My name is Ron McGarland.

After my divorce two years ago I was left, spending my days in a house that was way too big

for me.

Living there in that sparsely populated, extremely quiet, woodsy neighborhood while I was trying

to sell it, made for a pretty bleak existence.

Then there came a Sunday night in July when around 11 o'clock and made the usual trek

around each floor, shutting off the lights, and judging up the stairs to go to sleep.

In my bedroom I checked my work email one last time, and then closed my laptop down and

got in a bed.

I'd never had much trouble sleeping until a Christian left, now it sometimes took me an

hour or so to drift off.

I think it was about 1145 when I heard pretty clearly a creek on the stairs down the hallway.

My bedroom door was closed, but it came to be nonetheless.

I 10 stepped and lay perfectly still.

A few seconds later there was an identical sound, an identical instance, like a foot on

the staircase.

I could never fully describe just what that does to you, a moment like that.

It felt like my body temperature rose ten degrees and I could feel my heart pounding in

my chest.

You live your whole life and then in one second you learn what it's like for primal

terror to swallow you, mind and body.

I waited about ten seconds more and heard nothing.

...