We met once a month.

It was always a Friday at our house. My younger brother Davey and I started a Horror Club, with my two best friends, Jeff and Brad. We talked our parents into letting us have the Club on the last Friday of every month, where we would inhale a few bags of chips, a couple bottles of Coke and Sprite, and watch three or four horror flicks. We'd also go over horror comics we'd read, the occasional horror board game or two. Anything and everything horror related. We were obsessed.

The typical Friday would go that mom or dad would pick the four of us up from school, and take us directly to Rogers or Blockbuster to go through the vast sections of VHS' to rent. Though we'd spend the whole time in the horror section. There was a deal for five rentals for the weekend, so our parents would get one choice and we'd get four for the night. We'd watch one before dinner, then three in a row after.

Davey and I shared a room with a bunk bed, and had a TV and VCR in it, so Jeff and Brad would sleep on the floor on mom's yoga mats and we'd try to stay up all night. But we'd all usually be out cold by 1:00 a.m.

Stacy, our older sister, always came home around that time. I could hear her lame boyfriend Craig's car engine from several blocks away. Sometimes, she'd come in and try to scare us. Once, she got Craig to climb up the side of the house and bang on the windows with a gnarly mask on. That sent us.

I was usually the last one awake, and I'd stay up, thinking about all the crazy stories and monsters we'd just watched. I'd rate them against one another on their scariness. If there were any snacks left, I'd finish them in bed, up on the bunk, while looking back over the covers of the movies we'd rented.

The next morning, we'd all have breakfast and talk about the different flicks we'd watched, and maybe rewatch the last one we'd fallen asleep to. Brad or Jeff's parents would pick them both up before lunch and everyone's lives would return to normal.

And I'd be left waiting for the next month to come.

This Horror Club Friday finally came, and with it, Jeff had a surprise for us. But first, the video store. We rented Creepshow 2, Fright Night, The Blob - the '80's one - and Tremors. I'd seen Tremors and Creepshow 2, but Brad and Jeff hadn't and they were pretty fun movies so we agreed on them. We started with those two, before moving on to The Blob, which none of us had seen, but all immediately loved. It was now 10:30 and Jeff was ready to break out his surprise.

We'd all wondered what it was, sitting in a large garbage bag in the corner, the entirety of the night. Jeff explained he was out with his mom at an old, boutique style bookstore, filled with antiques and ancient film reels, records, and a small VHS selection. He scanned through the VHS', hoping for some horrors but only found old classics.

There was one, though, in a plastic case with a homemade label. It sat on a large, rectangular box the size of a board game. Which was what it turned out to be. When Jeff told us, we all got super excited. We'd heard of VHS board games like Nightmare and Atmosphere, but hadn't ever seen one or played it. Even though this one looked to be completely homemade, it had some frightening artwork on the cover. And when we opened the box to see the actual game, it was as thick as a cutting board, and just as heavy. The board was covered in zig-zagging pathways, all stemming from one corner of the board, and arriving at the centre, where a pop-up structure of a cabin was marked with the word "HOME."

Since it was a four player game, each corner of the board had a starting place, and we each got a figurine token for a playing piece. Each piece was small and metal, in the shape of a child, with the paint and colours smeared and faded. Each child's mouth was open in a scream.

The four corners were all different, from a grave yard, to a forest, to a haunted mansion, to a slaughterhouse. The objective of the game seemed to be for each of us to get to the middle of the board, or "Home," from whichever frightening origin point we started from. A simple four-sided die with the numbers one through three pushed you forward, while the fourth side would send you one step back. Every path moved through other paths like a maze and interacted with its origin point surroundings. Whether it was a path through the forest leading to a dead end or a hallway in the slaughterhouse into a meat locker, you had to pay attention to your path. Because of the other element to this game.

While your player was trying to get home, there was an additional figurine that moved, on its own, across the board, trying to catch you. I read the back of the box, and it sounded like the inner workings of the board were filled with gears, similar to a watch. They were powered by negative and positive magnets, which were the individual pieces and board, and charged up whenever they were near each other. The villain figure must be more attracted magnetically to certain other figures, which would make the choosing of our pieces all the more important. But how could I tell?

