The Halloween Cannibal

Chapter 9)Somebody's watching...

"The hanging tree" by Jennifer Lawrence

***
Ben doesn't seem to want to believe what's right in front of him. "No." He shakes his head incredulously, before stepping away from me to examine the tiny organ on the floor. It's as though he needed to check for himself, solely because the statement seemed so ludicrous. Ben suddenly runs down the hall towards the kitchen, and before I even have a moment to wonder where he's run off to, he returns brandishing a silver spatula. I grimace in horror, walking away so I don't have to see him poke at the tongue. With my back turned, I close my eyes as I hear the scraping of metal on the lovely hard-wood floor.
"Oh fuck." Ben utters, before I hear the quick shuffling of what sounds like him putting the spatula back down.
I turn around, but I find Ben pushing me gently for the direction of the kitchen. "Don't look."
"I already saw it." I protest, before I notice he's shaking his head.
"Cass...Do you remember sophomore year, we dissected cow tongues?"
I grimace at the memory. That was an unpleasant day where I truly contemplated becoming a vegetarian like my sister. But my love for pepperoni pizza killed that idea quickly. "What of it?"
Ben's face is pale as he suddenly takes my hand to lead me to the kitchen. "That tongue...Wasn't from an animal."
"But if it's not from an animal, what could it..." But I stopped midsentence once I saw the look on Ben's face. It was a pointed look where he wanted me to grasp what he was saying without him actually having to say it. I allow him to lead me to another room as I try to register what he said. Ben shakes my shoulder once we stop, but I feel so very terrified all the sudden. It's not even his comment, it's remembering something I saw. "Ben..."
"What?"
"Rosalita had blood coming out of her mouth." I whisper in horror. The next ten minutes we spend trying to get our phones to work to no avail. No amount of trying to connect to the internet gets us anywhere either. There's no reception and no internet connection. We have no ability to call anyone, we're incapable of reaching out to anyone via social media.

The landline was pointless. You can't make an outgoing call since whomever has one of the other phones is leaving it on. Ben's holding it together mentally better than I am. I'm still shaking over the revelation that the tongue at the mail slot is most probably human. That's not the only thing that I'm frightened of. It's remembering talking to the person on the phone while I was watching the person in the window holding onto Rosalita. The person holding onto her wasn't holding a phone. That meant there was more than one person apart of this.
If someone was holding Rosalita while someone else was on the phone, it's obvious there's two people doing this. After explaining this to Ben, he's more inspired to get the phones working. "I can't figure out what kind of stupid reason neither of our cells can call out!" He continued fiddling around with the bars on his phone. Somehow the people apart of this had to jam our cell phone connection. "We have to save her." I whisper, my eyes watering with fresh tears. Rosalita may be a horrible, unfriendly person, but I pray that it's not truly her tongue that's sitting by the front door right now. I pray with every fiber of my being it's a fake...Even though in my very core I feel that it isn't a fake organ.
Ben shakes his head and stops me from wandering out of the room. "First rule of surviving a horror movie...Never go outside to save the person who was dumb enough to get caught." He scolds, hurries to turn on the outside lights from the kitchen area.
I stare at him in disbelief. "This isn't a movie...This is real life...Someone's hurt...What if...What if that's really Rosalita's tongue over there?" I whisper incredulously.
Ben stares at me with scrunched together eyes, before shrugging. "Then it really sucks to be her right about now-"
"Ben!" I scold, rushing over to the large variety of knives to pull an exceptionally large one from the container.
"Oh hell no." Ben scolds, shaking his head adamantly. "You never use a knife as a weapon...You would have to step close to a person to strike them."
"So what do we do??"
He walks over to the counter where he left the fire place poker he brought with him. "Use something that gives you striking distance."
I nod. "Okay, then let's go! We'll grab a weapon, and-"
"You're not going out there!" Ben hisses incredulously. "We don't know who's out there! There's a possible psycho out there and they chopped off the housekeepers tongue. We're not going outside...I won't let you."
"What is she dies?" Tears pricking at my eyes.
Ben grits his teeth, before lowering his head to look into my eyes. "I'd rather something happen to her than to you." He says quietly, wincing with what appears to be guilt.
I shake my head, pushing him back. "She's a person...There's gotta be something we can do...We can overpower whoever it is!"
Ben scowls at this. "You said it yourself that if someone was holding onto Rosalita while someone else was on the damn phone, it shows there's more than one person...Odds are, if it's Tyler or hypothetically Nick, they have moron friends helping him...Hey, maybe we're wrong and it's just a well thought out prank." He looked hopeful at this last part. Even though he's trying to appear nonchalant about this, I can tell he's shaken. He's not believing this is just a prank.
"You said the tongue looks human." I murmur, shuddering by just saying the words aloud.
Ben gives another shrug. "Well I dunno for certain...Maybe it's...a real animal one that they bought somewhere..."
"Why would Rosalita have blood on her??"
This causes Ben to rub his eyes wearily. "Maybe she's in on it?" He looked exhausted. "We don't know that she's not." He offers. "Maybe she was that pissed in thinking we were going through her things, so she wanted to retaliate?"
But his theory sounds like he's only throwing out these hypotheses to get me to calm down. I bite my inner cheek, remembering what the person said on that phone. "I need to go search for that clue..."
Ben's eyes widen. "What? You're not seriously going to listen to some freak on the phone, are you??"
"He might have cut out Rosalita's tongue! Are you really wanting to risk pissing him off?"
He scowls. "The alarm's on, it's not like he can get in anyhow." Our eyes both widen before Ben can finish his sentence. It's obvious...The house alarm system. We don't need a phone to call the police...The security company will dispatch them for us as soon as we trigger the alarm! I rush over to the kitchen window to lift it open, excitedly waiting for the ear-piercing shriek of a siren to go off indicating the alarm has been triggered.