The nights used to be quiet, peaceful. Crickets, perched in the long grasses, chirped occasionally. The leaves of the bottle green bushes rustled. The wind a gentle breeze nudged at the flowering trees that grew at the entrance of the house.

That was before. Now, the nights are punctuated with gasps, whimpers of pain, and shuddering breaths as the people of the house realize that their nightmares aren’t real. They lurch from an uneasy sleep, leaning over the sides of their beds, bodies tangled in the sheets that they had thrashed under. They bend over their elbows on their knees, their heads in their hands. Take in quivering breaths, the human parts of their brain still active, screaming at them, yelling at them to fight. To fight against the evil that had taken root inside them. And the people of the house opened their eyes in that deathly black of night, and that evil seized control once more.

The feverish sweat coating their bodies are the only remnants of the gripping fear, of the human inside them.

Their eyes go blank, unfocused.

They are no longer the free, laughing people who once owned this house. Not anymore. The evil has taken control of their weak minds, their weak bodies. And made them into its pawns.

{End chapter}

Somewhere, deep inside that family estate, Fran Wilder lies, eyes wide open, staring into the dark, paralyzed with fear. She can hear the noises from the other rooms, from her mother, her father, her brother, once so timid and shy, now a killing machine, her sister, once so soft-spoken and quiet, now a monster who delighted in death.

They did not know that she existed. That their once beloved daughter, their sister, lay in her bed, mere feet away.

If they did know of her existence, she would have without a doubt been long dead.

She had been hiding in her room, surviving on a diet of a rapidly depleting candy stash. Some ancient instincts taught her how to move silently, how to make no noise at all as she trembled in fear. She did not know how soon her luck would run out. She did not know how soon the luck, pure luck, that no one had ventured into this room, would run out. She lived every day in the mind-numbing, paralyzing fear that her mother would decide to enter the locked room, expecting to find a dusty storage room, and instead, finding her prey, crouching in the corner, pale with terror. Perhaps the part of her that was still human would recognize her. Would be screaming in agony as she watched her own body betray her. As she watched her own hands reach behind her to brandish two wicked looking daggers. Or perhaps it would be just one knife, for carving Fran up. Maybe the monster who squatted inside of her mother didn’t enjoy cleaning up. Maybe she would use her bare hands to choke the life out of her beautiful daughter, smiling a wicked smile as the life in Fran’s eyes faded into the depthless black that Fran knew so well. Watching in satisfaction as a monster took over her daughter.

Fran had had a lot of time to contemplate exactly how her life would be taken from her.