The walls of the house never felt so thin. It's almost like they can hear him breathing outside that door, they can feel him smiling. Bobby has already begun to fall asleep. How can he understand what's happening? He is only 7. He's scared, but he doesn't know what of, exactly. Terry shifts in her seat. A single tear rolls down her cheek. No one has dared leave the table since they heard him come downstairs, since they heard him knock gently on the door. That's one thing she was thankful for; that the dining room had a door. This odd architecture kept them secluded, but it also kept them trapped. They heard of the hospital ward releasing an emergency statement that their most violent patient had escaped. He had killed some orderlies, but they didn't know exactly how, or why. It was a small town, everyone knew about him. How, even though his IQ was exceedingly low and he was low-functioning, he used incredibly intricate mental torturing methods. Five years ago, before they caught him, he had set booby traps in a family's home and made them walk through it, to find their baby hidden somewhere in the home. Of course they all died. It was beyond awful, the entire town mourned for months. Now Terry and her family had been chosen. They were eating dinner when it happened, talking about school, work, soccer practice, when they heard glass breaking. A muffled voice screamed for them to come out, that he'd find them eventually. They heard dragging too, like he was pulling something heavy along with him. They knew he stopped at the door. He must have known they were in there, it was the last place he had left to look. No one remembered who closed the dining room door, but they were glad it had been done. He pushed his fingers underneath the door. His nails were dirty and unkept. He pushed his mouth to the floor, and breathed heavily, and he wheezed. "I'm waiting for you," he said. "They let me out." Sarah, the oldest daughter, shrieked. Terry held her and Bobby, and Timothy just stared at the door. What could they do? Terry's arthritis left her struggling to even hold a fork in her fingers. Timothy was 13. Infantile, all of them, in some way or another. They had no choice. Open the door, and then what? Terry loved them too much, maybe he'd just leave. But he sat there all night, they saw his shadow from beneath the door. Every so often he sang to himself, or maybe it was to them, lullabies too old for any of the children to recognize. He giggled, too, and teased them. Now the sun was rising, and the doorknob began to twist from the other side.