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I Played A VHS Board Game Called "Don't Look Behind You"

We met once a month.

It was always a Friday at our house. My younger brother Davey and I started a Horror Club, with my two best friends, Jeff and Brad. We talked our parents into letting us have the Club on the last Friday of every month, where we would inhale a few bags of chips, a couple bottles of Coke and Sprite, and watch three or four horror flicks. We'd also go over horror comics we'd read, the occasional horror board game or two. Anything and everything horror related. We were obsessed.

The typical Friday would go that mom or dad would pick the four of us up from school, and take us directly to Rogers or Blockbuster to go through the vast sections of VHS' to rent. Though we'd spend the whole time in the horror section. There was a deal for five rentals for the weekend, so our parents would get one choice and we'd get four for the night. We'd watch one before dinner, then three in a row after.

Davey and I shared a room with a bunk bed, and had a TV and VCR in it, so Jeff and Brad would sleep on the floor on mom's yoga mats and we'd try to stay up all night. But we'd all usually be out cold by 1:00 a.m.

Stacy, our older sister, always came home around that time. I could hear her lame boyfriend Craig's car engine from several blocks away. Sometimes, she'd come in and try to scare us. Once, she got Craig to climb up the side of the house and bang on the windows with a gnarly mask on. That sent us.

I was usually the last one awake, and I'd stay up, thinking about all the crazy stories and monsters we'd just watched. I'd rate them against one another on their scariness. If there were any snacks left, I'd finish them in bed, up on the bunk, while looking back over the covers of the movies we'd rented.

The next morning, we'd all have breakfast and talk about the different flicks we'd watched, and maybe rewatch the last one we'd fallen asleep to. Brad or Jeff's parents would pick them both up before lunch and everyone's lives would return to normal.

And I'd be left waiting for the next month to come.

This Horror Club Friday finally came, and with it, Jeff had a surprise for us. But first, the video store. We rented Creepshow 2, Fright Night, The Blob - the '80's one - and Tremors. I'd seen Tremors and Creepshow 2, but Brad and Jeff hadn't and they were pretty fun movies so we agreed on them. We started with those two, before moving on to The Blob, which none of us had seen, but all immediately loved. It was now 10:30 and Jeff was ready to break out his surprise.

We'd all wondered what it was, sitting in a large garbage bag in the corner, the entirety of the night. Jeff explained he was out with his mom at an old, boutique style bookstore, filled with antiques and ancient film reels, records, and a small VHS selection. He scanned through the VHS', hoping for some horrors but only found old classics.

There was one, though, in a plastic case with a homemade label. It sat on a large, rectangular box the size of a board game. Which was what it turned out to be. When Jeff told us, we all got super excited. We'd heard of VHS board games like Nightmare and Atmosphere, but hadn't ever seen one or played it. Even though this one looked to be completely homemade, it had some frightening artwork on the cover. And when we opened the box to see the actual game, it was as thick as a cutting board, and just as heavy. The board was covered in zig-zagging pathways, all stemming from one corner of the board, and arriving at the centre, where a pop-up structure of a cabin was marked with the word "HOME."

Since it was a four player game, each corner of the board had a starting place, and we each got a figurine token for a playing piece. Each piece was small and metal, in the shape of a child, with the paint and colours smeared and faded. Each child's mouth was open in a scream.

The four corners were all different, from a grave yard, to a forest, to a haunted mansion, to a slaughterhouse. The objective of the game seemed to be for each of us to get to the middle of the board, or "Home," from whichever frightening origin point we started from. A simple four-sided die with the numbers one through three pushed you forward, while the fourth side would send you one step back. Every path moved through other paths like a maze and interacted with its origin point surroundings. Whether it was a path through the forest leading to a dead end or a hallway in the slaughterhouse into a meat locker, you had to pay attention to your path. Because of the other element to this game.