******
A loud crash woke Jacob from his sleep a few hours later. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked over at the clock next to his bed.
"Four fifteen!?" Jacob said to the darkness. "What the hell!?"
Another noise echoed through his dark and usually silent house.
"Where is that coming from?" Jacob sat up in bed and listened again. The noise happened, only louder seeming to originate from the landing by the front door.
He got out of bed, put on his slippers and opened his bedroom door. He put his hand on his baseball bat but remembered the man in his basement.
"He's probably just having a bad dream and is tripping out or something." He thought to himself as he let go of the handle of the baseball bat.
Jacob slowly started walking down the hallway towards the top of the stairs.
"Hey. Are you alright?" Jacob whispered into the darkness. "There's no reason to leave now."
Jacob got to the end of the hallway and took a deep breath before he leant over to look at the front door.
He saw Marvin standing at the door banging his bandaged hand on the door while scratching his nails around the deadbolt.
"You OK?" Jacob said to the man as he turned on the light and started to walk down the stairs.
Marvin turned around quickly, and Jacob stopped in his tracks. He tried to back up the stairs, but he panicked and tripped over the edge of one of the stairs.
Marvin began walking up the stairs; he was frothing at the mouth. His eyes were vacant and bloodshot. All of the colours had drained from his face, and all that was left was a dull grey colour. He opened and closed his mouth quickly as he walked, Jacob continually expected the man to snap out of what he thought might be a drug induced state and talk to him again.
The man reached his hand out and wrapped around Jacob's outstretched leg and pulled it towards his mouth, pulling him down a stair.
"What the hell!?" Jacob shouted as he pulled his leg close to his body bringing the frothing man closer to his face and shot it out straight, throwing Marvin down the stairs. He hit the door with a loud thud and slide to the floor.
Jacob took the opportunity to turn around and scramble up the stairs. He ran across the living room and into the kitchen where he fumbled with the drawers, trying desperately to open the child locks to get a butcher knife out to defend himself.
Jacob glanced over his shoulder as he struggled with the drawers, he gasped when Marvin stood and walked towards the stairs, grunting and growling at him as he walked towards him. The man walked past the dining room table and slammed into a chair.
He turned around at the noise and looked back to the drawer, realising he was not going to be able to open it, he quickly turned to his right looking at the back door and started towards it.
The man in his kitchen did the same, trying to cut him off before he made it out the door.
Jacob got to the door first and turned the deadbolt and the door handle at the same time, throwing the door open. He felt the tips of the man's fingertips run down his back as he tried to grab him and pull him back in the house.
Jacob, forgetting about the shoes he threw out the door earlier, tripped over one of them, crashed into the railing and started to roll down the stairs. He came to a sudden thud at the bottom and groaned in pain. Marvin followed down the stairs after him.
He tried to move his hands and push himself away, but the pain in his back and shoulders was too much.
His other neighbour, Peter, was out in his backyard for a cigarette, he rushed over to his side of the fence. "What was that? Jacob!? Is that you? Are you OK?"
Panic filled Peter's voice as he heard a soft groan coming from the other side of the fence. "Who's over there with you?"
Jacob groaned in pain; from his position at the bottom of the stairs he turned his head and watched Peter try to jump over the fence in the wrong spot and land painfully on the branch that had broken this past summer during the storm. Jacob did not need a light in his backyard to know that Peter was hurt, he could hear a gurgling sound as Peter began to spit blood and then he stopped moving.
Jacob watched helplessly as the man from his basement walked past him and over to his neighbour where he bent down to check on Peter, putting his face close to his to listen for breathing and took a large bite from his body. Marvin turned back towards Jacob, and he tried to scream.
The homeless man fell to his knees by Jacob's head and leant over him. A warm, wet liquid fell onto his face as the man bent closer and closer. More of the liquid fell on him as Jacob could feel the cold breath of the man as he opened his mouth and closed it around Jacob's Adam's apple.
Jacob opened his mouth in agony as the man closed his lips on his skin and pulled. The tearing of his muscle and skin sent him into shock and Jacob passed out knowing that he was probably never going to wake up from this nightmare.
Chapter Four