The forest pressed in on all sides. Dark shapes sat around a campfire, occasionally peering fearfully into the woods. An owl hooted in the distance, and one of the shapes jumped. Another shape tossed a log onto the fire and it flared up. Now it was clear that the shapes were people.1

"Thus us thu bus' birtday pary I've ever been tu!" said a chubby boy, his mouth stuffed with smores.2

"Yeah!" agreed another boy in a red baseball cap. "How did you convince your parents too let us camp out here?"3

"They don't know, they're at my grandma's." replied a boy with blond hair. "You know what the best part about camping out here is?"4

"Wah?" mumbled Chubby through all the marshmallows.5

"Look over there" said Blondie gesturing to something in the distance "Squint real hard"6

The boy in the baseball cap saw something about a quarter of a mile away, rising above the treetops. "Is that a building?" he asked.7

"That's not any building" Blondie grinned "That's the Simmon's house."8

Chubby started choking. "The Sim... Simmon's building??? Dude, there have been murders there! People say that everyone who goes there is cursed and there have been so many killings in that house that the police just stopped going up there! In High School my uncle got dared to spend the night there and he said he walked in, and then just ran all the way home!"9

"Yeah," said Blondie "Isn't that awesome? But I bet you don't know the worst story about that place." He leaned in and so did Blondie and Baseball Cap. Blondie spoke in a whisper and as the story went on Baseball Cap's and Chubby's eyes grew bigger and bigger with fear.10

"About fifty years ago a guy and his wife bought the Simmon's house. They moved in and at first everything was fine. The guy worked from home but the lady was a journalist, so she wasn't home very much. But sometimes, when the guy was home all alone in the middle of the night, he would start to hear noises coming from the basement. He would always go to check it out but nothing would be there. He never heard the noises when his fiance was home but other thing would happen. Mirrors broke. Pictures fell of the walls. Things would go missing and appear in the weirdest places. But the weirdest thing happened when the guy was at the store or something and the girl was in the kitchen."11

Here Blondie paused to drink some apple juice, enjoying the looks of terror on his friends faces.12

"There was a window in the kitchen and the wife loved looking out of it, you know, watching the birds and stuff. One day when she was looking out of it she saw a little kid wandering around, who looked maybe about four years old. She went out to go meet him and ask him what he was doing there. He said his name was Tom and that he was looking for her husband. 'That's a funny coincidence.' she said 'My husbands name is Tom too, but you'll have to wait he went to the store.' The kid said that it was fine and he would come back some other time. Then he walked back into the woods. About a week later the lady was in the kitchen and saw the little boy again. The same thing happened only this time, her fiance was visiting his sick mother. She told him the same thing and he walked away in the same direction. The third time though, the husband was in the basement but she was leaving in a hurry. So she told the little Tom where her husband Tom was, and drove away. About an hour later, she came back. She didn't see her husband so she went down to the basement. She saw the little boy lying in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed with a knife and her fiance was nowhere to be found. She called the police and they decided to try and find the little boy's parents. The little boy's body was lying on the autopsy table at the police station and the wife was sitting next to it crying. She thought her husband had killed the little boy. Then her mother-in-law came in to comfort her. But as soon as she saw the body she screamed. 'Tom!' 'You know him?' asked a police officer 'He's my son!' she said and pulled out her purse. She showed them a picture of the lady's fiance. 'That's not Tom that's...' But then the lady realized. The little boy Tom and her husband Tom..." here Blondie paused dramatically. "...they were the same person!" he finished.13

"How does that work?" asked Chubby, after a few moments of shocked silence.14

"No-one knows. All they know is, when they did tests, Little Tom and Big Tom had the same DNA, same dental records, and Little Tom looked exactly the same as Husband Tom did when he was in Elementary School."15

"Wow." said Baseball Cap.16

Then Blondie stood up..17

"Where are you going?" asked Chubby18

"We" said Blondie "Are going to the Simmon's house."19

"Ahhhkkk......" whispered Baseball Capo under his breath as he looked up at the Simmon's house. 20

It was a very old mansion, no-one could remember how old it was. The oldest people in town still remembered it standing the when they were young. It had been painted once, but the paint had long since flaked off. Almost all the windows had been broken and the door hung on with one finger. It stood on top of a hill surrounded by at least a few miles of woods on each side with only one long, overgrown driveway leading to a cracked forest road.21

"Hey Rob" said Blondie. Baseball cap looked up. "I dare you to go inside and down to the basement" Baseball cap know as Rob stared in shock and horror. "Or are you chicken?" finished Blondie.22

