Sometimes I wonder how things would have played out if I hadn’t gone to the Halloween party.

If I’d been anywhere else - like at home where I’d intended to be, or doing a late night at the garage - maybe none of what followed would have happened. The stupid part was that I hadn’t planned to go to the school party at all. In fact, I’d actively planned on not going, until Jessica’s jealous moron of a boyfriend Travis told me not to show up, ‘or else’.

Maybe, if I hadn’t gone, Victoria Pryce’s Special Ops team would have stepped in before the supernatural creature tracked me down. Maybe they’d have captured it without my help before Section 13 showed up. I’d have woken up the next morning, none the wiser to the chaos of the previous night. Heard the same rumours as everyone else, about a weird animal running riot around town. And that would have been the end of it.

Maybe, if I hadn’t gone to the party, my life would have trundled along as usual.

And maybe, just maybe, she’d still be alive.

On the other hand, it might not have made any difference. The same things would still have happened, more or less, just in a slightly different order. Perhaps how it all ended was inevitable, regardless of whether I’d gone to the damn party or not.

I guess we can all drive ourselves crazy wondering about might-have-beens. What if I hadn’t done that, hadn’t been there, hadn’t said that? I don’t know.

What I do know is this: As I stood alone in a darkened school corridor at around nine in the evening facing a snarling, toothy monstrosity straight out of Dungeons and Dragons, armed with nothing more than a broken door handle (no, really) and an impending sense of doom, I was definitely cursing the events that had put me there.

The thing, roughly the size and shape of a silverback gorilla but more canine-like, glared at me, all glowing red eyes, vicious claws and drooling fangs. It reminded me of the Gozer dog things from the original Ghostbusters, only scarier because that was in a film and this was real.

Worse still, it was not happy with me at all.

I mean, I had just smacked it across its snout.

In self-defence, of course.

I don’t normally go around whacking animals. I like animals generally.

I’m just not a big fan when they’re trying to turn me into lunch.

So as I stood facing the first monster I’d ever encountered, aside from cursing the fact of being there at all, my only other coherent thought was:

I’m only sixteen! That’s way too young to die!

As it turned out, I’d end up thinking that a lot in the following couple of weeks. If I had a penny for every time that particular thought crossed my mind, I’d be, let’s see, about ten pence richer? Maybe fifteen. Honestly, I lost count by the time things kicked into fifth gear on the whole ‘Let’s kill Ethan Hall’ deal.

Either way, that Halloween was the night that everything changed. It was the night I found out that monsters are real and started to get some idea of what I am. It was the night that unleashed a whole chain of events which...well, which happened.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me rewind a touch to explain why I was in that school corridor and introduce you to a few people. Just a few hours before we get to the whole ‘Snarling monstrosity about to tear me limb from limb’ bit.

Don’t worry, I didn’t die.

Obviously.

*

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Nine Hours Earlier.

Lunch break, Archway Secondary School canteen.

“So, are you two losers going to the Halloween party tonight, or what?”

That was Jess, one of my two best friends, talking to Deepak and me. Calling each other ‘losers’ and trading insults was how we showed we liked each other. It’s a British thing.

Our little gang of three was composed of the school’s outsiders: Jess, too smart and rich to be at a non-private school (her dad insisted on sending her to a comprehensive despite being minted), Dee, the only British-Indian kid (his elder sister had left the year before, leaving Dee one of the few non-white kids in the school) and me, the ‘quiet weirdo’ who kept himself to himself.

“Pff,” I scoffed.

Dee rolled his eyes and took a bite of his sandwich.

Sitting at the next table, Forrest chimed in, even though he wasn’t part of the conversation. Forrest, a blond, openly gay kid, wasn’t a member of our little gang. He just hung around on the outside sometimes. Everyone, teachers included, called him by his second name.

Ever since he’d come out, he’d made an irritating point of shoehorning that fact into every conversation he could.

“Halloween is sooo gay!” he piped up.

See what I mean? Typical Forrest.

