Costgreen, Vermont, sometime in 1901502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI5TGtz6BOH
The line of evergreens fringing the roadway cast long shadows across the yard all the way to the house. A raven-haired woman stood hunched over, half hidden by the shadows. A vulnerability was evident in her posture, and her hands played nervously against one another. Silently she watched the movers carry furniture up the porch stairs and the young couple, arm in arm, admiring their new home. It was the husband who first noticed the woman, and thinking her to be a neighbor coming to bid them welcome to the town, took his wife's hand and approached her.
"Why, hello there," he said, but quickly withdrew his hand. His smile faded and instinctively he pulled his wife closer to him when he saw the woman's face. It was a young face, yes, but her eyes were small, sunken, tired, her skin aged horribly before its time.
"Once, I lived in this house," the woman said---and her eyes rose to take it in---three stories with thick round classical columns supporting a sloping roof and a wide veranda running the length of the front and halfway along the sides. Nestled among evergreens and weeping willows, it seemed like a utopian house. Yet it was this house that had ripped the woman's family apart.
She let her glance linger on the open window on the second floor. An innocent room, a playroom, the toy room, they called it. The toy room---meant to be a fantasy land for their daughter.
But it was in the toy room---that horrible toy room---where what happened had happened.
Her body stiffened, and she slammed her eyes shut to block the unrelenting memory that had become part of her.502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNkagtLzbrX
IF she hadn't stopped him! My God! What could have happened? If she hadn't believed it all, her children might now be dead!502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUs3tBBODM2
But they were all alive and out of the house, and the family was slowly becoming as they had been before.
"Have you any children, sir? she asked the young couple in a shaky voice that made them take a step back.
Mesmerized by this ghastly parody of a woman, the husband answered dully, "Good heavens, no."
"Thank God," the woman said, and then repeated, "Thank God."502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCMfkQ692FL
And then she turned and was gone.502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJVNC3WkgUV
