I’m bleeding. I have scrapes and bruises from where I’ve tripped over fallen branches and tree roots. My whole arm is throbbing. It feels like I’ve been running for hours. I’m so tired and I struggle to stay upright. With each step I take, the more I want to stop; to just let him catch me.
I’ve been through a lot in the past hour, and now I just feel like I should listen to him and abandon any hope of escaping. After seeing what this deranged psychopath is capable of doing, my chance of survival is very slim. I mean my death is really all but inevitable now.
I hear the crack of a branch somewhere off to my left. I freeze. Ohmygod He found me!! Then, I hear laughter.











***

It’s 3 in the morning. I wake up to the sounds of movement downstairs. Ugh! Why would anyone be up at this time of night? Whatever. I roll over and try to go back to sleep, when I hear what sounds like a muffled scream. I immediately shot up in my bed and stood up, quickly putting on my tennis shoes. I opened the door to my room and quietly walked to the stairs.
When I get to the top of the stairs I can just barely make out what looked to be a dark silhouette of a person lying supine on the floor by the coffee table in the living room. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving. My pulse started to race. I was scared to death! The last thing I want to do is go down there and find some person in our house. What would I do then??? But, I need to help them!!! I know that if the situation was reversed, they would do anything they could to help me, whatever the consequences of that choice would be.
So step by step, I slowly climbed down the stairs, careful not to make any noise. The farther down the steps I got, and the more my eyes started to adjust, the clearer the scene before my eyes became. There was blood everywhere. I bent down to where my father lay on the ground, not moving. That’s when I noticed what had caused his death. He had multiple stab wounds. I counted. 1. 2. 3. I was horrified, but I continued counting. 4. 5. 6. 6 times this person had stabbed him. I held back my screams as tears welled up in my eyes. Crying was all that I could do. I stood up and walked around the room, taking in this horrific moment when I noticed another body, and another. My mother, my little sister Katie. They each had 6 stab wounds.
Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me. “You should have stayed in your room.” It was the person who had killed my family. He was standing in front of the door, blocking my closest exit. I ran as fast as I could up the stairs, into my room. I slammed the door shut, grabbed my phone of the charger and my keys from my dresser. “Knock, Knock.” He whispered in his sinister-sounding voice. He started beating on the door, while I was gathering up the courage to jump out of my 2-story window. I unlocked the window and opened it as wide as it would go. Just as I was climbing out, the door burst open. He had kicked the door open. No time to have second thoughts now. I jumped out just as he was crossing my room. I fell for what seemed like minutes, not mere seconds. When I hit the ground, I heard a loud crack and I felt a sharp pain shoot up my arm. “Crap, crap, crap!!!!! OWWWW!!!” I screamed. Despite the awful pain in my left arm, I stood up and rushed to my car, started it, and took off as fast as possible up my driveway.
“In the night the stormy night she'll close her eyes. In the night the stormy night, away she’d fly, and dream of Para-para-paradise, Para-para-paradise, Para-para-paradise Oh oh oh oh oh oh-oh-oh,” Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay sang. I jumped, the car started to swerve of the road. I quickly straightened the car, then reached to get my phone out of my pocket with my hand that I wasn’t using to steer and then I remembered why I wasn’t steering with that hand. “Owww!!!” I pulled my blue Volkswagen Bug over on the side of the road and took my phone out of my pocket with my good hand. The phone read “Mom”.
A familiar voice greeted me on the phone, but it was not my mother. “Hello, Rebecca. You’re the first person that has ever escaped me. But don’t worry, I WILL find you and then I WILL kill you. I will also kill everybody you decide to tell.”
“Wait!!!” The line went dead. “No, no, no!!!!” I put my phone down and pulled back onto the road, driving toward the police station. I almost stopped, but I didn’t. I couldn’t let those people die too. They had family. One thing I don’t have anymore. I passed the police department building, the sign on the front of the building read, “Ross County Police Department” Almost immediately after I passed, I noticed a car pull out of some abandoned warehouse. Again I heard my favorite song from my favorite band, but this time I didn’t freak out like I did the last time. I suspected it was him on the other end of the line again and I was right. I opened my phone up.
“Good. You were right not to involve the police in this.” I look back at the car and the old beaten up car is gaining on my small, blue one. The next thing I see was a blur. He came up beside me and hit my car causing me to swerve of the road and come to a skidding stop right by the edge of the woods. I climbed out of my car and ran as fast as I could through the thick forest. Remembering my phone, I put it up to my ear. “Hello?” I whispered my voice cracking. “There’s no point in running. I’ll find you. It’s just a matter of time.” I knew he was probably right but I kept running after he hung up the phone.
I’m bleeding. I have scrapes and bruises from where I’ve tripped over fallen branches and tree roots. My whole arm is throbbing. It feels like I’ve been running for hours. I’m so tired and I struggle to stay upright. With each step I take, the more I want to stop; to just let him catch me.
I’ve been through a lot in the past hour, and now I just feel like I should listen to him and abandon any hope of escaping. After seeing what this deranged psychopath is capable of doing, my chance of survival is very slim. I mean my death is really all but inevitable now.
I hear the crack of a branch somewhere off to my left. I freeze. Ohmygod. He found me!! Then, I hear laughter. “I told you I would find you…” I look around, but I can’t see anything. I feel arms
wrap around my waist and throw me to the ground. “AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Hello again Rebecca.”






















