Chapter Nine

Bella

I hardly had time to scramble into my PJ's or rather my old sweats I had used to sleep in before I started staying over at Jasper's, before Toni and Gemma arrived with armfuls of sodas and munchies. They were followed about ten minutes later by Sally and by the huge pile of take out bags in her arms I could see why she was last.

"I wasn't sure what everyone liked so I just grabbed some of everything. Whatever we don't eat tonight we can heat up for breakfast."

It was one of those things you found yourself doing as a student, reheating take out and I'd acquired a taste for Chinese for breakfast! I wondered what Jasper would think if he could see me first thing in the morning here tucking into reheated noodles and sweet and sour chicken!

We sat together chatting about the upcoming summer vacation. Gemma was off to Europe with her family while Toni was working at her dads dry goods store. Sally had a working vacation too with a newspaper reporter friend of hers, Clarissa was just going to spend the holiday with her dad at her aunt and uncles place on Martha's Vineyard but they were all interested in my trip to Yellowstone.

"Your mum and step dad sound really cool, a camping vacation in the wilds of the park. Are you any good with snakes and grizzlies?"

"Nope but Phil is a good shot and my mum killed a rattler a few years ago when we went camping in the Olympic range."

"Well my mum would have screamed and found a rock to stand on! She's not really the outdoors type but put her in a department store sale and she becomes utterly ruthless."

We all laughed at the idea of Toni's mum cutting a swathe through feral sale shoppers.

After we cleared away Clarissa explained the entertainment for the evening.

"We'll watch a movie first just to get us in the right mood then take it in turns to tell scary stories. Did you all bring one along?"

"Yes but what happens if two of us come up with the same urban legend Clarri?"

My room mate winced at Toni's use of her detested nickname but carried on,

"We'll draw straws to see who goes first each time and if your legend gets used then its up to you to come up with something else or buy the coffees for the next week."

Gemma won the first round and proceeded to tell us her story.

"I heard this a couple of years ago and its one of the reasons I didn't go to college in Atlanta. There was a creepy psycho prowling campus with a hatchet. He stalked and killed one girl and everyone was told to only go out in pairs and use brightly lit routes through the campus after dark. The police had been looking but there was no sign of him after the murder although at least three girls swore they'd been followed by a guy carrying something that looked like a hatchet.

Anyway, two girls who were stuck on campus over thanksgiving got bored with being stuck indoors night after night and decided to go to a local bar for dinner one evening. They got to talking and one was being chatted up by the bar tender. By the time they realized the time it was almost midnight and one girl wanted to go home but the other was having just too much fun so she left alone.

As she walked through the campus she thought she heard footsteps behind her and panicked going faster and faster until she was running. When she turned round she thought she saw a dark clad figure carrying something chasing her. By the time she reached her building she was in tears and rushed to her room fumbling to get the key in the lock expecting to feel the hatchet in her back at any moment. She got inside and slammed the door shut locking it and even then it took her a good ten minutes before she felt safe enough to move and went to get washed up. As she went to bed she thought about her friend and rang the bar to warn her to grab a taxi and not walk home but she wasn't sure the bar tender understood her over the loud music.

Eventually she fell asleep and when she woke in the morning she discovered her friend hadn't arrived home. She opened the door to the corridor carefully and the smell of blood hit her. Her friends headless corpse was laying by the door the fingernails broken from scratching at the door for help. Seeing a shadow falling over the body she looked up and saw a hatchet buried in the window sill opposite. So had he followed her and having missed her gone back for her friend? If she'd been awake to hear her friend scrabbling at the door would she still be alive? No female students went out alone after dark for a year after that."

After watching Urban Legend that fit just right we moved closer together as the straws were drawn again. This time Toni got the shortest one and told us her tale.

"I actually knew the girl involved in this tale or at least I knew her friend so I got it second hand. She was getting ready for a date with a really hot guy from college when reports came through of a mad man escaping from the nearby lunatic asylum. He was called The Hook because he'd lost one hand and wore a hook in its place and he was very dangerous. Anyway she and her boyfriend went to a drive in movie and then he parked up in the local lovers lane and they were getting it on to the radio music when it was interrupted by a news flash.

The lunatic had been spotted in the area and everyone should be vigilant. She wanted to leave but her boyfriend just shrugged it off. Anyway eventually she persuaded him it was too dangerous there and it had put her off sex then there was a bang on the car so he grabbed his keys and started the car driving off as fast as he could.

He took her straight home, annoyed she had stopped before they got past first base and didn't even get out of the car to open her door. When she got out she turned round and slammed the door, pretty pissed off with him and that's when she screamed. He leaped out of the car and ran to her shouting "What is it?" then he saw it. There was a bloody hook hanging from the passenger door handle!"

We opened the bottle of wine at this point and Clarissa lit all the candles making the place look really eerie then it was her turn to tell a story.

"One dark, windy night…"

We all groaned but she just stuck her tongue out and continued,

"The town drunk was making his way home after the bar closed. Somehow he got turned around and ended up walking through the churchyard instead of taking the road home.

The wind picked up and he thought he could hear a voice calling his name. Suddenly, the ground opened up in front of him, and he fell down…... into an open grave! He could hear the voice clearer now, calling to him. He knew it was the devil, coming for him just like the preacher said, on account of him being the town drunk.

The hole was very deep and inside it was pitch black. His eyes took a while to adjust and then he saw someone sitting in the dark with him. It called his name, and he scrambled away in fear, trying to climb out of that terrible grave. Then the figure spoke. "You can't get out," it said.

The drunk gave a shout of pure terror and jumped straight up more than six feet. He caught the edge of the hole in his hands, scrambled out, and ran for home as fast as he could go.

Inside the open grave, his neighbour Charlie sighed in resignation. He'd fallen into the hole a few minutes before his friend and had thought that together they might help each other climb out. Now he was going to have to wait until morning and get the mortician to bring him a ladder.

There were groans at the end too but she just shrugged,

"Well so far no no one has chosen the same story so who's next?"