It took Charlie a while to ease out from under the bridge and raise his nose above the steep embankment.

The street had returned to normal with its rows of autumn trees, as old as the town itself, that reached over the street forming a lush canopy in summer and a stark lattice by the time the snow blew through. A line of cars hugged the pavement—some covered in dust from being there for weeks. Dried rose stems clung to the arch above Bertha’s gate, but the gate seemed fine, and her door had returned to its frame and remained as eye-meltingly orange as it had always been. He saw no evidence that anything unusual had occurred. It seemed peaceful. It must have all been a trick of the light. Yes, that had to be it. The ogre, the cars, the cracked bridge must all just have been a trick of the light.

He backed away a few steps, his eye searching for anything else that would want to kill him, and then he turned and sprinted back the way he had come and didn’t stop until he reached his house and had locked himself in the bathroom.

He collapsed over the toilet bowl wanting to sick up, partly from overexertion but mostly out of sheer terror. At least the toilet smelled lemony fresh.

He snatched up his phone to tell Allie what happened and found a string of messages from her:

“I’m here. Where u.”

“Where are you!?!”

“Shows starting in ten!!!!!”

“You better not wuss out on me!”

“I put my life on the line to get these tickets.”

“WHERE ARE YOU!”

Charlie stared at the phone wondering what he could possibly say. Her mind worked differently to most people and she believed the strangest things, but an ogre... even that would be pushing it. He grabbed a towel and dabbed the sweat and dirty water from his face, and for a moment he wondered if he was going insane. He then wondered if insane people knew they were going insane.

Insane or not, Allie would kill him if he arrived late, so he quickly fixed his hair, changed his clothes, fixed his hair again and did the unthinkable: he asked his mum to drive him.

Allie was pacing outside the movies and glared at him as he approached. “Where’ve you been?” She tapped her watch furiously. “The manager’s been eyeing me like I’m about to rob the place or something.

Despite the cool weather, she wore a short skirt with boots, and her jersey sleeves were pushed up showing at least fifty colourful bracelets.

“Come on.” She grabbed his wrist and yanked him towards the confectionery stand. Charlie stuck a finger under his jersey like a gun, and Allie slapped his hand away.

“That’s so not funny! It would have been a lot easier to get us in when there were other people around. You know that!”

“Sorry, I uh—I fell in the river.” His shoes squelched with each step leaving a sheen of water behind him like a snail. The only other shoes he had were his school shoes and slippers and he wasn’t about to go out in either of those.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I then had to get my mum to drive me, and you know how she feels about driving. The whole way she was like, ‘Uuuh, we’re going to die, we’re going to die. Why are all these cars driving in the wrong lane.’

She hits the brakes so often, the cars behind her think she’s tapping out a message in Morse Code.”

“Wait, wait, forget all that,” Allie said, impatiently. “Did you say you fell into the river?” It took a while for the words to sink in, and then she bit back a laugh. “How did you manage that?”

They reached the counter, and Allie scanned the concession board even though she knew it by heart and always ordered the same thing.

Charlie pulled out his wallet. “Don’t ask. I was getting away from...” He couldn’t exactly come out and say an ogre. AN OGRE! The thought still rattled him. “I think it was—well it must have been a dog. It ran after me, and I kind of misjudged the bridge, and I must have hit my head. Actually, I don’t know how I ended up in the river. I turned, and I thought something was after me, and—”

“Wait,” Allie dropped her voice, “you can tell me later. There’s my contact.”

Now that other people were around, the whole incident at Bertha’s felt surreal. They had to cross the bridge again when they drove into town, and Charlie had kept his face glued to the window, looking for some sign that an ogre, or something, had passed through, but he found nothing. Even Bertha’s front door was intact. He couldn’t find any evidence that anything had happened. Yes, he must have hit his head on the way into the river. That could be the only explanation.

The theatre was dark, and the air stale, and behind them, on the screen, some guy’s head exploded like a cracker in a melon. After what happened on the bridge, a psycho movie had lost much of its shine. Charlie would far rather be watching an animation.

Allie grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the back row.

She clutched his arm as she shovelled popcorn into her mouth and flinched every time someone got a body part ripped off.

They remained behind for a long time after the credits had rolled and most of the people had filtered out of the theatre.

Allie stared wide-eyed at the screen. “I can’t believe we just watched that. How am I ever going to sleep again?”

Charlie was too shell-shocked to respond with more than a grunt.

“...then when we get back to school, I’m going to have dark rings under my eyes, and I’ll walk around in a daze with my arms up like a zombie, and I’ll be too tired to care what clothes I put on, so I’ll have like one duck slipper and one of your wet shoes on, and then I’ll walk all crooked...” She sighed. “Charlie, you have to help me. You have to promise me that if that happens you won’t let me wander into someone’s locker by mistake. Please, Charlie, promise me. You know how claustrophobic I get.”

He patted her hand, gently. “I’ll look out for you.”

She let out a long breath as though that was a weight off her chest. “Come on,” Charlie said. “We better go before everyone leaves and they catch us here.”

He hauled Allie up by the arm. “I don’t want them thinking I’m just waiting around to gather up all the leftover popcorn. You see, these are the things you rich people don’t have to worry about.”

“No.” She said it a little too emphatically. “I’m not leaving until you promise to walk me home and then keep a watch outside for the rest of the night...” She considered for a moment. “But what if a psycho is waiting inside for me... What if he’s lying under my bed, or he climbed into my wardrobe and is waiting to cut off my hand when I reach for my hairbrush. How will I brush my hair without a hand!”

After what he had just seen, Charlie felt every bit as reluctant to walk home alone, and he certainly didn’t want to go past Bertha’s again, but he didn’t want to admit how much the movie had freaked him out especially after he ‘girl screamed’ and everyone turned around and looked at him. He flicked his head at Allie and smirked, and she was too enraptured to notice any of it.

Allie snatched up three boxes of popcorn from the seats around them and shook them at Charlie threateningly. “Promise me, Charlie.”

“Okay, but only if I can stay over.

“Allie put out her hand to shake. “Deal.”