Date Night

“BOO!”

She had been expecting Megan to pop out of nowhere as usual, but Dani jumped in spite of herself. 

“Damn girl, we’ve still got another 8 or so hours to get through and you’re already all jittery! You’re gonna lose this bet, you know that, right?”

Megan’s head popped out from behind the cemetery wall. and Dani could see the trademark cheeky grin spreading across her face. She strode over to her, camera dangling from her neck like an extension of her being.

“Who said it was a bet, again?”

“We made a blood pact, remember? The one who wants to leave first has to buy the other dinner. Or breakfast, tomorrow morning.”

Having a date in a graveyard might seem a little peculiar to some but to Dani and Megan, it was just another thing that brought them closer together. If it actually was a date, that is. Dani still wasn’t too sure about that part. They had met the summer before, at a mutual friend’s house party, but Dani had known about Megan Harper’s existence ever since she’d spotted her striding down the hallways of their high school, a year earlier when her family had moved there. The two had bonded instantly and although Dani was still figuring out parts of herself, there was that unmistakable flutter in her stomach every time she was in Megan’s presence. 

“So, what should we do first? Go ghost-hunting among the gravestones or pop into the crematorium to see if any zombies are about? Ooo or maybe pay a visit to the chapel… I’m sure there’s a creepy old priest who’s secretly a vampire hanging out in there!”

“Actually, I was thinking we could get started on this,” Dani pulled a bottle of Martini Rosso out of the tote bag she was holding. 

“I love a girl with expensive taste in booze,” Megan’s grin seemed to broaden, if that was even possible. 

“Stole it out of the rents’ liquor cabinet. Doubt they’ll even notice it’s missing, knowing them.”

She produced two plastic cups and poured both to the brim, spilling a bit as she handed one over to Megan.

“Oi, don’t waste it! Ok this deserves a toast. Let me think for a sec,”

“I’ve got one: to many more Halloweens spent in graveyards,”

“Let’s see if you’ll still be saying that in a couple of hours but for now, hear, hear!”

As the two clinked glasses, Megan caught her eye and smiled as they both took a big gulp of the rosy pink liquid. 

The girls wandered around the poorly lit graveyard, only dimly aware of time passing. Megan would occasionally stop to take pictures; she’d told Dani she was making a collage of her final year in Hawthorne Heights. In the distance, the last of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters could be heard running around and screaming in fear, or delight, and when they were inevitably dragged back home by worn out parents, the pair could hear the dull thump of bass, no doubt from one of the numerous teenage house parties taking place nearby. 

“So how come you didn’t go to Jody’s party tonight? I heard everyone’s supposed to be there.”

“Were you planning to go to Jody’s party?”

“Well, no, but I wasn’t exactly invited.”

“So, that means not everyone was going to be there.”

Megan caught her gaze again and that twinkle in her eye almost made Dani forget where they were for a moment. 

“Anyways, I’ve been to loads of Jody’s parties before and there’s still a few more parties to go, so I don’t think I’m missing out on anything much. And I’d much rather be roaming the home of the undead tonight.”

“Do you think you’ll miss it though? All of this? Hawthorne Heights? When you go off to become a famous photographer, I mean?”

“I think this town will miss me more than I’ll miss it”

With just sixteen months between them, Megan would be off to the College of Fine Arts in Los Angeles next year to study photography and Dani would still be stuck here, in this godforsaken town, where nothing ever happened. Sure, she had family and friends, but secretly, she couldn’t wait to get away from it all the first chance she got. She harboured a secret fantasy of touching down in L.A., and Dani would be there to meet her at the airport, cheeky grin and all. 

Snap.

She had been reaching up to touch the wiry, outstretched fingers of an oak branch, when she felt the flash of Megan’s camera illuminate her. 

“You know I hate it when you take pictures of me! I’m so not photogenic,”

“You are too. And anyway, didn’t I already explain this to you? It’s not about being photogenic or not, it’s all about angles.”

“You and your angles. Lemme see,”

“Later,” she held her camera out of reach and swotted Dani’s hand away playfully. 

“So, did your sister enjoy her first trick or treating experience?” Dani asked, to draw the attention away from the blush rising in her cheeks at the feel of Megan’s hand brushing hers. 

“The little werewolf got a shitload of candy and will definitely sleep happy tonight. But, enough about the mediocre. It’s time for some mystery. It is Halloween after all. Your best ghost story - go!”

This was one of the things that Dani loved about Megan - the fact that she was so unpredictable. That she could turn a conversation on its head so naturally and catch her off guard. It was what made her so skilled at photography - that knack to metamorphose things with such ease. 

