15 MinutesBy David Bryant

So you wanna be a rock 'n' roll star? Well listen now to what I say.Just get an electric guitar, then take some time, and learn how to play

~~The Byrds

Chapter 1: The-Car-Crash-That-Never-Was

Song: Building A Mystery – Sarah McLachlan

“Oh God,” the words coiled in his throat like the smoke of smoldering cigarettes.

Niall's heart felt like an ill-timed drum trying to beat its way out from between his spine and his ribs. He could see translucent veins of lightning pulse with every crash, and he could feel the weight of water in his intestines when his heart would stop for a second before kicking his gut and beating on.

Fifteen minutes. It had been fifteen minutes, and he still hadn't seen it tonight, and maybe it wasn't coming? Oh, if only he could be so lucky.

Last night he had seen it at 12:07, the night before at 12:19, and the night before that at 12:02.

He had seen it every night, just after midnight, for the past three weeks, and, oh God, how he never wanted to see it again.

It was an “it,” right?

Dead things were its. He was sure of this. Living things could be people, but dead things at the foot of his bed were its, plain and simple.

Niall shut his eyes, he could feel his blond lashes pushing into knots, and tried to focus on the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

“This will pass,” he whispered, but the denial made it worse.

In order for it to pass it had to be real, and confirming that it was real meant the worst thing he could imagine... that it Actually. Was. Real.

All his life had been full of weird shit. In fact weird shit had been happening as far back as he could recall shit that had happened.

He had an imaginary friend named Herbert as a child.

Herbert liked to play in the crawl space in the hall where the air was sucked into the walls by the air vents, and Niall loved joining him. A five year old boy and his imaginary friend tucked away inside the walls of his parent's home like dragons hiding in a secret fortress.

He asked his parents for extra food to give to his friend, and he never understood why they refused to give him any. Herbert found that rude, and so did he. But then, he never understood why neither of his parents could see Herbert. He never understood why his parents were always so concerned about Herbert.

Herbert was the epitome of harmless; he was kind; he was old; he smelled like mothballs, and he told stories at night from outside Niall's window.

At five, Niall never thought it strange that Herbert could stand outside of a second story window.

When Herbert told him to come out and join him, that made perfect sense. Herbert said it was safe, and friends didn't lie to each other did they? And they were friends right? So why not join him outside of the bedroom window?

“That's right,” Hebert winked. “Come and join old Herbie.”

Come outside and join the floating man with his skin wrinkled like wrapping paper, and moth holes eaten through the lapels of his suit jacket.

That was the night Niall broke his leg falling from the second story window of his bedroom.

That was also the night when his parents found out that his imaginary friend’s name was Herbert. And before he returned home from the hospital, Niall found out that he had a great uncle named Herbert who had committed suicide inside the wall vent of his home.

Niall ignored Herbert after that, and Herbert started to ignore him.

As Niall grew older, the 'weird shit' came less and less. The red stains in the bathtub? Gone. The writing in the condensation on the mirror? Gone.

But some things never left completely.

Even to this day, if Niall stared long enough through the pitch black hole of his bedroom window, he could see Herbert's ashen face in the shadows begging him to come out and play.

That was part of why Niall was so hysterical tonight. He had really thought the weird shit had fallen by the wayside. He had thought things could be normal.

Okay, maybe things could never be entirely normal. He was gay and in a very conservative community. Just down the block from his home was The Church of The Prophet, a recent world wide phenomena, that had worked hard to change the meaning of words like faggot, and fag in England.

They had come from the states, but spread to almost every continent, and as long as that new movement stood as a curious firm pillar of his town... nothing could ever be entirely normal.

Normal. The word was beautiful. Oh how Niall wished to be normal so badly, and he had tried to so damn heard.

He had thought things could be normal.

The people at church told him he was normal. His youth counselor had prayed with him and told him everything was going to be okay.

Had they been lying?

Had he been hanging out with the wrong crowd?

Hadn't he done everything an 'okay' teenage boy was supposed to do?

