by Konnie Huq
The rest of the minibus journey is uneventful. By the time we reach the forest, everyone’s fallen asleep in the back of the bus and it’s chucking it down with rain.
‘Welcome to the forest!! Everyone out!!’ booms Edmonds at about a thousand decibels. ‘Tents up! Quick smart!’
This is a rude awakening from the warmth and dryness of the van that had rocked us gently to sleep …
We’re callously thrown into the miserable sheet rain, which is pelting down onto the muddy forest floor.
Ping! Suzie’s tent pops up instantly.
‘Get in, Cookie!’ she yells over the torrential downpour.
I want to help the others. This trip won’t be fun without us all getting along. Jake obviously doesn’t want my help; Keziah seems to be feeling bad for Jake; Alison is jealous of Suzie being nice to me; and Axel is even less likely to make eye contact in a level-ten onslaught of pouring rain. It’ll be impossible to get the cooperation and communication needed to erect a tent with this lot.
‘Come on!’ shouts Suzie. ‘Hurry up!’
I leap into her tent. It’s safe, dry, warm and pink (very pink – in fact, it’s like being inside a giant watermelon).
Meanwhile, everyone else runs around outside like headless chickens trying to put their own tents up. Alison looks as though she’s crying but there’s so much rain that it’s hard to tell for sure.
I feel terrible in here with just me and Suzie. The others will hate me even more now. But this isn’t my fault. Jake is the one being funny with me! Mind you, I needn’t worry too much about them hating me – you can bet they’ll all be getting angry with each other out there in the rain and mud, trying to sort out which tent peg goes where, while Edmonds barks orders at them. I’m well out of it.
Edmonds will probably make us come out and help any moment now. It surely isn’t the army way not to muck in together with the rest of your platoon or regiment or whatever. We wait but she doesn’t come. We seem to have been left to it. After about fifteen minutes or so our curiosity gets the better of us and we decide to peek outside to see what’s going on. We pull down the zip at the front of the tent and poke our heads out to have a good look …
The others are soaking wet right through but are all in hysterics. They’re laughing uncontrollably at the hilarity of the situation, slipping and sliding about in the mud like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. It’s a funny sight – they’re drenched right through, with their hair clinging to their faces and wet clothes clinging to their bodies.
I want join in but at the same time feel annoyed that they’re sharing this moment without ME! They’re clearly having the time of their lives and I don’t like it one little bit. Suzie pulls the zip up and we retreat back inside the tent.
‘Urgh! They’ll be sorry,’ she says. ‘They’ll get sick rolling around in all that bacteria. Come on – let’s eat chocolate and listen to music and gossip while they bathe in the muck like pigs!’
‘Yeah, gross,’ I say, secretly jealous I’m not bathing in muck with them.
‘Oh no! It’s not dark yet – you can’t eat!’ she says, ‘Ramakuh, remember!’ She pulls a slab of butterscotch-flecked chocolate out of her backpack, breaks off a row of cubes and casually tosses it into her mouth. ‘No matter! Only a couple of hours before the sun goes down. Hang on in there, babycakes!’
If only I could come clean and tell her! But when I open my mouth nothing comes out so I just sit there in silence.
She swipes through some music on her tablet, taps on her choice of song and grins as she turns up the volume.
‘Be who you am and am who you be, say what you like, you’ll never be me,’ Aliana Tiny sings out from Suzie’s hot-pink Bluetooth speaker as she croons along. Oh no! Worst music ever! She chomps on more chocolate and starts busting out dance moves.
This is awful! Jake will think I’m rubbing it in his face on purpose. How will I ever make up with him now?
CHAPTER 15
Ghost Stories
When it finally stops raining and the others have changed into dry clothes and fully recovered from the tent-pitching caper, Mrs Edmonds gives us a tour of the area and a quick rundown of what’s what.
