The intruder’s movements were strange. Along with the clattering of her dishes, she began to hear a rhythmic, heavy thumping against the floorboards. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounded heavy and deliberate, like someone violently striking the wood. Sarah stopped crawling, her knees digging into the carpet. Why would a burglar be making so much racket?
A chilling thought struck her. Were they trying to break open a floorboard? Maybe the intruder was looking for something hidden, driven by a desperate urgency. They clearly didn’t care who was in the house with them; whatever they were hunting for, they needed to find it immediately, and they were willing to tear the kitchen apart to get it.
The terrifying ambiguity of the situation only heightened her panic. She realized she couldn’t blindly run for the stairs without knowing exactly where the intruder was facing. She changed her direction, making her way toward the kitchen entrance slowly just to get a better look, taking slow, deliberate breaths to quiet the rushing sound of her own pulse.