“I know a lot of things about you, Rebecca. I’m surprised you haven’t recognized me yet though.”





























“What are you talking about? I don’t know you.”















“Oh, but you do…”
As I looked closer, I realized who I was standing face to face with. He was the infamous Ross County slayer. He had finally made it to our cozy little town of Deadman’s Crossing in Ohio. (Which is an ironic name really, but I can’t think about that right now.)

“Please!!!!! You don’t have to do this!! I won’t tell anybody!!”











“I can’t know that. But either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m still going to kill you.”




This was the first time I noticed the knife in his hand. I closed my eyes as I got ready for the impact of the blade. I whispered a small prayer, and felt the blade enter my abdomen.










***
“Huuuuuuuuuh,” I gasped. I jerked straight up in my bed. As I processed what had just happened, I realized that it was all just a nightmare, and the worst one that I had ever had. My whole body was covered in a cold sweat. Just a nightmare. Just a nightmare. I repeated over and over again in my head. I slowly got out of bed and walked across my room to my door. I opened it and slowly walked down the steps and into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I got a small cup out of the cabinet, filled it with cold water from the faucet, and slowly drank until there was nothing left in the cup. I put the glass in the sink and started to walk up the stairs, when I did a double take. The scene was straight from my nightmare I had just woken up from. “It can’t be.” I said to myself or so I thought.
“But it can.” The familiar voice said to me from behind. I slowly turned away. Just inches from me, I locked eyes with the Ross County Slayer. “What can’t be?” He laughed. Frozen with fear, I just stood there. I could almost hear the rapid beating of my heart. It felt like it could burst out of my chest like in the old cartoons the people were in love. But this wasn’t love. It was fear.
I looked down, and in his hand was a knife covered with fresh blood. “Hello, Rebecca.” He whispered. “Please,” I begged “Please don’t-” Before I could finish, I saw his hand flash towards me, and I felt the blade slowly enter the same place that it had in my dream. He pulled the knife out of my stomach, and I fell to the ground. “Emm” I whimpered. I looked up into his eyes and again the blade entered farther up into my lower chest. I was beginning to feel dizzy. My vision blurred and I fell to my side. The last thing I heard was the faint sirens in the distance, and the laugh of the Ross County Slayer.














***
“It’s been a slow day today.” Ethan Mitchell said to his partner Officer Matthew Egerton in the police department building that night. As soon as he finished his sentence, the dispatcher came over the intercom and said that there was a 911 call to a house in Deadman’s Crossing, the town over from them. Ethan and the other paramedics loaded up into the ambulance and when he arrived at the house, he began to get sick to his stomach. He knew this house. He knew the girl who lived here. When the two were younger he would always go over to her house to play. He and Rebecca had been best friends ever since he could remember.
When the ambulance came to a complete stop, he got out and ran as fast as he could to the house. When he opened the door, he almost immediately found Rebecca lying on the kitchen floor. He rushed over to her and rolled her on to her back. When he saw the wounds, tears came to his eyes. “Rebecca!” He screamed. “Rebecca!!!” But she was unresponsive. She was not breathing and did not have a pulse.
All of a sudden Rebecca’s phone started to ring. The first verse to Rebecca’s favorite song cut into the silence. Ethan searched Rebecca’s pockets until he came across her phone, he answered it and heard a rough, scratchy voice on the other end. “You’re next….” The voice said. Then the line went dead….