‘I hate camping,’ Lauren grunted, tripping over the crumpled canvas.
‘Yeah, well, it’s my birthday and I like it,’ Cara said, reading over the instructions with her tongue tucked between her teeth.
It was the final Friday of the summer holidays and the three of them were in a small clearing in a beech forest on the outskirts of Kilton. Cara’s choice for her early eighteenth birthday celebration: to sleep without a roof and squat-piss behind dark trees all night. It wouldn’t have been Pip’s choice either; she certainly didn’t see the logic in retrogressive toilet and sleeping arrangements. But she knew how to pretend well enough.
‘It’s technically illegal to camp outside of a registered campsite,’ Lauren said, kicking the canvas in retaliation.
‘Well, let’s hope the camping police don’t check Instagram, because I’ve announced it to the world. Now shush,’ Cara said, ‘I’m trying to read.’
‘Um, Cara,’ Pip said tentatively, ‘you know this isn’t a tent you brought, right? It’s a marquee.’
‘Same difference,’ she said. ‘And we have to fit us and the three boys in.’
‘But it comes with no floor.’ Pip jabbed her finger at the picture on the instructions.
‘ You come with no floor.’ Cara butt-shoved her away. ‘And my dad packed us a separate groundsheet.’
‘When are the boys getting here?’ Lauren asked.
‘They texted they were leaving about two minutes ago. And no,’ Cara snapped, ‘we’re not waiting for them to put it up for us, Lauren.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that.’
Cara cracked her knuckles. ‘Dismantling the patriarchy, one tent at a time.’ ‘Marquee,’ Pip corrected.
‘Do you want me to hurt you?’ ‘No-quee.’
Ten minutes later, a full ten-by-twenty-foot white marquee stood on the forest floor, looking as out of place as anything could. It had been easy once they worked out the frame was a pop-up. Pip checked her phone. It was half seven already and her weather app said that sunset would be in fifteen minutes, though they’d have another couple of twilight-lit hours before darkness fell.
‘This is going to be so fun.’ Cara stood back to admire their handiwork.
‘I love camping. I’m gonna have gin and strawberry laces until I puke. I don’t want to remember a thing tomorrow.’
‘Admirable goals,’ Pip said. ‘Do you two want to go and grab the rest of the food from the car? I’ll lay out our sleeping bags and put up the sides.’
Cara’s car was parked in the tiny concrete car park about 200 yards from their chosen spot. Lauren and Cara toddled off that way through the trees, the woods lit with that final orange nightly glow before they begin to darken.
‘Don’t forget the torches,’ she called, just as she lost sight of them.
Pip attached the large canvas sides to the marquee, swearing when the Velcro betrayed her and she had to start one side from scratch. She wrestled with the groundsheet, glad when she heard the twig-snap tread of Cara and Lauren returning. But when she went to look outside for them no one was there. It was just a magpie, mocking her from the darkening treetops, laughing its scratchy, bony laugh. She begrudgingly saluted it and got to work laying their three sleeping bags in a row, trying not to think about the fact that Andie Bell could very well be buried somewhere in these woods, deep underground.
The sound of branches breaking underfoot grew louder as she laid out the last one, and a din of guffawing and shrieking that could only mean the boys had arrived. She waved at them and the returning arm-laden girls. Ant, who – as his name suggested – hadn’t grown much since they’d first made friends aged twelve, Zach Chen, who lived four doors down from the Amobis, and Connor, who Pip and Cara knew from primary school. He’d been paying a bit too much attention to Pip recently. Hopefully it would burn out quickly, like that time he was convinced he had a real future as a cat psychologist.
‘Hey,’ said Connor, carrying a cool box with Zach. ‘Oh damn, the girls got the best sleeping spots. We’ve been pipped to the post.’
Not, surprisingly, the first time Pip had heard that joke. ‘Hilarious, Con,’ she said flatly, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
‘Aw,’ Ant chimed in, ‘don’t feel too bad, Connor. Maybe if you were a piece of homework she’d want to do you.’
‘Or Ravi Singh,’ Cara whispered just to her with a wink.
‘Homework is far more rewarding than boys,’ Pip said, digging an elbow into Cara’s ribs. ‘And you can talk, Ant, you have the s*x life of an argonaut mollusc.’
‘Which means?’ Ant gesticulated his hand in a rolling wave.
