Hillside Anthology

Night of the Demon

The night before Halloween, two young boys (Liam and Declan) were out having a cigarette in the allocated smoking area of the Westwood unit, of Hillside Residential School.

They knew it was killing them, but  they tried not to think about it.

Of course, Declan had been forced to attend all the anti-smoking classes at school; he’d heard all the scare stories; he could name many of the 4000  poisons entering his body with every drag of a cigarette, and the immediate and long-term harm they caused; he’d learned all about the diseases—the cancers,  amputations,  heart disease, the impotency, the early aging and the circulation problems; he could see non-smokers wince and gag as the revolting stench of stale tobacco that lingered on his clothing, hair and skin entered into their nostrils. But Declan was a born gambler and figured he had five, maybe ten  years of smoking before he would face the possibility of losing a limb, and perhaps another five after that before the noxious fumes would completely blacken and carcinate his lungs. When no one was looking, Declan closely followed trends in medicine and science and reckoned there would be a cure for lung cancer by the time would be facing  a long, lingering death.

Liam just lived for the moment, but paradoxically believed he would live forever. In his own eyes, he was immortal.

As the evil narcotic cruised through their blood streams, stimulating the pleasure centers  of their brains, inducing mild euphoria, there was a loud bang above them.

It was the unit door slamming shut.

The problem was that no one seemed to have shut it.  The boys dropped their cigarettes in shock—the door was never locked when they were outside. They rushed up the stairs to investigate.  They tried the handle. It was locked. They banged and banged the door. There was no response; so, they started to head back down, thinking to go to round the building to get in.

To their surprise, they heard a click. It was the door unlocking. They were annoyed, but also relieved. They dismissed it as a prank, albeit an irritating one. Like all such pranks, they could find the door getting locked at the last second, repeating the cycle.

They bolted all the way back up and barged through the door, hoping to deny their tormentor of his satisfaction.

Their tormentor, it seemed, was Dan; Dan G., they called him, but it was not the Dan G. they knew, not the friendly, easy-going, helpful and kind Dan that everyone liked and loved. This Dan  had a massive, wild grin on his face;  his eyes were wide and glowed red; he had a large kitchen knife in his hand; it was covered in blood. His face was like the face of a man possessed by the most evil of demons. He was chuckling and talking to himself.

Beside him was the unit manager, Craig Logie, lying down on the pool table. Blood trickled out of his chest, down his arms, along his hands and onto the floor. There was no movement, not even a twitch.

They froze.

How could this be? Just half an hour earlier,  Dan, Craig and the boys had capered and joked while experimenting  with a Ouija Board. It was all supposed to be fun. A bit of a laugh to get themselves into the right mood for Halloween.

Seconds passed.

It was only Dan’s sly sneaking up on them, that shook them out of their trance. 

He swung at them with the carving knife. They screamed and ran round the other side of the pool table, just evading the flashing blade.

Cutting through the lounge, they made for the long corridor, to make their escape. As if running terror struck in a dream, their legs seemed to fail them, and Declan gasped in panic.