The VHS came into play, acting as a sort of hour-long timer, counting down. If you didn't get "Home" before the timer ran out, you were locked out. But... you wouldn't be alone.

The figurine that chased the players was in the shape of a dark cloaked man with long, stringy hair. As far as board game tokens go, he was the scariest one I'd ever seen. I didn't even want to look at him. Which made the VHS that much more unsettling.

That stringy haired man filled the

screen, which was half covered by shadows. You could only really see parts of the side of his face. And his eyes, which were white as milk. When he spoke, it sounded like glass breaking. He introduced himself as "The Harvester of Souls," and looked forward to getting to know ours.

The Harvester welcomed us to the game, which was called "Don't Look Behind You."

He instructed us to take our places on the board, as the timer was about to begin. It glowed in red at the bottom of the screen. One hour. We had one hour to get to the centre of the board. We took turns with the die, each rolling and making our first moves.

Brad started, he was in the dark forest. Then it was Jeff, who was in the graveyard. Then Davey, who had the slaughterhouse. And me, who landed on the haunted mansion. My first roll brought me three places forward, and the closest to Home. My token was in a curving hallway, leading towards a staircase to the first floor.

Then... the Harvester's piece moved. Three places. It was going towards Brad in the forest. We all oo'd and ahh'd at the untouched token.

The Harvester spoke through the TV... asking if the Player was afraid of forests. Brad, caught off guard, looked to us and shrugged. The Harvester said he was about to be.

Brad rolled again, a three. He landed on a card pick-up. He nervously turned the card over, and found an image of the young boy that was on his token. The boy was walking through the dark forest on a slim, barely lit path. The Harvester was amongst the shadows, half his face lit by moonlight sprinkled through the trees. But his face, what we could see of it, wasn't that silky porcelain... it was bark-like. Rotted wood.

But his eyes were still white. And glared at the boy.

At the bottom of the card, the words "Don't Look Behind You" were written. Down, on the board, we realized the Harvester's token had moved... And was now headed towards Brad. Brad got angry, though it felt more scared than anything.

Brad stared at the card. I could see how uneasy it made him. He looked over his shoulder, checking behind him. Jeff called him out on it and we all laughed. Then it was Jeff's turn. His token was walking down a path between graves, but landed on an empty one, which meant he lost a turn. Then it was Davey, and he was making his way through the "bleeding out" room of the slaughterhouse.

We continued on through several turns, with each of us making our ways through the frightening locations. The Harvester was on the screen the whole time, staring down at us. Watching. It really felt like he was. The one eye we could see, seemed to track whoever was playing. I could even detect a smile here and there when one of us would choose to go left instead of right down a fork in our pathway.

The Harvester's token caught Brad in the darkest part of the forest. As it did, his voice came over the screen, announcing Brad was no longer in the game.

Brad sat back in a huff. What a gip. His token tipped over.

Jeff was the next one to land on a card pick-up. To get through the graveyard, he had to walk through a mausoleum, and landed on a bad square. The card showed Jeff's token walking through the halls of the mausoleum. One coffin had been pulled out of the wall, its lid opened. The Harvester was peeking out from inside, half his face hidden by shadow. The visible half had been zombified, rotted and grotesque. At the bottom of the card, again, the words "Don't Look Behind You" were written.

Suddenly, Brad pointed behind Jeff and screamed. Jeff spun, panicking to see. But nothing was there. Brad was just pranking him. Jeff had turned, though... and looked.

Down on the board, the Harvester's piece was now turned towards Jeff. Within two turns, Jeff's token had been caught, and that frightening voice came over the TV again. He was no longer in the game.

It was just Davey and I now. I was nearing the front door of the haunted house, and Davey was almost out of the slaughterhouse. We were coming from opposite ends of the board, and almost in the safety of the Home finish point.

The Harvester's next turn brought his token between mine and Davey's. He could reach one of us. The other would likely make it Home, but one wouldn't. He decided to turn towards my little brother's.

