Hi mum

My eldest daughter is in her final year of primary school and in Holland it is a custom that group 8 goes in a school camp. Usually, a far destination would be chosen, and the camp would last at least four nights, but undoubtedly due to budget cuts, the school booked a two night stay in ‘Costa del Zeumeren’ in Voorthuizen, only 40 kilometres away. The teachers definitely planned to exhaust the children and return them as living dead, so they decided to cycle to the camp site (one day) directly followed by the ‘bonte avond’, one day full of survival activities, a night game in the second night and then the bicycle trip back.

What the children didn’t know was the teacher, sir Eric, had asked help from parents for the exciting night game. Of course I volunteered, as I do not want to skip any occasion in which I can dress up or disguise myself. On top of that, the idea that my role would be ‘ghost’ was very attractive. My daughter has a bully in her class and I already had fantasies about how I could scare the shit out of him. 

The whole week, my head prepared for my Oscar winning role. Unfortunately, my body needed to go to work. So suddenly it was Thursday evening, around half past nine, when I realised that I had to leave in half an hour without having prepared a single thing for my outfit. I blasted through the attic, opened boxes and bags with old dressing clothes for plays and the only acceptable outfit I could come up with, was a relic of our Halloween Party, in which I was a witch and my partner was Dracula. I took the witches wig, and Dracula’s coat, grabbed some fake blood and facial paint with me and ran out of my house. In the car, I reread the instructions of the teacher in my head: ‘And you can haunt the children by making scary sounds.’ O my god, scary sounds. What on earth are scary sounds? The clock was ticking though and I had to pick up some other parents. My eyes fell on a bicycle pump, and what the hell, that sounds scary in the middle of the night, doesn’t it? Also I grabbed a bottle of perfume, but I had no idea why. 

We arrived at the camp site at half past ten. The teacher welcomed us. ‘So, are you prepared for the big show?’ ‘Hmm,’ I mumbled. ‘I need to change clothes somewhere and put something on my face, I guess there is a place where I can do that?’ ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘My idea was to walk you guys to the site right now, so the children will not see you.’  I tried not to show my huge disappointment. 

We started walking a trail close to a lake. It was still very light outside and the wind blew like hell. Meanwhile, the teacher started to explain the game. ‘Pupils walk in groups of four. They all have a list of seven sounds they need to find, in the order that is on their list. The sounds are: an owl, horse feet, peeping door, burbs, a rattle, an alien, and a frog . There is one guard’- one enthusiastic father raised his hand’- with a bright flashlight. He walks around and if he catches one of the pupils in his light, they need to go back for the last sound they found. So there are seven teachers or parents  with sounds. You all hide somewhere.  And last but not least we have a ghost, from who no one knows.  And you make scary sounds that are not on the list.’ And he looked at me, expectantly. ‘What do you have?’ ‘Well, actually…’ Before I could say anything further, the wind blew so fiercely that we all startled a little. ‘I think my sounds will fade away  in the wind.’ I said. ‘So I think of something else to frighten them.’ Sir Eric gloated. ‘All right, improvising, excellent!’ 

We walked a little further and then the teacher held still. ‘This is it.’ And then he admitted a little shyly: ‘There used to be a lot more trees, but apparently the removed them.’

We stood in an open field close to the lake. There were some bushes at the borders, in the middle of the field there was a giant tree and there were three hay bales. Not even close to a wood. ‘How are we even going to hide ourselves here?’ one mother asked. I was in shock. ‘Just spread a little around the field. I hope it will get darker than this and it will be fine. So come on, hide! The kids will be here in twenty minutes.’

Together with the father playing the guard, I walked to the border. Behind the bushes, there was a dried up ditch and we dove in there. On the other side of the ditch, there was already a road where cars drove fastly. At least, it was a good place to change. Although it wasn’t dark, it was not very bright either. And my ‘changing room’ had no mirror. So purely by feeling I put my wig on, I smeared some fake blood on my lips and placed the cape around my shoulder. As I forgot to put my rucksack off, a hump turned up beneath the cape. The guard looked at me. ‘Wow, don’t scare the car drivers. You look … well … weird.’

I hid in the ditch, which resembled a trench from World War I, and waited for the first group to arrive. You could see and hear them at a long distance. They tried to listen to the sounds the other parents would make, but the wind blew them almost from their socks. As soon as they would approach me, I would jump out of the bushes to scare them with … well, whatever I looked like.

