Roper came awake with the feeling that he wasn’t alone in the house. He sat up in bed, tense and wary, a crawling sensation on the back of his scalp. The night was dark, moonless; warm clotted black surrounded him. He rubbed sleep mucus from his eyes, blinking, until he could make out the vague grayish outlines of the open window in one wall, the curtains fluttering in the hot summer breeze.
Ears straining, he listened. There wasn’t anything to hear. The house seemed almost graveyard still, void of even the faintest of night sounds.
What was it that had waked him up? A noise of some kind? An intuition of danger? It might have only been a bad dream, except that he couldn’t remember dreaming. And it might have only been imagination, except the feeling of not being alone was strong, urgent.
There’s somebody in the house, he thought.
Or some thing in the house?
Roper just lay there, unable to move while paranoia coursed through his veins. His heart was beating with expectance as he listened to the sounds of the night. Howling winds whipped through the trees, causing them to rustle in a way that sent chills down his spine. After what felt like hours, the winds died down, causing an eerie silence to fall over the empty countryside. Roper nestled his head against his soft, squishy pillow and began to distract his mind with thoughts of happier things. It almost worked, and he came close to nodding off again, when he woke with a jolt. Suddenly he remembered the previous night, when he snuck downstairs after bedtime. Roper began shaking with worry.
He could clearly recall sneaking quietly down the stairs towards the kitchen to snatch a cookie from the pristine jar on the counter. After a successful mission, he stopped briefly to watch television over his parents’ shoulders. Brenda Sullivan, the local news woman, was reporting new information about an inmate’s recent escape. At the time he thought nothing of it, none of his family did. He could even remember his dad making a joke about getting out his rifle just in case. What disturbed him now though, was the fact that not only was the prison only fifty miles away, but the serial killer was going to be executed for sadistically killing three families. He had taken their fingers as souvenirs, after breaking into their homes.
With this thought, Roper ripped the sheets off of his body and ran to his door, tripping over dirty jeans and video game cases on the way. When he reached his door, he ripped it open and made a mad dash for his parent’s room. Stopping short, he remembered his mother and father had gone out for the night; he turned around and ran towards the room of his bratty older sister, Anna.
“Anna! Open the door. Please, open the door. I think there is someone lurking around outside,” he screamed as he banged loudly on the door to her room. He waited for her to open the door even though he knew she’d be annoyed that he woke her up at this late hour. After five minutes of no response, he pressed his ear to the cold door and listened. He could barely make out the sound of what appeared to be someone shuffling around the room. Angry that she did not care enough to answer his calls, he stormed off to his room. Roper dug through his bedside table until he found what he was looking for; a key to Anna’s room. He knew stealing it over two years ago, when he was only eleven, would eventually come in handy. He was about to leave his room when he heard sounds coming from outside his second story window. While holding his breath, he peered out his window just in time to see a dark figure run across the lawn and into the forest behind his house. Terror gripped his heart, making it beat twice as fast as it had before. He rushed off to his sister’s room hoping she hadn’t changed the lock on her door. When he arrived at her door, he was surprised to see her leaning causally against the door frame.
