The October Boys

by Adam Millard

  “But we didn’t do anything wrong!” Luke said, a little more indignantly than he’d anticipated.

  “You almost got yourselves killed,” his father said, wafting smoke away from his face with an open hand. Any moment now, Luke thought, his mother would erupt with a ‘For Christ’s sake, Jack, it’s just a cigarette!’, but for now she remained stolid.

  “We were Trick or Treating, Dad!” Luke said. “It’s not like we were looking for trouble.”

  “No,” said his mother. “But trouble always seems to find you, for some reason.” She was shaking, such was her anger. Luke had never noticed before, but his mother had several witchy qualities—pinched nose, wrinkles around her mouth, unkempt hair—that belied her real age. She was thirty going on fifty.

  Luke had had enough for one night. He could take no more chastisement, especially since he and his friends were innocent. “Can I go to bed now?” It was almost midnight, and Luke was pretty certain his parents would expect him to go to school the following day, despite what had happened tonight. After all, it wasn’t him currently lying in the back of an ice cream truck while some lunatic went at him with a chainsaw…

  “Go on up,” said his father. “And no TV. If I hear that damn Teenage Turtles Mutant whateveryoucallit theme tune, I’m taking the thing from your room, along with your VCR.”

  Luke didn’t warrant the threat with a response. He had no intentions of watching TV tonight. He was too tired, too confused, and all he wanted to do was sleep and hope that things would be better come morning.

  They might find Ryan, he thought. They might find him alive and well, and he would be at school tomorrow, just like his friends, and they would all have a jolly good laugh about it.

  Somehow, even as the optimistic thought developed, he knew he was wrong. There would be no lunchtime laughter at school the next day, no banter amongst friends, no jokes about how Ryan had run like a sack of potatoes, because Ryan was dead.

  Ryan was dead and he knew it, just like he knew the fucker behind the wheel of that ice cream truck was pure evil, just like he knew that Tom and Marcus knew it, too.

  Making a point of not bidding his parents goodnight, Luke made his way upstairs and into his room.

  Just a moment ago he had been tired, but not anymore. Perhaps he was just tired of being treated like a little kid, an eight-year-old instead of the almost-teen he now was. He couldn’t wait to be sixteen so that he could get the hell out of his parents’ house. He would get a job down at the sorting-office, just like his uncle Ted; the pay wasn’t great, and it would be even less for him as a school-leaver-cum-apprentice, but Luke didn’t care. All he needed was four walls and a place to rest his head at night. There were bedsits out there; he could rent one of those, come and go as he pleased. At least in a bedsit he wouldn’t have to listen to the constant bickering between his parents, the unremitting back and forth which sometimes culminated in one of them—usually his father—disappearing for a few days. And then, as if nothing had happened, his father would return and things would go on as normal.

  Until the next time.

  Luke couldn’t understand why his parents stayed together. If they were so unhappy, why persevere? He was pretty sure it wasn’t for his benefit; he would have been just as miserable if they divorced. At least if they separated, he would get twice as many birthday presents, twice as many Commodore games at Christmas.

  Speaking of which, his father had made it perfectly clear that there was to be no television tonight. Strictly speaking, his Commodore 64 was not TV, and he wasn’t quite ready for bed now that the opportunity presented itself.

  He seated himself at his desk and powered up the computer. The monitor screen turned green, casting an alien glow into his bedroom. He pushed the Ghosts and Goblins floppy disk into the drive and typed LOAD “$” ,8. Then he typed LIST, which loaded the contents of the disk. He located the file he needed, then typed the command to load it.

  Computers were amazing to Luke. So sophisticated. He could imagine what the computers of the future would be like, how quickly they would load games, how fantastic the graphics would be. He envisioned a computer that could be controlled by the mind; a cable inserted into a port somewhere at the rear of one’s head would make gaming much more fun. There would be no more sore hands from manipulating the stubborn joystick, and if the cable was long enough, it would reach all the way across his room to where he slept. He could play without even getting out of bed.

  “Come on,” Luke whispered, urging the game to load. It was hit and miss; sometimes the commands would work and the game would be up and running in no time, other times there would be an error and the whole thing would freeze up.

  Luke hoped this was not one of those freeze times.

  There appeared on the green screen, the word ‘ERROR’, and Luke deflated somewhat. Computers of the future wouldn’t be this recalcitrant; there would be no errors or malfunctions. Whenever you wanted a computer of the future do something, it would damn well do it, and in super quick time.

  Luke was about to remove the floppy disk and try another—Invaders, perhaps—when another word appeared on-screen.

  WINDOW

  “Window?” Luke said, frowning. What the hell did that even mean? Window to what? A window of opportunity? What?

  He hit the DEL key, hoping to expunge the word, but it remained. After trying three more times, growing more impatient and confused with each attempt, Luke realised that the only way to fix this obvious error was to reboot, to switch the computer off and start from scratch. He reached for the switch on the side of the keyboard, and that was the moment a second, more ominous message, appeared.

  GO NOW

  And then:

  WINDOW

  Realising these weren’t standard computer commands, Luke stood, glancing down at the green screen with a strange feeling of dread.

