Dr. NoSleep

I had no idea what had happened to Quentin and Emery and Benito and Irma upstairs.

I thought I'd heard sounds of a baseball bat striking flesh up there earlier.

Now, the second floor was utterly silent.

For all I knew, I was the only one left alive in the house.

Salazar turned his gaze from me as he hit Nico's corpse again.

I lurched up and bolted to the front door.

Salazar yelled, but I had put distance between us.

I yanked the front door open, coming face to face with Delia and the two men, Tony and Robby.

Delia was sobbing.

Robby, a thick-set Hispanic guy about Tony's age, held her in a headlock.

As I looked at my girlfriend, struggling with the utter despair of seeing her like this, something hard cracked me in the back of my left leg.

A baseball bat.

I yelled in pain and fell to my knees.

Then the bat was pressed against my throat as Salazar pulled me to my feet.

Leading the way, we went upstairs, me limping and barely breathing thanks to the bat at my neck.

Delia and the two men followed behind us.

I resumed praying that the police would show up before anything else bad happened.

The second floor featured three bedrooms and a bathroom.

The master bedroom, with its ensuite, was on one end.

As we got to the top of the stairs, Salazar turned us around and marched me alongside the railed-off stairwell.