Excerpt: The Collection

When dinner was ready, Bonnie and her four guests sat around the table in the candlelit room, enjoying Bonnie's cooking and the Halloween atmosphere. After the first course, Bonnie got out an old book of ghost stories from her childhood that she particularly prized, and began to read.

"It was a cold night up on the windy hills. The black silhouettes of the trees against the dark sky stood like sinister sentinels, watching over all who passed by. The man wrapped his travelling cloak tighter around him as he made his way across the hill, his destination the warm lights of the small village beyond. He was alone. Although it may be said that he wasn't quite alone ..."

Bonnie revelled in storytelling, and she allowed the words of the tale to flow through her, allowed herself to absorb its coldness and darkness, until she was almost a child again, almost ready to believe that spirits of those long gone really could be found upon those dark and misty hills. When she had finished, she closed the book, and her audience applauded. But somehow, Bonnie could still feel a chill inside of her, and she knew it would be a while before it went away.

She was about to get up and serve the main course when Bonnie heard the door to the living room slam open. She whipped around to see what had caused the noise. There in the dark doorway stood an apparition. Its face was pallid and grim, its eyes were wider than nature should allow, and it had a tangle of unkempt hair framing its face. Its clothes were dishevelled and dirty. For a moment, Bonnie's heart seemed to stick in her throat, and she shivered a little, recalling the story she had just read. A ghost ... ?

Then she came to her senses, and realised that it wasn't a ghost after all. It was something much scarier.

“So you decided to turn up after all, then, Kate?”