WHAT HAPPENED TO ME

 

JOE R. LANSDALE

 

 

In many of the stories in this anthology the theme has been of places haunted from within, of threats – supernatural or otherwise – found inside the places where we live. Here, however, we have something coming from the outside to make its presence known in a ramshackle Texan house. Lansdale’s story is a compelling blend of the quietly supernatural and full-blown Lovecraftian horror. There is a master at work here, and the final tale in our collection will stay with you for a long time.

 

 

I WISH I had a story to tell, but I don’t.

Not like all of you, and being last to go after all those fine stories is a toughie. I can’t make things up like you people, and I’m impressed. So, all I can do is do my best, and admit right up front that this isn’t a story, and therefore may be a bit pedestrian because it’s something that actually happened to me.

I suppose you could say it’s a kind of haunted house story, except it’s not a story, and took place many years ago and ends with a not altogether satisfying explanation, if it is an explanation at all. But it does end with a death, I’m sad to say, and some of the things I saw disturb me even now, and I suppose they will do so until the end of my days.

It would be an almost classic story in a way, if it were fiction.

But it’s not. It happened, and I’m not going to add any frills, just tell it to the best of my memory, as accurately as I can, and you can judge its worth as my offering for the night.

When I was a young college student attending Stephen F. Austin University, I was poor as the proverbial church mouse. A friend of mine, Clifford, who I called Cliff, was poor too, as was another friend, William, who did not go by Bill. Always William. He was adamant about it.

We decided that the only way we could attend college was to find a place with as cheap a rent as possible, with enough room for three, and go into it together. What we all had to live on were student loans, and they were not large, and after we paid for tuition and books, there was very little to survive on for a semester.

I forget how we came about knowing of the place now, but as it happened we found a house – and get this, because it will be hard to believe in this day and time – but we found a house where the rent was thirty-five dollars a month, split three ways.

Admittedly, thirty-five dollars in those days was worth more than thirty five dollars now, but it was still very reasonable for us, split up like that.

East Texas, even in winter, is generally a warm place. But this winter I’m talking about was unusually cold, at least it was for a while, and considering the house we were about to rent was without gas heat, only fire places, it seemed even colder.

After renting the house, Cliff and I had other matters to attend to in our home town of Tyler, and couldn’t be there on the day our rent began. But William could be. His plan was to stay there and we would catch up with him the next day.

Cliff and I drove down together from Tyler in that rare and bad weather I mentioned, and by the time we arrived at the house the next afternoon, the wind was blowing sleet. As we pulled in we were surprised to see that William’s car wasn’t in the drive.

We were even more surprised to find a note tacked to the door. It was on a piece of notebook paper and said simply: I’ve decided to go to Kilgore College.

This was out of the blue, and immediately eliminated one third of our income as far as rent went, but as I said, it wasn’t a terrible rent we were expected to pay, so we could bear it. The main thing was we were surprised that he had bailed out on our plans, and had explained himself so thinly with that note.

These days, to find out more, you would pop open your cell phone and give him a call, but then there were no cell phones, and for that matter, the house didn’t have any kind of phone, and, frankly, the electricity out that far, especially during weather of the sort we were having, was iffy with all that ice hanging from the lines.

After cussing our partner, we entered the house and found that his bedroll – for there were no beds at this point, and only limited furniture – was still there, stretched out in front of the fire place. There was no fire, but we could see where there had been a recent one, built by William, no doubt, and after discovering that not only had William left his bed roll on the floor, we found he had left a number of other items, including a grocery sack of food, most of it canned goods.

But, let me jump ahead in my story a little, saying that we got over his departure quickly, and that for the first two days things were fine. We were there very little, since we began attending classes. On the weekend we went home to load furniture in a rented van to deliver to the house.

In no time at all we were settled in, and also in no time at all we began to feel uncomfortable. It was nothing radical, and I can’t say that I remember being scared, early on that is, but that I did feel discomfort. It was akin to the sensation of thinking someone was peeking in a window at you. And as there were no curtains on the windows at the time, I thought this was most likely a natural sensation of being exposed, though where we were located we could have pretty much gone naked and no one would have noticed.

There were also minor things, such as thinking we had heard sounds, but when we discussed it, we were unable to adequately describe what it was we had heard. One of the more uncomfortable places in the house was the dog run. The house was divided by a long hallway that went from the front porch to the back porch. The front porch was long and ran right and left to the door, but the back porch extended out from the back door on the same path as the dog run hall. Both porches were roofed over and were wide and solidly built, though the back porch creaked whenever you stepped on it.

