Page 98 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

A silver-tinted darkness had taken over the woods, enclosing on all sides the small bright marquee that glowed like a lantern amongst the sleeping trees. They had two battery-powered yellow lamps on inside and three torches between them.

Lucky they had moved to sit inside the marquee, Pip noted then, as it had just started to rain, quite heavily, although the tree cover protected their patch from most of it. They were sitting in a circle around the snacks and drinks, the two ends of the marquee rolled up to alleviate the boy smell.

Pip had even allowed herself to get to the bottom of one beer, sitting with her navy star-crossed sleeping bag rolled up to her waist. Although she was much more interested in the crisps and sour cream dip. She didn’t much like drinking, didn’t like feeling that loss of control.

Ant was halfway through his ghost story, the torch under his chin making his face distorted and grotesque. It just happened to be a story about six friends, three boys and three girls, who were camping in a marquee in the woods.

‘And the birthday girl,’ he said theatrically, ‘is finishing off a whole packet of strawberry laces, the red sweets sticking to her chin like trails of blood.’

‘Shut up,’ Cara said, mouth full.

‘She tells the handsome guy with the torch to shut up. And that’s when they hear it: a scraping sound against the side of the marquee. There’s something or someone outside. Slowly fingernails start dragging through the canvas, ripping a hole. “You guys having a party?” a girl’s voice asks. And then she tears through the hole and, with one swipe of her hand, slits the throat of the guy in the check shirt. “Missed me?” she shrieks, and the surviving friends can finally see who it is: the rotting zombie corpse of Andie Bell, out for revenge –’

‘Shut up, Ant.’ Pip shoved him. ‘That isn’t funny.’

‘Why’s everyone laughing then?’

‘Because you’re all sick. A murdered girl isn’t fair game for your crappy jokes.’

‘But she’s fair game for a school project?’ Zach interjected.

‘That’s entirely different.’

‘I was just about to get to the part about Andie’s secret older lover slash killer,’ Ant said.

Pip winced and shot him a blistering look.

‘Lauren told me,’ he said quietly.

‘Cara told me,’ Lauren jumped in, slurring the edges of her words.

‘Cara?’ Pip turned to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, tripping over the words because she was the wrong side of eight measures of gin. ‘I didn’t know it was supposed to be secret. I only told Naomi and Lauren. And I told them not to tell anyone.’ She swayed, pointing accusatorily at Lauren.

It was true; Pip hadn’t specifically told her to keep it secret. She thought she didn’t have to. Not a mistake she would make again.

‘My project isn’t to provide you with gossip.’ She tried to flatten out her voice when it spiked with annoyance, looking from Cara to Lauren to Ant.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ant said. ‘Like, half of our year knows you’re doing a project about Andie Bell. And why are we talking about homework on our last Friday night of freedom? Zach, bring out the board.’

‘What board?’ Cara asked.

‘I bought a Ouija board. Cool, huh?’ Zach said, dragging his rucksack over. He pulled out a tacky plastic-looking board adorned with the alphabet and a planchette with a little plastic window you could see the letters through. He laid them out in the middle of the circle.

‘Nope,’ Lauren said, crossing her arms. ‘No way. That’s way over the scary boundary. Stories are fine, but no board.’

Pip lost interest in the boys trying to convince Lauren so they could play whatever prank it was they had planned. Probably about Andie Bell again. She reached over the Ouija board to grab another bag of crisps and that’s when she saw it.

A white light flash from within the trees.

She sat up on her heels and squinted. It happened again. In the distant dark a small rectangular light turned into view and then disappeared. Like the glow of a phone screen extinguished by the lock button.

She waited but the light didn’t come back. There was only darkness out there. The sound of rain in the air. The silhouettes of sleeping trees against the gloom of the moon.

Until one of the dark tree figures shifted on two legs.

‘Guys,’ she said quietly. A small kick to Ant’s shin to shut him up. ‘No one look now, but I think there’s someone in the trees. Watching us.’