It was a dark, still night as the rain slowly trickled from the sky.  Everyone in the town was sleeping except at one house in particular, Piper’s house.  Her parents were out of town on a business trip and she was home alone.  The enormous house was silent except for the sound of the still falling rain.  Even though she was fourteen years of age, Piper was still afraid of the dark.  Around the house she ran.  Upstairs, downstairs, through the kitchen, bedrooms, and everywhere else until all the lights were on.  “Much better,” she said to herself as she turned on the final light.  She then sat on her bed to watch a little television.   BOOM!  She jumped as the lightning and thunder joined in the storm.  “It’s only a storm,” she told herself as she got up to close the curtain, “just a storm.”   

As she walked to the window, she noticed the floor was wet. “Hmm, how did that happen,” she wondered.  The window was wide open.  “I would’ve sworn I shut that earlier.”  Quickly she closed the window before anymore rain could get in, but as she closed it she noticed pieces of glass were missing from the panes.  Looking to see what had caused it she saw the missing shards on the floor.  “Good thing I didn’t step on that.”  She couldn’t think of any explanation for the broken glass but then she saw the giant oak next to her window.  “I guess the wind must have blown one of the branches into my window,” she said nervously.  “Yes, that’s exactly it.  The wind.”  Another round of thunder sounded, but this time it was different, closer.  She shrugged it off and went back to her television show, Night of the Living Dead.  

Around the time she started watching it again, she began hearing odd noises.  Though she tried to convince herself it was the television, there was no doubting they were real.  Then she heard a loud crash from the kitchen.  Suddenly she remembered what she had heard on the news the day before.  There was an unidentified Zodiac Killer copycat on the loose.  She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and knowing that was her only way out, she hid under her bed and turned the television off.  The footsteps stopped at her doorway as the lights went out.  “Oh no,” she thought to herself.  A maniacal sort of laughter escaped the strangers lips as the footsteps proceeded down the hall to the other rooms. Then it dawned on her.  

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