This is an unpublished novel I am serialising on substack. This is a “first” draft in the sense that it hasn’t been through an external editorial process (though I’ve redrafted it twice now.) So this is some raw, uncut stuff you’re getting here.
It’s a bit Veronica Mars, a bit Brick, and a bit demonic. Enjoy!
STRANGER THINGS (HAVE HAPPENED)
It begins with a Stranger Things themed house party.
The party in question is being hosted by one Devlin McCallister, son of a prominent local chicken farmer and host to many such a shindig, given the appealingly rambling nature of his family’s farmhouse. By the time I arrive it’s late enough to be packed to the gills, and early enough to be buzzing hard with the finest in teenage kicks that my small, rural town has to offer.
You know the scene in An American Werewolf in London where the two cutely American backpackers stumble upon a local pub in the wilderness of the British moors, and as they cross the threshold, the noise drops, and the conversation stops, and every local sitting within that fine establishment turns to look at them with that special stare reserved for the most outsider of outsiders?
I swear you’d hear the sound of a record scratching to a stop, if this was the kind of place cool enough to be playing vinyl. I steel myself and push my way further into the house, giving the closest staring partygoers a bare-teethed grin. They look away, whisper-shouting in each other’s ears over the thumping music.
Funny. I’ve always wanted to be the centre of attention, but now I am, O cruel irony, I’d much rather be ignored again. I haven’t ventured outside in weeks, and it probably shows. I think I took a shower yesterday, but I can’t swear to it.
I worm my way into the house and skirt the edges of the kitchen, feeling more than a little anxious, but determined not to have any of Devlin’s infamous punch to take the edge off. (The punch is known simply as ‘The Dregs’. Devlin’s parents enjoy collecting weird, unpopular tourist alcohol from far-flung places and then leaving them half-drunk and forgotten in the backs of cupboards. One time Devlin mixed a liqueur made from avocados with the remains of a kumquat gin, resulting in quite the Roman vomitarium on his front lawn.)
I’ve been doing my best Gollum impression for so long that I’ve forgotten what parties are like, and current evidence suggests I haven’t been missing out on much. There’s only one reason I’m here, and it’s not for the all-you-can-slurp vodka jelly shots.
It’s for Deena.
Our meet-cute was a heated clash over favouring the same climbing frame of our new school’s jungle gym and not wanting to let each other take turns on it. One round of tantrums and tears later and our friendship was cemented, in that sudden and decided way of kids, by the discovery that we both had the exact same purple glitter unicorn lunchbox.
Eighteen year-old Deena might prefer smaller dresses since her unicorn lunchbox days, but a quick foot recce confirms that while you can take the girl out of the age of purple glitter, you can’t take the purple glitter out of the girl - her enormous block heels sparkle with it.
‘Finally,’ I call in relief. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Mm?’ Deena says, not meeting my eye.
I watch her hanging sloppily from the arm of some tall guy currently turned away from her and talking to his friends as though he’s barely aware of her existence.
‘You called me,’ I shout over the throbbing bass line. ‘You sounded weird. I was worried.’
‘Mm?’ Deena’s gaze roves haphazardly across everywhere in the room but me. She dangles from the guy’s arm like a bored toddler, her legs soft and unsteady.
Only now, with the build-up of clues, does it dawn on me that she is, in the parlance of past times, shickered, skimished, slewed, sprung, schnockered, stewed, stiff, soaked. To put it even more clearly, she’s quite literally falling down drunk.
Suppressing a surge of irritation, I put a hand on her arm.
‘Tell you what,’ I say, ‘why don’t we discuss it over a nice toilet bowl?’
I tug, but her other arm is stuck fast in the meaty grip of the guy simultaneously ignoring her and keeping her trapped to his side.
‘Hey,’ I call to him, ‘can you give me a hand here?’
The guy turns coldly aggressive eyes on me. ‘What was that, darling?’
Darling. Oh dear.
But as Buddha says (probably) - in the face of adversity, keep it friendly.
‘She’s about to the whip the cat,’ I reply through a smile. ‘Let go of her so we can take her to a room with a receptacle, would you?’
‘What are you on about?’ the guy replies with affected boredom.
‘Is vomit a kink of yours?’ I enquire.
The guy takes a cursory glance at Deena’s vacant face and shiny skin.
‘Nah,’ he declares. ‘She’s still good to go.’
His friends snicker.
‘So your kink is instead bagging semi-comatose and therefore entirely non-consenting strangers. Delightful.’
‘She’s not a stranger,’ the guy says.
‘I’ve got her from here, thanks,’ I suggest through a tighter smile.
The guy gives me an up and down. ‘I’m sorry, but who the hell are you?’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I the hell am her boyfriend, Jamie.’
‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend, Jamie.’
‘Four months we've been going,’ he says. ‘She’s my girl.’
‘Four months, gosh. If you’re ring shopping I recommend white gold, it goes with her skin tone.’ My voice drops to a deadlier note. ‘I’ve never heard of you, dude, okay?’
‘Then you must not be very good friends, must you?’
‘Best friends since we were five, Jamie,’ I reply through a smile so tight that if it were a wind-up toy it’d be going until sunrise.
Jamie scoffs. ‘Deena’s best friend’s name is Mallory Jones, I was at her pool party last weekend, and she came round mine with Deena two nights ago for an intimate little shindig. Just my good friends and hers. You weren’t invited, I notice. So, again. Who the hell are you?’
I fight a hot flush of guilt. I’ve been hearing the name Mallory Jones of late. Mallory’s the one who’s been actually following through on plans with Deena while I’ve been busy crawling into a hole and hiding from the world.
