The Midnight Game, page 4
“Finger pricker,” she said, taking her finger out. Reece tried not to stare. “It’s actually called a lancing device, but that hardly rolls off the tongue when you’re having a hypo.” She shrugged at the blank look on Hugo’s face. “Hypoglycemia? It means my blood sugar is low. I’m diabetic. I do it all the time.”
“You do? Did it hurt?” Hugo eyed her curiously.
“Not a bit.” She went back into her bag and pulled out another, sealed in plastic. “This one’s spare and sterile. Here.” Reece turned away, pricking his own finger as Ellie delicately tended to the rich kid. He pushed the needle in, gritting his teeth as he heard her murmur soothing words. There was a click and a soft cheer from Ellie as Hugo breathed an audible sigh of relief. Reece fought the urge to pull a face; instead, he watched his own blood spill down his finger. He’d gone in way too deep with that needle. He quickly smeared it across the paper and wiped it on his hoodie, hoping no one would notice. It was already red, after all.
“All done?” said Mei.
“Yep. What now? Names?” Callum asked.
Mei nodded. “Yes—first only. Middle if you really want, I guess, but no last names. The Midnight Man needs to know whose blood he’s tasting.”
“Gross,” Ellie whispered.
The faint scratch of pencil on paper filled the room as they signed their souls away. Reece suppressed a laugh as he scrawled his name on the paper—even he was leaning into the dramatics.
“Is that it?” Ellie asked as she got to her feet. “Don’t we need to write the other bit—you know, the secret?”
“Oh, yeah, either your awful secret or the real reason you’re here.” Callum grabbed a discarded sheet of paper from one of the desks and quickly ripped it into pieces, then handed them out. “Hurry. Write it down and put it somewhere safe. You have to keep this one.”
Reece curled a hand around his piece, committing the reason he was there to paper. He folded it up as small as he could and slid it inside his jacket pocket, patting it for good measure.
“Right, then.” Mei tucked her roll of paper into a little pocket on the waistband of her leggings. “Don’t lose those. You’ll need them to end the game.”
A chorus of murmured assent echoed around the room as Mei walked over to stand in front of the door. She held a small red candle in one hand and a box of long matches in the other, the kind Reece had seen his dad light the barbecue with. “It’s almost time. Grab everything you want to bring with you and be ready to light your candle from this one. We won’t be coming back.”
“Wait, we have to stick our names to the door before we do anything,” Callum interrupted, holding out a handful of tacks. “That’s what these are for.”
“Oh, of course, sorry.” Mei tried—and failed—to smile. “I’m a bit nervous.”
“Don’t worry.” Callum held out his hand and they all took one of the dull brass thumbtacks from him. Reece watched as he joined Mei and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “The door’s pretty hollow, I think. These should go right in.”
Reece hung back, watching as the others approached the door. They were already forming alliances without him. A line of torn paper danced before his eyes, each piece scrawled with a first name and a smear of dark-red blood. He swallowed, approaching slowly and pinning his to the bottom as a thrill of excitement coursed through him. No going back now.
“All done,” he said loudly, shoving the tack in with a flourish, before pushing the sleeves of his jacket up to expose pale forearms. “Now what?”
Toni spoke up. “Now we perform the ritual.” Even her voice trembled slightly. “Right? Now we call the Midnight Man.”
“Yes, we do.” Mei wiped her palms across the sides of her leggings before taking hold of the box of matches. She removed one and her hand trembled so violently, the match fell to the floor as the others rattled like old, dried bones in a coffin. “Sorry”—her voice was hoarse—“didn’t realize I was this nervous.”
“Here.” Toni took the box of matches and struck one expertly. The flame smoked for a second as she held it to the red candle, the brand-new wick catching slowly and then all at once with a hiss. “Ready?”
Mei swallowed hard as Reece watched, entranced.
“Ready.”
