Author's note:
The Character of Joshua and others in this story speak In South London Dialect; sometimes their spoken English may be technically incorrect.
At the age of sweet sixteen, I learned the truth.
That opening sentence makes me sound old, doesn't it?
I'm not, I'm seventeen.
I'm here to tell you the truth. If you don't want to hear it, I suggest you bow out now. If you can take the truth, I dare you to read on.
I learned the truth at 3.A.M, last year, on my sixteenth birthday.
It was a typical day at school: daydreaming and avoiding the other kids.
Because, the other kids think I'm creepy.
A combination of elements makes them think this of me. Firstly, my eyes, they're pale green. I get them from my mum, she's Irish. Secondly, my name's got 'bad' in it. I'm called Benita Badoe. I get my surname from my dad, he's from Ghana. And thirdly, this is the clincher, my birthday is the 31st of October: Halloween.
Also, I have no friends. So you can understand why I freak the other kids out.
Still, they leave me alone; I don't get bullied, I get lonely.
On my birthday last year I was feeling particularly lonely. I was missing dad, he died suddenly while visiting his parents in Ghana. He was my hero, but heroes often die.
Mum was away with work, so this was my first birthday alone, "We'll have a big meal out, when I get back darling," she said, hugging me goodbye.
I wasn't mad with her. It's only mum and I in our family now; she has to provide for us both.
After school I treated myself to my birthday meal: chips and a can of coke, consumed while I dawdled home.
As usual, I stopped off at the library. I pretended to study, but I went to be around people; the company of strangers diluted my lonely.
And, there's a boy goes there that I was crushing on. I was crushed that he wasn't there. Absolutely gutted.
But I guessed he had brothers and sisters and was out trick or treating, or just generally having a life; something I don't have.
Usually I'd cut through the park to get home fast, but I decided to take the street route. Strangely, I didn't want to be in the house on my own for long, so this route would waste time.
I say strangely, because normally I don't mind my own company, but this evening I felt different. Maybe it was turning sixteen, I thought. Or perhaps it was Halloween and kids my age were having fun.
Whatever it was, I had this strong compulsion to cut through Petal Road.
Petal Road is legendary in my area. Years ago, a young mum was slaughtered in her house on this street, in front of her two young kids, by a crazy crack head.
But it wasn't the murder that gave it its legendary status. No, it was old man.
Old man lived at 30 Petal Road before the young couple and their kids moved in, he was evil. They say he carried out animal (some say even human), sacrifices, to conjure up evil spirits that would possess people, who'd carry out his murderous commands, for his entertainment.
Entertainment's that some say were responsible for high profile murders. Deaths that were dismissed, as accidents were in fact, the work of old man.
Of course, mum says it's all crap. She said the young woman's husband went mad with grief and started claiming all kinds of weird stuff.