Deena and I haven’t been hanging out much lately, and I’ve been feeling bad about it, when my other feelings let up enough for a little guilt to slip through. It’s my fault - mostly - though it occurs to me now that Deena hasn’t made a huge effort to keep in touch with me, either.
To complicate matters further, Mallory and I don’t mesh well. Our tolerance of each other is based solely on the fact that Deena is our connective tissue. I claim friendship seniority, but Mallory likes doing the kinds of things that Deena likes doing - shopping, reality show marathons, hot yoga - which gives her a tenuous edge.
Jamie’s aggressively puckered expression suddenly clears. ‘You’re that weird bi girl, aren’t you. Yeah, she’s been going on about you. You’ve had a crush on her since you were toddlers and she can’t get rid of you.’
‘Bi,’ one of his friends muses, ‘or just greedy?’
Brays of laughter.
‘It’s okay,’ I say, ‘I understand. It must be frightening to watch all the girls around you get wise to the fact that they have twice as many options as you do, thus relegating your kind to the “only on a bad, desperate night” end of the list, but - ’
‘Okay, Officer Me Too,’ Jamie shouts over me, drawing wider crowd stares. ‘You about to cancel me for looking after my girlfriend? Why don’t you go stalk someone else? Deena isn’t interested in you, okay? She’s not interested because she’s with me, psycho dyke.’
In beautiful timing Deena suddenly hunches over, going tense and still.
‘Oooh,’ Jamie’s back-up whistles. ‘She is so about to hurl -’
Aaand she does.
Jamie quickly lets go of her arm and steps back.
‘Gross,’ he laughs, to cover his embarrassment. ‘Tell you what, bestie, I’ll let you handle this one, yeah?’
I give him a thumbs up. ‘I hear wedding bells!’
But he’s already turned away from us both.
‘Come on, Deenie Dean,’ I murmur, scooping up what remains of my best friend and steering her away.
We make a toilet pit stop on the way to my car - it’s a piece of junk, but that’s still one step up from being a vomit-covered piece of junk - and I do the holding-the-hair back friend duty of time immemorial. Deena barely talks throughout, skin greasy pale, stumbling along beside me with her block heels capsizing against the sticky carpet like tankers at sea.
I belt her in and start up the car, peeling gratefully away from the raucous shindig behind us.
My god, I hate people.
A few minutes into the ride with the window open, and Deena’s colour starts looking a little less dead toad.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I hear her mutter.
‘Done what?’ I ask, my eyes fixed on the road.
‘Shouldn’t have embarrassed him like that.’
‘Him? Who him?’ It clicks. ‘Jamie?’
‘He’ll be upset,’ she moans. ‘I’ll have to calm him down.’
‘Sounds like quite a catch.’
‘Oh, what would you know about it, Alec?’ The snap in her voice is somewhat muted by her gloopily weakened state, but I can still hear it. ‘You’ve never even had a boyfriend. You don’t understand what a serious relationship takes. It takes work and compromise, okay?’
‘I don’t know relationships take work and compromise?’ I retort with mock surprise. ‘I’ve been friends with you long enough, haven’t I?’
‘Well if you feel like that then why are you still hanging around me?’ Deena sucks in her cheeks. ‘Could it be because no one else in this town will put up with you?’
The only sound is the grinding hum of my car as we roll along a dark back road sentried by looming trees.
‘I’m sorry,’ Deena says after a while, her voice wobbling with the promise of tears. ‘I’m really sorry. That was so mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Why did you call me from the party tonight, Deena?’ I ask carefully. ‘Why did you get so drunk? What’s going on with you lately?’
‘Nothing,’ she mutters, turning her head away from me.
‘Is it the lunkhead you’re dating? Is he treating you badly? Because if that’s the case, so help me god I’ll pummel him. I don’t care how tall he is, my knee can still reach his balls.’
‘No! Jamie is fine. Look, Alec.’ Silence. ‘It’s not me. It’s you.’
‘What?’ I glance at her. ‘What about me?’
Finally comes her small, soft, pitying reply. That’s the real stinger - the pity.
‘You know what.’
I look at her again, trying to think of what the hell to say.
When I look back, there’s someone standing in the middle of the road, and I’m about to hit them.
My heart stops. My hands jerk. The wheel wrenches left. I hear Deena’s sudden intake of breath, the soft, brief moment of suspense before actions become consequences. A black shape rushes towards us, flipped into white craggy relief from the headlights of my car as it careens and crumples into it with sprays of glass. The loudest bang I’ve ever heard. Pain. Pressure.
We’ve hit a tree, I remember thinking, we’ve hit a tree, we’ve hit a tree, that’s what we’ve done is we’ve crashed into a tree, over and over, as if evoking the simple practical situation we’re in will give me back control.
A few seconds later, I hear Deena suck in a huge, unsteady breath. And then another. Hysteria is on its way, but that’s good, because it means she’s alive. And judging by the sharp throb just now beginning its tap dance on my forehead, so am I.
That only makes two of us, though. Because whoever - whatever - it was standing in the middle of the road? Definitely dead. I only saw it for a second before I swerved to avoid it, but I’m sure, and the reason I’m sure is that living people don’t usually resemble the walking embodiment of Munch’s Scream.
Whoever - whatever it was - that just ran us off the road, it might have looked like a human being, but it wasn’t.
I have to check. I have to make sure it’s not still there, that it’s not even now taking jerking, stumpy steps towards the car and the helpless people inside it. Moving on autopilot, I open up the mangled driver’s door and crawl outside. I can hear Deena sobbing behind me, where are you going, where are you going, but I can’t talk, I’m in a daze, and I have to make sure.
But when I get to the road, whoever - whatever - it was, is gone. There’s nothing, not even another car. We are alone.
Relief takes me to my knees on the dark, wet asphalt.
That was the first one.