after arriving, drinking a beer and trying to make friends. He leant over to a nearby table and started a conversation with a girl who looked about his age. She was polite but the conversation was short, and when she left to go to the bar she spoke to her boyfriend and his friends.” He reaches behind him for his can and takes a gulp.
“Isn’t this supposed to be scary?” Willow asks with a mocking grimace.
“Well if you’d listen!” Brad says, wiping his mouth. George quietly chugs his drink and watches them bicker.
“As I was saying, she told her boyfriend and his friends, and they didn’t take whatever she’d said lightly. The man, all the while sipping his drink and looking around for someone to talk to, is suddenly smashed across the face by a pint glass that the boyfriend had launched at him. It knocks him from his chair and leaves him dazed in the broken glass, blood seeping from the fresh wounds criss-crossing across his face. He blinks blood from his eyes and sees the men converging on him, leaving him no choice but to run.” Brad holds Willow’s gaze and sees that the humour is gone, and that despite her best efforts, she’s clinging onto his every word.
“He runs through the streets and they chase behind him, hooting and howling like a pack of rapid hounds. They’re gaining on him, so he cuts off from the pathway and down into the pitch black woods trying to lose them.” George begins to pound the earth with his feet to mimic the sound, panting and whining. Willow casts a nervous eye at him, then back to Brad.
“He’s running blind, wiping blood from his eyes and with his hands out in front of him to feel for trees. He daren’t look back, certain they’re right on top of him. He barrels through bushes and down banks, praying he can get to safety.” George howls into the night, channelling the pursuers. Brad takes another quick sip.
“He’s almost there,” he moves the light to cast deeper shadows again, “but then he makes a mistake. On that bank over there,” he points towards the pathway that they’d walked down to get to the water earlier in the day, “he looks back at the wrong moment, and he comes crashing to the earth. He tries to get his breath, but it’s too late. They find him crawling towards the water, and under this tree they beat him into a bloody pulp, leaving him half dead, right where we’re sitting.” George mimics a slowing heartbeat with his feet against the floor, gasping for air. The hairs prickle on Willow’s arms and she shivers, suppressing the urge to move back from the spot she’s sitting in.
“But they didn’t end it there…” Brad reveals, rocking forwards from his sitting position onto his knees, “they came back with a rope to finish the job,” he loops an imaginary rope around his neck and slowly stands, acting as if it’s pulling him, “and they hung him,” he says through faux chokes, “from this tree.” He increases the choking sound and sticks a spasming leg out in front of him. George’s footsteps get slower and slower until he lets out a long “beeeeeeeeeeep.”
Brad stops choking himself and settles back into his role as narrator for the final flourish.
“But do you know the worst thing of all, Willow?” He asks, still holding her gaze intently.
“The whole village knew about it, and no-one said a thing. In fact,” he looks up to the spot above them both and her eyes follow, “they never even cut him DOWN!” He drops forwards and lands on Willow, sending her sprawling and screaming at him. He holds his weight against her as if he’s dead until she knees him in the stomach and he rolls off, laughing and whining. George is on his hands and knees by the tree laughing through retches, his skin pallid and glistening in the moonlight – the alcohol finally catching up to him.
Willow throws an empty can in Brad’s direction, struggling to see the funny side in it yet.
“Fuck you!” She rages, “I knew it was bullshit!” She aims another kick in Brad’s direction but he rolls out of the way, engulfed in another coughing-laughter fit. She takes her moment to jump on him and enact her revenge, raining half-hearted blows across his chest and face with her sleeve-covered-hands, the frustration of being conned fading into a relief that it had all been made up after all.
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