The dog run hallway, however, was what was most uncomfortable. We assumed this was due to it being separate of the rest of the house, and therefore devoid of heat. Anytime we entered it, it was not only cold, it was foul, as if a dead cat were somewhere within the walls. And the first few nights, when we slept on the floor in the living room, I had the most miserable sensation that something was moving about in the hallway, though I can’t say as I remember hearing anything at all. Just this feeling that something was out there, pausing at the closed door that led to the living room. The way those old houses worked, was the front and back door were locked, but as an extra precaution, the door to the hallway could be locked as well from either side of the house; what you had was essentially two houses separated, and yet connected, by a hallway that ran between them and connected to the porches. After the first night, I took to locking the one connected to the living room.

I remember Cliff seeing me do it, and expecting him to laugh or chide me for my extra caution. But he didn’t. He merely looked away and went about his business, which gave me the impression that he had the same concerns that I had.

Now, keep in mind, because I know more about what happened later, I’m certainly overselling this aspect of the house, at least early on. I’m merely trying to explain that the two of us were a bit prickly, if not frightened, or even concerned. I thought, as I’m confident Cliff did, it was due primarily to the isolated location, the age of the house, which surely provided noises to which we were unfamiliar, and the fact that we were unaccustomed to being there.

It seemed to me that once we got curtains, odds and ends, our own rooms chosen, that things would be considerably more homey, and this proved to be the case.

At least for a time.

Now, there was another matter. I thought little of it at first, but early on, after we had assigned bedrooms, when the furniture was placed, I had begun to have uneasy dreams; a serial dream actually. You know the sort, where you dream it each night, but it changes slightly.

I would feel myself lying in bed, slowly coming awake, and when I would awake, it would still be dark. Each night I saw a shadow at the window, like a tree limb with branches, hand-like, but much larger than a hand. I would see the shadow curl its ‘fingers,’ then flex out, as if stretching, and touch the window, and with little effort, lift it.

On one occasion the last part of the dream had been of those wooden-like fingers stalking across the floor, attached to a long branch, an arm if you will, and the fingers had taken hold of my blanket at the foot of my bed and began to pull.

And then I came awake.

This time, as before, there was no branch, and the window was shut. But the blanket that had covered my feet was on the floor in a heap.

This, of course, was easy enough to explain, and I came to the conclusion that during the dream, in fear, I had kicked at my blanket and caused it to come free of the bed and fall on the floor. It was a reasonable explanation, and I accepted it as truth without due consideration.

It seemed so logical.

I also determined that to have peace of mind, I would inspect the windows, to make sure they were fastened tight. I had checked them when we first moved in and found them stuck, as if the window frame had been painted and pushed down before drying, causing it to stick. But when I examined the window I had dreamed about, it was unlocked and no longer stuck. It lifted easily.

It is of also of importance to note there wasn’t a tree near the window, so the idea that I might have half-awakened and saw the shadow of a tree limb and its branches against the glass was immediately dismissed. I came to the conclusion that it had been less stuck than previously thought, and I had been mistaken about the lock; in other words human error.

On a day when Cliff had class and I had none, I went out to the barn behind the old house and looked for a hammer and nails to seal that window shut. I knew if I were to sleep in the room comfortably, even if I was only taking care of psychological worries, I would have to seal the window more securely.

The barn was a dusty affair and both sides of it were festooned with all manner of horse-drawn accouterments: horse collars and bridals and back bands and the like for pulling plows. The plows themselves were there, rusted over. There was a big cedar trunk as well, and I looked in there first. It was chock-full of junk, including children’s toys and a large note book that I opened. Inside it were a child’s drawings. They were of the usual thing, a house with a family. The drawing was done in what I supposed was crayon, or something like it, and it had a blue sky and yellow sun, and dark stick-like figures of a woman and a man.

There was a drawing of a child, placed somewhat at an angle between them, as if the child were falling over, and there was a shadow drawn for the child, but none for the parents. The shadow was crude, but very interestingly drawn nonetheless. There were quite a few other paintings as well, including one of the night sky and what looked like a line of crudely drawn trees. There were other paintings of trees and what I concluded was the barn I was in, and I reached the obvious conclusion that they were the drawings of a very young child. There were quite a few of these drawings, varying only in the fact that in each drawing the trees were closer to the house.

