Author Note: A longer chapter this week to make up for the lack of Dean in it.
There are mild spoilers for What is and What Should Never Be in this chapter and the next few that follow. I apologise if I've got any of the lore wrong in any of this. Also, Dean's joke in this chapter only works if you pronounce 'beta' the American way, i.e. bay-ta. Apologies in advance for the joke. I couldn't resist.
"C'mon, Yasmine Bleeth easily!" exclaimed Ash.
"She's hot, I'll give you that, but have you seen Pamela Anderson's rack?" Dean said from his right.
Ash craned his neck round further and said, "Billy, back me up here, Yasmine Bleeth is easily the hottest person on Baywatch."
Billy looked up from the text message and shrugged. "I dunno, I always thought it was David Charvet myself."
"I second that," said Priya, barely looking up from her frantic scribbling.
"What are you writing?" asked Dean.
"I got the third one wrong so I'm writing down how to get to the answer."
Dean grinned. "It's a shame Mohammed dropped maths, that would have been such great ammo for him."
Sixth form had started but you could hardly tell from their maths class, which was nearly identical to last year in both work and in faces. If Billy was honest he kind of missed Mohammed and his bullshit. Still, at least Ash was back with them now.
Ash had originally been in the top set last year, but had been demoted for arguing and talking back to the teacher. Billy wasn't certain of why they couldn't have punished him using more conventional methods but he'd guess it was because the kid had been through detention more times than most people had living relatives. He just didn't care anymore. He'd waltz in, finish off the work, then strut his way out again with a grin and a wink. But being kicked out of one of the few classes that still challenged him, that had hurt him more than a detention ever could.
Mr Watson might have been the dullest teacher Billy had ever met, but he had to hand it to him. He knew more about his students than he let on.
With that in mind, Billy tucked away the mobile phone, planning to reply to the text a little later. He picked up his pencil and was about to tick the next answer when Ash turned around once again.
"Any of you guys up for beta-ing the latest game I've coded? It's like Tetris but with more levels and the colours of the blocks lead to additional points."
"I'll do it, I'm a master beta," Dean said with a shit-eating grin as both Billy and Priya groaned and rolled their eyes.
"How long have you been waiting to make that joke?" asked Priya.
"About half my life," said Dean, his grin growing wider as Priya's face broke into a small smile.
Priya turned to Ash and said, "I'll beta for you if you want, just send the game to my school email address."
Ash shook his head.
"Why not? The file's too big?"
"It's nothing to do with that, the file size is fine," he said, before dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The school network's a joke. I hacked into it a couple of weeks ago just for the hell of it. Man, I could see everyone's personal files and everything-"
"Ash, I hope you've got all this marked and you're on task two now?" Mr Watson interjected from the other side of the classroom, eyebrows raised in a challenge.
"Yes, sir, just finishing off task two," Ash replied.
"Shit, he's coming to check," whispered Priya. "Quick, take mine." She started pushing her sheets towards him but he held up some lined pages covered with his spiky scrawl and handed them to the teacher.
Mr Watson looked over the completed work and walked off with a grunt and a nod. Ash smirked at Priya's look of incredulity.
"What? I got it done quickly near the beginning of the lesson," he shrugged.
"I haven't missed you at all, you know that?" said Priya.
Ash smirked, before leaning in again to whisper, "So nothing through the school network, I'm not having anyone taking my idea. I'll bring it in on a memory stick and give you that."
"Okay," said Priya, before returning to her work. Ash turned around to face the right way again and there was a lull in the conversation.
Billy got out his mobile phone again and sighed.
'I can come over on Friday evening, is that okay?'
It's not okay, but it's the best we're getting.
Billy and Luke rarely got to meet up, though when they did, they both had a great time. After all, it was hard to not have a good time marathoning Top Gear and stuffing your face full of doughnuts. But Friday evenings were when Billy and Priya usually met up to kick back and put on some 80s slasher flick and try to guess who was going to be the next to die.
Still, he and Priya could do it the week after.
"Priya, Luke wants to meet up with me and he's saying he can come over this Friday," he said, sheepishly.
She glanced up at him before looking back at her work. "Sure thing, I hope you guys have a good time."
Billy sighed, knowing Shortie was a little disappointed. "Thanks."
It was no fun picking between friends.
Sam looked at his watch again and huffed. To be fair, it had only been fifteen minutes since school had ended, but Dean was never late.
