Stop me if you've heard this story before...

Jason drove down the road GPS forgot.

The forest on either side was so thick that even on full beam, his headlights couldn't penetrate the gloom. He cursed the old toothless man back at the gas station for the poor directions. His phone was now a glorified calculator, and the only radio station broadcasting was 'Angry ranting white men' FM.

Jason had seen thousands of movies that started just this way. The cliché made him smile.

His good humour lasted as long as his car did. He watched the speedometer decline before it settled at zero. The car died, its front driver's-side wheel precariously balanced on the edge of a muddy embankment.

Jason's fists pounded the steering wheel as he filled the air with every curse word and slur he knew. He eventually conceded defeat when the fleshy part of his left hand started to bleed.

Sucking the wound, Jason stepped out of the car and into the misty rain. He lifted the hood and gazed down at the strange array of black boxes and hidden circuitry. He pulled and prodded at various yellow levers and buttons before conceding that he had no idea what to do with any of them.

He kicked the plastic front bumper for good measure and scanned the road ahead. Sure this was the point in the movie where the lost driver would stumble upon the remote farmhouse, he grabbed a package from the back seat and marched off into the gloom.

The clock was ticking on his delivery, and if it didn't arrive by the company's definition of 'the next day', it would come out of his pocket. Somehow he knew the company could still track him even in the electronic black spot.

Using the torch on his phone sparingly, Jason made his way along the seemingly endless single-lane road. Whenever the road climbed, he would step off the tarmac, afraid of headlights rising over the top and plowing him down. Every driver at the company had some variant of that story, a hitchhiker springing out of the gloom, too late to avoid.

Jason thanked God the package wasn't food. Being lost in the woods all night, forced to carry around someone else's groceries that you were forbidden to eat, seemed an unnecessarily cruel punishment.

Eventually the tree line thinned out and Jason found himself walking along the edge of a field. He could hear the buzz of an electric fence hidden from view down a small incline. Beyond that was an empty stretch of land that appeared and disappeared as the clouds passed in front of the moon.

A light came on, a single pale dot, about a mile or so away. It seemed to float in the air.

"Great, it's an alien abduction film now," Jason grunted.

A second light, directly below the first, illuminated a porch at the front of a house. The door opened and Jason watched the silhouette of a person step out and descend the steps. A trail of lights bloomed in the darkness before the figure moved out of view. He was pretty sure the Manson Family didn't use security lights and vaulted over the fence.

Jason landed badly. His foot slipped on the wet grass, and his ankle exploded in pain. The impact drove the air from his lungs and splattered foul-tasting water into his mouth. He rolled around like a pig, gripping his ankle and groaning at the moon.

Still on his back, Jason searched for the package. His fingers brushed the cardboard surface and he pulled it tight to his chest.

"Better...this...than...getting...electrocuted..." he grumbled as he struggled to his feet.

It was like walking on an exposed nerve. Each step sent a jolt of pain up his leg. Jason gazed down the endless waterlogged field and swore. He bit his bottom lip and limped towards the house.

Jason had no idea how long it took to cross the field. He would stop every couple of meters and rotate the damaged ankle, trying to pop it back into place. Despite one hopeful crack that echoed through the night and startled some nesting birds, nothing happened. His good leg now ached from supporting the unevenly distributed weight.

A gravel drive separated the field from the front of the building. The house was a three-storey Colonial with several barns at the rear of the property. The lights had gone out while Jason trekked across the field but came back on when he was in range of the sensors.

To his left, the road led away from the house, curving down a hill to God knows where. He climbed the porch steps and rapped gently upon the door. It swung open and let the outside lights partially illuminate the hallway beyond. Furniture lined one wall and several doors led further into the building.

"Hello." His voice echoed in the gloom but no one responded.

Gripping the doorframe, he took some of the weight from his swollen foot.

"Is anyone here?" Leaning his head inside, he strained to make out anything in the shadows.

Jason hoped to see a phone but found only photos, mirrors and what he imagined to be a collection of taxidermied animals.

Maybe he had imagined the shadowy figure? Sneaking out of the remote farmhouse...in the middle of the night. Images of carnage and slaughter came unbidden to his mind. Was no one answering because there was no one left alive? His stomach turned cold. The horror clichés had lost a lot of their humour in the pale moonlight.

Feeling as if he was being watched, Jason whipped his head around and then, without thinking, stepped inside the house. He felt comforted knowing that whoever the shadowy figure was, they were outside. His heart raced. Had he alerted them with his shouting? He placed his hand against his mouth, all thought of the pain in his foot gone.

The silence was deafening, even the animals had stopped making noise. The only sound Jason could hear was his own heart struggling to escape his chest. He was now firmly inside the hallway, his back to the house. He gently closed and locked the front door, half expecting someone to charge up and stop him.

Resting his head against the cold wood, Jason listened to the sound of the house settling. He lumbered along the hallway. The photos arranged along the walls told the story of the all-American family that lived there. He saw weddings, graduations, birthdays and christenings. The thought of its sudden, violent end broke his heart.

Abandoning the package on the hall table, Jason moved through the house in search of a phone. He made sure to avoid straying too close to any windows in case the shadowy figure spotted him. Finding nothing on the ground floor, he made a final check that the front door was still locked and climbed the stairs at the rear of the house.

As the wood groaned gently beneath his feet, Jason saw the trail of muddy footprints he had tracked through the crime scene. What would he tell the police when he managed to call them? Nothing if he didn't hurry up and find a phone.

At the top of the stairs, there was a long hallway with half a dozen doors leading off it. All the doors were closed apart from the last one on the left, which swung gently as if caught in a breeze. Jason limped towards it, his breathing long and ragged from the exhaustion of travelling so far on a damaged ankle.

A chill wind blew through the door and made the hairs on the back of Jason's neck stand on end. Inside was a bathroom, empty with the shower curtain pulled across the tub. Jason slowly reached out and gripped the plastic sheet, sliding it to one side. A spider crawled out of the drain pipe and scurried up the tiled wall.

Jason was about to crush the creature out of spite when the distant sound of a door being opened caught his attention. He froze, clasped his hands to stop them trembling, then hid behind the door. He peeked out from behind the doorjamb but saw nothing but blackness.

Once his eyes adjusted, Jason saw the shape of a man stalking the corridor. He crouched down and prepared to charge. In movies, victims always tried to run or hide, only to make themselves sitting ducks. That wouldn't be him.

Taking a deep breath, he sprang out from behind the door and charged.

"Get out of my house!" the old man screamed as he opened fire on the mysterious, mud-soaked intruder.