07/01/2022 16:19
FrenchBanana: Everyone needs to bring their own kit, is that OK?
User3678: How come?
FrenchBanana: Well, I imagine we’ll get split up at some point. You don’t want to get stuck without your own candle, do you?
YeahBoi_121: Why not? Will something spoooooooooky happen?
FrenchBanana: Seriously, did no one do their research?
16:21
CreepyTeepee: *Insert tumbleweed gif*
16:23
FrenchBanana: Fine. I’ll tell you in a minute.
FrenchBanana: Right, copy and paste this somewhere, please. You’re going to need:
* A candle, preferably a tall one that will last and is easy to carry.
* Matches. NOT a lighter, ONLY matches.
* Salt—enough to draw a thick circle around you if you need it.
CreepyTeepee: Is that it?
FrenchBanana: Yep, apart from the pencil and stuff. I’ll bring the red candle to start the ritual; we only need one of those.
YeahBoi_121: Seems easy enough, thanks @FrenchBanana.
Donttalktome12: Got it.
16:26
FrenchBanana: You got that @User3678 and @HotDog45?
16:27
HotDog45: Sorry, gaming at same time. Yeah, got it.
16:30
FrenchBanana: @User3678?
User3678: Yehyeh, got it.
FrenchBanana: Great. Remember, you MUST have your own stuff.
YeahBoi_121: You said you’d tell us why, remember?
FrenchBanana: I’m getting to it. First, did everyone read that article?
HotDog45: Yeah. Wait, one sec.
HotDog45: Pretty rough, right? You think she played the game and got so freaked out, she offed herself?
Donttalktome12: Er, dunno if that’s the politically correct way to say that.
HotDog45: Say what?
Donttalktome12: That she died by suicide.
HotDog45: Oh. Right.
HotDog45: Well, do you? Think she was scared into it?
CreepyTeepee: Maybe. But none of this is real, right?
FrenchBanana: Right…
User3678: Wait a minute—so you think this girl played the game and scared herself silly? Scared herself enough to take her own life?
Donttalktome12: I mean, maybe. We don’t know how stable she was beforehand, do we?
HotDog45: I guess not.
YeahBoi_121: Or…
16:33
YeahBoi_121: Or…
FrenchBanana: Go on, I’ll bite. Or what @YeahBoi_121?
YeahBoi_121: Or the Midnight Man is real. And he killed her.
Saturday, July 2, 11:58 p.m.
ELLIE
What was it about fire? Ellie’s eyes tracked the quivering flame as she tried to curb her fight-or-flight response. What the hell was she doing here? This was ridiculous. It wasn’t too late to rip her name off the door, destroy that and the paper that kept her secret before the ritual was complete. She could burn it right now—hell, she could eat it if she had to. Anything to keep her out of the running.
Instead, she watched the flame twist and grow along with the unease inside her.
“What’s next?” Even Callum’s voice was shaky now. Poor Mei had gone a sickly shade, her glasses casting large shadows over the hollows of her eyes. She looked like some macabre cartoon character, her features strangely exaggerated in the light.
“We knock.” Mei’s voice barely hit a whisper, so she cleared her throat.
Ellie flicked her eyes over the rest of the group and saw that the candlelight made everyone look as ghoulish as Mei did, a cast of Tim Burton characters standing there in the gloom. Gooseflesh erupted all down her arms, and she wished she had brought a sweater with her. Maybe she’d find one inside, or one of the boys would lend her something.
“We knock,” Mei repeated, clearer this time. “Twenty-two times. The last one has to be at exactly midnight, or it won’t work.”
“So let’s do it slowly from one minute to?” Hugo said from Ellie’s left. She was surprised—it was the most useful he’d been so far. She smiled encouragingly at him, and he ducked his head slightly, his cheeks darkening.
