TAKE OUT

(Part 4)

As the sun sank low in the evening sky, the residents of Bellmawr were still reeling from the horrors of the night before. Nearly fifteen hours after all hell broke loose on Benigno Blvd and Creek Rd, everyone was still asking the same question; who started the devastating fire that leveled the WaWa Superstore and what the hell happened to Cheryl Meyers, Karen Daniels and 5 of the town’s police officers, two of which were found crushed against their own cruiser.
While authorities from multiple jurisdictions spent the day scouring through evidence and interviewing witnesses to try and piece together the horrifying events from earlier in the day, answers were slow in coming.
Terrified and confused, the public fed on all the rumors running rampant on social media, especially the one about a mysterious car said to shoot flames fifty feet into the air. A vehicle not only witnessed by at least a half dozen people as it chased Karen into the industrial park, but one caught on a six second cellphone video recording as it crossed through the Sunoco station parking lot before going airborne, trailing fire and smoke behind it.
Unbeknownst to everyone, however, was the fact that a malevolent force had been awakened when the historical Harrison House was leveled and graves desecrated at the Saint Mary’s Cemetery and now there was hell to pay. In a town full of secrets and a forgotten past, evil had returned home and it was here to stay.

°°°°°°°°

It was about 7:58 in the evening when Beth finally realized she hadn’t had dinner yet. Having been off from work, she had lost track of the time spending all day watching the news and monitoring updates on her phone about the tragic events that happened just about a half mile up the road from her house where the ashes of the WaWa Superstore were still smouldering.
Living alone with her tiny chihuahua, Blue and a pet parakeet named Stickler, Beth usually loved her days off because her house was never a mess. With no big chores to catch up on and no one around to bother her, she could easily spend the entire day binge watching shows on Netflix without a care in the world.
On this day, however, reality hit a little too close to home. Of the two women missing in this morning’s tragic event, one happened to be a close Facebook friend of hers, while the other was someone she knew from back in high school. To make matters even more concerning was the fact that two of the town’s finest were now dead and three others nowhere to be found.
Taking a pause from the news, Beth muted the TV, then grabbed her cellphone off of the coffee table in front of her. Pulling up the contacts list, she scrolled down to Paradise
Pizza and placed the call before switching it over to speaker. As she sat on the end of her couch, waiting for someone to answer, Blue jumped up next to her and laid down while Stickler chirped playfully away in the background.