He had gotten a job, even though he had hated that job. He had found a fake girlfriend, and he had been dumped by that fake girlfriend. He had bought a guitar, and he had written a fake sappy break-up song about that fake girlfriend. Then that fake girlfriend told people she thought he was gay, and Niall had spent plenty of time trying to avoid her in the hallway at all costs.

Niall had tried out for the football team. Surely you couldn't be a poof and be on the football team. Right? Well, maybe, but he hadn't made the team and wasn't surprised when he failed to make it. He was told he was too small. He had always been for his age, that was true.

Naill tried out for the school play, but he didn't get to be Peter Pan, or John, or Michael. He didn't even get a singing part. Instead, he got to be 'boy fairy number 4', and now, rather than wowing the school with his singing ability, his ex-girlfriend assured everyone within ear range that he was indeed gay.

Bitch.

But that was all normal right?

It was certainly normal compared to seeing dead people.

All normal teenagers, even normal gay teenagers, went through those other things. It was an expected rite of passage.

Teenagers scorned their teachers, carved graffiti into school desks, and worried about being picked last when choosing sides for basketball.

What teenagers did not worry about were dead things at the foot of their bed, and neither had Niall until the morning of the radio sermon.

The radio sermon.

Looking back, those three words rang through him like a death sentence.

His parents had played a radio sermon in the car on the way to the start of another day in his sixth form. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, because he had grown up listening to radio sermons every morning. His parent's casually attended the Church of the Prophet, and it was a sermon from that church that was on the radio.

Niall could hear the pastor's voice scraping at the top of the man's mouth like needles against metal. He could imagine the heavy set pastor's red face and dampened brow. He could imagine an over fed mouth screaming about queers in Britain, and immigrants taking away their jobs. He could hear the man screaming the church's mantra.

“God gates fags! Yes indeed my brothers and sisters. I tell you the God of love is a lie! Did that

God love Job so much he had to smite him? Did that God love Isaac so much he asked his father to sacrifice him? Did that God love his son so much he strung up up on a tree in the shape of a T to die! Yes God hates brothers and sisters. God hates the Queen! God hates the Prime Minister! God hates the immigrants who steal from our country! God hates the Republic and Loyalists who bomb our embassies, and above all else GOD HATES FAGS!”

The voice felt so loud, so hot, so close, and then...

Then the car hit a skid.

His father slammed on the brakes. The preacher's screeching voice gave way to screeching tires. The car spun twice into the other lane, and Niall's head smashed into the window, creating a delicate spider's web of glass.

An eighteen wheeler came storming over the steep horizon, and Niall only caught a glimpse as it plowed into the driver's side of the car.

The car flipped and the roof caved in. Skidding sparks shot across the pavement, spreading like stars against darkened asphalt.

A lanky, brown-haired boy on the footway, who was looking up at the sky and leaning against a telephone pole, startled at the magnitude of noise.

He froze like a deer in headlights, no longer looking at the sky, but looking helplessly at the upside down car hurling towards him. Then his body smashed between the passenger door and the telephone pole. The boy groaned, and his face turned white.

There was blood. There was Niall's blood. There was the boy's blood spread like burgundy grease across the windows. There was so much of it.

The whole world had turned red.

And then it hadn't happened.

Niall opened his eyes to find himself back in his seat, the car window unbroken, and the radio still shouting hate speech against in the name of religion.

The memory of the crash felt translucent. It felt like an unnerving case of deja vu, or a surreal daydream that he couldn't entirely shake.

But he was okay. He was alive.

Then, right after the car-crash-that-never-was came the ghost-in-the-shadow that would not go away.

The first night, and every night after, there had been a dark figure with long limbs, pale skin, and a smudged face standing at the foot of his bed. The face and upper torso were always in shadow and never looked quite right.

That had happened for the past three nights.

Now it was 12:15.

A creaking sound broke the tattered beat of Niall's teenage heart.

“Who's there?” The words were so soft Niall wasn't even sure he had uttered them.

The creaking grew louder and turned into a groan until Niall's forced open his rain colored eyes.

“What do you want?” Niall kept his gaze on the ceiling as the door to his closet continued to open.

