Horror Stories to Tell in the Dark by Anthony Masters

Author:Anthony Masters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

6

Voodoo

Marie-Denise was terrified of the joyriders who screeched their stolen cars around the Bloxham Estate in South London at night. She was eleven, and her parents had gone back to Haiti because there was some trouble at home, so her gran was looking after her and the twins. She wasn’t so much worried about herself – it was Jean-Luc and Duval that gave her such concern. In their parents’ absence the two nine-year-olds had got completely out of control and would run round the estate late at night, despite her best efforts to find them.

‘They’re devils,’ Gran would pronounce, standing on the balcony of Wessex House, looking at them charging across the muddy grass of the so-called ‘landscaped’ area below. ‘I can’t control them.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Marie-Denise, ‘there’s nothing to do here.’

Her statement was all too true. There was a large number of signs around the blocks firmly stating NO BALL GAMES, and the only official nod to the existence of children was a rusty climbing-frame and a swing that had lost its chains.

‘I don’t care,’ replied Gran obscurely. ‘Those two are heading for trouble.’

Later that evening, just as dusk was falling, Marie-Denise and Gran watched some joyriders arrive in a stolen VW Golf. They did handbrake turns, and a crowd of teenagers and children, which included the twins, watched them skid the VW round with an appalling screaming of tyres.

Because the estate was rough it had become a no-go area for the police, and normally the joyriders remained unpunished. Even now they were squealing round the service roads with kids running after them, and Marie-Denise could see Jean-Luc and Duval jumping up and down in excitement.

‘I’ll go and get them,’ she said firmly, and her gran sighed.

‘You can bring them back, but they’ll be out again in seconds.’

‘No, they won’t.’

But as Marie-Denise ran down the stairs she knew all too well that her gran was right. The boys’ hours of captivity were limited. The teacher at school said they were both a ‘pain’, and ‘what could you expect with the mother away like she is?’ But what could anyone expect here, Marie-Denise thought as she emerged into a wilderness of graffiti-smeared concrete, grey and unending, with the rubbish piled up on the pavements, burnt-out cars in the basement garage and closed shops, protected by steel shutters. The only traders who had stayed on were the industrious family who had a newsagent and an off-licence which had expanded into a grocery. They also had shutters, which at least protected them and their merchandise from ram-raiders.

Now, as she strode towards the watching crowd, Marie-Denise felt vulnerable. She knew one of the joyriders, a bumptious and overconfident fourteen-year-old known as Terry Caxton. He continually mocked her at school, partly because she was protective towards Jean-Luc and Duval, and partly because he wanted her to notice him – which she determinedly didn’t. ‘Little mummy,’ Terry called her, and she hated him more than she had ever hated anyone. She always stood up

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