“I don’t really know any ghost stories, actually,”

“Come on, I don’t believe that for a second, kid. It doesn't have to be ghosts; vampires, zombies and psycho murderers will also do. Did you know this graveyard is supposed to be haunted, by the way?”

"You're totally making that up,"

"'Fraid not. You won't have heard about it since you're a Hawthorne Heights newbie, but legend has it, the Lady in Blue stalks these very pathways each night."

"The Lady in Blue? Seriously?"

"Many moons ago, a young family moved here, when the town had only just been built. The husband was soon called off to war so the woman was left alone with a newborn baby daughter to tend to. She suffered from anxiety and post-natal blues and one night, she took so many pills, she almost killed herself. She didn't, but when she woke up to check on the baby, she found it all blue and not breathing. It had frozen to death when the heat in the house went off while she was passed out. After this gruesome discovery, she walked straight out the front door and drowned herself in the frozen lake. They say she did it cos she wanted to go the same way as her daughter - by freezing to death."

Dani felt a chill running up her spine but she would not let Megan know that the story had gotten under her skin.

“I'm sure you literally just came up with that to freak me out. And, I've got a much scarier story for you - my brother told it to me a few years ago."

"Let's see what you got, kid."

"So, once upon a time, there was this old manor up in Northern England and it looked like a proper haunted house - Gothic architecture, acres of land, detached from the rest of town - the whole shebang. But, it totally wasn’t. No ghosts in the hallways, no weird creatures in the forest around it, no murders ever recorded there. It was a perfectly normal house. This little old lady lived in it alone but her family used to come visit in the summers. But get this right - this broad, she was obsessed with spooky shit. She loved everything to do with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies - you name it. The inside of the house was almost like a creepy museum, filled with pictures, ornaments and even statues of all kinds of horror movie paraphernalia. 

Anyway, when she died, her three grand kids were cleaning out the attic and found some drugs - magic mushrooms apparently. They decided to take them the next night, which happened to be Halloween. Their grandma’s dying wish was for the manor to be decorated and open to trick-or-treaters for one last time before her son sold it off, so there were loads of people around. But something happened after they took the shrooms. The security cameras were pulled out so no one knows for sure. But by the time the police got there, the manor was in disarray and 5 people were found dead around the grounds, one of them being the youngest grand kid, who had apparently committed suicide by jumping off the front balcony of the house. The only evidence they found was the message scrawled in the victims’ blood in the main foyer: “The Real Monsters are in Our Minds”. And from then on, the manor which had always been ordinary, suddenly became the haunted house everyone always willed it to be.”

Megan, who had been listening intently, suddenly snorted. “I have a feeling your brother only told you that story to make sure you stay away from drugs.” 

“Very likely. But still, you asked for a scary story.”

“Touche’, kid, I actually enjoyed that.”

“Your turn.”

But Megan’s mood had suddenly shifted. She seemed to be miles away, ignoring Dani altogether and staring ahead with unfocused eyes. 

“Just wait for me here a sec, OK?” and with that, she walked off abruptly, leaving Dani wondering what had just happened. 

She diligently stood in the same spot for around ten minutes, checking her messages and scrolling through Instagram, watching stories of all the people she knew who had attended Jody’s party, and secretly reveling in the fact that she had somewhere even better to be tonight. 

But when Megan did not return after what seemed like 20 minutes and hadn’t responded to any of her texts either, Dani started to get worried. Using her smartphone’s flashlight to guide her, she made her way cautiously in the direction that she had seen her go. 

“Megan? If you’re trying to scare me, its not working,”

A rustling in the bushes caught her attention and she spun around to the direction of the noise.

“Who’s there? Megan, this isn’t funny, stop freaking me out!”

The source of the fracas emerged and Dani saw that it was nothing but a stray cat, who mewed at her innocently, seemingly as surprised to see her there as she was to see it. 

Dani breathed out in relief and stooped to pet the creature, who gladly accepted her advances. “A black cat on Halloween, huh? I always forget if you’re supposed to be good luck or bad.”

Suddenly, a different sound arose from the other side of the path and as Dani straightened up and aimed her flashlight to its direction, she could just about make out a solitary figure kneeling over a tombstone. 

Holding her breath, she made her way towards it, calling out Megan’s name softly in the growing darkness, but braced for the worst. 

