SUNDAY FOUND Jake going out shopping at the supermarket which was mostly done by his mom but she got called in again for another exclusive.
Yap, that week was going to be a pretty busy one for her, with five days left to Halloween.
He was feeling rather off that day, considering what had happened the previous night—if it had even happened in the first place!
Passing through a section lined up with groceries; mostly oranges, apples, asparagus and peaches, Jake almost hit another guy's shopping cart who was coming from the opposite direction.
"Sorry."
"No problem, kid."
A canned tomato soup container then fell down his cart as Jake stopped to pick it up.
"Hey, you dropped your..."
There was no one there.
The section was quite long, surely he couldn't have gone that fast.
Jake then began to feel a weird sensation, like his body was being passed through a light cold mist. The can in his hand began to shake, slowly at first then violently.
Gasping, Jake dropped it, letting it hit the floor and watched to his amazement as it fell rooted to one spot, without rolling away from the residual force.
The can started shaking again and this time Jake saw something else.
Something was inside of it. The sides of the can were acting up, contorting like something was trying to come out of it.
A weird high pitched growling started coming out of the can too as whatever was inside writhed tirelessly to get out until suddenly, the can tore apart at the top like a miniature bomb had been dropped on it, prying it open.
What followed was even more horrifying.
Jake watched a dark red slimy substance flow out from the top of the can, descending down its sides and began to slowly creep towards him, reminding him of Venom, the alien from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man.
The scary gooey substance hissed and Jake could see small bubbles pop out of it like it was boiling.
At one point, some of the substance lurched out at him, landing on his left arm which began to burn like hell. It felt like hot lava, smoldering his skin.
He was just about to scream when someone put a hand on his shoulder.
"Excuse me, is this yours?"
The burning immediately stopped as Jake turned to find a young woman with glasses standing in front of him, her hand outstretched toward him, holding a cereal box.
Jake checked his arm.
No burning lava there.
His head darted to the floor.
Also no scary tomato can.
"Yes," he replied to the woman.
He was just taking the box from her when he stopped upon seeing that in place of where her hand was, was what looked like long sharp claws, darkened to the tips.
Jake got the freezing intensity again which happened when he was scared. This could not be happening. Something was wrong.
Raising his head to the rest of the body, a loud shriek met him and all he could see was a wide mouth screaming at him, filled with jagged teeth, making them look sharp.
"Aaaah!" Jake took a step back, stumbling into his cart and raising both of his arms to protect himself.
"Are you alright?"
A woman's voice again as Jake found himself cowering behind his cart, only to find the same woman standing there with a box of cereal.
"I think you dropped this," she was saying but Jake had had enough of that shit.
He left the woman standing there with the box, wondering what had gotten into the boy.
"Be cool, Jake, you're not losing your mind..." he was telling himself after leaving the supermarket.
He had even purchased some drugs from the supermarket which he quickly removed and swallowed two pills.
There was some kind of racket going on a few yards from the supermarket as Jake turned to see a man arguing with a woman about something he could not quite hear. Everything had suddenly become so distracting to him, like he could feel every single thing that was happening around him all at once.
Jake watched the argument escalate until the man suddenly turned and ran towards the direction of the road just opposite to where they were standing. It was a highway.
To Jake's horror, a fast moving truck came out of nowhere, hitting the man with such great force, its windscreen shattered.
The truck's tires screeched with the driver effortlessly trying to stop the truck but the damage had been done. The man's body had crept under the truck before his head was smashed by the front right tire.
Jake's eyes were wide now.
That wasn't even the scary part. It was when he saw something like a thin cloud of smoke rise up from the roadkill guy and at one point, he thought he could see a man's face in the smoke and he heard it say so something!
I'm fucking free!
Jake shook his head, looking away from the horrid scene.
He caught his breath for a moment and then looked back at the road. Yap, there was a dead body there and people had gathered near the road, with one woman crying.
It was real! He hadn't imagined it.
"Great, now I can see ghosts, too!"
Getting home, Ryan's usual jump scares at him once he opened the front door didn't work on him, for the first time.
"Buzz of, Ryan!"
"You suck!" Ryan spat, probably from the loss if victory in scaring his big brother out of his wits.
Not today, Ryan.
Jake locked himself in his room before rushing to the bathroom and splashing some water in his face.
What's happening to me?
He looked at the sixteen year old boy staring back at him in the mirror.
What have you done to me, Jake?
Yap, he was definitely going crazy.
Jake walked to his laptop and googled a whole lotta crazy scenarios like schezophrenia, personality disorder and even crazy itself but none of it was completely relating to what was happening to him.
"Shit!"
He closed his laptop and that's when he saw it.
Lying just an inch away from behind the laptop; its tattered edges and broadness with the dark old cover and the distinct golden embossed symbol on top of it with a circle around it which Jake hadn't noticed the first time he saw it—also golden, of the pentagram.
The book.