by Shawn Bailey

Created on: September 14, 2010

It was raining outside, had been for hours, and me and my family were playing scrabble on my parent’s bed.  We were eating popcorn and laughing and listening to top 40 on the internet radio.  As we got near the end of the game, the lights went out.  The storm was subsiding, but the rain still came.  We brought out the candles.

My sister had school the next day, so she went to bed.  That was fine with me because she was ahead of me anyway. After my turn, there were only four pieces left and it took my mom a long time to make a word.  And then we all noticed the dripping sound.

It wasn’t anything at first, but then it got louder and made it hard for mom to concentrate.  Dad said it was probably the gutter come loose again.  He said he would go outside and fix it and mom got up to use the bathroom.  Her candle disappeared around the corner. 

I didn’t want to stay inside alone.  It was creepy with the lights out and nothing but candlelight.  So me and dad went outside in the light drizzle.  As we rounded the house, we came to the side where my parent’s window was and we both parted the bushes and walked closer to the house.  My dad and I heard the dripping right in front of us and he raised the flashlight and turned it on. 

There was a large, fat man, with wild hair and no shirt lying next to the house.  When he smiled, he had fangs and you could see nothing but blackness inside his mouth.  We froze, unable to move or speak.

Then we noticed his hand.  It was lying next to the gutter.  And with a yellow fingernail that protruded a long way from his finger, he stopped tapping on the gutter.  The sound stopped. 

I ran and ran and didn’t stop until the policeman picked me up and told me about what had happened to the rest of my family.  I you ask me now what evil is, I’ll tell you. 

Evil is in the heartbeat of the rain and the slow tap, tap, tapping of a fingernail.

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