She then tells us that we’re going to light a fire. The prospect of a proper campfire to gather around telling stories and cooking food is an exciting one! It’ll be just like in films and on telly. Keziah is the only one who’s a bit nervous, as she knows this means it’s going to be night-time soon and there are no Winnie-the-Pooh digital alarm clocks or night lights in the forest. Just darkness.
I, on the other hand, can’t wait for it to turn dark so we can have dinner because I’m absolutely STARVING. Everyone else ate lunch except for me so I can’t wait to get stuck into my evening meal! I’m literally counting down the minutes.
Lighting a fire looks so much easier on TV. In real life it’s nearly impossible.
Things probably aren’t helped by the fact that everything is damp. Luckily, Edmonds has brought loads of ground sheets, so we put them down all over the place. It’s a bit like having an outdoor carpet. We can sit and roll around on the floor quite comfortably!
Lighting a fire is another matter though. We have to find a bit of flat ground that isn’t too wet and then create the fire triangle! Oxygen, fuel and heat – the three components necessary for fire. Take any of these away and your fire goes out.
My dad runs a restaurant and a pan once caught fire in the kitchen. The chef put it out by turning the cooker off (taking away the fuel) and covering it with a tea towel (taking away the oxygen) – plus the tea towel was damp (taking away the heat). Triple whammy!!
Mrs Edmonds tells me and Axel to get a bucket of water from the lake nearby in case our fire gets out of hand. I know this is just Edmonds wanting us to be all survivalist and army-like because I noticed she actually brought a fire extinguisher with her in one of her bags! Next, she’ll be making us live off the land!
Once we all settle down, our camp feels really cosy and inviting. The fire takes a while to get going properly as the wood has to have lots of air gaps in between to keep a good supply of oxygen. In the end, Edmonds has to help us build it. We light it with a magnesium flint stick, which we rub against a steel stick to create a hot spark and kick it all off. Jake says it looks like a dragon sneezing, which is pretty spot on!
I try not to laugh. Even though we’re all having fun, Jake is continuing to ignore me.
It’s still light by the time we start making dinner. Why so early? How will I avoid eating till it turns dark? I pretend to get obsessive over picking up bits of rubbish from the forest floor so as not to join in with the meal. I watch on as vegetarian sausages, baked beans, and bread and butter triangles are dished out and pray that Suzie won’t announce I’m fasting. Keziah, Jake and Axel know that Ramadam was back in May, so it will definitely look weird if Suzie says anything. Alison probably doesn’t have a clue – I bet she doesn’t even know what fasting is!
Luckily, Suzie says nothing and instead goes off to disinfect her hands with antibacterial gel. While she’s away, I quickly declare that I’ll eat my food after I’ve finished picking up litter. This way it won’t look weird to Suzie or the others that I’m not eating.
‘Once it’s dark I won’t be able to see anything,’ I say. ‘The planet won’t save itself! I can’t relax till I’ve finished. You guys carry on. Won’t be long.’
‘What a wonderful example, Cookie! Well done!’ cries Mrs Edmonds.
It’s painful waiting for the sun to go down, listening to the others munching away as my stomach groans on at me.
After about three-quarters of an hour it finally gets dark, which means fake fasting is over for the day. At last, I can eat! Hurray! Sheer jubilance! I could’ve eaten the whole campsite at that moment.
I race over to the others, my stomach begging me for food. I put down my bag of rubbish and say, ‘I hope you haven’t been littering, gang!’
Mrs Edmonds chuckles away as
though I’ve said the most hilarious joke she’s ever heard.
My face falls. ‘Oh! There’s only one sausage and a few baked beans left.’ (I count them – there are only fourteen beans in total!)
Still, on the bright side, it’s the best vegetarian sausage and fourteen baked beans I’ve had in my entire life. If only I could have had ten times as much! For pudding we each have some toasted marshmallows, which Edmonds frugally rations out, one by one. I could have happily polished off the whole bag, but, hey, the night is young!
Being in the great outdoors is amazing! We are at one with nature. The fire gives us warmth and light, crackling away blissfully against the night sky. We are all relishing the moment. Sheer joy!