Davey rolled... and landed on the final card pick-up before the front steps of Home. He lifted the card... and stared at the image. It was his token, the little boy, walking through the slaughterhouse. Behind him, the Harvester had a chain-metal apron on. He carried a large, electric bone saw in his hands. He was covered in blood. His one visible, milky white eye, was aimed at the little boy in the image.

And with that, the Harvester's token was right behind my brother's. The voice whispered out from the screen, "Don't Look Behind You." Davey screamed, spinning around and staring up at the TV. The Harvester was looking down at him, a crooked smile formed.

My dad knocked on our door, scaring us all even further. He told us it was time to go to bed. Davey snapped off the TV, vanishing the Harvester's face from
our visions just as he was beginning to outright laugh.

We all decided to call it a night. We turned off the lights and I climbed up onto my bunk. Davey was already under his covers, only his face poking out. He didn't look okay.

Jeff packed the game up and put it away. Then him and Brad tucked into their sleeping bags.

The room was pitch black, all I could hear was four sets of hushed breathing. Everyone was still scared. I could tell we were all still thinking about the game. It really was creepy, and some of the things the Harvester said felt personalized. I knew Davey had a fear of slaughterhouses. He'd seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in one of our first club meetings, and he still hadn't recovered. I also knew Jeff hated graveyards because of his grandpa's funeral and Brad hated forests because he'd been lost during a childhood camping trip.

We were all scared of plenty of things though. I knew I was just trying to scare myself now, and tried to think of the movies we watched. But my mind kept inserting the Harvester's face and voice into my memories. Everything kept leading back to him.

Then I got really nervous. I remembered one time when Brad had brought over a Ouija board for the Club. It was kinda fun, I didn't really believe in it, but wanted to. I was thinking about the one rule Brad made clear we needed to follow when we finished playing the Ouija board - when we were done, we had to end the conversation. My mind took that rule and ran with what we just played. We never finished the game...

I rolled over, looking out my window now. The wind was picking up, and caused the light from the streetlamp's to flicker against the glass. My eyes picked up a shape. A human shape, in the shadows of our next-door neighbour's hedges. I saw a sliver of that porcelain skin. Then it was gone. Was that him? Had I seen the Harvester?

Stop it. You're scaring yourself. Just go to bed. I rolled onto my back and shut my eyes. It felt like this was going to be a long night.

I finally drifted off. The sleep was restless, filled with nightmares of long hallways, with many doors, all darkened by the silhouette of the Harvester.

In my last dream, the static fuzz that accompanies the end of a VHS finishing its recording, drifted in.

Then, I was awake in bed. Laying on my back. I could hear the TV fuzz clearly. Someone had been watching something? I rolled onto my side and looked down...

The TV was that static fuzz, but I saw Davey's foot, his Freddy Krueger themed socks, pulled through the TV screen. My heart stopped and I shot back in bed. I was pressed into the top corner of my room, unable to see the screen. I didn't want to.

Had I just seen what I thought I'd seen? Was that actually his foot? I knew I saw his sock... but had it really been pulled through the screen?

I gathered my courage, and crawled back to the edge of my bunk, and looked down.

Jeff and Brad's sleeping bags were empty. Between them, the board game was set up. All the pieces were placed where we'd left off. I was so scared to look down and see what was in my brother's bed. Disturbing visions of the Harvester, stringy hair, long, gangly arms, wrapped around Davey, was all I could think of. But I peeked under...

His bed was empty too. I was the only one in the room. I climbed the ladder down from my bunk and inspected the board.

The pieces were in the same places, but they were different. They didn't look like random, little boys anymore. They looked like Brad. Like Jeff. Like Davey. Like me. We were all there.

I reached out to pick up my piece, but felt a shock spark through me. The room got really bright, and I realized the TV screen was now inches from my nose. And the next second, I felt my body passing through something like a flurry of snow. Then a late November wind rushed overhead. It got dark. My face was pressed into dirt. I was cold. I got up, feeling four walls of dirt around me. My eyes adjusted and I realized I was in an empty grave.

