The Dare and the Dark

We’d been smoking behind the assembly hall for a while after detention - not talking much, just leaning up against the wall trying to pretend we were cool -when Jake turned to me with that annoying smirk on his face.
‘You heard about the Void?’ he said.
‘You what?’ I asked, though I already half-knew.
‘It’s this place, like a maze, under the school. Tons of stuff down there - you know like… the desks they use for exams, old blackboards, all sorts.’
‘Blackboards? Wow,’ I tried to sound as patronising as I could.
‘It’s massive, you can get lost in it. One time, this boy died down there.’
‘Oh yeah, who?’
‘You know Danny Cryer? In the sixth form? His cousin.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘Danny was mates with my brother, told him about it. It was a couple of years ago. Bloke went down there for a dare, got lost and died. Starved to death or something.’
‘What a load of crap.’
‘It’s true!’ Jake’s eyes were wide. ‘We should check it out.’
‘Er... why?’ I said, shaking my head at him.
He shrugged, ‘For a laugh?’
I took a long drag on my cigarette, and then tried hard to suppress the urge to cough.
‘Well I’m going. If you’re too scared then don’t worry. You run along home to momma.’
‘Screw you, Jake.’
‘Come on then. Dare ya.’
Dare ya. He sounded like more like five than fifteen, but the way he looked at me reminded me of Charlie, my dog. Charlie had died a couple of months before and I guess I missed him.
‘Go on then.’ Even then I kind of knew I was going to regret it.

The entrance to the Void wasn’t much to look at. A drab grey door at the bottom of a drab grey staircase. I tried the handle. It was locked.
‘Let’s go.’ I said, turning away.
Jake smiled and took a key out of his trouser pocket. With a flourish he unlocked the door.
‘Where’d that come from?’ I asked him, genuinely surprised.
He tapped his nose. ‘Contacts.’
He pushed the door inwards, revealing a dark, uninviting corridor beyond.
‘Come on,’ he said, and, swinging his Arsenal bag he sauntered through the door. I glanced up the stairs in case a teacher, working late, should clock us, then followed him through and pulled the door closed behind us.
The light switch wasn’t working on the other side of the door, so we had to make our way down the corridor by the light of Jake’s cigarette lighter until we reached another door, green and peeling, at the far end. This door was heavy and there didn’t seem to be enough of a gap between the bottom of the door and the floor so it took both of us pulling on the handle to drag it open.
Beyond was complete darkness. Jake reached round the frame of the door, trying to find a switch, but there was nothing. Regardless, he stepped into the space beyond and the darkness swallowed him up.
I hesitated. ‘What’s in there?’ I said. There was no reply.
‘Jake!’
His laugh, high-pitched and annoying as always, came back at me from the dark. ‘Come on!’ he said.
Feeling uneasy, I walked through the door and immediately felt the sensation of being in a vast space. It was pitch black and I put my arms out to my sides but felt no wall or object.
There was a flicker of light and a few yards away I saw Jake’s disembodied face, ghoulishly illuminated by the flame of the cigarette lighter.
‘Stop pissing about; where’s the light switch?’ I said, moving slowly towards him.
‘I don’t know. This is freaky innit?’
It was freaky. It was a darkness like nothing I’ve ever experienced before or since. There was no sense of where the walls or ceiling were and no sounds other than our breath. Jake flicked the lighter off and the darkness was complete.
‘Hey, don’t…’ Although I was only yards away from him, I suddenly felt very alone. I edged gingerly in the direction that I had last seen him.
‘Where are you?’ I said, waving my arms around attempting to connect with him. There was no answer. Panic gripped me. I couldn’t even tell where the door was now.
I kept moving, but a weight seemed to drag at my legs though there still seemed to be nothing around me. My foot collided with a small object. I bent down slowly and fumbled for it. My hand tightened around it. A plastic cylinder of some kind, with a metallic edge at one end – Jake’s lighter.
‘Shit… Jake? Jake?’ My voice sounded distant in my own head, like someone else shouting at me from a great distance.
I struck the lighter and but only a spark flew from it. I tried again but the flame seemed unwilling to emerge as though afraid that it too would be absorbed by the darkness around me.
The darkness - it felt oppressive, almost solid. I heard the cry ‘Jake!’ escape my lips before I started running.
My arms outstretched ahead of me, I ran, and it was like running through a waterfall, fighting my way through the dark. Then suddenly I was flat on my face on the ground, my legs pulled from under me, or so it seemed. I pushed my hands against the pitted floor, forced myself upright and staggered onwards, my head spinning and my stomach lurching.
My hand somehow connected with the door handle and I frenziedly pulled at it, barely registering the fact that the heavy door had somehow swung closed. The darkness was like a weight on me - crushing, overwhelming – then inspiration hit me and I pushed the door as hard as I could and found myself tumbling into the corridor beyond.
I belted through the gloom towards the door at the far end. Behind me I heard a tremendous slam as the entrance to the Void crashed shut. I didn’t look round but fled through the deserted school and out into the street, where I held myself against a lamppost and threw up into the gutter under the disapproving gaze of a passing old lady.
I started walking home, shaking slightly, running through what had just happened over and over again in my head. I thought about what I was going to say to my mum and as I did, I started to realise how crazy it would all sound. I didn’t even know how I could put it all into words. Maybe, maybe it had just been Jake mucking around, he was always doing things like that, yeah, that was it; Jake had been taking the piss out of me, and I’d just got carried away. Course I had. That bastard, I’d get him in the morning.