He watched the stragglers slowly filter out of the school gates, leaning further into the corner he was standing at to try and keep off the October chill. He hoped Dean would come soon. There was homework to be done and Mythbusters were doing a special episode on the uses of cola that he wanted to catch.
Pulling his collar up, he glanced round for a glimpse of a brown leather jacket and wondered again what might be keeping him. He didn't have any clubs on- football was on Wednesday lunchtime, not after school. Maybe he'd gone to the library? He was tempted to go check, but what if Dean went to their spot when Sam wasn't there and then went to look for him?
Easier to just stay put.
Just then, Priya barged out of the main entrance and stumbled down the steps.
"Priya! Do you know where Dean is?" asked Sam.
The girl took a few deep breaths and steadied herself against the wall. "I've just run 'round the whole school looking for him. And Billy too." She took another breath. "Billy went to the toilet in physics about half an hour ago and then Dean did a little later. I haven't seen either of them since."
Sam felt a wave of fear wash over him. Dean wasn't likely to skip lessons or head home without Sam, so where was he?
You're being irrational. He'll be fine. He probably got distracted by something shiny, the jerk.
Nonetheless, in less than ten seconds, he found himself bounding up the school steps. "You say he went to the toilet, did you check there?" he asked.
"They're the boys' toilets, I kind of don't fit the specification for entry," replied Priya, taking the steps two at a time to catch up.
Sam keyed in the seven digit code that opened the main doors. "Right, we'll check there first."
He walked down the corridor and started to turn off when Priya called after him. "Billy never uses the main toilets. He says they're always too busy and he prefers the ones in the basement, near the deliveries entrance. He told Dean about them and I think Dean uses the same ones now."
Sam backtracked and they ran through the main hall and raced down the grey cement steps to the basement. Priya waited outside as Sam entered the boys' toilets.
"Dean!" he yelled.
No answer.
He walked along the line of cubicles banging each door open, trying to control his anger as the dark pit of trepidation grew in his stomach. He stopped at the last one and turned back round to come out when he saw them.
A dark brown M&M, a blue one a little further along.
He walked back out and opened his palm to show them to Priya. "He definitely came down here."
Priya nodded. "I was waiting here and I saw that," she said, pointing at a surveillance camera that was pointing down into the large, cream coloured tunnel out of the school. "They record everything, partly because it's the only non-coded entrance to the school and partly so they can do a roundup at the end of the month of all the deliveries that have been made. I was talking to Mrs Robinson in Admin about it a couple of weeks ago."
Sam shook his head. The girl knew too much for her own good. "What are you suggesting? Should we go to Administration and ask to see the recordings?"
Priya thought for a while, then pouted and shook her head. "Nah, they won't let us. Confidentiality or some crap like that-" Priya stopped and started walking up the stairs again.
"What?" asked Sam, following her.
"They might not let us see the recordings willingly, but I think I know someone who can hack in and gain access. When are your parents expecting you home by?"
"They won't mind as long as it's within half an hour or so," said Sam, as they walked across the middle yard and through the corridor to the empty computer room.
"Okay then, if we still don't know where they are by then, call them and tell them you can't find him," she said, before turning round and walking towards the furthest corner in the room. "Ash!"
Apparently the room wasn't empty. A leather chair swivelled round-
the teacher's chair, no less
-and the mullet-haired guy called back a quick "hey Priya", before swearing at his monitor as some coloured blocks meeting made an error message appear onscreen.
"Ash, I really need your help," Priya threw her denim jacket onto the chair next to Ash's and sat down hurriedly. "Remember what you said about being able to get into the school network?"
Ash nodded, not looking away from his screen, where he was frantically editing code. "Yeah, why?"
"Are the school surveillance cameras linked into the same network?"
"Yeah," he hit 'Enter' and turned round to face Priya and Sam. "School's stupid, they keep all their eggs in one basket."
"Good, so do you think you can get me access to the recordings?"
He turned back to the screen and continued to type. "Uh, sure I guess, but for how long back? The archived stuff might take longer to get to..." he trailed off, busy trying to get blocks of the same colour to line up with each other.
"Just the last few hours, that's all," replied Priya.
"Okay, but then I have to get back to the game. I tried something different but it seems to have more bugs than a David Attenborough documentary."