“Good idea.” Callum nodded. “Everyone got their stuff? And their, er, motivation?” He tapped the zipped pocket of his jacket as everyone else checked for their second piece of paper. All heads bobbed in agreement. There was silence otherwise, apart from the spit and hiss of the flame. Ellie surreptitiously tapped the underside of her bra, the hiding place that had yet to fail her. It wasn’t going to fall out of there in a hurry.
“Good. Right, Mei.” Callum looked down at the small girl and she nodded. Ellie’s stomach knotted itself together. “We need to start in a sec.”
“Right.” She took a deep shaking breath and pushed it out slowly so as not to bother the flame, her mouth a small O. “Make sure you have your candles ready. I’ll blow this one out after the last knock. When I relight it, you all have to light yours from it before we can go through the door. OK?”
More nods.
More silence.
“Go,” Callum whispered.
“One,” Mei said, rapping her knuckles on the door. She looked to Callum for reassurance and Ellie saw him nod, his eyes crinkling kindly.
“Two,” he joined in as Mei knocked a second time. “Three. Four. Five.”
The hollow knocking swelled, filling the room. Ellie sucked in a deep breath as a gust of wind scorched her bare arms.
“Wh-what was that?” Mei stammered as the flame danced wildly in the breeze.
“Six.” Callum chimed, and she managed a knock. “Don’t get distracted. Seven.” He was nodding his head to each number, keeping Mei on task. Ellie was glad to be an observer right now; she didn’t think she’d be able to keep it together like he was. He seemed like someone who would be calm in a crisis. She put that thought away for later. A quick glance around showed that everyone else stood transfixed, their heads bobbing too. “Eight.”
“Nine.” Six voices chimed this time. It broke the tension a little, and the muscles in Ellie’s neck relaxed slightly. “Ten. Eleven…”
“Halfway,” Reece whispered, tugging at the zipper on his jacket. Ellie studied him carefully. He didn’t seem so confident now.
“Twelve.” The gust of wind ripped through the little cabin again, whipping the ends of Ellie’s hair, but Mei was ready for it, her small hand wrapped around the flame to protect it.
“What is that?” Toni said, shivering visibly.
“Thirteen.”
“A draft, maybe?” Ellie heard herself saying, even though she wasn’t sure she believed it. No one responded. “Fourteen,” she said, echoing the others.
Ellie began to shiver. It seemed to start from her feet, her legs shaking slightly in her denim shorts, goose bumps crawling up them like a swarm of hungry insects. It hit her torso next, and she clenched her teeth, forcing herself to stay still—she didn’t want the others to know how scared she was. She took deep breaths through her nose as she listened to them counting, mouthing along for effect.
“Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.”
Mei rubbed her knuckles as Ellie fought the urge to allow her teeth to chatter together. The swarm had reached her scalp now, and she could almost feel hundreds of tiny legs scuttling across her hairline. The thought set off a wave of shudders. Ellie tried to fight them as another gust of wind hit the group, this one so cold, Toni hissed in displeasure and Hugo visibly shook next to her.
“Eighteen.”
Ellie tried to join in again, but her jaw had a mind of its own, her bottom lip trembling furiously.
“Nineteen.”
Ellie tightened every muscle in her body in an effort to stop shaking, forcing her arms and legs ramrod straight. “T-twenty,” she tried.
“Almost there,” Callum said quickly, his words running together as he made eye contact with Mei. “Do twenty-two on my nod. Twenty-one.”
Mei watched him closely. Ellie couldn’t remember how to breathe. Callum took a visibly deep breath, his eyes fixed firmly on his watch, waiting for midnight.
It beeped.
“Twenty-two.” Mei knocked in a way that Ellie assumed must have taken every ounce of strength, but the boom quickly faded to an echo.
Silence.
“Blow out the candle,” Toni said. Mei quickly followed the instruction, and the room was plunged into darkness for a second. Purple spots appeared in Ellie’s vision. A match sparked, and slowly, a flame started to flicker in the red wax once more. Ellie rubbed her arms, noticing that the air had returned to its previous warm temperature.