When I heard the group coming, I moved to attack position and I jumped forward. But immediately, I got stuck in the brambles. The group walked passed me without noticing a strange creature, struggling herself loose in the bushes. 

This was definitely not going to work.  I should move. Maybe walk around. I saw some pupils in the distance, maybe it would scare them if they saw a shadow of a strange person walking in the field? So I climbed out of the bushes, got stuck in again, pushed myself up and started walking. A few yards behind me, a group turned up. ‘What the hell is that?’ I heard. ‘Maybe she is the owl! Let’s go over there.’ I hadn’t taken the possibility into account that they would think I was to make a sound from their list. So I turned around and started running towards them, making a  roaring sound and putting my arms up.

I have no idea how ridiculous that must have looked. However, no child in that group of four screamed, or seemed to be shocked otherwise. Instead, one of them turned around and walked right up to me, to inspect me. She looked me directly in the eyes and said, with a voice full of irony: ‘O, hi witch.’

I decided to run and while I was crossing the field, I heard them laugh. I dove into the border on the other side of the field and squatted in the high grass. Soon, another group approached me. They came very close and I suddenly jumped out of the border and roared. There were four boys that at the maximum didn’t expect this, but were not intimidated whatsoever.

I heard one of them say: ‘Let’s find out who she is. Come on!’ They come closer to me and stood there, at a half meter distance. One had , around his wrist, a small flashlight which he turned on and pointed at me. ‘Who are you! What is your sound?’

I had no idea what to do. The only thing that came to my mind is whispering something like ‘Go away’. I tried to make it sound spooky, but the boys started to laugh. ‘I don’t know her, who is she?’ ‘Who are you? Witchy witchy, come out of there!’ One came closer and seemed to reach for my wig. In panic, I felt in my pocket and found the bottle of perfume. I got it out and sprayed it towards him.  ‘I smell liquorice’, another one said. And then the fourth:  ‘Come on, she bores me, let’s go over there.’

And then they left. This was not at all the performance I had had in mind. Disappointedly I walked, without even trying to disguise, towards the giant tree in the middle of the field. Around the tree there were some bushes, like an island in the see. Here, I found the guard. ‘Hi! Did you scare them already?’ he asked. Apparently, he was having great fun. ‘Eh … well, yeah.’ And mumbling: ‘Little psychopaths.’

We agreed that we should work together when we saw three pupils crawling through the grass towards our island. ‘I try to catch them in my light, and when they start running, you scare them,’ he instructed. ‘Well… all right …’ The guard sneaked behind them, I thought: ‘He ís good’, and he caught them in their lights. They actually started running towards me, according to the plan,  and I jumped from my island and roared, again. For the first time, two girls screamed. Just when I was thinking I was improving my performance, one of them said: ‘O, hi mum!’

I ran away and the rest of the game I hid in the border close to the lake and did not come out until I heard the teacher shout: ‘We have a winner, let’s call it a wrap!’ Groups of pupils joined together and then I heard someone say: ‘Where is the witch?’ I felt the urge to stay in the border forever, even go to sleep there. When the last pupil passed, I sneaked out and closed ranks. No one saw me until we arrived at the gathering point. ‘Ah, there is the witch!’ the teacher said. All pupils turned around, came closer and inspected me. One touched my fake hair, one my hump, another my coat. And my daughter grabbed my arm and said: ‘That was great fun, wasn’t it?’ Four of her friends agreed. ‘You look really scary.’

When we strolled back to the camp, I walked next to the bully of the class. He was in the group that had won. He told me he was heavily disappointed that I had not encountered his group, they had had no idea that there was a witch in the game. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I would have scared the shit out of you. And I doubt if you had won the game then.’ ‘We doubt that too,’ he said wisely. 

Back at the camp site, where the lights were on, my daughter looked at my face. ‘What is this, on your mouth? That looks strange! Here, clean it up.’ She handed me a washcloth. ‘What was it anyway?’ While I was scrubbing the fake blood off, I told her: ‘It was meant to be blood of a child I ate.’ She looked at me, incredulously. ‘No kidding.’ I nodded.  ‘That is … scary, mum.’ And then she laughed out loud, said goodnight and went to bed, with her friends.