But Jake wasn’t in school in the morning. That wasn’t particularly strange; he was always bunking off, but I did feel a little sick in my stomach.
It was only later that night, when my mum took a call and came into my room with a solemn face, that I began to feel truly afraid again.
‘That was Jake’s mum,’ she said, ‘he hasn’t been home the last two nights - no one knows where he is.’

Later still, two bored looking police officers, a man and a woman, came round to ask me some questions. My mum held my hand as I told them the basics of what had happened, that Jake had gone into the Void and then disappeared but that I had no idea what had happened to him.
They decided to take a look at the Void and wanted me to accompany them. My mum, shaking her head and denouncing Jake as a bad influence on me, came too. When got to the school it was past midnight. We were met at the gates by the caretaker, Mr Croker. He was puffing on a fag and looked highly unimpressed at being called out so late.
He confirmed to the police that his key to the storeroom, as he called the Void, had gone missing but he had been able to find a spare. We went down to the basement and Croker tried the door. It was locked now and he used his key to open it. He shone his torch down the corridor beyond.
‘Light bulb’s gone I’m afraid,’ he said as he led us along it to the peeling green door that led to the Void. I swallowed hard as he pulled it open and stepped through into the darkness.
A light came on, revealing the room beyond. I clutched at my mother’s hand as we went in.
It was a large but by no means enormous room, and it was absolutely cluttered with small, graffiti-covered wooden desks stacked two or three high. It was difficult to move around without banging a leg against one of them. There was little else of interest to be seen, a few blackboards leant up against the walls, an ancient television set, and a broken climbing frame from the junior playground.
‘This is it,’ said Croker, waving his hand apologetically.
‘No, this isn’t how it was…’ I said but no one took any notice of me.

They searched of course. But they found no trace of Jake. He never showed up. Consensus was that he’d run away or that his old man had done him in, his father was a drinker and used to hit him or so people said.
I quit school at the end of that year without taking my exams; it never felt right without Jake. He wasn’t much of a friend, but he was practically my only friend.
I kept the lighter, which lay forgotten in the pocket of my blazer for weeks after the event. One night - it must have been nearly a year later - I was lying in my bed unable to sleep. I sat up, fished the lighter out of my bedside drawer and rolled it in my hand for a moment, thinking of Jake and what had happened in the Void.
I flicked it on, and for a moment I saw him. His face illuminated, disembodied, floating in the dark like it had the last time I saw him. He looked right at me, and it seemed like there was a flicker of recognition in his blue eyes.
I let go of the lighter and the image disappeared into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared. I didn’t sleep too well for a long time after that, but the lighter found a resting place - at the bottom of the canal.