I closed up the notebook, put it back, and went rummaging about the barn looking for that hammer and nails, and finally found them. The nails were in a paper bag and they were an assortment of lengths.

Back in my bedroom, I picked through the bag until I found four, long, thin nails, and used those and my hammer to firmly nail the window shut. There was a part of me that felt idiotic about doing it, but I can say truthfully, that after I had fastened those windows down tight, I felt significantly better than before.

Early afternoon, after class, Cliff drove back to the house and announced he was going home for the weekend, hoping to borrow a bit of money from his parents. I wished him luck, but at the bottom of it all I felt abandoned, as if I had been set adrift on a stormy sea. I’ll tell you another thing. I think he too was having discomfort with the house, and had decided to get away from it for awhile. This only added to my discomfort. These concerns soon took a back seat as I decided to stay and study for a history exam.

I sat on the couch in the main room – the one we had begun to call the living room – and studied for my test. I had the books spread out beside me on the couch, and there was plenty of light through the windows, and I was deep into the American Revolution, when a shadow passed over me, darkening the room considerably, and giving me a chill that went beyond the winter weather outside.

I got up and stoked the fireplace, built up the fire, but it did little to heat me up. I pulled on my coat, returned to the couch, but the shadow had swollen to fill the room. The shadow seemed to be nothing more than a reflection of the outside weather seeping in. Clouds had moved to cover the sun. I went to the window to look out, pulled aside the curtains, and saw that it was quite dark for mid-day. I could hear thunder rumbling in the background, and saw a flash of lightning snap out over the thick forest across the road from our rental, giving the trees the brief impression of having been drawn with a piece of charcoal instead of by the hand of nature.

I went back and sat on the couch and turned on a lamp beside it, and began to study again. A short time later, I heard a scratching sound, and then I had what I can only refer to as an impression. A feeling something was on the porch. It was a primitive sensation, something I assume our prehistoric ancestors might have experienced regularly, the feeling that something predatory was near, even if it was unseen, and that it was necessary to be alert.

I glanced toward the row of windows that looked out over the porch. Curtains covered them now, and it would have been necessary for me to go over and pull them back to take a look outside. But I just couldn’t make myself do it, so sure was I that something was on the porch, and that there was something to fear about it being there. And then I heard the porch floor creak. The clouds shifted and it grew darker yet behind the curtains. They were white curtains, but thick. I couldn’t see clearly through them, but I could see enough to determine light or dark, and now I saw there was a spot, a shape that had moved in front of one of the windows, and I swear, it seemed as if it were leaning forward as if to try and peek through the windows and the curtains.

I sat there, frozen to the spot. The shadow, which was human in shape, also reminded me of a willow tree, the arms like limbs, the long fingers like branches; it was the thing from my dream, and it swayed with the wind... I must stop here, for to be honest, I can’t fully describe it. I’m uncertain how much of what I’m describing is how it actually looked, and how much of it was me having an impression of something I couldn’t really see accurately. I know no better way to explain or to describe it than how I have.

The shape moved, and I heard the boards on the porch squeak, and then... I swear to all I know to be true, the door off the front porch opened. I was certain I had locked it, as well as the door to the other end of the dog run, but I was equally certain that I heard it open.

Now I knew someone was out there. It was someone who had arrived with the rain, and not by car. And even as I thought this, I heard the screen door move, and then the screen door and the front door slammed shut in rapid succession.

I glanced toward the door that led out into the dog run hall, and without really thinking about it, I stepped quickly there and turned the latch. A moment later, as I stood at the door, I heard what can only be described as... breathing. The door was generating tremendous cold, and I felt a chill run all the way down my spine. Someone, or something, was standing just outside that door and they were causing the door to turn cold.

The door knob started to twist, very slowly.

In case you’re unclear, I will explain once again that the house was like two houses, divided by that dog run, and that meant that the only way into the house was through the doors on either end of the hallway, with the exception of a back door that led out onto the back porch from the kitchen. Forgive me for repeating this, but it’s essential that you understand this so as to appreciate my situation at the time.

That thought occurred to me, about the kitchen door, and as it did, I stepped back and turned and walked gently through the living room toward that door, which was at the rear of the house on the same side as the living room.

