Chapter 4: A Psychic's Warning

After we finally managed to get out of that horrible church, we ran as fast as we could back to the car. Me and Darry were clinging on to each other and pretty much slammed into the driver-side window, where Trish was; and scared the living shit out of her. She proceeded to call us assholes, but then she noticed our terrified expressions and the fact we were clinging on to each other extremely tight. Trish got out and helped us both into the car and tried to calm us both down. We pulled out of the driveway and headed back down the road, opposite of where we were going. I figured Trish was going to the diner we passed earlier in the day.

"Would you guys please just say something?"

"Guys you're scaring the shit out of me!"

"We have to stop."

"You guys hear me?"

"Guys?" Trish kept talking while we were still staying silent. We really didn't know what to say or how to explain what we saw in the basement. Somehow, I managed to speak up, but only about Kenny and Darla.

"She did lose her head…Darla lost her head… just like they said." I said quietly, with a quiver in my voice.

"And you know what he did, Trish? You know what he did for her?... He sewed it back on… he sewed it right back on." Darry added in the same tone of voice as me. After that, Trish stopped asking questions and we all remained silent until we got to the diner. We pull into the diner and next to the gas pumps; Darry and I are still in shock, but Trish manages to break our trance.

"You gonna make a phone call?" Trish asked Darry to which he replied with a nod. She looked at both of us and took note of how filthy we are after our tumble down the pipe.

"Throw some water on yourselves, you guys look like you just crawled out of a sewer." Trish told us as we were getting out of the car. Just as we closed the doors, we heard an awfully familiar and terrifying sound. We all look to see 'beating you' barrel down the road, back towards the church. This terrifies us, but Darry and I are more terrified because we knew that he was going to know that we were there.

"He's going back… He's going back. Come on! Come on!" Trish yelled grabbing both of us and pulling us into the diner. All three of us enter the diner and Trish tells the waitress that we need help and to call the police. We get some questioning looks but thanks to Trish's persistence, the waitress complied. Trish then turned to us and told us all we had to do was tell the police what we saw in the church. Darry and I stared blankly and slightly shaking. Trish, sees us freeze, grabbed us, and pushed us against the wall near the phone and told us to hold it together. We both tell her that we are scared and that when he gets back to the church, he was going to know that we were there. It was then the phone started to ring, scaring all of us half to death, which I thought was a little odd considering the fact that it was a payphone and not designed to take incoming calls. It continued to ring and we all just stared at it until one of the patrons asked if we were going to get it. After a few more rings, Trish decided to pick it up and what followed was the strangest phone call ever, but we would soon regret not heeding the warning.

"Yeah, hello?" Trish answered.

"Have you seen the cats yet? You, your brother and sister."

"Me, my brother and sister?" Trish looked at us confused.

"You, Darry, and Karen. I saw you with lots of cats."

"Who the hell is this? How do you know Darry and Karen?" Trish asked even more confused.

"Who is this?" Darry demanded after taking the phone from Trish. Though he had the phone I could hear what the mystery caller was saying, mostly due to my heightened sense of hearing.

"Darry? You know the cats I'm talking about?"

"Who is this?!" Darry demanded again.

"You have a torn shirt, right? And a bloody hand. Shirts torn just above a small rose tattoo on your stomach. Karen has a scrape on her right cheek and her pants have a tare across the right knee."

"Who is this? How the hell do you know us?" Darry yelled lowly after looking at himself and then me and we were shocked at the accuracy of the caller.

"You found its House of Pain."

"The what?" He asked confused and scared.

"Those bodies down there… that's what it likes to call it. Its house of pain."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about" Fear just rolling from Darry's voice.

"I don't know if it's a demon or a devil or some hungry thing from some dark place in time."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about" Darry repeated.

"I just know its not gonna stop…coming after you or anyone else it wants to. Because once it has the scent of something it likes… it can't… it can't stop."

"It what…" Darry started.

"What's she saying?" Trish asked trying to listen in.

"I saw that awful truck too."

"Huh?"

"With the license plate"

"What 'beating you'?"

"The license plate on its truck"

"Right 'beating you'?"

"No, think about it!"

"What?"

"Think about it for Christ's sake! Hold on I need you to listen to this"

Jeepers Creepers

Where'd you get those peepers?

Jeepers Creepers

Where'd you get those eyes?

"Ok?" Darry said even more confused.

"You hear that song, you run. And I mean run. Cause that song means something terrible for you and your sister. Something so terrible you couldn't dream of it; not in your worst most terrible nightmare."