"Thanks," said Priya, turning on the computer she was sat at and starting to log in. "I owe you one."
Sam watched in fascination as Ash opened up something called 'Command Prompt' and started typing in line after line of gibberish. Within about ten minutes, they were staring at footage they weren't meant to be able to see.
This is so illegal…
Growing up is so cool!
He felt a shiver of excitement run down his spine as he relished the feeling of breaking the rules.
Ash then shifted back to his computer and Priya took charge. She selected the camera staring down into the large mouth of the deliveries entrance and started to rewind to about two hours ago.
"This was before the physics lesson so we won't have missed anything if there's anything to see," she said as they watched the back end of a van leave the screen. She sped up the clip and leaned back to watch.
Not much happened. It was pretty clear no one else used that area anymore and there were few deliveries to the school. Sam grabbed a chair and took a seat. They weren't even likely to get anything from this clip. All it'd probably show was that Billy and Dean had gone to the toilet and then come back out again and walked up the stairs.
Sam was about to stifle a yawn when he saw movement. Billy had come down the steps and entered the toilet. Then, the screen blurred and ripples of noise appeared as someone seemed to walk out of the wall of the tunnel and came towards the camera, staring at the boys' toilets.
Priya paused and Sam asked her to zoom in. She did so and Sam could just make out, beneath the bands of fuzz, a tattooed man.
This was not looking good.
Priya flicked forward slowly through the frames and watched as the ripples of static undulated and the man waited. Billy came out, wiping his wet hands on his jeans, and looked up to see-
the djinn
-the tattooed man.
You have to stop your imagination getting the best of you. It's bad enough there's a strange man lurking around the boys' toilets, no need to make it worse by getting the supernatural involved.
But the next frames made the creature unmistakable. It lunged forward and grabbed the kid, touching his forehead, some kind of light spreading over his hands. In the next frame, Billy was unconscious. The few after showed the creature dragging the body towards the wall and the one after those showed nothing again.
"Wh-what was that?" Priya whispered, her eyes wide with terror.
"Skip to when Dean came down," said Sam, tersely.
Priya played at double speed until his bowlegged big brother was onscreen, walking into the toilets. The djinn appeared again not long after. It was like watching a black and white stop-motion horror film. Dean saw the monster, ducked as it attacked, and scrambled for the steps. Sam stared in dismay as a frame showed him stumble. Frame by frame, he watched as the light overtook his brother, as Dean's body was dragged towards the wall, where it would join his friend.
Priya flicked onto the next frame, which once again showed an empty entrance. She leaned back and closed her eyes. "It's a dream, just wake up. This is not real…" she muttered to herself.
Sam shook her and she jerked up. "This is real and I know what that is. Come on," he said, hoisting up his schoolbag and getting off his chair. Priya thanked Ash and turned off the computer, her hand shaking as she let go of the mouse. Soon after, she followed Sam out into the empty corridor.
"Shit, Sam, we're gonna have to tell the police," she leaned against the wall and clenched her fists. "They've been kidnapped, oh god, they've been kidnapped, Sam!"
"Hey, Priya, we can't go to the police-"
"Why not?" She interjected. "We're really not old enough to handle this on our own. I wish we were but we're not."
"Because that thing isn't human," said Sam, knowing how ridiculous that must have sounded.
Sure enough, Priya looked up at him incredulously. "It-It's gotta be human. I mean, that was clearly a man, even through the static you could see that."
"Didn't you find the static a bit odd? What could cause EMF disturbances like that?"
"Uh, a really strong magnet maybe, I dunno what else…"
"Exactly, and did you see any neodymium magnets around?" he asked, hoping he'd pronounced the name of those really powerful magnets that were almost impossible to separate by hand correctly. They were pretty cool, he could probably get his hands on some for Christmas.
Maybe Dean can try and make a crude generator from them?
The thought of the family engineer brought him back to the task at hand.
"Did you?" he pressed.
Priya bit her lip. "No," she said.
"It all adds up. The tattoos, the weird light at his fingertips, the way they fall unconscious so quickly, the fuzz on the recordings."
"It's not adding up. It's not adding up at all," Priya fretted. "I'm going to get a teacher."
Sam grabbed her bag before she could walk off and jerked her back with a huff. "Look, you won't find many teachers around anymore. And, more importantly, I know what that is and the teachers will neither believe it, nor be able to do anything about it."
