First of all, lumping Howie, laptop and research, together, earned him the right to laugh. So he did, for quite awhile, tucked in a booth at a corner of the diner, his three friends now smirking at his reaction, he laughed to the point where tears started to spill and then it hit him like a swarm of killing fucking bees.

This wasn’t right, not right at all. What had he succumbed his friends to? A road trip to nowhere, because Howie, good ole Howie who was trying so hard to fill Kevin’s shoes, and Kevin’s shoes are big to fill in, and Howie’s the size of a hobbit, so it was hard, but he tried, faced the laptop like it was the battle of his life, learnt what google is, because how many times had he teased the old man before? Google is your bestfriend Howard! But Howie never looked it up, never had a reason to, until a few weeks ago, all because he had shown them a sketch of a young woman drenched in her own blood, in the middle of a fucking carpark, with a motel as the backdrop and the words ‘Super 8’ blinking on a dashboard.

Howie was the only one who bothered enough to check it out, to see if there was any meaning to his sketches, because no one else bothered, or maybe they did, they just never consulted google. He didn’t do much himself, wasn’t sure if he wanted to know in the first place, what would it mean if these weren’t just random images his headaches tend to bring with them.

But Howie found Super 8 Motel, and following the design on this particular sketch, pointed him to White Creeks, Nashville.

Brian said he’d give them a week, AJ said he was game for a road trip. With Howie’s trusted facial moisturiser packed in the bag, they made the flight down to Nashville, rented an Escalade, down by Exit 40 and checked in at Super 8 early Monday morning.

Five days later and there was nothing. Brian was getting restless over more talks of dude with yellow eyes, Howie wanted to know what the visions felt exactly, what that would accomplish remained a mystery to him, and AJ claimed he heard scratching on the walls in the middle of the night and believed, knew, the motel was haunted.

It was going nowhere, there was nothing to find, not even a shadow of the girl in the sketch. Everything was normal, and for five days, no visions or voices came to him and Brian had blown off his top, told him, accused him, in the middle of their argument, that he had lured them to this place, this isolated, no fan land, because he wanted their attention.

But last night wasn’t normal. Last night the vision came, just like Sam had said it would. And this, was going somewhere. He had found his break, maybe answers to questions he was looking for, just to wake up and realise it might have all been his imagination. There was no Sam and Dean, maybe they lived in his head, telling him things that he wanted to hear.

“Whatever’s in that coffee, I want some of it,” AJ smirked.

He laughed even harder, now desperately trying to hide the tears as one of amusement rather than despair. There was nothing in the coffee, just dark and strongly bitter, right to the last drop, just like his visions…dark and bitter and fucking annoying.

“One giggling, hyperventilating kid is enough,” Howie said, still playing around with the laptop.

Brian pushed the box of tissue his way and he pulled a piece, voice still choked to even mouth a thanks. Took a deep breath, because having a full blown breakdown in the middle of a friggin diner was just unfair; hadn’t he been subjected to enough stupidity already?

“Pancake’s nice.” Eat something Nick. I’m worried about you.

And because he really wanted to work this out, wanted to not freak them out, wanted to show his gratitude to his friends who had dropped everything and went on this trip with him, he accepted Brian’s silent offer of the pancakes and even licked his lips to show his appreciation.

“Hey, hey, I think I got something.” All eyes were on Howie now. He didn’t think his heart could ever beat this fast to a point where it was hurting, nauseating. Funny that, how something so vital in life was hurting him.

“Great, maybe now you’ll let me hog the laptop, it’s been 5 days Howie.”

“I’m sorry you can’t find any other way to get porn AJ,” deadpanned Howie. AJ grinned despite the sarcasm and he was thankful for that. Thankful the light banters that AJ tried to pull, to make light of heavy situations, to calm the nerves before it grew into a storm.

“That girl in your sketch, the one you said who was stabbed right at the parking lot of this motel? Susan Ray, she was murdered about two months ago Nicky, killer never found.”

Oh.

Dread. Disappointment. Let down. Fucked.

What good was a vision if he was already too late? Was he going to keep seeing dead people now? And girls that talked into a cup of blood? And yellow eyed freak telling him these was all okay? What’s the whole fucking point?

“How old was she?”

“24.” So young. She was so pretty too. Looked kind of lost, the last few moments before she was stabbed, but pretty, you can’t hide natural beauty and he knew beauty when he looked at one, appreciated them even more after all the exposures he got from the business. Separate the rough diamonds among the stones.

Now Brian was reading through the article, because Howie had suddenly lost interest in the laptop and AJ looked almost as pale as he was, he didn’t think porn was on his mind right then.

Suffered from depression.

Isolated herself for months.

On medication.

Therapy.

“Killer might be someone she knew, someone who had been threatening her for a while and she didn’t dare to tell anyone. Said that would explain the depression in the first place.”

He couldn’t think anymore, nothing made sense. The pancakes felt foul in his mouth and he pushed the plate away, wished he had a cup of milkshake to rid the taste of bile in his throat. Wished he was somewhere else, not in a friggin diner, in a crowd of truckers coming in for breakfast before heading out to work, wished he wasn’t anywhere in public, so opened, exposed, vulnerable, because the tears were coming and if he didn’t do something right now, think of something else, rid himself of this nausea, he was going to break down, and no one, not even joke abundance AJ, could stop him.

What if all these time, from the first vision to now, what if all he had been doing was seeing dead people; then he almost laugh, because wasn’t that about a movie? Seeing dead people? These strange faces, all dead, somewhere out there, and this yellow eyed guy, this demon, because now, now he knew for certain it’s a fucking demon, had the audacity to come into his head and whispered where no one else could hear, that it was okay Nick, it’s all right, son.

Fingers now pinching the bridge of his nose, because that was all he had, all he could muster, to stop the tears from flowing. Not now. He didn’t know what to do next, unsure if he should just get up and leave because he couldn’t trust his voice to speak, didn’t want to be there, surrounded by strangers having breakfast, didn’t want to look into the eyes of his brothers, didn’t want to hear himself telling them it’s time to let go. Give up on me, there’s nothing left here.