I Dare You

by Jeff Ross

  “If anything like that happens, you do something,” Mom said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like that one boy tried to do in the video.”

  “That dump truck in a tank top? He stepped in and wasn’t able to do anything. No, sorry, if a fight breaks out, I’m going to go ahead and leave those people alone.”

  “What if one of the boys doesn’t want to be in a fight?” Mom asked.

  Dad snorted.

  She glared at him. “What?”

  “What do you think it is, hon, a fight club? These guys get angry at one another for some reason. Likely a girl. And they hit one another. It’s been happening since caveman time, and I doubt it’s going to change now.”

  “But what if the boy is being bullied?” Mom said.

  And I hadn’t even said it, but the words started swirling. “Beingbullied, beingbullied, beingbullied.”

  Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom.

  “Well,” Mom said over top of me, “I think it’s stupid and pointless.”

  “Exactly!” Dad said. “As it was, it shall always be.”

  Jordan’s BMW was parked a few doors down from my house when I returned from school the next day. I walked up, opened the door and slid in.

  “That video was awesome,” he said. He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, as though he was undercover. “It was on the news. Did you see it?”

  “Yeah, my mom showed it to me last night.”

  “You didn’t say you had anything to do with it, did you?”

  “Hells no,” I said. A woman walking her dog passed us. My mind said, Dogs bark. They go wuff, wuff, wuff. You should go wuff, wuff, wuff at the dog. I pushed the necessity down and nodded my head a bunch.

  “I got another one,” Jordan said.

  “Another what?”

  “Video idea.”

  “What was that last one all about?”

  “What do you mean?” Jordan kept looking at his face in the rearview mirror, then picking at something beside his nose.

  “Why get into a fight outside that school?”

  “Oh, some dirtbag from there stole Row’s girl.”

  I’ve always hated that phrase. Stole his girl. Like she was a possession that could be taken away. My guess was this girl decided not to date Rowan, or she had dated him and didn’t want to anymore. Either way, it was her choice.

  “Ah, okay,” I said. “So what did that fake fight do?”

  “The girl’s parents are super protective. I guess he figured they’d see it and she wouldn’t be allowed out anymore.”

  “Posting to that moms’ board makes way more sense now. Did it work?”

  “Fuck if I know. Who cares?”

  I shrugged. I guessed it didn’t matter. “So what’s the next idea?”

  Jordan took his glasses off and looked straight at me. He looked like the kid I used to hang out with all the time. His eyes were bright, and his lips curled just so.

  “Okay, here’s what I want to do. We get something circulating about—like, this girl. Like, a ghostly girl coming out of the forest.”

  I gave him a look. My mind said, Woof, woof, woof.

  “Would anyone fall for that?”

  “For sure. People are stupid, man.”

  “That’s true. Where are we going to get a little girl?” I paused as the woofing built inside my head. Then I laughed/barked. “That sounds bad.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, like, a dude then. A hitchhiker coming out of the woods. That’s creepy in a different way.”

  I was already thinking of places where we could film. Angles that would make things more creepy. Lighting. Something to make it all seem eerie yet real.

  “Will we eventually say it was us?” I asked. For some reason this mattered to me. I wanted to get credit for this if it worked. It could be my calling card for a social media or film job.

  “Eventually, yeah. Sure. To show people they shouldn’t be so stupid and believe everything that shows up on social media.”

  “Do you think we’d get in trouble?”

  Jordan gave me a look that triggered something inside me that wanted to tic out. The woof, woof, woof was burning the back of my throat. I needed to do it—I needed to bark.

  “From who?”

  “Police?” I squeaked.

  “No,” he said. “Not a chance. What could happen that would get us in trouble? It’ll just be a video. Are you in?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to push the tic away. But it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’m in,” I said, then opened the door and jumped out. “Talk soon.”

  The second Jordan pulled away from the curb, I started barking. I tried to muffle it, but that made my head twitch and my hands shake. So I let it go. I was full-out barking in the street. The dog was gone. Everyone was gone. I was barking at an empty street. Before the black BMW had turned the corner at the end of my block, it was over, and I felt much better. I felt absolutely fine.

  Chapter Four

  After final class the following day, Jordan, Rowan and I went to the art room. Mrs. Cain was there, but she was always happy to believe students were taking an interest in her class. She was also super suspicious of anyone at school after hours. Jordan and I were both in her art class, but she had no idea who Rowan was.

  “He’s here to help fit the sheets together for my project,” Jordan said before he could be asked.

  “The plywood?”

  “Yeah. I want to test that the thing is going to hold before I go any further.”

  “Okay,” she said, though she still sounded super suspicious. “Be careful, don’t destroy the place, and tidy up when you’re done.”

  “For sure,” Jordan said. Before she was even out the door, he’d started pulling the sheets of plywood from behind a cabinet.

  “What is that even?” I asked.

  “I’m going to throw some paint on it and call it art,” Jordan said. “I really just wanted to make the biggest thing I could.” The supply cabinets were massive and filled with materials. Some of it was pure junk. And most of the kids loved digging around in it. Taking found things and calling it art was huge for anyone who couldn’t draw. But we weren’t there for the junk. We were there for the fabrics.

