Prologue

There it was.

At first I considered that I had imagined the eerie cry, but now that I had sat up and tucked my brown hair behind my ear, there was no way my imagination had devised it.

It was a baby cry. A baby crying from the house next door. Yes, I had met that baby before. A sweet, adorable little girl. A little girl hat didn't cry like that unless something was wrong.

Relax, Natalie. Babies cry all the time. It's a normal thing.

But, wait. Now their dog was barking, too. A sharp bark that could no doubtfully be heard throughout the whole neighborhood. The sounds combined rung in my ears and had my heart thumping. It was eleven o'clock, and I was supposed to be asleep. At that moment, I wished I had listened to my mother and fell asleep like I was supposed to. But even if my eyes were closed and I was off somewhere, I still would have heard them.

I sat up starighter now, unaware of the book in my lap falling to the ground, closely followed by my reading light. With my bedroom door closed and the only light I had turned off, the reading light created a beam that illuminated the screaming shadows.

I clutched the arm of my teddy bear now, scared to move as I listened helplessly to the chorus of sounds outside the small window. I ordered myself to breathe through my nose, closing my eyes and trying to imagine happy things.

I tried to smile, to remember that in the morning I would laugh. Laugh at my insecurities and obsessions over every little thing.

But it was pushing me over the edge. The cries had turned into screams now, and the barking was uncontrollable. I had to do something. But I couldn't go out to my mom, who would surely think I was crazy. So I quickly got up from under my blanket and made my way to the door. But I paused.

I paused because it had suddenly become very, very quiet. It was almost impossible. One minute it had sounded like someone was being murdered, and the next the world was silent as a stone. But just to make me feel safer, I opened hte door about halfway before returning to my bed. But when I looked out into the hallway, I couldn't move.

Because that's when I saw him. The man with the knife.

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*NOTE I'm marking this story mature because when I was origanlly thinking about the basic plot line, I realized I should make it have some mature stuff in it, just cause. So yah, it probably have some sexual stuff, so if you're sensitive, you can probably skip or don't read it at all.

updated Oct 4 '11 by Doodler123