The memory of this party could haunt him
forever…
In Trick or Treat by
JL Merrow, Sam is dragged along to a haunted house by his mates, at the
Halloween party from hell—the guy he fancied has turned out to be a bigot, and
Sam has just outed himself to his whole football team.
Escaping to the
garden, he meets James, an enigmatic stranger with a mischievous smile, and the
evening soon takes a turn for the better. The night may be chilly but the heat
between Sam and James is hotter than Hades.
But James has a role
to play in the evening’s ghostly entertainment, and it’s a story with a deadly
ending. Unless Sam can change the script and stop history repeating itself,
“till death do us part” will come sooner than he thinks.
Trick or
Treat
JMS Books (October 27, 2014)
IISBN: 9781611526714
Excerpt:
Sam had planned to stay in the garden until he’d finished the bottle of
vodka, but every drink he took reminded him of the taste of it on James’s
tongue. After a while Sam just chucked it in a patch of stinging nettles in
disgust.
Then, of course, he wished he hadn’t. Sitting in the garden by himself
getting drunk might be a bit sad, but sitting in the garden by himself not getting drunk was just pathetic.
Giving up, he heaved himself to his feet. Might as well go back to the house.
At least he’d see who James was with. Unless they’d left already? Sam looked at
his watch. Twelve
fifty-eight .
They should all be there, then. After all, the whole point of coming to
this bloody house on Halloween night was to see the ghosts. Some poor bastard
from ninety years ago and the jealous gay lover who’d stabbed him and then
killed himself. At exactly one fifteen , if you
could believe Kev, they’d both appear to re-enact their last, bloody minutes.
It was the sort of thing that sounded like a right laugh when you were
down the pub, but wasn’t so much fun when you were actually there.
You had to hand it to Kev: he might be a bit of a tosser, but he’d gone
to a fair bit of trouble to organize the party. He worked at the estate agents
that managed the place—which seemed to be a euphemism for hanging onto the keys
while the house slowly mouldered away. If his boss ever found out he’d
“borrowed” the keys for the weekend, he’d be in deep shit, but Kev was one of
those arrogant bastards who thought that having gone to a minor public school
meant he was entitled to anything he wanted. Worst of it was, he always seemed
to get away with it, too.
He’d invited a shed-load of people, including Sam, who knew him from the
pub Sunday football team and had fancied the pants off him ever since they’d
met. Even though he’d known the bloke
was a wanker and straight as a bloody goal-post to boot. Funny how easy it was
to forget all that when Sam looked at his soft blond hair and tall, muscular
figure.
It just served Sam right he’d had to sit there and listen to Kev make
nasty little jokes about poofs and their lovers’ tiffs until he couldn’t stand
it any longer. Sam winced as he remembered shouting “I’m a bloody poof, all right?” before grabbing his bottle of vodka
and storming outside.
It looked like he’d have to find something else to do on a Sunday
afternoon from now on. Walking back into the house, Sam wondered if anyone
would even speak to him.
A couple of the girls were doing something with plates of half-eaten
food in the kitchen. They gave Sam embarrassed looks as he walked in. He took a
deep breath.
“Did you see James come this way?”
“James? Don’t think I know him.”
“Me neither. What does he look like?”
Gorgeous. Beautiful. “He’s a bit shorter than me, skinny bloke, blond
hair, crap clothes. Braces. On his trousers, not on his teeth.”
“Braces?” They giggled. “Think we’d have remembered that!”
Sam sighed. “I’ll have a look around, then.” He wasn’t even sure why he
was doing this, except he seemed to have some deep-seated, masochistic desire
to see the bloke James was with. Although how a queer couple had managed to get
an invite from that bastard Kev was anyone’s guess.
Sam smiled wryly to himself. Maybe he wasn’t the only bent footballer on
the team, after all. Kev would probably have a heart attack when he realized
he’d been getting his kit off in front of two
flaming queers on a regular basis.
He pushed his way past snogging couples—all suitably heterosexual—in the
hallway and stuck his head in a couple of doors. No James. He did see Kev,
though. One look at him told Sam the bloke was completely rat-arsed.
“God, are you still here?” Kev threw at him in obvious disgust. “I
thought you’d buggered off hours ago!” He sniggered. “Literally.” Christ, how had Sam ever thought him
good-looking? Face reddened from the booze and twisted in a sneer, Kev just
looked like the arrogant bigot he was.