  When Jordan had come up with his idea, I’d remembered seeing this long cape-like thing in the supply cupboard. At first I’d thought it was a Halloween costume, but when I’d gotten a closer look, I’d recognized it for what it was—a huge sheet with a hole in it. With a couple of safety pins to make it tighter, I imagined it would look really creepy.

  “What is it we’re doing here?” Rowan asked.

  “I told you, Row,” Jordan said.

  Rowan was combing through the materials, knocking stuff onto the floor and not bothering to put any of it back. “Tell me again.”

  “We’re going to do a kind of Slender Man or Momo thing. This figure is going to come out of the woods, and we’ll film it. When it goes up online, it’ll go viral.”

  “Viral,” Rowan said. “Why would you even care?”

  “It’ll be everywhere,” I said.

  “Online,” Rowan said.

  “Yes, online, Row.” Jordan stopped what he was doing and looked at his friend. “You really don’t do anything online, do you?”

  “Never seen the use. Seems like a waste of time.”

  “Well, this is going to freak people out. We’ll put a story around it as well.”

  “Sounds dumb,” Rowan said. “And exactly why I don’t spend my time on there. If idiots like you two can get a whole bunch of people freaked out about nothing, what’s the point?”

  “It’s funny,” Jordan said. “Anyway, you don’t have to make the outfit or anything.”

  “So why am I here?”

  “You’re the one coming out of the woods.”

  “No fucking way,” Rowan said.

  “We already talked about this, Row. You’ll just stumble out onto the road, then go back i
nto the woods. That’s it. I’ll be driving along the road, and Rainey’ll film it.”

  “Why would I want to do this?”

  “It’ll be hilarious,” Jordan said. He’d found a fake ax and was swinging it at Rowan’s legs, pretending to chop him down.

  “It’s fucking dumb.”

  “Come on, man. I dare you.”

  “Yeah, I dare you,” I said.

  “Ohhh, the two of you dare me. Well, I guess I have to do it or I’ll look like a wimp then.”

  “There you go,” Jordan said, shaking his head in what I guessed was disgust as soon as Rowan had turned his back. “That could be part of the video too. Like, we tell people we dare them to try and find the thing, whatever we call it.”

  “A figure coming out of the woods and a challenge,” I said. My mind was exploding with the potential.

  “This is going to be insane.”

  “Here it is,” I said, grabbing the long sheet. Even with me holding it at arm’s length above my head, it touched the floor. It was thin enough that it would waver in a breeze, but not so thin that you’d be able to see Rowan’s form beneath it. The hole in the top wasn’t quite big enough for Rowan’s head, so I carefully made it larger. The problem that immediately emerged was Rowan now looked like a blob. Blobs aren’t frightening. We got him to move, and he continued to look like a blob with a head.

  “Here,” Jordan said, thrusting a couple of Halloween brooms at Rowan. “Hold on to these.” The brooms gave his body a bit of definition. They looked like arms, at least a little, and because of their length, his body seemed really long. I grabbed some safety pins and fit them around his arms. If I left it alone he’d just look like a big ghost. But with the safety pins I was able to pull the material closer to his body and keep it there. Now he was beginning to look like a thing. When he moved, the fabric kind of fluttered around him. It was long enough that it fell just above his ankles. His movements seemed more like he was floating than walking.

  “This is good,” I said. “But we need to do something about his head.”

  “I should do something about your head,” Rowan said. But he wasn’t serious. He was in front of the full-length mirror, checking himself out.

  “Either bigger or make it disappear,” Jordan said.

  “Like a pumpkin, or just bring the material up higher?” I asked.

  Jordan was rummaging through a cupboard. “Not a pumpkin. But also not like Slender Man. No hat or anything.” He pulled out a tall foam triangle. It was bendable. I wondered what the hell it was supposed to be and who’d made it.

  “Try this,” he said.

  “Where?” Rowan replied.

  “On your head.”

  “I won’t be able to fucking see.”

  “We’ll cut holes if we need to. Let’s just see if it works.”

  Rowan reluctantly put the triangle on his head. I pulled the material up about halfway and secured it with safety pins. This left his calves exposed. I got on a stool and grabbed the top of the triangle and bent it back slightly. Not a lot, just enough to give the whole thing a shape that looked like it could be human but not quite.

  “That’s it,” Jordan said. He ran and closed the classroom door. “Walk across the room and back.” The blinds were shut on the windows, leaving only the sputtering fluorescent bulbs for light.

  “Shut those lights off,” I said.

  Jordan turned the lights off, and we were thrown into darkness. I switched on two lights Mrs. Cain kept in the corner, the kind you’d see onstage at a concert. I pointed them both at the ceiling and then turned on a large fan. The lights flickered as they warmed, and as Rowan walked, the breeze from the fan caught the fabric and made it ripple. I couldn’t think of a better look. It was creepy as hell. He looked humanlike—this wasn’t some kind of bear or Sasquatch thing—but at the same time he didn’t look human at all.

