The taxi rolling in was a combination of common and uncommon in this time. Lots of relatives from out of town drove through Hornsay to get to the little unnamed sublet, but usually with the encouragement of the townsfolk and their 'heed my warning' speeches, they left the same day.
Wasn't safe here overnight, just like the old man had said.
The town was already starting to pack up by 6pm, it clearly wasn't a town with a big night life. Twenty minutes from the heart of Hornsay, the heart of the sublet had a corner store, and a diner, the diner was open, while the corner store looked like it hadn't been open in months. It's windows were barricaded with wood and one was smashed through. Spray-paint had scrawled "The dead come to take." in blue across the boards. Cliche saying that had been changed to imply the dead were... taking?
The diner was open, a flickering light on the doorstep. Inside was only three customers, and a middle aged waitress, smoking behind the counter with the cigarette dripping ashes into her black drip coffe which she was presumably serving to customers. No one seemed to care though. As Laurent entered, the waitress let out a gritty smokers cough, and eyed him down.
"You." She said, with a southern accent unique to the deep Appalachian. "Our kitchen's closed. Got coffee an' anything in the display." She says, pulling her cigarette from between her lips. She had greying brown hair but thick, drawn on brows, wrinkles around her lips which were coated with a sludgy lipstick, and her messy eyeliner looked as though to be done with shaking hands.
She might have been a beautiful woman if she had not been working at a diner in the middle of nowhere.
"Coffee, dea-"
A bell chimed out, a church bell. It was louder then the waitress speaking, louder then the chatter between two of the guests, a young couple. The bell had a domineering presence, and it called everyone to attention. The waitress put her coffee pot down and with haste, paced towards the far window of the diner, where up on a hill where the run down church lay, a cross was being erected outside it, but was too far to see what the significance was.
Almost at once, all three customers were up, a lone man, perhaps a cowboy from around here, and a younger couple who also looked to be from out of town. The waitress looked at Laurent and smiled a little, with yellow teeth.
"Oh praise the lord, they got 'un." She said, and she grabbed her coat from a chair behind the counter, slipping it on. She bolted to the door of the diner, and looked behind her before she left with the cowboy in tail.
"Don't steal anythin', kid. I own a gun." She said, before she was gone...
The young couple stood, reveling their camera around the neck, and their cases. They giggled a little and looked at Laurent.
"You're new here too, aren't you!" The girl said, and her accent was a thick one, new jersey, or somewhere like it. Not the southern drawl the waitress had. "We're reporters... well, sort of. You must be something like it, no one comes here just because."
She took the hand of her lover and headed for the door as the bell chimed in the back, overwhelming the air with a sense of deep dread. The boy spoke.
"Come see what the point of the town is." He said, the same accent mirrored on him. His hands gripped his camera and they both headed out the door...
The cross stook fully erected at the church up on the hill...