I heard movement back in the dog run, and I knew that whoever, or whatever, was there had realized my plan and was rushing toward the kitchen door. My intent was to lock it, for I knew it to be unlocked, and if whatever was in the dog run made it through the hall, out the back door, and onto the back porch, he/she/it might beat me there.

I broke in a blind panic and ran for it. I heard the door to the back porch – general door and screen door – open and slam, in spite of it supposedly being locked.

I glanced to my right as I ran. There were a series of windows against the dining room that viewed out onto the long back porch. I had to pass through the dining room to end up in the kitchen. As I hurried, I glimpsed through those windows. The curtains were pulled back and my view was clear, and I saw the same dark, willow tree shape I had seen on the front porch. But now it was twisting and flowing in a manner that is impossible to describe. But I knew one thing for certain, even if all I had was a glimpse, whatever was out there was most certainly not human.

I made it to the back door and twisted the lock, and immediately the knob turned violently, and then the door began to shake, and there was a moaning like something big and wounded dying out there on the porch. That door shook and shook. I thought it would never end. I heard the wood screech and give a little, and I was absolutely positive that it was about to break and fall apart, that I would then be at the mercy of the thing.

And then, it was over.

The door quit shaking, and the air, which I now realized was cold throughout the house, warmed immediately. The rain was starting to come down, and I could hear thunder and lightning, but I knew as certain as I was standing there, that whatever had been out there, was now gone. It was the kind of thing you could sense.

As an added note, when I had the nerve, I unlocked the door from the living room to the dog run, stepped into the hallway and looked about. Nothing was there, and to make things even more disconcerting, both doors to the dog run were still locked.

Before night settled in solid, I was brave enough to go to my bedroom to gather up bed clothes to sleep on the couch. I found that side of the house, where my bedroom was, incredibly cold. Though I didn’t have the impression anything was there, I had an overwhelming feeling that something had been there, and that that side of the house was more its domain. In my bedroom, I grabbed a pillow and some blankets, noted that the window I had nailed down had been lifted, and that the tips of the nails I had driven through the wood stuck out at the bottom like weak little teeth.

I closed the window and locked it, as if it mattered, and with my pillow and blankets left the room. That night I slept on the couch, but not comfortably. Nothing else happened.

That I was aware of.

 

 

THE FIRST THING I suppose you might think is if there was something actually wrong with that house, what was its history? I thought of that, and I must also pause here to say that I never in my life have believed in ghosts, and oddly, I’m not sure I do now. Not in the way that some people might think of them. But I took it on myself to visit with the lady who had rented the house to us.

It was Saturday morning, and the moment I awoke, I went to town, dropped by to see her. She had an office on North Street where she handled dozens of rentals. She was a big, middle-aged woman who looked as if she could wrestle a steer to the ground and make it recite poetry. Something I was assured by people around town she had actually done, minus the poetry part. I asked her if there had been unusual experiences reported in the house.

She laughed at me. “You mean ghosts?”

“Unusual things,” I said.

“No. Until about six months ago the only thing in that old house was hay. I kept it stocked there, like a barn. No one but you and your friend have rented that house ever. I bought that property thirty years ago from the Wright family. You two are the first renters.”

“Is there anything curious about the Wrights?” I asked.

“Yes; they are all very successful and there are no drunkards in the family,” she said. “But as for ghosts, or murders, or ancient disturbed grave yards... nothing to my knowledge. Matilda is the only one alive. She was the youngest child of the family, and she’s young no more. She was a famous artist of sorts. At least, she was famous around here. She’s up in the Mud Creek Rest Home now, and no doubt that’s where she’ll finish things off.”

I don’t know if it was our land lady’s intent to make me feel foolish, but she did. I had not directly asked about ghostly activities, but she certainly understood that this was exactly what I was alluding to, and had found the whole thing amusing.

I drove home, stopping by the mail box across the dirt road from our house. It was rare I received any mail, outside of a few bills, but inside was a note from Cliff. It wasn’t a letter. It hadn’t been mailed. It was a note he had left there for me.

Its content was simple. He wasn’t coming back. He had dropped out of college and was thinking of starting next semester at a Junior college in Tyler. There was a P.S. written at the bottom of the note. It read: ‘There’s also the house. It makes me uncomfortable. It might be a good idea for you to leave.’

