A dark rumble coming from the back corner of her room woke her up. She sat up on her elbows and groggily wiped her eyes. She turned on the light by her nightstand, accidentally knocking over her alarm clock. As the light penetrated the darkness of her small room, she reached down to pick up her clock and placed it back on her nightstand. It read 1:38am. She silently cursed whatever made that noise for waking her up as her eyes scanned her bedroom. Her eyes passed over her bookshelf, her desk, her mirror, the clothes thrown across her floor and then they stopped at her closet. The door was closed. She never closed it. Ever since she was 5, her closet door had always remained open. Elizabeth's stomach churned. She never got over her fear of the thing that hid in her closet. The thing that knew her deepest, darkest fears. The thing that knew exactly what creeped her out. The thing that ruined her dreams, and created nightmares. She pushed off her fleece blankets and threw her legs over her bed. She got up and rolled her eyes, she was 15 now, and she needed to grow up. There was nothing in there, or so she had thought. Elizabeth walked over to her closet and gripped the metal knob. She took a deep breath and reassured herself that nothing was going to jump out at her, and on the count of three, she was going to open her closet door. "One, two, three...”
Three months later, posters of 15 year old Elizabeth Marie Donough were scattered throughout the town of Arlington, Ohio. She had gone missing on November 22nd 2010, between the hours of 2am and 5am. Police came from nearby towns, and assisted the Arlington Police Department in a search around the surrounding forests and mountains. After a month, they had given up. Policemen, friends, neighbors and families were all puzzled by Elizabeth's disappearance. Her windows had been sealed shut, the security alarm was on, so even if she ran away, the alarm would have gone off. All that was left in her bedroom was a small puddle of blood, right outside her open closet door.