As she cautiously approached the grave, Dani saw that the mysterious figure was indeed Megan, who with her back to her, seemed not to notice her approaching. As she knelt down in the wet grass beside her, Dani saw that Megan’s big brown eyes were mournful like she had never seen them before and her face streaked with tears. She put her hand on her shoulder and the other collapsed into her at once, breaking out into fresh sobs. Looking up at the tombstone in front of them, Dani suddenly understood. It read:

HERE LIES DYLAN JACKSON HARPER

APRIL 1997 - JULY 2009

BELOVED SON AND BROTHER

TAKEN TOO SOON FROM US TO BE WITH THE LORD

GOD GRANT HIM ETERNAL PEACE

 “Your brother.”

“He was so young, Dani. He had his whole life in front of him. He wanted to be a pilot and he probably would’ve been by now.”

“How did it happen?”

“In the worst possible way - cancer. It ate away at him for 4 years, stealing his childhood then robbing him of any chance at adulthood too. We used to be so close. He wasn’t one of those mean big brothers who stole your dolls or pulled your hair. He was sensitive and creative and my best friend.”

“I’m so sorry.”

They sat there for a while and, having forgotten all about ghost stories, began exchanging tales from their childhoods while they finished off the rest of the rose’. When they finally could not stand the cold, damp ground any longer, Megan got up and led them towards the little chapel in the centre of the graveyard, in the hopes they would find some warmth within its walls. 

As they stepped inside and noticed the candles still burning gently in one corner, Megan made her way over to light one herself. Dani followed and she could not help but notice how her companion’s eyes took on a mesmerizing shade of hazel when they caught the light. The other felt her staring and smiled back, not her usual cheeky grin but a softer, more vulnerable upturn of the lips that seemed to Dani like she was letting her in on a secret that no one else knew. She instantly felt the familiar flutter, which had been dormant for a while, start up again. 

As they took a seat on the hard, wooden benches facing the altar a few moments later, Megan whipped out a blanket from her backpack and wrapped it around the both of them. Sitting in the pew, huddled together for warmth with the smell of incense enveloping them seemed like the most natural thing in the world to Dani, as strange as it may have seemed to anyone else. 

A Gospel Spotify playlist from Megan’s phone filled the echoing silence, setting them both off in giggles, but when the tracks suddenly became a lot more subdued, so did their moods.

“Do you believe in God?” she knew Megan wasn’t openly religious but then again, not many kids their age were anymore. Her own dad being a pastor, Dani had been raised around religion all her life, but she sometimes wondered if you could outgrow it, like a pair of old shoes. 

“I believe in a god. Not in the Christian sense of the word, though. I guess as human beings we just need to believe in something greater than ourselves. The alternative is too depressing to think about.”

Without knowing the exact reason, it was suddenly that moment that everyone always talked about, in books and movies and even amongst her friends. Dani knew it was, even if the effects of the sweet wine were still lingering about her consciousness. Without missing a beat, she leaned over and tilted Megan’s face towards her. Their lips met as they had on occasion before, but this time was different. As Megan responded, she found herself in the other’s lap and there, in the dimly lit chapel of Hawthorne Heights’ graveyard, on the night of Halloween, Dani felt a piece of her fall away, like a tree shedding old leaves to make space for new ones. 

          **********************************************

It was the early morning light filtering in from the stained glass windows that woke Dani, who had fallen asleep on Megan’s lap, using her denim jacket for cover against the cold. Megan also seemed to have just resurfaced and she sat up in the pew now, rubbing at the back of her neck. 

Looking down at her watch, she saw that it was 6:22am, marking a full 8 hours in the cemetery. They had actually managed it. 

“Good job kid, we did it!”

“And none of us is possessed right?” 

“Well I guess we’ll find that out later”

“OK I need breakfast. And my neck is killing me!”

The sunlight greeted them warmly as they walked out of the chapel hand in hand. They took the shorter route through the graveyard and Dani was in awe at how every spooky branch, evey ominous corner seemed perfectly normal and harmless in the clear light of day. 

“Hey, check out this photo. It’s the one I took of you.”

Dani groaned, “I told you I'm not photogenic!”

“No I mean, really look at it. What's that next to you?”

She peered closer at the camera screen Megan was holding up and saw the image of herself reaching out for the oak branch as she had done a few hours ago, but what looked like a white blotch appeared at her side. Megan zoomed in on the photo and the blotch transformed into the unmistakable face and outline of a woman with long, lank hair staring directly at the camera, a blueish tint hovering around her. 

The two girls looked up at each other, pure disbelief etched into their faces. 

"The Lady in Blue!" they exclaimed simultaneously.

“I guess this means we’re pretty much invincible, right?”

“If we crossed paths with an actual member of the undead, on Halloween, in a graveyard, and emerged unscathed, I think we can get through anything” Megan winked at her and the cheeky grin was back in full force.