Hi's PoV
"Did a bomb go off in your head?" Not another idea Tory.
"C'mon it will be fun! What's the matter, scared?" She teases.
"It's just, we're kind of out of excuses nowadays and I doubt my mom would be happy with me trespassing," Shelton adds,"How about something legal?"
This is where Tory talks for about ten minutes, eventually swaying everyone to go along with one of her crazy schemes. To be honest I wasn't totally against her idea. Ghosts, that's pretty cool and I love an adventure, one if the reasons the girls find it so hard to stay away.
"I'm in." Ben
"Ghosts are awesome." Me
"You guys are so annoying," face palm, "Fine I'm in."
"Thanks guys this is going to be great! A little adventure,"
Yeah because it's not like we go on adventures on a weekly basis, I think as I reach for another slice of pizza. We were all sitting in Ben's rec room, the man cave as I dubbed it, eating a pizza that Ben and Shelton had driven over to Folly to collect. Ham, cheese, chicken, pepperoni, mushrooms, you name it. But not anchovies. Blech, no way José.
Just a usually Friday night for us guys. Kinda how we roll. Well food is definitely how I roll.
"What time shall we meet, Kit's staying at Whitney's tonight so I'm free whenever. What about you guys?"
"Whenever," Not surprised since Ben's not graced with overly responsible parents like myself.
"Well it's," watch check, "10:37pm right now, I could go home say I'm feeling crappy and meet by the docks at say, 11 ish."
"Sounds good, Shelton?" Tory asks.
"Incidentally both my parents have caught the flu so they're probably going to go to sleep any minute now, I'll be able to do eleven" he replies with a thumbs up, you might think he seems a bit to excited for something like this but ghosts are not on his list of phobias, strange but he doesn't believe in them so he's not scared of them. Makes sense I guess.
"Welp, I better be going, not feeling to hot" I depart with a wink closely followed by a Shelton.
Tory's PoV
"I should go check on my parents too, see you at the dock at eleven," Shelton says with a wave.
"I have to go take Coop for a quick walk, wanna join? There will be saliva covered sticks,"I say trying to raise the stakes.
"Sure, it's what I live for," Ben replies sarcastically.
We walk back to my house and get a lead and of course Cooper. It's twenty to so we will walk Cooper along the beach in time to be back for our outing. I text Ella while Ben and I walk.
Boys are in. Will be there by 11:30
Awesome sauce, I'm just about to arrive to put in place some of the necessitates.
Can't wait, text if you need anyting.
I shut off my phone to find Ben eyeing me, "What?"
He seems to realise he was staring and quickly looks away, "Oh. Nothing."
We walk for a few minutes, idling tossing sticks and having to find new ones when Coop can't be bothered to actually bring it back but expects us to go and get it. Ben throws one that goes into a very bushy area and Cooper goes missing but you can still see the bush moving.
"Him searching around in the bushes reminds me of Hi," We both start laughing
"Are you sure that it isn't?" He replies smiling, "It stopped moving, where's Cooper?"
"I'll get him. Cooper. Cooper! Coo- oh silly boy. He's tangled in the bush," I inform Ben, removing my jacket and throwing it at him, "Time to get down and dirty."
Ben's PoV
I quickly dodge an oncoming missile, "Watch it, that things dangerous!" I yell over to Tory who's busy untangling Coop from the bush. My eyes stray over to her jacket and I can see her phones fallen out of her pocket and decided to bury itself in the sand.
Ouch that's bad for a phone, I think picking up the phone and then almost dropping it again out of surprise as it suddenly buzzes and incoming text from Ella, I didn't mean to read it but it was right there in my face.
TORY DEFCON ONE I THINK I FORGOT THE FISHING LINE EVERYTHING IS RUINED THE PRANKS WONT WORK!
Before I can react another text beeps in:
Don't worry it's all good I found it haha!
Mentally eye rolling at Ella's cluelessness, I hold up the phone with an eyebrow raised to Tory who's walking back after freeing the mongrel, "Care to share?"
I see her read the two messages and then she face palms before mutter, "Oh Ella." She quickly fills me on on her plan and I laugh at her slyness, these are the reasons that I love being around her, she's always up to something. We soon come to an agreement that I will help and she texts Ella to update her and no doubt telling her to use her brain next time.
"It's probably better that you know, I doubt much scares you. Plus it was hard to keep it secret but you have to be able to act the part. You can do that right?"
"I think I can handle it."
We start walking back to Tory's house to drop off the dog after agreeing that Coop probably wouldn't be the best addition when trying to perform pranks on your friend, he would probably sniff out Ella and give the game away. She opens the door for Cooper who rushes in and she leaves the door open and just stands there two steps higher than me watching him before turning to me and saying,"We have five minutes, want to just wait at the boat?"
Without her knowledge Cooper suddenly comes up behind her and jumps into her, caught off guard she stumbles down the steps and I quickly catch her but the momentum sends me back and we end up on the ground, her on top of me.
Awkward.
We have a moment of eye contact but then we both quickly scramble to our feet to find Coop in the doorway staring at us. If dogs could look smug then he definitely did. "Lets just go down to the docks, it'll be safer."
She locked Cooper in the house, smiling at what I said, "Sure thing."
Ella's PoV
In the distance I hear the familiar wine of a boat engine and I quickly get to my hiding spot only to hear the boat slowly fade away. That's odd, I thought but I soon hear the wine come back again and cut out altogether, probably just had a little look round the island.
I hear the squeek of the front door opening and footfalls kiss the floor above, I can also hear speaking though I can make out what anyone is saying so I quickly go over to the screens that connect to the cameras set around the house (night vision of course, it's strange what kind of things that you can find around the house). I can see the four of them in the room talking and see Tory subtly nodding to the camera and putting her thumbs up behind her back.
That's my cue.
I sneak out the back exit and go round to the front door, the windows have been boarded up so I'm not worried about anyone seeing me. I gently grab the handle and suddenly pull the door shut and quickly run back to my room. I heard no screams but a quick replay of the tapes shows a very startled Hi and Shelton jump away from the door with a slightly less scared Tory and Ben.
Come on guys, fake it up.
Shelton's PoV
Ghosts aren't real. Ghosts aren't real. Maybe if I keep saying this they'll go away, "We have been in the place less than five minutes and already weird things are happening!"
"It was probably just the wind, you don't believe in ghost anyways so there's nothing to be afraid of," she says with an uneasy grin, most probably slightly frightened herself.
"C'mon guys lets just continue looking arou-"
BANG.
We all jump that time, Tory looks more scared this time too and she looks a bit… confused too. Not surprised considering she doesn't believe in ghosts either and isn't taking her advice to believe it was just the wind.
"This way," Ben leads us down a. Arrow hallway, it's very dark and drab with bits of peeling wallpaper covering the walls and not much else. Our feet echo on the hard wood floors that our musty from years of neglect. The passage leads us to a T-section and we turn right and right again into a medium sized room, it's got one old leather couch in and nothin else other than candles on the floors. Hi spots some matches and quickly goes over to light them up. He leans down to ignite each of them but before he does his breath kills the frame from a sudden, "What the hell!?"