“Now we light our individual candles.” Mei’s voice shook as she held the wick of a large church-style candle to the little red tea light. It hissed and spat, but eventually the flame doubled, and she stood upright, placing it inside a holder that was surrounded by a glass cylinder with an open top. “You next, Callum.”
“What’s that?” Toni asked, her eyes narrowing as she pointed at Mei’s candle. “You never told us to bring one of those.”
“I found it at home and thought it would be useful. It’s a hurricane lamp. The glass stops the flame from getting blown out, but the open top means it still gets enough oxygen to stay lit.”
“Clever.” Ellie smiled at her, wishing she’d thought of that herself. She’d just thrown in whatever she could find in the emergency drawer at home.
“Cheat,” she heard Toni mutter.
Ellie moved along the line, waiting for her turn. Hugo managed to light his candle eventually, after what seemed like a hundred tries with a shaking hand. She lit hers quickly, used to the process. She stared into the pool of molten red wax and felt the urge to press her finger into it, like she did when she was a kid. The wax was red as blood in the low light.
She hoped it wasn’t any kind of premonition.
Reece and Toni lit theirs together, the latter too impatient to wait any longer. Ellie was surprised she’d let anyone go first. Maybe the sassy goth-girl thing was all an act. Maybe she was as scared as the rest of them.
“Do you think it worked?” Ellie whispered. They were back in the semicircle around the door, all looking at their names.
“Only one way to—” Mei was cut off midsentence as the red candle went out.
07/01/2022 16:34
FrenchBanana: Do you actually think he is real? That this whole “ritual” will really summon some kind of entity?
Donttalktome12: Maybe. Probably not, I guess, but the story has to come from somewhere, right?
User3678: It did come from somewhere—the depths of the internet. It’s a creepypasta.
CreepyTeepee: Yeah, but so was Slender Man.
Donttalktome12: Fair point.
HotDog45: What’s Slender Man?
FrenchBanana: What?
YeahBoi_121: Seriously? Even I know what that is.
User3678: Dude, how did you even end up on this forum???
HotDog45: I like spooky stuff, just not that creepypasta stuff. It’s stupid, just playground stories.
FrenchBanana: Yeah, but everything is just some kind of story, isn’t it? At least until you’ve experienced it firsthand.
CreepyTeepee: Then you’re just someone else telling the story.
YeahBoi_121: Very poetic @CreepyTeepee.
User3678: *Vom noises*
HotDog45: No one gonna tell me then?
FrenchBanana: Give me a second.
16:40
FrenchBanana: So there were these three girls. All best friends, around thirteen years old. Two of them—can’t remember names but I’ll link an article—were obsessed with Slender Man. He’s meant to be this scary, tall figure who lives in the woods and punishes children or something. He wears a black suit, has no face, and has these tentacles that come out of his back. Very incognito, right? Well, the two girls decided that if they killed their other best friend then Slender Man would reward them and they could go and live in his mansion with all the other creepypasta monsters. They had convinced themselves that if they didn’t kill her, Slender Man would come and hurt them and their families—or so they said, anyway.
16:41
CreepyTeepee: I remember this, I think. My mom put a block on the internet after it happened.
HotDog45: No way @FrenchBanana! So did they do it?
FrenchBanana: Yeah. They attacked her, but she didn’t die. They got caught near the interstate later that day, looking for the creepy mansion. They really believed it.
User3678: How did they even come up with the idea? Like, what would you do if your bestie suggested offing someone?
FrenchBanana: Well, I’d call the police, but there’s a whole psychological theory about two people coming together to do something like this. Folie à deux, it’s called.
YeahBoi_121: It’s French. Folie à deux is something like “the madness of two”?
FrenchBanana: Yeah, that’s right. It’s when two people share the same disturbing ideas. A Bonnie-and-Clyde type of thing.