‘Well,’ said Pip, ‘an argonaut mollusc’s penis snaps off during intercourse, so it can only ever have s*x once in its whole life.’
‘I can confirm this,’ Lauren said, who’d had a failed dalliance with Ant last year.
The group fell about laughing and Zach gave Ant a conciliatory whack on the back.
‘Absolutely savage,’ Connor chortled.
A silver-tinted darkness had taken over the woods, enclosing on all sides the small bright marquee that glowed like a lantern amongst the sleeping trees. They had two battery-powered yellow lamps on inside and three torches between them.
Lucky they had moved to sit inside the marquee, Pip noted then, as it had just started to rain, quite heavily, although the tree cover protected their patch from most of it. They were sitting in a circle around the snacks and drinks, the two ends of the marquee rolled up to alleviate the boy smell.
Pip had even allowed herself to get to the bottom of one beer, sitting with her navy star-crossed sleeping bag rolled up to her waist. Although she was
much more interested in the crisps and sour cream dip. She didn’t much like drinking, didn’t like feeling that loss of control.
Ant was halfway through his ghost story, the torch under his chin making his face distorted and grotesque. It just happened to be a story about six friends, three boys and three girls, who were camping in a marquee in the woods.
‘And the birthday girl,’ he said theatrically, ‘is finishing off a whole packet of strawberry laces, the red sweets sticking to her chin like trails of blood.’
‘Shut up,’ Cara said, mouth full.
‘She tells the handsome guy with the torch to shut up. And that’s when they hear it: a scraping sound against the side of the marquee. There’s something or someone outside. Slowly fingernails start dragging through the canvas, ripping a hole. “You guys having a party?” a girl’s voice asks. And then she tears through the hole and, with one swipe of her hand, slits the throat of the guy in the check shirt. “Missed me?” she shrieks, and the surviving friends can finally see who it is: the rotting zombie corpse of Andie Bell, out for revenge –’
‘Shut up, Ant.’ Pip shoved him. ‘That isn’t funny.’ ‘Why’s everyone laughing then?’
‘Because you’re all sick. A murdered girl isn’t fair game for your crappy jokes.’
‘But she’s fair game for a school project?’ Zach interjected. ‘That’s entirely different.’
‘I was just about to get to the part about Andie’s secret older lover slash killer,’ Ant said.
Pip winced and shot him a blistering look. ‘Lauren told me,’ he said quietly.
‘Cara told me,’ Lauren jumped in, slurring the edges of her words. ‘Cara?’ Pip turned to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, tripping over the words because she was the wrong side of eight measures of gin. ‘I didn’t know it was supposed to be secret. I only told Naomi and Lauren. And I told them not to tell anyone.’ She swayed, pointing accusatorily at Lauren.
It was true; Pip hadn’t specifically told her to keep it secret. She thought she didn’t have to. Not a mistake she would make again.
‘My project isn’t to provide you with gossip.’ She tried to flatten out her voice when it spiked with annoyance, looking from Cara to Lauren to Ant.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ant said. ‘Like, half of our year knows you’re doing a project about Andie Bell. And why are we talking about homework on our last Friday night of freedom? Zach, bring out the board.’
‘What board?’ Cara asked.
‘I bought a Ouija board. Cool, huh?’ Zach said, dragging his rucksack over. He pulled out a tacky plastic-looking board adorned with the alphabet and a planchette with a little plastic window you could see the letters through. He laid them out in the middle of the circle.
‘Nope,’ Lauren said, crossing her arms. ‘No way. That’s way over the scary boundary. Stories are fine, but no board.’
Pip lost interest in the boys trying to convince Lauren so they could play whatever prank it was they had planned. Probably about Andie Bell again.
She reached over the Ouija board to grab another bag of crisps and that’s when she saw it.
A white light flash from within the trees.
She sat up on her heels and squinted. It happened again. In the distant dark a small rectangular light turned into view and then disappeared. Like theaguished by the lock button.
She waited but the light didn’t come back. There was only darkness out there. The sound of rain in the air. The silhouettes of sleeping trees against the gloom of the moon.
Until one of the dark tree figures shifted on two legs.
‘Guys,’ she said quietly. A small kick to Ant’s shin to shut him up. ‘No one look now, but I think there’s someone in the trees. Watching us.’