To be fair, he’d had taken a lot of bullying since coming out, and it had taken a lot of guts to do so. His response to the bullying had been to throw it back in people’s faces at every opportunity, and sometimes he really overdid it. Even though our town, Stroud, was pretty open-minded, it was still a small town.

“Dude!” Dee exclaimed in a shocked tone. “You can’t say stuff like that! This isn’t the eighties!”

“I can say stuff like that,” Forrest replied with an arch expression, “I’m re-appropriating homophobic language, ain’t I? Besides, Halloween is blatantly gay. All those straight kids playing dress up? All the freaks and geeks coming out at night to scare the normies? I can’t be the only one seeing the subtext there, surely? Come on.”

The three of us took a moment to absorb that little nugget. Not for the first time, Jess looked like she wanted to throttle Forrest. Dee rolled his eyes again and carried on with his sandwich.

“Wow,” I muttered, “did you swallow a dictionary this morning?”

“Wow,” Forrest snarked back, “did you read a book ever?”

I grinned, but it was forced. Forrest had hit a nerve, more by accident than out of malice. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed academically. I wasn’t stupid or lazy, I just struggled at school. Other kids, mentioning-no-names Jess, swept up straight A-stars without breaking a sweat. Even Dee, with his affinity for languages, got the odd A here and there. I, on the other hand, usually scraped C’s and the rare B if I put my back into it.

Okay, so I was a bit lazy. The thing was, I knew what I wanted to do when I left school and academic studies weren’t part of the plan.

Cars. It was all about cars for me.

“Idiot,” I bantered back at Forrest, masking my discomfort.

“Fool.”

“Moron.”

“Whatever,” Forrest replied, “Anyway, I’m going. It’ll be cute seeing all those in-the-closet boys and girls getting their freak on.”

Jess, who had been observing our exchange with her ‘unimpressed’ face, nodded.

“That’s truly fascinating, Forrest, but I wasn’t actually talking to you. Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to hijack other people’s conversations to promote your own agenda?”

Seriously, I thought, what is it with all the dictionaries today?

I knew Jess had thrown the last bit in to shut Forrest up, though, and it worked. Forrest was stuck for a comeback and shrugged, which was the effect Jess had when she wanted to. She could usually get the last word in and make sure it stuck.

Jess was still waiting, standing at our table. The question hung in the air.

“We’re not going,” I said. “We’ve got a night planned of stealing cars, kicking ass and taking names, right Dee?”

“What better way to spend our free time is there?” Dee asked.

He sounded appalled at the very idea there might be an alternative to a night on the PlayStation.

“Oh,” Jess said, “Fair enough. I think it’ll be fun.”

As well as being a straight ‘A’ music and science nerd, Jess was a horror film fan, so a Halloween party was her type of thing. Me? I was more of a ‘James Bond/The Fast and the Furious’ type of guy. It takes all sorts.

Jess gave me a look I couldn’t read, which had been happening a lot lately. Before I could respond, a voice boomed across the canteen.

“Legend!”

Jess’s pale face turned a few shades redder than her long, ginger hair. I winced in empathy. Travis, Jess’s boyfriend, waved from the other side of the canteen, grinning.

“I’ve told him not to call me that,” Jess scowled.

“Band practise tonight, right?” Travis continued, oblivious to Jess’ frown.

Jess was semi-stuck with the nickname ‘Legend’ even though she hated it.

Her dad was a local B-list celebrity who, back in his heyday, had been the frontman of the punk rock band ‘Johnny and the Legends’ – and went by the name Johnny Legend. These days, he stuck to bit parts in movies and television shows and owned a small nightclub in town. He’d been smart enough not to burden his daughter with his adopted moniker and given her his real name, O’Leary. Still, some kids, her current boyfriend/bandmate included, insisted on calling her Legend now and then.

It drove her nuts.

Jess stalked across the canteen with a clear ‘we’re going to have words’ expression on her face.

“Sheeee liiiikes you,” Forrest smirked.

I scowled at him, but he walked away before I could start denying it.

“Good grief, that guy can be such a tool,” Dee said when Forrest was out of earshot.

“Right?” I said.