  Something weird was happening. His computer, for whatever reason, wanted him to go to his window.

  GO NOW

  Across the room, his bedroom window waited beyond its curtains. Luke’s heart was beating so rapidly he could hear it, or at least the quick hush-thump of blood in his ears. Standing there, between computer and window, fear washed over Luke. It was still Halloween, or thereabouts, and his computer was talking to him, not only that but giving him commands the way he had once commanded it.

  A shrill beep emanated from the monitor speaker, and then three new words appeared in staccato bursts.

  IT’S

  ME.

  RYAN

  Luke’s legs turned to jelly, for he must have fallen asleep at his desk. That was the only possible explanation for what was happening. Ryan Fielding was not talking to him through his computer, was not insisting he walk to the window. It was not possible.

  But what if it was?

  What if Ryan was dead, murdered by that sadistic ice cream truck’s driver, and was trying to now communicate from beyond the grave? What if Ryan could help Luke, lead him to the murderer? If Ryan was dead, and that sonofabitch had killed him, then Luke wanted nothing more than to bring the sicko to justice.

  He leaned across and tapped out a response on the keyboard. The fear he was experiencing led him to make one or two mistakes, but he doubted it would matter in the grand scheme of things. He was talking to a ghost, after all, and ghosts are omnipresent, or something…

  DID HJE KILL YU, RY?

  He felt silly for even entertaining the possibility that his friend was now some sort of spirit, utilising a Commodore 64 as a less-rudimentary Ouija board, but that was the only thing that made sense. If he wasn’t asleep, dreaming this whole thing—and he no longer believed that to be the case, since everything was so lucid, so real—then he really was standing in front of his computer waiting for the ghost of his dead best friend to respond, and when a response did come, Luke took it like a punch to the gut.

  YES

  Downstairs, Luke’s parents were fighting; a full-on slanging match was underway, but Luke
pushed it away, turning down the volume inside his own head so that he could concentrate, so that he could accept what his friend had just told him.

  Ryan was dead. His friend, gone, run over—or worse?—by that lunatic. Things would never be the same again; their group was down a member, and—

  LUKE

  WINDOW

  HELP

  No longer scared (it was Ryan, the boy who had been dressed as Pugsley Addams just a few hours ago, his cheeks reddened and shiny with sweat as he forced chocolate and blackjacks into his mouth) Luke made his way toward the window.

  The caterwauling of his mother, seemingly angrier than his father, as was often the case, drifted up the stairs. On any other occasion, her plaintive keening would have unnerved Luke, but in that moment he didn’t feel anything.

  He reached the window.

  He separated the curtains slightly where they met.

  He peered down into the darkness.

  He saw Ryan, still dressed as the tubby young offspring of Morticia and Gomez, staring up to the window, a sorrowful look painted across his face, and Luke whimpered.

  For the longest time, Ryan just stood there, and Luke just watched him. His friend—one quarter of their gang—did not look like a ghost. There was no spectral aura surrounding him, no unnatural hovering as the wind buffeted him from the south. Ryan looked as solid as he ever had, and for a moment Luke wondered if his friend was dead at all.

  But then Ryan lifted an arm and waved; Luke saw ghostly black tendrils trailing behind the boy’s arm, and it was then that he knew he was looking at something from the other side.

  Something crashed downstairs; his mother screamed. The front door slammed shut, and a few seconds later, Luke heard the family car reverse speedily out of the drive and roar away into the night.

  The computer beeped noisily, urgently, and even from where he stood Luke could make out the large capital letters which had appeared.

  COME

  DOWN

  Suddenly, Luke was besieged by fear. It was one thing gazing down at the ghost of his dead friend from his bedroom window; it was quite another going down there.

  He turned back to the window. Ryan was now waving him down. Come on down, mate. Just because I’m a ghost, doesn’t mean we can’t play…

  Sense urged Luke to go downstairs and tell his mother. She would protect him, for that was her job, wasn’t it? To keep him from harm, to shield him from danger, to tell him when he was being silly…

  And that was the thing, right there. She wouldn’t believe him. She would tell him, in no uncertain terms, that ghosts aren’t real, and that he’d better get the fuck to bed before she lost her temper. His father had already stormed off; Luke had no doubt that his mother had already opened a bottle of wine. She would be distraught and unapproachable. Certainly not in the right frame of mind to humour her son and his fantasies about dead best friends.

  I

  KNOW

  WHO

  KILLED

  ME

  Luke stared at the computer monitor, watching in awe as the words appeared.

  “Oh, Ryan!” he whined.

  I

  WILL

  TELL

  YOU

  Luke knew, then, that he had no choice. He made his way across the room, eased open his bedroom door, and stepped out onto the landing.

  The door leading into the living-room at the bottom of the stairs was shut. Luke could just about make out the music his mother was listening to—Gene Pitney? Roy Orbison?—and it was the same music she always played when his father left.

  The front door was unlocked; the keys still swung gently to and fro, as if to demonstrate just how hard his father had slammed the door as he went. Luke slipped out like a burglar, stealthy.

  Quiet.

