A Horror Anthology

Last Night - @dcompbooks

Light makes the world safe. 

Would Lauren ever admit to that? Hell no. No one wanted to know a fifteen-year-old who's afraid of the dark. Getting called baby would be the least of her worries. Cherry Valley was too small to be an outcast.

So whenever anyone slept over she made sure to unplug the nightlight next to her bed. She and her friends always fell asleep watching crappy movies anyway so that wasn't so bad. Whenever anyone wanted to watch a scary movie Lauren would totally agree. On the inside she'd be having a heart attack. Her imagination was wild enough without ghosts and vampires and things crawling out of TVs. She shoved her TV into the hallway every night for a month after watching that one.

Or on nights like tonight when Jason had the brilliant idea to get drunk in the cemetery. You wouldn't see Lauren object to that. What else would they do? No one had a car. It was midnight and it's not like anyone's parents would drive them anywhere. Half-assed parkour on headstones it was.

The tab on the beer can made a clang sound when she flicked it. Whatever they were drinking was some skunky stuff. Scott said he found it at the back of their extra fridge in the garage. Junk was probably older than she was and tasted like licking a sidewalk. But at least it made the dark more tolerable. She wasn't as nervous with a buzz going on. She couldn't hear every bird and cricket that decided to scare the crap out of her. There was a full curtain of pitch black woods behind her she was trying to not think about and that was hard to do when all sorts of things kept making noise.

It was muggy as hell and her shirt stuck to her skin. She ran her finger under her eyes for the millionth time that night, just as afraid of running mascara as what could have been lurking in the trees at the edge of the cemetery. A headstone was at her back, the granite cool against her skin even through the shirt and a chill rolled over her body.

Scott and Jason rolled around in the grass play-fighting, hitting up against crooked stones that wobbled in the sterile light from the lantern. Shadows of flying hands and feet wavered across the stones, and Lauren tried her damndest to stifle another chill that had nothing to do with anything cold. She was as close to the light as she could get, it resting at her feet. Cradling it in her arms would give her away and make it hard to hold her beer. Right now she needed that liquid courage.

Shannon and Maria sat across from her, each to their own headstone, nursing their own crappy beer. It was a week before school let out. If this was what they all had to look forward to for two months of summer, Lauren was going to lose her mind. It made a family vacation seem almost appealing. Almost.

A small rock hit her shoulder and Lauren blinked, shaking the daze out of her brain. She looked over to Shannon who leaned forward, eyes wide and the messy bun on top of her head twitching in the light as she waited for Lauren to say something.

"You there? Chug that beer too quickly?"

Lauren moved to rub her eye and stopped herself just short of crushing the heel of her hand into her eyelashes and smearing black across her face. There'd be no recovering from that one.

"Yeah, just . . . stuff." Lauren waved it away as if it were a fly buzzing around her head. "What'd you say?"

"Daniel. You know. Baseball dude. Tight pants. Great hair. Ass to bite into. Has he texted you yet?"

A flutter in her chest made Lauren's breath catch. Daniel. Not Dan or Danny. Daniel. Hot ass was right. And hair that belonged on some surfer guy, not a no-nothing village baseball player. She couldn't help but smile as she pictured it curling out from under his cap. She wanted to flick at the curls and watch them spring.