Thump

A teenage baby-sitter put the kids she was watching to sleep in their beds and went back downstairs. The late night news was on the TV — the reporter said a psychopath from a local mental institution was on the loose and that police thought he might be in the area. He cautioned residents to lock their doors and windows because this guy was very, very dangerous.

Well, the teenager checked the locks on the windows and the doors, but she forgot the door on the cellar bulkhead. Needless to say, the psychopath broke in about an hour later, coming up from the cellar, armed with an ax. The children heard some noises downstairs, but thought it was the baby-sitter moving some furniture around. Then it got real quiet.

All they heard for the remainder of the night was this noise: "Thump! Thump! Dra-aag… Thump! Thump! Dra-aag…" Evidently, they were too afraid to get up to see what it was. In the morning, their parents came home and were horrified to find the babysitter at the top of the stairs, dead with both arms hacked off at the elbows. She'd been climbing the stairs on the bloody stumps of her arms, pulling her badly injured body along. Was she trying to check on the children? Was she trying to get help? Or in the madness of her tortured soul, was she planning to kill the children herself?