  Rowan raised the brooms and made a moaning sound.

  “No, none of that,” Jordan said. “That just looks creepy.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re going for?”

  “Yeah, but it looks like someone trying to look creepy. Just move. Shift the brooms a little as you go. But not much. And go slowly. So it kind of seems like your feet are moving but maybe not.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “It all has to look right but not quite right.”

  “What is this, Hamlet?” Rowan said. But he walked. And it was perfect. I knew what was going on—I mean, I’d helped create it. But as he came across the room, I was totally freaked out. It didn’t seem normal.

  Which was exactly what we were looking for.

  “Okay, get it off,” Jordan said as he flicked the lights back on. He moved to the step to remove the triangle. “Before someone comes in.” He looked at me. His eyes were shining. “This is going to be awesome.”

  And I had to agree.

  Chapter Five

  We decided to film that night. I borrowed the lights from the art room, and Jordan bought a camera from a different Best Buy. I got to the woods first and looked for spots to set up the lights. My Social Sciences book fell out of the back seat of my mom’s car when I pulled out a light. I’d told my parents I was going to study, and they had believed me, and I felt awful about that. I didn’t want to lie to them, but I couldn’t tell them I was going to the woods to film a video. First of all, they wouldn’t have let me. And secondly, they would have known then about our idea.

  No one could know. That was the point.

  I’d brought battery packs for the lights. They had maybe half an hour of power in them. I moved the lights around in the woods, seeing what they looked like from the road. There needed to be a bit of light, so we could actually see Rowan coming onto the road, but not so much that the scene looked lit. It was a delicate balance.

  Even though I was busy setting up lights and knew there was nothing freaky about the woods, I did get a little scared. Every so often I’d hear a noise—the snapping of a twig or an owl hooting—and I’d get a shiver up my back.

  In the time I’d been here, only one other vehicle had gone by. I was pretty relieved when Jordan and Rowan pulled up.

  “Won’t that look fake?” Rowan asked as he swung out of the car.

  “We need a glow so the camera can see you,” I said. I brought Rowan and Jordan to the other side of the road and held up my phone with the camera on. “See, it looks like something is going on in there, but what exactly it is, you can’t really tell.” They both looked at my phone and then back at the woods.

  “That’s weird.” Jordan handed me the camera.

  “I don’t think I want to use that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will be too clear a picture.” I pulled another phone from my pocket. “This one will be way better.”

  “That old piece of shit?” Rowan said.

  It was an iPhone 6. The camera on those was good for the time, but not great in dim light.

  “It’ll be perfect if we film from the car.”

  “What?” Jordan said.

  “Well, we can’t just happen to be out here walking on the road and then spot this thing coming out of the woods. My idea is that Rowan gets in the woods, he walks toward the road, and I film from inside the car. You can say, ‘Seriously, what the hell is that?’ or something, and that’s what the video starts with. Then we swerve so the headlights aren’t on him, and he’ll stop and turn back into the woods. If we keep our distance, say”—I walked back a little and turned again—“here, there will never be a clear shot of him. I can keep it out of frame a bit as well.”

  Jordan was nodding to this. “Yeah, I can see that working, yeah.”

  A bit of lightning flashed in the distance, and then we heard a low rumble. That would add to the atmosphere. But I wasn’t sure I wanted it any closer. “Get in your shit.”

  “I still don’t get why you two want to do this,” Rowan said.

  “People are idiots,” Jordan said.

  “Okay.
And?”

  “I want—we want to expose that. Like, these idiots will believe anything they see online. I’m thinking of using this as my senior paper.”

  “A senior paper on how you duped people online?” Rowan said.

  “Yeah. I want to get into advertising. It would be perfect.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Rowan asked me.

  And for some reason, that set off a bunch of tics. I whistled and shook my head a couple of times before I could answer. Rowan stared at me the way people do when I tic out and they’re not used to it. Like he was freaked out by it but at the same time pretending it wasn’t happening.

  “I want to get into film and public relations,” I said. “It’s all practice.”

  “And what am I getting out of this?”

  “You’re the star,” Jordan said, giving Rowan a pat on the back and leading him toward his car. “Now let’s get you suited up.”

  “Before the rain comes.”

  “We only have about twenty minutes before the batteries die on the lights,” I said. “Maybe two takes.”

  “We’ll nail this in one,” Jordan said as he opened his trunk. We got Rowan dressed quickly. I’d parked my mom’s car in a lane, and Jordan had pulled over in a little picnic spot. But we wouldn’t even have needed to bother. Not a single car passed as we got Rowan ready.

  I took Rowan to a starting place, and he put an earbud in one ear. I tilted the triangle as a breeze pushed through the leaves. I will tell you this—it was creepy as hell.

  “What?” Rowan said.

  “That’s so creepy,” I said.

  “That’s what you wanted, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I brought my phone out. “Answer this,” I said as I called him.

  “Got it,” he said, his voice coming through the phone and right in front of me at once.

  “Dude, this is so creepy,” I said.

  “Just hurry up. Before someone drives by.”