Clothes hangers on the closet door clattered against the upright dresser like a toneless wind chime, and the blackness of the closet felt overwhelming.

Niall's limbs started to tingle. At first it was just the fingers, and then his entire hand cramped shut.

He couldn't open his hand! It was frozen! Shit! He was having a heart attack.

Niall felt spittle glistened across his pink lips as they opened and closed like a dying fish.

Everything went cold, and he knew it was now standing at the foot of his bed watching him die.

The ghost spoke. For the first time since the car-crash-that-never-was, the ghost-in-the-shadow spoke.

“You are only as strong as the things that you scare, and you are only as weak as the things that you fear.”

“What?” Niall squeaked, his eyes still glued to the ceiling.

Was that in rhyme? Did the ghost just address him and do so in rhyme?

“I don't do this to be mean, so please don't be scared.” The ghost continued, “But you should be informed so that you can be prepared.”

Niall tilted his head from the pillow; his bleach blond hair scraping against the shams, and let his large, blue eyes rest on the ghost-in-the-shadow at the foot of his bed.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because the only way to learn is for somebody to teach, and the only way to teach is for somebody to preach.”

“I don't even know what that means,” Niall pleaded. “Can you please --”

Niall had to stop for a moment while fear burned through his veins like acid.

“Can you please, n-not speak in riddles? Please.”

Nothing came. The ghost, the face of everything Niall had ever feared, loomed over him.

“If you want me to help you,” Niall cried, “I have to understand what you need me to do. I-I'm not that bright. I mean. I'm not that stupid but I just-- I can't --”

There was silence again, and Niall could feel the eyes, if that thing even had eyes, boring down into his peach colored skin as if holes were being burnt through muscle and bone.

“Window,” the ghost struggled as if a banal sentence would tear the dead meat from its throat.

“Window?” Niall felt something warm in the bed with him. Shit. Had he pissed himself? Please don't let me have pissed myself he thought. His mum, his dad, his boyfriend Liam, his friend Zayn... even if he lived he would never hear the end.

“Sit on the front row, sit by the window.”

“You want me to--” saliva went down the wrong way, and Niall choked on his own spit, “--to go, to the window? To go to the bedroom window?”

Nothing.

Niall cringed, and a fat, heavy tear streaked from his eye. He pulled the covers over his head. He couldn't go to the window. Herbert was at the window. Herbert was always at the window, just out of sight, every night of his life.

He opened his eyes under the covers to realize the ghost-in-the-shadow had taken it upon itself to join him under the sheets. The horror sent chills down his entire body. The ghost was under the bed covers with him. Was nothing sacred? But there it was, looking at him under the covers, sitting up and turning the bed sheets into a jagged tent!

Niall tried to scream, but all that came out was a mousy squeak. He ripped the covers off, his feet became tangled, and his body dropped onto the floor between the bed and his bedroom wall.

He was so pathetic.

The idea circled around his mind, taunting him ….pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Niall looked pathetic and felt pathetic.

He had seen ghosts before, and none of them had killed him, although Herbert and a few others had tried. Could ghosts kill? He wasn't even sure ghosts could kill. They couldn't pick up knives, and they couldn't punch you.

Why was he so afraid? Why couldn't he ever keep his shit together? Ever?

He looked at the bed; he had pissed himself.

His face burned with humiliation.

But why? Why did he even care if he pissed himself? There was a dead thing in his bed, and he could fucking smell it!

The ghost-in-the-shadow raised a hand, and its finger extended from the palm all the way to the window.

Niall used the chair rail to pull himself up and clung to it as he walked to the window.

He marched like an injured kid being sent to stand in the corner, his head down, legs shaking, lips pursed, and hating himself for the squish of humiliation in his briefs.

He shut his eyes and tilted his face up towards the window. He could hear the long finger tapping at the glass, and he knew he would soon have to look out into the darkness... to look out at Herbert.

He tore open his eyes like ripping off a plaster, and sure enough there was a man in a suit jacket floating in the deep pit of darkness outside his home.