"Fuck you lady!" Darry yelled before slamming the phone back onto the receiver. I heard the entire conversation and strangely the part that freaked me out the most was the song. There was something about that song that made me increasingly on edge. I see that everyone is looking at us and Darry is even more freaked out. I could tell he just wanted to talk to the cops and get out of here, mostly because we all wanted to. I just hoped the cops would arrive soon so we could go home, but knowing the length of the highway, it wasn't likely they would show up anytime soon. On top of that, they would probably want us to take them to the church, which I really didn't want to do.

As predicted the officers didn't show up for a few hours, long enough to where it is now pitch-black outside. I stand in the corner with Trish and Darry while he puts on a clean shirt. We had been able to clean ourselves up after we calmed down enough to ask the waitress for some rags, bandages, and water. The officers were currently talking to the manager, I guess to make sure our story was believable, and we were not just a group of disturbed kids. I look over to see the male cop looking at us, probably thinking we are crazy. Trish chimed in saying maybe we should have left out the part about the strange phone call we had gotten. I agreed, slightly but knew it wouldn't have made our situation seem any less crazy.

"It seems too much like a bad dream." Trish said.

"Well, everything we said we saw, we saw." Darry replied and I nodded. I noticed Trish giving us a weird stare and I knew she was starting to doubt us.

"What? You think we bumped our heads down there?" I asked, getting slightly irritated and Darry supporting me.

"I didn't say that" Trish said defensively.

"Then look us in the eyes and tell us you believe us." Darry demanded, sticking by me.

"Look us right in the eyes and tell us you believe everything we said!" I yelled lowly grabbing Trish by the arms. Before anything else could happen, the cops came over to us.

"Ok, we're running the plates and we've got someone on their way out to the old church." The male cop told us.

"And?" Darry asked.

"These kids you two saw on that wall, who were they again?" He asked, probably not believing us.

"Darla Cleeway and Kenny…Brandon." I said in a nervous voice.

"Found their car all smashed up about 20 years ago. Am I remembering this correctly?" He asked and we all nodded.

"Those bodies would be nothing but bones by now." He commented. At this point I knew Darry would lose his cool. The cop repeated the statement Darry made about them still having skin on them and my statement about Kenny having a ring on his finger. Darry then asks if they believe him and grabs the cop's arm as he is demonstrating how he grabbed the corpse on the wall and explain that it felt like petrified wood, like the guy preserved them or something. The cop tries to get Darry to calm down by saying that they're just trying to get all the facts. Darry then begins to rant about how he told them the facts and gets so loud that the manager had to motion for him to quiet down so that he's not disturbing the other patrons. A few seconds after that, he quiets down and tells them that the bodies are stuck to the walls like a sick version of the Sistine Chapel. As he continues his rant, I start to notice everyone moving towards the front and looking out of the window. I thought this was odd and maybe something was happening outside, but I didn't want to leave my siblings. There was also a strong urge to stay inside and not even go near the window for fear of what I might see. I look back at Darry as he's telling the cops to drive to the church if they thought we were lying, and they explain that this was a really big story we were laying on them. After the cops says this, the waitress runs up behind him.

"Hey, that's your car out at the pumps, isn't it?" She asked really concerned. We all look at each other and bolt out of our chairs and out of the diner to see the back door to the car wide open and a basket of laundry strewn all over the ground and back seat. We all run to the car to see if anything was missing and to pick up the clothes. That was when the waitress told us something strange.

"Bunch of folks saw him through the window." She said. We look back at her in confusion and she continued.

"That man there at your car." She said pointing to the vehicle. We looked back at the car and then back at her.

"He was standing there at your car… sniffing that laundry. Holding big handfuls of it under his nose. Looked like he was liking it too." She said with a scared expression. Even the officers looked confused and worried. We start to pick up the clothes and I realize that most of them are mine; with a few of Darry's and that fact made me super nervous. Trish saw that I had froze and also came to the realization that most of the clothes thrown about were mine; and she gave me a reassuring squeeze to my shoulders and told me to hang back, which I gladly did. I watched as Darry and Trish gathered up all of mine and Darry's clothes when Darry yelled that now the guy knows his name and mine, I silently curse our mom for putting our names on our underwear. He then asks if the cops were interested in a handprint to which they were surprised and approached the car, I saw that the female officer was on her radio when Darry asked, but apparently, she was too curious to answer the responder on the other end. I too began to get curious and walked over to where everyone was at and saw the handprint. Darry asked if they could dust it and get a print, but as if by fate a gust of wind blew some of the dust away. The cop even commented that it looked like somebody already dusted it. As everyone was looking at the print on the door handle, I hear a faint 'whoosh' sound above and behind me. I slowly look back and up to try to find the source, but I couldn't see anything, but I could make out the faint scent of earth. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.