It was a nice day with the sun shining and the grass waving in the wind like the ocean. Me, Nicole, Ashley, and Ryan were all getting ready to baby sit my 5 year old cousin, Sam. He was a nice little boy who always loved to play. We were all lounging at my house talking about the crazy stuff we all used to do together and all the fun we had. It was beginning to get dark and Sam yawned and I took it as a hint that he was tired so I put him to bed. I came back to the front room and all of my friends were all sitting there staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Someone just knocked at your door,” Ryan said.

I went over to the door, looked through the peek hole and there was nobody there. I didn't think much of it so I sat down on the couch and forgot about it in no longer than five minutes.

Ashley got up to go get a drink of Pepsi from the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door, got a can of pop, and when she shut the door, she seen Ben the psycho killer. Ashley screamed for help but it was too late. Nicole, Ryan, and I all sprang up and ran to the kitchen. We looked all around but she wasn't there. I ran to my phone and called her, but she didn't answer. I called her again, this time someone did answer. First there was just someone breathing.

“Ashley?” I asked.

No answer, they just hung up. Scared that something terrible has happened to Ashley, I told Ryan we are going over to Ashley’s to see if she was home while Nicole stayed and watched Sam. We got in my car and started to drive towards her house when we seen someone in the distance just staring at us. We got a quick glance at the figure before it ran into the dark forest. With a glimpse of the figure, we could see it looked a lot like the wanted ads. We sped up because we got frightened, but we didn't see the cop behind us. Of course, he stopped us. He got out of his car and slowly walked up to my window.

I got my license out and my car registration. He takes a glimpse of it and hands it back.

“I'm gonna have to give you a ticket for speeding young lady,” he says.

“I'll give you money if you don’t give me a ticket :)” I bribed.

He started to reach for his ticket book when an arrow went straight through his head. He stood there for a second, twitching, then fell over. “Holy Crap!” Ryan said.
Horrified, I sped off. I accidentally ran over one of his legs. We approached Ashley's house when Ryan's phone started ringing. He answered it and heard Nicole was terrified. Practically screaming she said, “Someone's in Marie's house! I heard noises in the bedroom where Sam is so I opened the door and seen nobody.”

Ryan said, “Okay calm down and get Sam out of the room.”
It was too late when Nicole opened the door. A knife flew at her and all Sam could see was her falling to the ground. He started to cry then ran in the closet and hid.

As I rushed back home with Ryan spazzing out, I prayed that nothing had happened to my little cousin. We ran up to the door, unlocked it, and ran in the room where Sam was. I didn't see him and immediately thought the worst. But to my relief I heard a little boy crying. I opened the closet door, picked him up and ran out of the house to my car with Ryan behind me.

Of course, the car wouldn't start the first couple times. We sat there, shaking. I thought about starting the car again but I froze and seen a shadow in my house passing by the window. I gave up on the car and ran out to the woods behind my house. Ryan was behind me with Sam on his shoulders giving him a piggy back ride. We ran until we seen a barn which was caving in from all the snow the past winter. We got in there, made our way to the back past all the fallen wood to this little doorway. The doorway was about half size, so that you had to crawl to get through. Sam crouched beside me. It surprised me of how calm he was, because he was only five years old and he acted braver than any kid I knew.

It was silent. This was a dream and I almost convinced myself that it was. All I heard was Sam and Ryan breathing. Then, we froze and stopped breathing all at once to listen for a second. We could all hear the same thing...footsteps. They got just a little bit closer but then they seemed just to fade away. We kept listening and waiting. I took out my cell phone but no bars. In my head I was panicking, I couldn't figure out how we were going to sneak away. I looked around, but all I could think of doing is crawling out through the little doorway right beside us. I thought about crawling through it, but couldn't bring myself to do it. So I sat there wondering what would happen, wondering if we were going to die. I wanted to leave bad but I couldn't. It was as if I was nailed there to the ground. Sam suddenly moved a little closer to the stairs that went up to the dark hay loft. “I hear someone's voice up in the hay loft,” Sam whispered a little frightened.

“Does the voice sound familiar to you?” Ryan asked.

“Wait I hear it now too,” Marie said.

“I don't hear anything,” Ryan said.

A few minutes passed and Ryan finally hears what Marie and Sam heard. We started panicking again and crawled through the little doorway. We all got up and started running for the dark woods where all you could see was bunches of trees and bushes. We got up to a bush and quickly hid in it. We sat there and thought we were safe for a couple moments, but then something pulled Ryan from the bush and drug him away. Sam started crying and I sprang up and picked Sam up and started running. I was heading for town, or at least someone's house. I could hear Ryan screaming in the distance but I kept running because I knew there was nothing I could do.