  It was still raining, but not as heavily as earlier. Thunder rumbled off in the distance. A storm was on its way or had passed them by. Luke hoped for the latter.

  Standing in the same place he had been a moment ago, Ryan brightened as Luke emerged from the house, as if he was seeing Luke for the first time in years, when actually they had been together only a few hours ago.

  A lot had changed since then.

  Ryan was dead.

  Ryan was dead.

  Ryan was a ghost.

  Who killed you? Who killed you, Ryan?

  Nothing would come out, though. Luke couldn’t even breathe properly, let alone speak.

  As he approached slowly, past the tyre-swing, past the row of firs which contained their gang’s den, Luke felt suddenly exposed. Apart from him and his dead friend, the street was deserted. His brain urged him to turn, to turn and run back to the house, to barricade himself in his bedroom until morning.

  “You look frightened,” Ryan said when Luke was close enough to hear him. His voice was not much more than a whisper, and yet it echoed around inside Luke’s head as if played through a speaker. “Why?”

  Why?

  Luke had heard some stupid questions in his short life, but that one took the biscuit. Why are you scared of a ghost? Why have you wet your pants, Luke?

  For he had; a warmth saturated the front of his boxers, quickly turning ice cold.

  Seeing the dark patch appearing around Luke’s crotch, Ryan erupted with laughter. “Oh! Deary me! You’ve pissed your panties, Luke!” As if it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  Luke couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. He knew he had had an accident, and yet it didn’t bother him.

  “Poor Pissy-Pants Davis! That’s what they’re going to call you at school! Pissy-Pants David! Pissy-Pants Davis! Pissy-Pants…”

  This isn’t my friend!

  Luke knew—was he too late to do anything about it?—that this was not Ryan Fielding; this was something wearing his skin, an imposter—

  The thing which killed him!

  Luke turned and ran; the thing behind him wearing his friend’s skin roared gutturally. “I’ll come back!” it bellowed. “I will have you!”

  Too terrified to turn around to make sure the thing was not chasing after him, Luke flung open the front door to his house, no longer mindful of the noise he made. His mother had turned the music up—“Something’s got a hold of my heart”—so he doubted she would hear him as he slammed it shut behind him and turned the key. Without pause, he flew up the stairs and into his room. Across to the window, he peered through the crack in the curtains, but there was no thing pretending to be Ryan. There was only the distant tinkling of an ice cream truck—

  Pop goes the weasel

  —and when Luke turned to his computer, he saw one word, flashing repeatedly and filling up the whole monitor screen.

  MINE

  * * *

  October 25th, 2016,

  Luton, Bedfordshire

  “What the fuck are you doing, Luke!?” Karen screeched, and then she was rushing across the room through the semi-darkness, arms outstretched, reaching for their daughter and the hands wrapped tightly around her throat.

  When Luke realised what he was doing, he quickly released his daughter and watched as, with eyes and mouth impossibly wide, she sucked in huge lungfuls of air. After a few seconds the colour returned to her cheeks, to her lips, which had turned an awful shade of blue.

  Luke stood from the bed and backed into the corner housing Lydia’s gigantic doll’s house. Karen was still screeching at him as she pulled their daughter up from her bed and, after checking her over and asking if she was okay, hugged her tightly.

  Then she turned to Luke—Lydia just hung there in Karen’s arms like a ragdoll, or one of those ultra-realistic reborn things barren women put their life savings into—with an expression of fear and confusion etched across her face.

  Luke shook his head. He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t remember how his hands had come to be around their daughter’s throat, didn’t want to admit that he had almost strangled her to death in her bed, half-covered over with her pink sheets.

  “What
the… fuck, Luke!?” It was Karen’s turn to back away now; she moved toward the door without taking her eyes from him, as if he might suddenly snap and lunge for her. After all, he had just tried to kill their daughter, hadn’t he? Who knew what he was capable of?

  “I didn’t…” Luke trailed off there, for he did, and there was no denying it. But why? Why had he almost throttled the life out of his precious daughter? How long had his hands been crushing her throat? Long enough for his knuckles to turn white and Lydia’s lips to turn blue.

  “Get the fuck out of here before I call the police!” Karen was hysterical, as was her wont, but this time she had good reason to be.

  “The police?” Luke swallowed; it felt as if a handful of razorblades slipped down his throat. “Karen… I would… I would never hurt…”

  But Karen was gone, through the bedroom door. Luke listened as she rushed downstairs—thump, thump, thump—and then he knew she wasn’t messing around; she was going to call the police, and they would come to arrest him for attempted murder. He would spend the next decade or so staring at four walls and trying not to get raped by some overzealous muscleman from D-Block.

  Before he knew it, he was rushing for the door, down the stairs, and into the living-room, where Lydia sat upon the sofa, rubbing a tiny hand over the soreness of her neck while Karen paced back and forth. Her mobile phone was clenched tightly in her right hand.

  “Please, Karen!” Luke was about to approach, but when Karen shrank back like an abused housewife, summoning their daughter to her side, he decided to remain where he was. Calmly, he said, “I don’t know what just happened. I… I took her back to bed, and then we were listening… listening for something…”