We Dance Among Our Shadows

REGINA

Regina Hartley woke with a start. She was slumped over many notebooks, sheets of paper, and a lot of felt-tips, all strewn over her desk. She blinked three times and yawned, holding onto her head with her hand. Slowly, she sat up, rubbing her cheek where the corner of a notebook had been digging in.

“What’s the time...” Regina mumbled quietly, her eyes raking over her flat. Moonlight and the orange light from the streetlamps poured in through the windows, casting her home in an odd light. Everything was grey. Her eyes landed on the digital clock perched on top of the fridge: 2.30 it screamed in bright red numbers. She blinked sleepily, then let her head fall into her waiting hands. Her head hurt.

“You fell asleep again,” Regina snapped at herself, “again! And just when you were getting somewhere.” She picked up her pen and poised it to write on one of her notepads again, but she couldn’t remember what she’d been about to write.

It all points towards what happened

What happened ... Well, that was a good question. Regina sighed heavily and dragged the now-cold cup of tea towards her. It was in her favourite mug. She stared at it; the tea was now dark brown, and there was a paler substance floating on the top. Milk, Regina supposed. With a smaller sigh, she stirred it with the end of her biro, before taking a hesitant sip. Ugh, she thought to herself. It tasted awful.

She wondered what had woken her. Pondering this, she doodled in the margins of her notepad. Hearts; flowers; squiggles; lyrics. Without realising, she began to draw a witch on a broomstick. When Regina looked down at the paper, she frowned and furiously scribbled the bad little drawing out; so hard she went right through the paper.

For someone who had dedicated the best part of her twenty-six years researching witches, witch-hunts, witch trials, and everything to do with that, Regina still couldn’t stop herself from being absolutely terrified of witches. Not the types that flew on broomsticks with big noses and stupid hats, the sort associated with Halloween; not the types from Harry Potter. No, she was scared of the stories she’d heard. She’d always been fascinated as a child. But there had always been something very sinister about the whole thing – something she’d never been able to get her head round.

Just then, the phone rang. Loud and shrill, it pierced the silence and made Regina pour tea down herself through shock. Dabbing at the stain that was spreading over her pink pyjamas, Regina set the cup down on the table and approached the phone, snatching it out of its cradle. “Hello?” she said.

“This is Regina Hartley, isn’t it?” the voice was flat, emotionless, and androgynous. Regina carried the phone back to her desk and sat, running a hand through her tangled brown hair before replying.

“Yes, this is me.”

“Ah. Good.” There was a moment of silence, then the voice said, “Do you write for the Daily Record, as a freelance writer, often writing articles on paranormal phenomena?”

“Yes. Look, can I ask who this is? It’s very late.”

They ignored her. “I’m giving you a tip-off. What you are about to hear could be very beneficial to you,” the person said. “I advise you to go to the town of Epityville. It’s in England. When you go there, begin to learn everything you can about the town and it’s past.”

“I already know all about its past,” Regina replied. “It’s the place of the Epityville Witches, isn’t it? The thirteen that were hung –”

“That is not all that’s happened there, Regina,” the voice said seriously. “And that is what you will find out.”

“Who is this?” Regina asked.

There was a small chuckle, and then, “that doesn’t matter. Maybe, one day, you’ll work it out. But for now, all I want you to do is go to Epityville. It will but everything to rest.”

“What do you mean?”

“The nightmares, Regina. The mystery. The reason why you can’t get away from your obsession with witches,” the voice said. “It’s answers.”

Regina was silent. How did this person know about the nightmares? The witches?

“Look, who is this?” Regina exclaimed. “How do you know about me?”

There was the chuckle again. “It doesn’t matter, Regina. All that matters ... is that you get down to Epityville. Soon.”

“I’m not taking orders from a mystery person who somehow knows about me,” Regina said firmly. “Goodnight.” She made to put the phone down, but the voice shouted from the phone. Very, very loud, and suddenly furious.

“You will go to Epityville. You will go.” And then, the line went dead. Regina put the phone down, and sat back in her chair. A normal person would have been perturbed by this phone call.

Regina wasn’t perturbed: she was fascinated, curious, and mostly desperate to learn the answers that the caller had promised with her trip to Epityville. With that in mind, Regina busied herself with tidying away her notebooks, papers, pens, and putting her cup of tea in the sink, before changing her pyjamas and climbing into bed.

The moment Regina closed her eyes, she gave herself up to the one thing she spent her life trying to escape from: the Nightmare. Tonight, of course, was no exception, and the Nightmare was probably encouraged by the phone call.

“I didn’t do anything! I promise, I didn’t do anything – no, no, please – no, I didn’t! I promise! It wasn’t me, It was someone else – NO!”

MELANIE

“D’you want to stop here? ... It has a great cafe.”

Melanie Price sighed heavily and dragged her eyes away from the view outside the car window. Her father was nodding towards the large supermarket, set away from the busy road. The car park was empty except for a few small cars, and, rather oddly, a goat tied up to a signpost that read: SUNDAY – CAR BOOT THIS WAY.

Her father turned into the supermarket carpark, coming to a jerky stop in one of the parking lots. They were driving a motor home – and it wasn’t a comfortable drive for Melanie, who was travelsick in normal cars, let alone huge motor homes driven by her father. Her father wasn’t such a good driver.

“Come on, Mel,” her father said softly. “It’s not forever. Just for a few weeks. Okay? Then we’re back home.”

