Four childhood friends on their way home from coll
Author:unloginuser Time:2025/01/14 Read: 3472Four childhood friends on their way home from college, Find themselves on an old highway with a flate tire, not knowing what is in store for them. Jon, Lacy, Ginger, Paul struggle to trust each other. blaming each other and when they finally realize the danger that they are in its too late. Old Man Fred lives along that old highway and its been said he loves visitors but nobody is seen again, and the four friends are gonna find out really soon how to trust, survive, and live
The battered Honda Civic coughed and sputtered, finally surrendering with a pathetic wheeze and a disconcerting thud. A flat tire. On Highway 666, of all places. Jon swore, the harsh glare of the setting sun painting his face in angry shadows. Lacy, Ginger, and Paul, his college roommates and lifelong friends, exchanged uneasy glances. Highway 666 was notorious – a ribbon of asphalt snaking through a desolate landscape, whispered to be haunted by more than just tumbleweeds.
“Great,” Lacy muttered, her voice tight with a mixture of frustration and fear. “Just great. We’re stranded.”
The initial bickering began almost immediately. Jon blamed Paul for overloading the car. Paul countered that Lacy hadn’t checked the tire pressure before they left. Ginger, ever the peacemaker, tried to calm them down, but her words were lost in the growing darkness and the rising wind that whipped through the desolate landscape.
The spare tire was flat too. A cruel joke. As they huddled together, shivering not just from the cold, but from a primal fear that settled deep in their bones, they spotted a flickering light in the distance. A ramshackle house, almost swallowed by the encroaching darkness, stood silhouetted against the horizon. A weathered sign, barely legible, read “Fred’s.”
Hope, fragile and desperate, flickered in their eyes. They limped towards the house, the silence broken only by the crunch of gravel under their feet and the increasingly frantic thump-thump-thump of their hearts.
The door creaked open, revealing Old Man Fred. He was gaunt, his eyes like chips of obsidian, his smile unsettlingly wide. He invited them in, his voice a low rasp that somehow managed to both soothe and terrify. His house was a bizarre collection of antiques and unsettling artifacts, the air thick with the smell of dust and something else… something faintly metallic and sickeningly sweet.
As they sat around a crackling fire, sipping lukewarm tea that tasted faintly of rust, the cracks in their friendship widened. Suspicions flared. Jon noticed Paul nervously fidgeting with his pocketknife. Lacy caught Ginger stealing glances at a shadowed corner of the room. Trust, already strained by their earlier argument, eroded completely. The strange, hypnotic quality of Fred’s presence seemed to exacerbate their paranoia.
One by one, they started disappearing. First, Paul, lured away by a whispered promise of a phone call. Then Lacy, drawn by a mysterious melody emanating from an old gramophone. Ginger vanished next, seduced by the scent of freshly baked bread, which inexplicably wafted from the apparently empty kitchen.
Jon, terrified and alone, finally understood. Old Man Fred didn’t just invite visitors; he selected them. He preyed on their weaknesses, their fears, their mistrust. The metallic smell was blood. The sweet scent was… well, Jon didn’t want to know.
He tried to run, but Fred was faster. Stronger. The last thing Jon saw, before the darkness claimed him too, was Fred’s smile, wider than ever, reflecting the flickering firelight in its obsidian depths. Highway 666 claimed another victim. Another set of friends, their shattered trust and broken bodies adding to the chilling legacy of Old Man Fred. Their story became just another whispered warning, another reason to avoid the road where the darkness held a sweeter, more terrible welcome than any lost traveler could ever expect.