"Bawk, bawk bawk!" Chubby chimed in, relieved it wasn't him being dared.23

"So, are you gonna do it? If you do I'll talk to Sophie for you." bribed Blondie.24

Rob gulped and looked up towards the Simmon's house. And he nodded. "I'll run, in and out." He thought "It'll take twenty seconds." He slowly put his foot on the top step.25

An "Any day now..." came from behind him.26

Rob walked up to the door and turned around to look behind him. Chubby was looking at him in admiration but Blondie looked impatient. Rob took a deep breath and plunged into the house, running at top speed. Everything flashed by. A mildewed hallway, with all the pictures lying on the floor. A room with a chadelier tinkling in a small breeze. An uprooted toilet, in the middle of a kitchen.27

"Basement, basement, basement" he thought "Where the hell is the basement?" 28

Rob decided to open a door leading off of the hallway. It seemed to be a dining room. On the table there was a very odd shape. Rob approached it thinking the worst, but it seemed to be a decade old turkey. Rob opened another door and found some stairs leading downwards.29

He slowly walked down the stairs. Every step creaked, and now that Rob wasn't running anymore, he was starting to shiver uncontrollably.30

"Just to the bottom of the stairs, just to the bottom of the stairs, just to the bottom of the stairs, just to the bottom of the stairs." was the mantra that pounded in his brain as he tested each step before he stepped on it. Finally Rob reached the bottom and instead of quickly running back up, curiously looked around.31

The basement seemed to go on forever, adorned with cobwebs and mouse droppings. Mold was growing in the corner and there was a boiler like an iron dragon but none of those was what caused the hair on the back of Rob's neck to rise.32

It was the faint noise he heard. Coming from a dark corner of the room was the most terrifying sound he had ever heard in his life.33

It was a kind of shuffling sound, like an old, old man makes when he moves. But it was also a sort of extremely faint clattering, like blunt wind-chimes in the smallest breeze. Finally it was almost a low moan, like the sound a small, defeated thing. Something that had given up in the darkness. And the sound was coming closer.34

Rob snapped out of his nightmare and sprinted up the stairs. He got to the top and found himself back in the kitchen.35

"Lock the door, lock the door, gotta lock the door!" he muttered frantically. He at the knob, but there was only a rusted keyhole. "Barricade." he thought. He searched through the kitchen as fast as he could but all he found was some ancient kitchen utensils and a vase.36

"The toilet!" he thought, grabbing it. But, years of slime had stuck it to the floor, it was immovable. Then Rob saw the latch, the latch on the basement door.37

"That's it!" he realized, dashing over to the door. He reached above his head, the latch was just slightly higher than his fingers. "Come on, come on!" he thought. He could hear The Thing on the bottom step. "Come on, come on!" he thought as he fumbled with the latch. He could hear The Thing getting closer.38

"Screw this." Rob realized. He immediately took off running. He passed the same dining room, but all the rooms after that were unfamiliar.39

"I would have remembered a purple closet." he thought as he frenziedly opened doors trying to find the way he had come. The Thing was getting closer, he could hear it in the hallway. Finally Rob found a door that was not locked or a dead end. He tore down it, it led to a long, strait hallway.40

"But this isn't the hallway I came in." realized Rob with dawning horror. This hallway was pitch black, he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. And there were no doors or windows, it was just one long, never-ending hallway.41

Rob was starting to tire. He was so scared, he just wanted to curl up in a corner and sleep forever. But he forced himself to keep going. The Thing was coming.42

Rob was panting and clutching his side. His strides were uneven and he was using one hand on the wall to push himself along. The Thing was still coming. In fact, it seemed to be coming faster.43

Rob had almost slowed to a walk, but he was still going. The thing had sped up. Rob could hear it. It couldn't be less than fourty feet, now.44

Rob was walking now, all his energy gone. Then he bumped into something.45

"No!" he thought. "No, no, no, no, no, oh no..." He had come to the end of the hallway. He spread his hands over the end of the wall in the darkness, hoping that there would be a door, a window, a weapon, a flashlight, anything. But nothing was there. And the thing was getting closer.46

"I'm dead." Rob thought, strangely detatched. The Thing was less than twenty feet now.47

"But if I am going to die, I might as well know what killed me." The Thing was only ten feet away now, Rob could hear it coming for him in the darkness.48

Slowly Rob turned around. And screamed. And screamed. And screamed. And screamed. And screamed some more. And then stopped screaming. Because what Rob had seen, just before his eyes had closed forever, was a figure wearing a tattered red baseball cap.