“Stop being such a git, Kev,” the hard-faced girl sitting next to him
said irritably. Kev’s sister, Lucy. Sam had never liked her much, but she was
starting to grow on him now. “Isn’t it almost time for the show?”
“Christ, yes!” Instantly, Sam was forgotten. Kev stood up. “Right, you
lot—quiet—we’ve got ten minutes until
haunting time! Get your arses out in the hall and bloody well keep quiet, all right?”
Everyone did as they were told. Kev had presence, no doubt about it—a
commanding voice and the physique to back it up. He’d played rugby at school,
and to hear him talk had made a bloody good fly half, whatever one of those
was. Sam was a state school boy and he preferred his balls spherical, thanks
very much.
“Are we going upstairs?” one of the girls from the kitchen asked. Helen,
that was her name: one of Lucy’s friends, a bit on the cuddly side but with a
pretty face. Sam had a feeling she’d been trying to get together with Kev, and
wondered if she’d managed it.
“No! Idiot, I told you the stairs aren’t safe. Probably fall to pieces
under your weight,” Kev added with
casual cruelty that answered Sam’s question. “We’ll be able to see everything
from down here. Just wait in the hall and stop
bloody talking, all right?”
Helen’s face twisted, and Lucy glared at her brother as if she’d like to
kill him, but nobody said anything. Kev tended to have that effect on people.
Sam kept an eye on the stragglers drifting into the hall from various
directions. If James was anywhere in the house, surely he’d be along, too? Even if he didn’t come, Sam reckoned whatever
was about to happen would be worth seeing—whether there really were ghosts or
just Kev looking a right plonker when whatever show he was planning fell flat.
Either would do for Sam.
Staying as far away from Kev as he could, Sam ended up standing next to
Lucy and Helen at the back of the hall. “Does Kev really believe we’re going to
see anything?” he whispered.
Lucy shrugged. “He said he does. If it’s a set-up, I don’t know anything
about it. Anyway, shh. You know what
he’s like.”
“Right,” Kev said, once they were all assembled, his voice seeming to
echo in the sudden quiet. “We’ve got five minutes.”
“How do you know?” Dave the goalie asked dubiously. He was a friendly,
unimaginative bloke with around six million freckles to go with the prematurely
receding ginger hair. Sam liked him. He wondered bitterly if the feeling was
still mutual, after tonight’s little revelation.
“It was all in the report given by the last man to spend the night in
the house.” Kev fell into story-telling mode, with exaggerated tones and
dramatic gestures. “It was a dark, stormy Halloween night, and a power cut had
plunged the house into darkness. The man—let’s call him Collins—lit candles and
a lantern to fend off the shadows—”
“Like we have,” one of the girls said in an awed whisper, obviously
getting into the spirit of it.
Kev sent her a paternal look of approval. “Eventually, Collins fell
asleep in his chair in front of the fire. At one fifteen precisely he was woken by the sound of
shouting coming from upstairs.” Kev’s voice lowered. Even Sam found himself
paying rapt attention. “Of course, Collins was terrified. Nevertheless, he
armed himself with a poker, and dragged up the courage to go upstairs and see
what the hell was going on. Halfway to the stairs, he heard a crashing sound,
as if a violent fight was going on.”
Kev paused dramatically. Suddenly the silence was broken by muffled
bumps and cries coming from above them.
Several people jumped, including Sam. Helen giggled nervously.
“Oh, come on, it’s a set-up!” one of the lads said loudly—Mike from the
footie team, who was short and dark but pretty nippy in midfield. “He’s got a
CD up there playing sound effects.”
“I can’t hear anything,” someone else said, sounding genuinely confused.
Sam wondered what they’d been drinking.
“Shut up!” Kev hissed.
Sam couldn’t help anticipation tightening in his gut. It was a put-up
job, had to be—but what if it wasn’t? What if they really were about to see
some ghosts? Christ, what must that be like? To be doomed to play out your
death scene for all eternity?
The sounds grew louder. Someone upstairs shouted, “No!” in a high,
panicked voice. Sam cast a look around at his companions. One or two of them
looked pale and scared, while others just looked bored or puzzled. Couldn’t
they hear it?
Suddenly an upstairs door burst open, and a slender, male figure hurtled
onto the landing. He passed the top of the staircase and stopped, clutching at
the balustrade. When he turned, the light from the lamps and flickering candles
below illuminated his face with eerie shadows. Pale, delicate features were
marred by a trickle of dark blood running from a cut on one temple.
It was James.
To purchase from JMS Books, click JMS Books
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