The True Horror Began On Friday 13th

“Ren, don’t be stupid, you said it yourself it’s almost two am! Don’t be stupid!” Ricky protested as I pulled on an old chequered shirt and my jeans, “Listen, please don’t go down stairs or outside on you own, please!” he yelled as I stormed down stairs, my matted, almost greasy hair streaming out behind me like angry snakes. Mum was always sighing about how I should get it cut.

I fell down the last few steps, my ankle twisting, making me hiss. Ricky tumbled down after, practically falling on me as I crammed my feet into my battered lace ups.

“Listen, I’m sorry. Please-,” he said, suddenly stopping and staring at the table. He bent over me and snatched up a new white card on the table, “Shit, fuck,” he hissed, both of us staring at it, “It’s drenched,” he muttered, wiping the smudged writing, “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round,” he read.

“David Lodge, I remember writing that one and slipping it past you. Quite cunning really,” I muttered sarcastically, slipping out beneath his arm and heading towards the front door, my mission set, "If that doesn't goddamn prove he's alive then I don't know what does!"

I swore violently under my breath when the phone began to ring. I saw Ricky glance towards it and try to run at it. I managed to beat him to it, picking the hands free up before he could.

“Hello?” I asked.

A crackling, hollow answer replied, un audible and creepy.

“Gerard? I know it’s you, I can know it is!” I practically whined, curling my toes in my shoes, “Where are you calling from? Please, I need to see you,” I murmured, not liking the fact that Ricky was trying to his hardest to listen in. The dialling tone suddenly sounded and I swore, “Shit!” I spat, “He hung up on me!”

“Give me the phone,” Ricky ordered, prying it out of my hand and snatching my arm to read the faded numbers from my arm.

“Ricky! Leave go!” I demanded, wriggling my fingers to try and un clamp my arm from his, “Don’t ring Mikey-“

“Hello? Is this Michael Way, this is Ricky Fuck-knows-who and I’m calling from fuck-knows-where. Either way you better get your freaky fucking brother into a fucking asylum before I go over there and kick your scrawny mother-fucking ass into the next fucking century!” he roared.

I heard Mikey protest on the other end of the line, yelling back something equally as bad.

“I don’t give a fuck if this isn’t Michael –w-wait who are you then?” Ricky asked turning white, “Fuck, sorry man. Wrong number,” he muttered, slamming the phone down and turning maroon, “Well that turned out fucking splendid!”

“Well it was your own goddamn fault!” I spat, wrenching my arm away and jarring it on the wall. I whimpered under my breath and tears welled up painfully in my eyes, my arm feeling like some one was twisting it round and round in a brass vice.

“Oh god you’re stupid,” Ricky muttered, “Too be honest with you. I don’t wanna know what’s going on in your head but what I do know is this. You’re stupid,” he said wisely as I rubbed my arm dementedly, trying to snap myself out of a trance of anger, pain and the feeling to laugh.

I pushed my cheek against the cold window pain to try and calm myself, slowing my movements down to massaging my elbow slowly. I stared blankly up my drive into the night. The lamppost shadowed the brick house opposite us, letting the shadow loom menacingly onto the gravel of our drive.

I sighed and wished Gerard was here now, I couldn’t stand the thought of him laying at the bottom of the lake, fish flitting around him like he was a pebble. His eyes would be open and staring, his face wrinkled and white like time had taken a fall on him. He’d spend day in and day out just lying there, occasionally getting knocked about by passing debris.

“Stop thinking about him,” Ricky ordered, “Where’s it gonna get you? You’re driving me crazy, just looking at you is making me want to tip my goddamn hair out,” he said, sitting down.

I zoned out as he began to rant and my eyes fell mesmerised out into the street.
He was back, a blur of black standing by the lamppost.

A car suddenly zoomed by, making me blink from the sudden movement.

And he was gone.

“D-did you just see that?” I asked Ricky, stopping him in mid sentence.

“See what?”