The Freaks | Sally Face

Chapter 83: Splat

River's POV:-

I was scared, truly and uttered scared. The four of us began frantically running around the now burning treehouse not knowing exactly how we were going to get out of this hell. Kenneth Phelps and his damn cult had somehow found us and was now looking to send a message one way or the other. That message not only being burning Larry's beloved treehouse, but burning four teenagers alive too. I don't know truly if he knew we were up here, but I have a funny feeling if he did then he would've come up here himself and dragged Travis out. I didn't know what to do, I began quickly dialling the fire department on my phone but the line kept coming up dead. It was as if somehow, Kenneth had already got hold of the fire department and told them his plans to burn something down. Of course, with the corruption of Nockfell this would be entirely possible. I mean, they paid of the papers to keep their business out from underneath their noses so who's to say that he couldn't do that again. 

Travis began to howl as he rushed around the treehouse trying to conduct a plan. Larry remained in complete shock and couldn't utter a word correctly and Sal began looking at our options. The only ones that he could come up with involved us jumping down from the window in the treehouse, thus causing severe damage to all of our legs or possibly killing us or the next option being one of us climbing down through the hatch, risking getting severely burnt and alerting our parents in the apartments next to us. Neither option was great at all. I then began dialling the only other number that I knew would answer. My dad. My hands grew sweatier as I pressed the call button on my phone. I began to cough as the smoke continued to make its way in between the cracks of the wooden slates beneath our feet. I had to remain calm, I had to make sure we got out of this alive otherwise who knows what could happen next. The phone continued to ring and ring but strangely my dad wasn't answering his phone either. I snatched Larry's and Sal's phones away from them and began calling their parents but again, the deathly ringing tone was causing my anxiety to sky rocket. 

"What the fuck are we going to do?!" Travis roared and began picking up the prophecy book and throwing it into his back pack. "Is there anything in here that we can toss out the window to land on?!"

"You don't think I've thought of that already?!" Sal screamed, his face on full display for Travis to see as he fumbled putting his prosthetic back on. 

"I was only asking!" Travis replied and continued his frantic running around the now shrinking space.

"We're fucked, completely and utterly fucked.." Larry finally spoke, coughing aggressively as he did. 

"Don't speak like that!" Sal replied. "We give up and he wins!"

"Look at us Sal!" Larry screams. "We're essentially cooking in inside this treehouse. Like he's put us in a damn oven for us all to die!"

Sal, Larry and Travis all then began to argue as the crackles of the flames continued to fly beneath us. The sweat pouring from my head was now becoming more noticeable and I could sense that we didn't have much longer before the floor beneath us finally caved. I ran over to the window ledge, looking up to see the branches above may have some stability to buy us some extra time... but we had to work fast if we wanted to survive.

"Stop it!" I roared at the boys. "Look you may think I'm crazy but we need to go upwards, it might buy us some time before the tree finally caves in!"

"Are you mental?!" Travis shouted through his now wheezing coughs. "If the tree collapses then we'll die by up there!"

"We'll die if we don't leave this oven now!" I replied sternly, biting my teeth together so tightly that it began to hurt. 

"Can't you just do some magic shit?! I don't know, teleport us out of here?!"