It was about six feet high, but I could reach the top and pull myself up. I looked out and saw... I was in the graveyard from the game. The same Mausoleum sat in the distance. The one Jeff didn't make it through.

Oh my God... I was in the game...

I leaned against the wall of the grave, wondering how this could all be. What was I doing here? Then it hit me. Jeff was here. Somewhere. In the mausoleum. If I could find him, maybe that was how I'd get out? Or maybe I'd be led into a trap.

Either way, I didn't want to wait in this grave any longer. I climbed out. The grave beside me had a hole dug up through the centre, like something had pulled itself out. The gravestone said "Harvester - 1691 to blank."

I thought back to Jeff in the graveyard. While playing, his character had picked up a key in the rose bushes near the entrance to the mausoleum. It's what allowed him to get inside and try to leave the property. I needed that key. I set off across the graveyard, wind whistling between the stones and shadows taunting me. I felt like I was being watched from every angle, silhouettes of the Harvester peeking out from behind tombs.

I made my way towards the garden on the side of the mausoleum. It took me a few minutes of nervous searching, but I found a bronze key with a skull for the bow, sticking up from the soil like a flower.

I unlocked the back door of the mausoleum, and entered. Slivers of moonlight highlighted the edges of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sealed coffins in the walls. The mausoleum all of a sudden seemed so much bigger inside.

Crying echoed through the endless halls. It sounded like Jeff. I hoped it was. I followed the crying. It led me down several hallways, before I heard it coming from the walls. I checked one of the seals, and saw it had Jeff's name written on it. I pulled the handle and yanked the coffin out. There was thudding coming from inside, and the lid burst open, Jeff screaming and gasping for air. He hugged me when he saw me, and I helped him out of the coffin. He was shaking uncontrollably, and said the Harvester had taken him and pulled him through the TV. The next thing he knew, he was stuck in that coffin. He was crying far too loudly, and the sounds were echoing through the halls. I quieted him down, and told him we needed to get out the front door.

We moved through one aisle, than another. And another. Finally, we were back in the main hall. I saw the front door, way down at the other end. We rushed towards it.

Somewhere behind us, the Harvester screamed out, "Don't Look Behind You!" I felt Jeff's body shift to turn back, but I yanked him forward and told him to keep staring straight ahead. We kept running.

The voice screamed out again. This time closer. We kept running, and got to the entrance as the words bellowed behind us.

We burst through the door and slammed it shut. Nothing followed. No banging on the door or screaming. Silence. We turned around to see we were now facing a wall of tall, dark trees. It was the forest Brad didn't make it through.

You could barely see five feet into the woods. It was just too dark. How the hell were we supposed to make it in there? Then Jeff remembered that there was a flashlight near the entrance to the woods. At the beginning of the game, Brad rolled a two and missed getting it by one digit. We could avoid that in person.

There was an entrance, a few yards to the left, that led onto a path that disappeared a few feet in. We jogged over to it, and found the flashlight sticking up from the bushes. It worked, and gave us a larger window of vision through the woods.

We moved down the path, which was barely that. It was only about a foot wide and filled with gnarled roots and branches. We had no idea how we were going to find Brad. But he was lost in the darkest parts of the woods, so that's where we were headed.

Jeff and I got to what felt like the middle of the forest. It was pitch black all around us. I stopped Jeff and turned off the flashlight. It was like our eye sockets were cut. Everything went black.

Then... I heard crying. Brad's. I turned the flashlight back on, and we followed the crying. It got closer. But so did the sounds of twigs breaking, somewhere behind us. I reminded Jeff not to look back. No matter what.

Finally, my flashlight hit Brad. He was wrapped up in vines, which we had to break and pull apart to get him free. The twigs behind us kept breaking. We got Brad up and moving and I hustled them down the path. I had no idea where I was leading them, but hoped it would be to wherever my little brother was.

A scream echoed through the forest. It was the Harvester, saying he was coming to get us, and to turn around and see. I yelled not to listen to him, and to keep running.

The voice kept yelling, getting closer. And closer. We could feel his cold breath on our necks. Then, we all fell forward...

And slid across a slicked, tiled floor. We were all