Herbert's face hadn't changed a bit, and an unexpected grin exposed the dead man's yellowed teeth.

“Niall?” Herbert's voice rang merrily, almost childlike. “Nephew! It has been so long. Come on outside. I can protect you from the one you fear most.”

Niall shook his head no.

“But this time you won't fall! I know for sure that this time you can float! I swear it. If you'll just come outside, just step out of the window... you can float! Just like me.”

“I don't want to.”

“But what choice do you have? Out here is the devil you know, and in there is the one that you don't.”

Herbert moved closer to the window.

BAM!

Out of nowhere a newspaper blew up against the glass, and Niall flew backwards in fright.The wet paper stuck to the panes, and one of the corners beat up and down in the wind as

rapidly as Niall's fluttering heart.

Then, Niall could feel it; it was behind him; its mouth was next to his ear. The blond boy shut his eyes again. He could not do this. He wished that he were dead. At least if he were dead it would stop, and he wouldn't have to be afraid anymore.

The long finger tapped once again against the window glass, more impatient and demanding than ever.

“What?!” Niall's voice broke, “What do you want me to see? Herbert? He's always there. Every night. What do you want me to do about it?!”

“Pull the band-aid off the wound and make it better,” the ghost-in-the-shadow answered. “Pull the wool from off your eyes and make a sweater.”

Niall opened his lids. They felt heavy, and he felt so childlike, so fragile from fright, with his yellow hair matted to his forehead and urine running down the inside of his left thigh. Niall stared hard at the soggy paper clinging to the glass.

It was a classifieds page, and the ghost's finger pressed firm against a single ad.

Rock, Pop, Heavy Metal, Showtunes, and more. Seeking dedicated front men for commercial

group. Influences: BSB, NKOTB, BZ, Open Auditions May 7th

-9th

. 7 am – 8 pm. Manchester Millennium Event Center. Info: www.artistsandrepertoire.com

“Take it.”

Niall unlocked the window; he didn't know why, but he knew he had to.

What if Herbert came into his bedroom? What if he was sucked into the darkness and never heard from again? It didn't matter. He knew he had to do what he was told, and so he did it.

Niall pushed the bottom pane of the window up, and the paper flew in hitting him in the face. He swiveled to grab it and felt the cold touch of a hand reach through from the outside to grasp the collar of his neck.

“One more time,” Herbert's voice croaked as his hand felt its way down Niall's neck to the spine of his shirtless back, “one more time for Herbie?”

“No!”

Niall spun around and slammed the window shut cutting through the ghostly arm.

Then he lost his balance and allowed himself to collapse in the floor.

The ghost-in-the-shadow bent down to look at him as though inspecting a zoo animal trapped in a cage.

“You want me to do this?” Niall pointed at the classified ad

“Life can be a choice; can be a path that you take, or it can be a decision that you never make.”

The voice was distant, but it wasn't soft like Herbert's. It was broken and coarse, as if speaking caused the spirit traumatic pain, almost sadness.

Then the ghost-in-the-shadow backed away, heading back towards the closet.

Just before stepping into the darkest darkness, it nodded to Niall's TV set, which flickered on.

Niall looked up, the images on the screen glistening in his bright-blue eyes.

It was a news reel with graphic images of the horrible car-crash-that-never-was. He could see the strange boy, pinned between the car door and the telephone pole. He could see that everything was exactly the way he had recalled it, except one thing... the overturned car wasn't his family's car. It was Zayn's beat up red Ford Focus.

Zayn was Liam's best mate from Wakeside. Was Liam with Zayn?

Shit. Was Liam in the car?! Niall squinted, trying to see, but there was too much smoke in the car to see anything other than Zayn's face masked in dark blood.

While squinting, he noticed something else was off. Something important. The date at the bottom of the screen was wrong. It was dated for to take place in four days, on a Sunday, at 12:15 am.

That was the last thing Niall remembered before glaring sunlight poured against his eyes, turning the inside of his lids bright red. Then it was morning, and it was all over. The TV was off; Herbert was gone, and the closet was closed... but he could still smell the stench of his own piss.