Priya closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before opening them again. The panic had subsided a little, but not much. "Okay, I'm listening."
"Okay. The thing in there is a djinn. It's sort of like a genie, it grants you your deepest wish and lets you live that out in a sort of hallucination while it slowly feeds on your blood."
"What sort of fucked up version of Aladdin have they been watching?"
"This isn't Disney, this is real. I wasn't sure they actually existed but this-" he gestured towards the computer room, "this has convinced me otherwise. There are probably a lot of other supernatural creatures out there too, but for now, we've got to focus on this. And get this, their 'magic' sort of distorts electric currents, like a magnet or a lot of power cables would. That's why there was static. Also, djinns have to administer a poison to knock you out and get you dreaming and that's what it was doing with that weird light around his hands."
"This is really screwed up." Priya rubbed her hands down her face. "Like, really, really, screwed up."
"I don't like it either, but right now we've got to work on finding where they took them and how to kill the thing."
"Okay, say you're right. Say ghosts and witches and-and these genies are real. Will they have left the school, dya think?"
"I doubt it. It wouldn't be able to drag the two bodies along without attracting attention to itself. No, they prefer dark, abandoned places to hoist their prey up in, if I remember correctly."
"Wow, you really read around this ghost stuff."
Sam shrugged. "It was a phase."
Priya's head suddenly rose and she picked up her schoolbag. "If you're right in saying they won't have left the school, I think I know where they might have gone."
She walked into the main hall and Sam quickly followed, nearly bumping into her when she stopped abruptly in front of a slightly cheesy display board titled 'So many years… so many memories'. It was covered with Moreton High's greatest hits and pictures of how the school developed from its infancy to its current state.
"Look at this blueprint. And then at the most recent one." She pointed at the basement areas of both. "See how the old one has that classroom labelled 3B and this one doesn't?" She said, leaving smudges on the glass above the bit marked 'Deliveries Entrance'. "I was looking at this map-" she paused when she saw Sam's raised eyebrows, "what? It was a really long assembly, I was bored."
Sam shook his head. "Doesn't matter, continue."
"So yeah, I was looking at this and I was wondering 'how could a classroom disappear?' So I asked some of the older teachers and it turns out that used to be an English room. But because it was so out of the way, the powers that be decided to scrap it and just turn that whole area into a deliveries entrance. That room was abandoned and it has been for quite a few years now. I think they might occasionally use it for storing crap they can't find a decent place for. Does that sound like somewhere one of these djinns might live?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Also, I think the djinn must be pretty severely weakened. If it was at full strength it could have easily blurred the whole of the recording, but there was relatively little blurring so it's probably a pretty busted up or old djinn."
"I guess that's something. How do we kill it? How long will it take for it to kill the boys?" asked Priya, looking down worriedly at her watch.
"The boys will be okay for a bit, it takes a few days for all the blood to drain out. And to kill it, we need a silver knife. Where are we going to get one of those in school?"
Priya grimaced. "We're not. But we have a silver carving knife at home. I live about fifteen minutes away from here, ten if I run. Dad'll be at work and I'll tell Mum I'm needed for a play at school or something."
"Yeah, okay," Sam checked the time and frowned. "Mum and Dad will be getting worried soon, what should I do?"
"I dunno, lie or something." Priya shrugged.
"Really? But-but won't they be able to tell?" Sam didn't like this idea at all. Every time he'd tried lying, his dad had caught him out right away.
"C'mon, just make something up! Dean's been asked to fill in for someone in a football match and he's going to be another couple of hours in coming home. You're going along to cheer him on. There." Priya spoke brusquely, but then seemed to see Sam squirming and softened. "I know you don't want to and, trust me, I don't want you to. Hell, I have half a mind to go down there alone without you-"
"No. No way am I staying up here while Dean's down there with that monster." Sam crossed his arms, adamant.
Priya crossed her arms in response, but quickly uncrossed them again with a sigh. "Okay, I get it. I'd not have let anyone keep me up here if it had been Sonali. Fine, but then you're going to have to tell something to your parents and if you say Dean's been kidnapped by a genie, what do you think they'll say?"
Sam could almost hear his mum's panicked voice. The sound of police sirens. The soft yet authoritative voice of a therapist telling him ghosts weren't real.
"I'll call them, you go get the knife," he said, resignation washing over him as he prepared to lie as convincingly as he could.