The wind blew and then the candle’s flame disappeared. The curtains stirred in a most peculiar fashion and as I looked up to examine the freshly blackened room I heard it, a light pitter-pattering of feet right outside the door. As a stared, fixated upon the shadowy portal before me, I slowly stood up and fumbled to that looming, wooden, phantom. The closer I came to it, the louder the foot fall became. It was soon accompanied by the most unsettling, infantile laughter I had ever had the displeasure to hear. Like nails on the most ancient of chalkboards, the impish glee radiating from the door rattled my spine and sent a sick wave of dread through my clammy, shaking, body. Now, mere inches from that demonic, hinged, plank of carved malevolence, I suppressed a shudder of horror. The voices had become deafening and that once small tapping of little feet slammed down on the unseen hallway floor. Screeches and cackles, bangs and tremors, shook me so violently I felt as if my very soul were apt to fall out of me. With one weak, sopping, icy hand I reached out to the gleaming knob that I knew, once turned, would surely lead me to the deepest circle of hell. As my shriek rang out, that satanic door flew open with all the fury of Mephistopheles and his minions and I opened myself up so as to end it all the quicker. I opened my eyes to see my waking nightmare and halted. Nothing. Nothing stood before me but the same hallway I walked everyday. Silence, as heavy as world, laid tangible in the darkness. There was nothing in the hall, and nothing in my mind. I was gone, empty, a shell. My sanity swirls forever lost in a sea of nightmares.