The terror began immediately.
Scratching at the bedroom window, icy chills, voices speaking in empty rooms.
Then Fiona begins to suffer from blackouts - medical experts can't explain. Her eldest daughter, Harmony, is threatened by the appearance of...
Shaking his head in disbelief, he closed the door, thinking as he did - who had opened the hallway window and the front door?
The old man, no doubt - he had been walking around the house.
Going into the kitchen, he turned on the light and found no windows opened. What he saw instead was Katrina fast asleep.
'Katrina?' He asked softly, bending down next to her
Katrina - hearing her dad's voice - opened her eyes and looked around the kitchen. Confused by how she ended up being in the kitchen when the last thing she remembered was being in her own bed.
'Dad?' she spoke, her voice drowsy. 'What I'm I doing here?'
'You must have sleepwalked?'
'I don't know. I can't remember; I just remember waking up, hearing somebody call my name.'
'Who?' Steven asked, intrigued.
'I don't know. He kept telling me to come downstairs, so we could play.'
'Was it a young voice?'
'I think so, yeah.'
Although the hour was late, gone three in the morning, the early birds chirping outside. Steven had a vague idea - who that voice belonged to. The old man. But he kept that thought to himself. Katrina was tired; he could hear it in her voice.
'Do you want me to carry you upstairs to bed?'
'Yeah.'
'Come on then, let's get you up.'
Picking Katrina up into his arms, her weight surprised him. 'You're getting heavy, you know that.'
'You must be getting weaker if you can't carry a small kid upstairs.'
It was a brief moment of humour between a father and his daughter, and they both smiled.
'Carry on, and you'll be walking upstairs.'
It was a fun threat; it didn't mean anything and going up the stairs, Steven had to watch his step. Not only that, the room space on the stairs, there wasn't much of it. And Steven had to be extra cautious when he got to the corner.
Making it, at last, to the girl's bedroom, Steven managed to open the door and went into the room. The hallway light flooded the room, and straight off the bat, Steven saw Harmony on the floor; she was lying on her stomach.
Either she had fallen out of bed, or the old man had dragged her out of bed. One or two, he didn't like to mull over which one. And he spat the thought out like a bad taste in his mouth.
'Why is Harmony on the floor? Did she fall out of bed?' Katrina wanted to know.
'Probably, but right now, let's get you in bed.' And that's what Steven did. The same with Harmony.
Going back to bed, Steven fell into a deep sleep, and the next morning, he and Fiona would find it odd; the girls weren't in the house. And they would look everywhere and not a peek.
'They haven't gone out; the front door is still bolted, and so is the backdoor.' Fiona would say.
After twenty-minute of searching high and low, Fiona and Steven would eventually find the girls.
Both sleeping on the road outside, where anything might have happened to them.
Anything
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