"Dad!" a shout woke me up with a start.

I opened my eyes. Huh?

Aaron was next to me, looking like he had been crying.

"I'm so glad you're all right!" he said as he leaned down to hug me.

Slowly, I became aware of my surroundings. I was lying on a mattress in a new set of clothes and I could feel cloth wrapped around my leg.

My eyes drifted behind Aaron, to the young man standing behind him.

Jared. He was all right. But then, my eyes made their way down from his left shoulder to his arm. There was nothing there from the elbow down, the part where it had been severed was wrapped in cloth.

Everything came back to me. The sadist, the fight we had with it, Jared's arm being cut off, getting lead down the stairs, Jared saving us at the last minute, me attacking the corpse and then I didn't remember what happened after that... I was wide awake again.

"What happened?!" I stammered out jumping into a sitting position.

Jared spoke up, "After you went out cold, I managed to get up again. Thanks to Aaron's help, I managed to treat my wound," he looked grimly down at the stub where his arm had been, "Thank God I had first aid training... the bleeding's finally stopped... Anyway, after I thought I treated the wound as best as I could, Aaron went to check on you. Put you in a new pair of clothes, cause you know, the old ones were no good..."

"Thank goodness..." I said as I held Aaron and stroked his hair. I thought I'd never see him again.

"Jessica's ring!" I started. It was in my pocket, did it get lost...

"Don't worry," Aaron said as he handed me the ring.

I sighed with relief and slipped it into my pocket, "I'm glad you're alive... I'm so glad... I didn't think any of us were going to survive that... Wait! What about the sadist?"

"The sadist?" Jared gave me a puzzled look, "Oh, the creature, you mean. While Aaron was checking up on you, I took the body and burnt it in the wood stove. It stunk like you wouldn't believe. Now all that's left of that thing is ash."

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All three of us sighed with relief.

It was dead.

It wouldn't bother us anymore.

And more than anything else... Jessica and Jared's brother had been avenged, along with the countless others that had been toyed with and killed by that monster.

The source of the screams had been silenced.

Were we... safe... now?

I didn't delude myself for one second.

I knew in my heart that this was only the beginning.

Only God knows what the hell is lurking in the storm. If He's even watching us anymore, that is.

I glanced at my watch. It was eleven in the morning. I had been sleeping all the way into the next day.

I brought my arm around Aaron to comfort him, and we sat there in silence for a long while, not quite knowing what to say to each other. Words could not express the emotions of confusion, disbelief and terror we were experiencing when we remembered what had happened only yesterday in this very room. It seemed impossible... everything about this storm seemed impossible. If you thought too much about it, if you let it get to you, it would probably drive you insane... All we could do was bury the thoughts and try to move on...

Aaron was the one that broke the silence, "So, what do we do now?"

Jared scratched his head, "After what happened yesterday, I don't want to take any more chances. We have plenty of food, enough to last us a month at least. Now that we've searched the house and the store, we don't really have any reason to leave the basement until we get low on food," he paused to consider if what he was saying was the right decision, "So, I think we should barricade ourselves up in the basement," he glanced to his missing arm, "I really don't want a repeat of yesterday. If we make the barricade nice and secure, and block the window, there should be no way that any of those things will get at us."

"I had actually been thinking the same thing," I said, "It's a good plan. Of course, we need to think about what we're going to do when we run out of food..."

"I guess we'll just keep trying the radio. See if there's anywhere that's safe. Wait and see if this storm will ever end."

I nodded.

I didn't say it out loud... but I really didn't think the storm would ever end.

The Storm... I think that it would never leave this earth until it leveled everything under its malignant gaze.

"Let's do one last sweep of the house," I said as I got up, "bring anything we can down here."

We searched the house, bringing everything that we found down into the basement. We didn't find anything new, and most of the stuff we brought down probably wouldn't be of much use anyway. But it was better to be safe than sorry. Most of it was just stuff like clothes, blankets and other things we most likely wouldn't really need. But if we were going to be isolating ourselves for a month, we didn't want to forget anything.

I asked Jared what he had done with what was left of the old folks. He told me he gathered up what he could of their remains (which wasn't very much) and laid them side by side in the cellar, locking them in there. He said it was the best burial he could give them, and that it was the least he could do for them considering we were using their house.

I told him that he did the right thing, and in my head I prayed that they had finally found peace now that they were free from the sadist's foul control.