SOMETHING ROAMS THE NIGHT...

TEN

I finally stopped screaming when I began to come to my senses. I wasn't thinking straight-what was going on?

Whose blood was this? Why was my house a mess? Where was my family? Was I even alone?

At the last thought, I shuddered. If I wasn't alone, someone must have heard me screaming. And if they had heard me scream...

"Haley," a whisper from somewhere inside the house, so soft, so...creepy. It was a man's voice, judging from its tone.

I started to shake violently, but not from the cold. Who the hell was that? What did he want?

"Haley," there it was again. "Over here."

I turned, but there was no one there. I tried not to think about the blood still stuck to the bottom of my shoes, but I couldn't. My stomach lurched.

I was freaking out by the second.

"Hale," the voice continued to call. "Closet. Over here."

Closet? The only closet in the house was in my parents' room. I didn't know what else to do, so I started for the closet.

I didn't say a word, but I knew whoever, or whatever that was, had already heard my screams.

The floorboards creaked under my feet. It was so dead quiet, I could hear my own teeth chattering.

No. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't a coward.

But that thought didn't last for long.

I stood before the closet. It loomed like a dark monster above me.

Should I open it?

What if something jumped out and attacked me? What if...one of the creatures of the night was hiding inside? Would opening the wooden door be the death of me?

And then I heard it. Andy's voice, from inside the closet.

"Haley!" he cried. He sounded afraid, like the little boy he once was.

"Andy?" I shouted, and I reached for the closet door.

"Haley?"

"In here, honey!"

Dad's voice, then Mum's. I pulled open the closet door without thinking twice.

Something tumbled out, and it wasn't Mum, Dad or Andy.

It was a man I had never seen before in my life.

And he was dead.