Melanie sighed again and swung the door open, leaping out onto the carpark. She slammed the door shut behind her, and stuffed her hands in her pockets.

“And don’t forget, there’ll be a payphone in the village,” her father continued, walking around the motor home, “so you can ring your mother whenever you like.”

“I have a mobile,” Melanie reminded him as they set off towards the supermarket.

“Well, yes,” her father replied hesitantly, before swallowing and saying, “but, you won’t get a signal, Melanie.”

“I won’t?” Melanie stared at her father. “I promised Ann I’d text her! And Ben -”

“Ben? Who’s Ben?” her father said sharply.

“No one. But...” Melanie shook her head and, without saying anything more, pulled her jacket’s hood up.

“Melanie.” Her father gently touched her head, as if going to remove her hood, but Melanie jerked out of the way and walked a little faster.

Only a few moments later, they were sitting down opposite each other in a brightly lit café adjacent to the supermarket. Her father was enthusiastically reading a menu, exclaiming over each dish; Melanie had her own menu in her hand, but she wasn’t paying any attention to it.

This was her idea of hell. Her father was a writer. He wrote novels for a living. She didn’t mind this – in fact, she quite enjoyed reading them when they were finished – it was just the research part that Melanie couldn’t stand. Whenever her father began a new book, he always wanted to travel somewhere that was connected to the story. Usually, he took her to her mother’s, on her own request, while he went everywhere. This time, her mother had gone away herself for the week, which forced Melanie to join her father on another one of his trips. She had to stay in a tiny caravan for a week, in a tiny village, with no signal on her mobile phone, and a payphone in the village her only contact with her friends and family. And she wasn’t even sure she could remember her mother’s number now.

Melanie looked up, as there was a loud burst of laughter and six men walked into the cafe. Their faces seemed familiar to Melanie, but she couldn’t think of where she’d seen them. She looked over to a woman who was sat on her own. The woman was reading some sheets of paper, a half-eaten chocolate brownie on the plate in front of her, and she looked slightly startled by the men’s appearance – then, when she took in what they looked like, she looked slightly nervous and took a big bite of her brownie. Melanie looked at her menu with a small sigh.

“What’ll it be, Mel?”

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

Frank Iero wriggled around, trying to get comfy as he considered sleeping on the sofa, rather than his bunk. Around him, his band mates were laughing and talking. He, for once, was silent. He was sleepy.

“When are we stopping?” He found himself saying after a few moments. “I’m tired. These roads are bendy. I might fall off the sofa.”

He felt people’s eyes on him.

“Don’t go to sleep then,” Gerard told him, and he felt a cushion hit his head. He threw the cushion back.

“We’re going to stop at the next service station,” the driver, a man named Gavin, called. “We’re going to pass through one more village, which is about five minutes away, then we’ll be stopping. ’Kay?”

No one replied.

Frank sat up, rubbing his eyes, and looked out of one of the windows. All he could see were hedgerows, flying past.

“I’m bored,” he complained.

“You always are,” Bob told him.

“I’m not always,” Frank objected.

“You said you were bored the second after we set off from the cafe,” Mikey added.

“That cafe,” Frank announced, “was fun. But I think we scared the people in there.”

“That guy didn’t seem to bothered,” Ray said.

“No, but the girl he was sat with did. Actually...” Frank ran a hand through his hair. “She looked upset. She’d been crying. I could tell.”

“I think we terrified that other woman,” Gerard commented. “With the brownie. I think she recognised us, y’know.”

“She looked at us like we were zombies.” Frank made an ‘oooo’ noise and pulled a stupid face as if pretending to be a zombie.

“Well, y’know, I think I’ve woken up, seen your face Frank, and thought the same thing,” Mikey muttered. Frank threw a pillow at his head. Then he yelled.

“I see the sign for the village!”

And he had.

EPITYVILLE.
Kill your speed, not a child.

“Whoo!” Frank cried. “We can stop soon!”

“Epityville?” Gerard frowned. “Sounds like something out of a fucking horror movie.”

“It’s a lovely village,” Gavin called. “Really small, though. We won’t be stopping, though. No point.”

“Does this mean we’re stopping soon?” Frank asked eagerly. “Oh, thank God. I’m starting to feel sick.”

“That’s probably because you ate too much,” Gerard grumbled. “Which, you did. I’m surprised you weren’t sick there.”

“I won’t be sick,” Frank assured his friend. “I never am.”

“Except for that time in London,” Mikey chipped in. “When you drank a lot of coke.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

“That’s what you said when Gerard tried to kill you for throwing up on his bunk,” Ray said with a roll of his eyes.

“Do you guys know anything about Epityville?” Gavin called. Gerard replied with a no. “It’s got a lot of history,” the driver continued. “Lots of legends – it’s a bit creepy, actually.”

“Vampires?” Frank asked.

“Not quite. No – devil worship, witch hunting, that sort of stuff. One of the most famous witch trials in the whole of England. The whole place seems pretty proud of it, for some reason.”

“And I said it sounded like a horror movie,” Gerard snorted. They were in the centre of the village now, driving past a row of neat stone cottages and past a village green. It didn’t look like something out of a horror movie, Frank thought. There was no one about – maybe that was because it was quite late, really. He had noticed, however, that a lot of the little villages they’d passed through had been empty. Frank found himself shivering – and just then, the bus came to a shuddering halt; there was an unhealthy sounding pop, and then a horrible smell filled Frank’s nostrils.

The bus had broken down.