In the distance I could see a light. I felt a relief lift off my shoulders. I came closer to it and it was a cottage house with flower bushes on both sides of the door. I came up to the doorway, rang the doorbell and knocked loudly. I stood there waiting for someone to open the door. I was looking behind me and looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was around. I quickly tried opening the door and it opened to my surprise. I walked in. “Hello?!” I screamed. No answer. I ran into one of the other rooms looking for somebody, or maybe a phone. There was something strange about this house. It was like it was trying to look normal, instead of just being normal. I stood there, thinking, trying to sort through my brain, trying to focus.

I heard someone walking up to the house. They were stepping slowly, taking loud foot steps. They were also dragging something. All of a sudden my heart started to pound and my stomach dropped. I quickly took Sam's hand and ran into the nearest closet and kept it open a crack so I could peek. The steps stopped and the door knob started to turn. The door opened. It was Ben the killer, dragging my best friend Ashley. Sam gasped and I covered his mouth. He walked in and just threw Ashley aside. He grabbed the T.V. remote and switched his T.V. on. He plopped down in his chair and flipped it to The Simpsons. It was kinda weird. He laughed more than I did when I watch the show. I suddenly felt less scared of him, just because of the fact that he was watching The Simpsons and laughing. I looked around the closet. There were old coats and stockings that had that old smell to them because they haven't been washed or worn in so long. Sam pulled one of them aside and found this old handle. I looked a little bit more and found that it was a crawl space. I was going to try to open it but I was worried it would make too much noise.

Ben got up and went to his kitchen. I heard him open the refrigerator door and take out a few things. I took it as a chance to open the door to the crawl space. I pulled on the handle and it slid very easily as if it had been opened and closed frequently. I peeked my head inside and I saw a ladder leading down to the basement. I made Sam climb down the ladder first and then I went behind him. We got down to the bottom and it was a dirt floor. It was dark so I used my cell phone, with no bars of course, as a flashlight. We walked a little bit and froze. There was a rolled up tarp in front of us and it looked like it had a body in it. I walked up a little to it with Sam staying behind me, and it squirmed. I quickly got down and tried to rip the tarp. There was a little tear in it so I used that to rip it open. It was Ryan. He was alive. “We got to get out of here,” he said out of breath from almost suffocating.

I helped him up, put Sam on my shoulders, and started looking around to find a way out of here. We realized that this entire place was made out of dirt. “We could dig our way out of here,” I said. Ryan found a good spot to start digging at the wall. The dirt was not that dry so it was fairly easy to dig. He started clawing at the wall and I sat next to him digging. Sam started wondering around while we were digging. We could hear Ben upstairs walking around. We started to dig faster because we were getting a bad feeling. We were digging upward now; the dirt was falling in our eyes. I looked down and started to claw like crazy so the dirt wouldn’t get in my eyes.

The crawlspace door just slid. We were panicking again. Ben was coming and he was going to find us. Sam was hiding in a corner a ways from us. He was coming down the ladder. “Dig faster Ryan,” I said. We were close; we started to see sunlight peek through the dirt. “What are you trespassers doing in my basement!?” Ben yelled.

His face was blazing red, he was mad and I knew he was about to take all of his anger out on us. He was right behind us now. He pulled out a knife and was aiming for Ryan, but before he could strike, a gun shot fired. Ben froze and was still for at least five seconds with his hand still in the air with the knife still aimed and tilted downward like in the horror movies. He fell to the ground and behind him was Sam holding a gun. “Where did you find that gun?!” I yelled.

“Over there on the ground,” Sam said surprisingly calm.

“We could have died,” Ryan said.

I turned back around and continued to dig upward. I was able to stick my whole arm through the dirt. I put both arms through and forced myself up. I turned around and Ryan lifted Sam up to me and I pulled him through. Then Ryan was lifted himself through the dirt after Sam. We were alive and we couldn't believe it.

We followed the gravel road onto a highway and walked until we got into town. We came up on a gas station and went inside to use the phone. I first called the police to tell them what had happened, then I called my parents to tell them we were alright. They arrived only minutes later to take us all home. They couldn't believe what we had just been through. We were so lucky to be alive. Ben had been wanted for years and he is finally gone.