Disclaimer: I don't own House of Anubis.
A/N: This is intending to be a horror story, according to my original plan, the contest I'm entering (summary) and the genre (horror, duh.) So if you don't like this kind of stuff, gore, chills, ect. please don't read. I have you warned, so you have absolutely no right to bitch me out about it. I'll repeat that for you, no right. Anyways, happy reading... or maybe not.
3rd Person's P.O.V:
They were fighting again, Joy sighed to herself, as she tried to block out the bickering that Eddie and Patricia were doing in the back seats. It wasn't working though. Jerome had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, and had no intentions whatsoever to wake up and keep his girlfriend company. Also, there was no radio reception around here, and Joy's car was so old-school, that it didn't have a CD player, but a tape player. Who the hell had tapes lying around these days?
She sighed, and focused on the road ahead of her. It was dry and dusty, and resembled nothing like a road, but Patricia insisted that her GPS never failed, and that they were on the right track. The robotic woman's voice that sounded from the GPS backed up Patricia, and so had Eddie (mainly because he wanted to stay in Patricia's good books), and she would have been outnumbered even if Jerome had been awake.
That had been an hour ago, when the sun had been up high, and cascading heat. Now it was seemed to be cold and quickly getting dark. She would have to put her lights on soon. Joy still couldn't believe that the sun went down so fast. It was the middle of summer, and the sun was almost all gone at half eight in the evening... she looked ahead at the "road" drearily. This was just going fabulously.
Then she spotting something on the side of the road. It was gone as soon as she blinked, but she could of sworn that it was a... person? But people didn't just appear and disappear like that. It was probably just a trick or the light... or rather, the dark.
Joy just shivered, rolled her shoulder back, flicked on her lights, and listened to the not-so-soothing voices of Patricia and Eddie rising and rising in their pointless argument.
Joy kept her eyes to the road, and glanced around, not being able to stop herself from being wary since she thought she saw that person... she was being hopelessly paranoid over nothing.
She had just began to relax, just managed to convince herself that nothing bad or unusual was going to happen when... she was dead sure that she saw a strange figure tip his hat at her as she drove by. He was wearing a dark trench coat that obscured his figure from sight.
Her heart rate went sky high again, and she felt sick to the stomach. She could almost feel all the blood rush out of her face...
...of course nobody else noticed, because they were either asleep, or fighting with each other viciously.
Joy took deep breaths and told herself that the man that saluted her was just a friendly farmer... but there weren't many fields that looked like farming material... or a person who was taking a walk, she passed a house occasionally around here. It wasn't totally deserted. Or he could be a ghost...
No! Joy screamed at herself mentally, it was a friendly person walking home. That is all.
But who wears a trench coat and hat in the dead of summer? Who even owned that stuff around here? It was America, it was hot in summer. She mentally berated herself for giving into Patricia and Eddie's pleas to join them on a road trip in a foreign country that she knew hardly anything about. Urban legends rushed into her head immediately. She blanched and felt as if she couldn't breathe for a few seconds.
She also regretted it because she got stuck with all the driving, and right now, Patricia and Eddie were making out in the back. Lovely.
"Guys!" She exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "Cut it out!" She glared at them playfully, as Jerome murmured something about "Alfie" and "pranks" in his sleep.
Patricia and Eddie ignored her, but eased up a little, so that they weren't that disgusting, and Joy rolled her eyes again. She had almost, for that little second, forgotten about the trench coat man...
...until she saw him again, looking at her intensely as she drove by. This time he didn't move or salute her, just stared. How did this guy move so fast? And when she looked into the rear view mirror, he had gone. Dissolved into his surroundings, or thin air.
Joy let out a little frightened squeak.
"Joy, what's wrong?" Patricia asked, finally breaking away from Eddie. They both gazed at her questionably.
"Err... I just thought that I saw something... but I didn't." Joy answered. "I'm just tired, I hope that we get out of here soon, and find a B&B to stay the night. Not that Jerome needs the sleep." She glared softly at her sleeping boyfriend, who was now murmuring something about "waterfights" and "eggs and flour".
Patricia looked like she was going to say something else, but then they heard a voice. "Turn left in 14 yards."
They all visibly jumped in their seats with fright, except Jerome, who was still sleeping, and laughed nervously when they realised that it had just been the GPS. It had been quiet for so long that they had forgotten that it was even there.
Joy laughed along with her friends, eager not to show how much that had actually made her heart jump. She looked around again, and once again there was a man on the side of the road, and standing beside him was a girl that vaguely resembled herself. She had the same face, same hair, same height, but she was in a long, dark trench coat, and staring at Joy as she was driving past.
Or rather Joy stared at Joy as she passed.
She bit down the urge to scream and cry, but she didn't because Eddie and Patricia still hadn't seen anything odd, and they would just think that she was really tired, or going insane and delusional.
She was terrified though.
She drove on for a bit, plagued with worry about those two shady looking figures, and resisted the urge to cry. Something darted across the road, and Joy, in her paranoid state, braked hard, jolting her, Jerome, Patricia and Eddie hard into whatever was in front of them. Her, the steering wheel. Eddie and Patricia, the front seat. Jerome, well... Jerome was in such a position that the seatbelt stopped him from belting anything. Regardless, the impact of the stop made him wake up instantly.
"What the hell?" He yawned, looking around him. Joy looked outside onto the almost pitch black road, her eyes filled with horror. What was that thing that had just ran past her? She took a deep, meaningful breath, and let it out slowly, closing her eyes. On the other side of the road, there stood a tabby cat, hissing and glaring at the car. His greeny yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.
"Joy, are you okay?" Patricia asked, her voice wavering.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm just tired and jumpy," Joy gave a tight smile. "Lack of coffee probably."
"Here," Jerome was fully awake now. "You get some rest, and I'll drive on." Joy nodded and looked at him gratefully, giving him a quick peck on the cheek.
She opened the driver's door and got out, and Jerome mimicked her actions. As soon as she stepped out of the car's safety, she shivered and her heart started pounding against her chest once more.
It was warm outside with a small, refreshing breeze, yet it was almost pitch black. It was unusual - even if it were in the middle of summer. She crossed over to the passenger's seat cautiously, as if something were going to jump out and drag her away. She sat into the car again, as Jerome started the ignition. Funny, she hadn't remembered turning the car off... He shot her a worried look, just as Patricia and Eddie settled down in their seats again. It was easy for all of them, Joy thought bitterly, they weren't seeing weird people on the side of the roads.
Jerome drove off into the night, Joy tried to relax, Patricia snuggled into Eddie, and they were both watching out the windows, not really looking for anything in particular except for a way out of the semi-isolated part of the country.
Eddie saw it first. A man in a trench coat at the side of the road staring into the car. He tensed up, and that was how Patricia noticed. Joy and Jerome had already seen it, and while Joy looked the image of a person about to faint, Jerome was shaking his head and whispering something about himself being delusional.
The mysterious man held his hand out, and for a second everything seemed to stop at a standstill, and then everything came crashing down to earth. And the last thing that any of them know is, darkness, pain, and white hands stained with red...