‘Mrs Edmonds,’ asks Axel, ‘when you were in the army did you ever kill anyone?’
‘It would be foolish to say …’ replies Edmonds. ‘What happens in combat stays in combat!’
‘Huh?!’ says Suzie.
‘It means I can’t tell you or I’d have to kill you!’ jokes Edmonds. At least I hope she’s joking …
Edmonds has been in combat?! No way! She’s probably been in war zones and everything!! She can really handle herself, which makes us all feel safe in her company. It’s getting quite creepy in the forest now. The later and darker it gets, the stranger the noises and shadows are.
‘Can you tell us a story of one of your army adventures?’ asks Jake.
‘Well, OK then, seeing as it’s you six,’ says Edmonds. She looks around before she begins, as though she’s about to tell us a state secret and wants to check no one else is listening in.
‘One day, my troops were all at base, sitting around a fire much like this one, in the middle of an unknown territory …’
‘Huh?’ says Suzie.
‘They were somewhere they didn’t know,’ explains Keziah.
Oh brother … we’re in for a long night if every sentence is going to need explaining!
Edmonds goes on to tell us how some of her company or battalion or whatever you call it had wandered off and disappeared, never to be seen again. The locals said later that they’d probably been eaten by the native man-eating ghosts!
‘Right!’ says Edmonds, getting up. ‘Just going to put some things away in the van and then it’s bedtime.’ She disappears off.
‘Man-eating ghosts?’ says Alison, turning pale.
I roll my eyes. Edmonds blatantly made that story up to stop us wandering off on our own in the night.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ says Jake. ‘Ghosts don’t exist!’
‘And they certainly don’t eat people!’ chimes in Keziah.
‘I really don’t feel well,’ says Alison. She doesn’t look well either. ‘I think I’m gonna be sick!’ she cries, running to the loo. When I say loo, it’s more of a dilapidated hut with a hole in the ground.
Moments later, we hear a piercing cry echo through the forest. Alison runs back at top speed, screaming.
‘I saw a ghost!’ she splutters, shaken up and trying to catch her breath.
‘Where?’ asks Axel, laughing.
‘In the toilet. It was a floating, glowing head without a body!’ Alison is hysterical.
‘You must have imagined it,’ says Keziah.
‘I know what I saw,’ she protests. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘You’re winding us up!’ says Jake.
‘She wouldn’t do that!’ says Suzie, defending her best friend (well, her ex-best friend). She knows Alison better than all of us and is convinced she’s telling the truth. To be fair, Alison isn’t really the type to trick people, unless she’s just playing along with Suzie. But Suzie definitely isn’t in on this.
‘Was it inside the actual toilet?’ asks Suzie.
‘Doing a wee!’ adds Jake, giggling.
‘No! It was in the hut thing that houses the toilet,’ sobs Alison.
It’s getting pretty dark and scary now and the six of us are unsure what to do about Alison’s outburst. She really has lost it.
‘I’ll get Edmonds,’ says Axel. ‘She’ll check it out!’
We wait and reassure Alison.
‘I’ve never liked the dark!’ says Keziah, trying to be helpful.
What is going on? Has Alison made it up or imagined it? It can’t be true, can it?!
At that moment, Axel dashes back towards us.
‘Edmonds has gone!’ he says. ‘She’s not packing stuff into the minibus and she’s not in her tent. She’s gone!’
CHAPTER 16
Actual Ghosts
Where is Mrs Edmonds? Has she been taken by a man-eating ghost?! What if she’s stumbled over a tree root and knocked herself unconscious? Or maybe she’s just gone to get some more water from the lake? The fire has become pretty big and will need to be put out for the night. But what if she’s tripped and fallen in?
Is the lake deep? I know people swim in it as it has a ramshackle building next to it with a ‘Forest Outdoor Swimming Club’ timetable pinned to the door. What if she’s drowning?! Surely you have to be able to swim to be in the army?
Alison is nearly hyperventilating now.
Breathing furiously, she stutters, ‘Worse still, I … I …’ She stops, unable to continue, much to Suzie’s annoyance.
‘You … what?!’ snaps Suzie impatiently. We’re all getting frustrated now.
‘Worse still, I … I …’ continues Alison. ‘It sounds ridiculous but I … I’m sure I heard the ghost call my name as I ran away!!!’
She’s quivering and tears are streaming down her cheeks. The poor girl is in a real state.
‘How could it have known your name?!’ Jake bursts out laughing. ‘What am I talking about? Ghosts don’t even exist!!!!’
What on earth is going on?!! Is there a name-calling ghost out there?! As if.
‘Alison!’ a distant voice calls out from somewhere in the bushes. We all freeze. Alison starts screaming. Suzie looks annoyed – she clearly isn’t pleased that Alison is currently the centre of attention. Suzie isn’t used to that.
‘Alison!’ repeats the deep, gruff voice … but it isn’t the voice of a man-eating ghost, although I must admit I don’t know what a man-eating ghost’s voice sounds like.
I do know this voice though … it belongs to Mrs Edmonds!
‘Alison!’ she says, emerging from the bushes. You really should knock before entering the toilet – there’s no lock, you know.’
‘Huh?’ says Suzie, confused.
‘You’re the ghost!’ grins Axel.
‘Not a ghost,’ replies Edmonds. ‘Just an innocent civilian trying to use the toilet in peace.’
‘Told you so,’ crows Jake, ‘there’s no such thing as ghosts!’.
‘Jake’s right,’ I say, hoping he’ll respond to me and that this could be a bit of an ice-breaker for us. But he doesn’t – he’s still ignoring me.
‘It can’t be. You can’t be,’ sobs Alison. ‘I saw it with my own eyes. There was a glowing head in the dark.’
‘You mean there was an innocent civilian in dark clothes in a dark toilet with her head illuminated by the light of her mobile phone!’ snaps Edmonds matter-of-factly.
‘Huh?’ says Suzie.
‘Illuminated means lit up!’ explains Keziah, giggling.
‘By the way, whoever goes to the toilet next – take this with you,’ says Edmonds, holding up a loo roll. ‘I finished the last one.’
We all laugh. It’s funny. The whole thing is funny. Although Alison looks visibly upset that Suzie is joining in and laughing too, eventually she does see the funny side. Better still, Alison reckons she’s finally got over her fear of ghosts!
We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Edmonds says we’ll be doing all sorts of outdoor activities and challenges. Exciting! (I think …) I’m hoping it’ll be more stuff like the minibeast hotel and the scavenger hunt as opposed to an army assault course or a ten-mile cross-country run.
After we’ve brushed our teeth and put on our pyjamas, we all get into our
tents ready for our first night’s sleep under the stars.
Lying there, looking up at the hot-pink fabric ceiling, I really hope Keziah is OK. It’s so dark out there. The sky is pitch black – there’s no moon in sight. The glowing embers left behind from the fire add little if any light to that of the few stars present in the sky tonight. Ordinarily, I’d be reassuring Keziah right now, but because I was dragged into Suzie’s tent during the rainstorm, Keziah has ended up sharing with Alison instead of me. I say dragged, but to be honest I wasn’t complaining during the downpour when I was dry and everyone else was getting drenched!
Edmonds has her own tent and Jake is sharing with Axel. It’s been so much fun around the campfire this evening. My only regret is that Jake is still annoyed with me. I curl up into a ball in the top half of my sleeping bag and think about everything that’s happened. It’s hard to block out all the forest sounds: owls, insects and other odd noises.
Before long, Suzie nods off and I feel lonely and a bit frightened. I’m sure I can hear shuffling and crunching outside. I stay dead still in the comfort of my sleeping bag. When the noise gets really close, I dare to peek out through scrunched-up eyes and spot a scary shadow looming over the entrance of the tent.