That was it. I concluded he too had had experiences, but had never elaborated. My guess was he had driven home, felt better being away from the house, and determined not to come back, except to the mail box to leave me a note. He had driven all the way, which was a good two-hour drive, to deliver that note, not waiting to send it by mail, and not waiting until I was home, therefore avoiding having to re-enter the house. As I considered that, I decided that what was even more likely was he intended to return, but once he arrived, just couldn’t go inside again, and had written the note in his car and left it for me in the mail box.

Of course, that should have been it for me. I should have grabbed what mattered to me and hauled out of there, but the truth is, even with two of my room-mates gone, I could still better afford the rent there than somewhere else, and I really needed to continue with the semester. If I dropped out, I would lose my tuition. With that very earthly consideration to deal with, I decided that most of what had happened had been in my imagination. It was a decision based on necessity, not common sense, but there you have it. I was determined not to believe what my own senses had revealed to me.

At night, though, I felt differently. I felt trapped, fearful of stepping out into that dog run. I was also equally determined not to believe that the thing had opened locked doors and had paused at the one to the living room, and had not opened it. I couldn’t explain that, nor could I explain that I could lock it out from the kitchen, yet it had free run of the porches, and the dog run, and, as I was to discover the next morning, the other side of the house.

 

 

I HAD LEARNED to fear the night and any dark days due to rain. Because of that, I always hurried home before dark, and I had learned that as night came the house became colder on the bedroom side. Because of that, I had taken to permanently sleeping on the couch in the living room, and due to that choice, I had not really visited the other side of the residence since Cliff left. In fact, it seemed, with him gone, the atmosphere of dread had compounded, and was focused now on one person. Me.

But the mornings always seemed brighter and less fearful, and it continued that way until late afternoon when the ambiance of the house shifted to a darker and more oppressive tone. It also seemed activated by any grim change in the weather. The ice storms had melted out, but the winter was still unseasonably cold and subject to shifts in temperature and sudden outburst of rain. When that occurred, no matter what time of day, the feelings of dread mounted. Because of that, I was glad I was gone most of the time, and on Wednesdays, when I had a late class, I was at my most nervous on returning. I parked as close to the porch as possible and entered the house rapidly and made my way to the living room, and locked myself inside. The back door from the kitchen to the porch I never unlocked.

But, I was telling you of the morning I went to the other side of the dog run to examine that side of the house. In Cliff’s bedroom I saw that all of his abandoned belongings – his books, his clothes – were strewn everywhere, the clothes ripped to fragments, pages torn from books. I was shocked to discover the entire room looked as if an angry burglar had been through it. That was my first thought, actually, or vandals, until I saw that the bed clothes in my bedroom had been ripped from the bed and piled at the end of it in a shape. That’s the only way I know how to explain it. Somehow, those blankets had been twisted in such a way as to make a kind of teepee, but one that had no opening into which to crawl; a twisted cone the height of my shoulders. The sheets were ripped in strips and thrown around the room and the glass was knocked out of all the windows. My mattress had been ripped apart and the stuffing was tossed about as if a fox had had its way with a chicken.

When I breathed my breath frosted. This made sense as the outside weather had been let inside, but I had the feeling that the air was not cold from natural atmospheric occurrences. Still, I didn’t feel that odd impression of something being in the room or nearby; the cold was more like the residue of something having passed through.

 

 

THIS SHOULD HAVE been my absolute cue to pack up, but at this point, to tell it as truthful as I can – I was mad. The idea of being forced out of the house, and the idea of having to pay money I didn’t really have for a different place to live, or to consider moving home and losing my tuition loan, was more than I could bear.

I locked the door to the ravaged side of the house as I came out, and then I made sure both ends of the dog run were locked. I followed that by entering the living room side of the house and locking that door. I pulled all the curtains across the windows, and even went as far as to take some of the spare blankets I had moved into that room a few days back, and hung them over the curtain rods in such a way to secure myself from the sight of anything on the porch. I concluded if I couldn’t see it, I would be less fearful of it.

I took some peanut butter and a loaf of bread, a plate and a knife to spread it with, and carried it into the living room, followed a moment later with a glass and a gallon of milk from the refrigerator. I closed the door from the living room to the dining room and locked it. I determined I was going to make that room my sanctuary this night.

I didn’t have a television or a radio, not in that old house. There were actually only a few electrical outlets available. It had never been fully transitioned from farm house to modern home.

There was a little bathroom off the living room, a kind of guest bath that had once been a closet. It was large enough for a toilet, a sink, and a shower. I took a shower and dressed in comfortable clothes I had laid out, as I had already moved all of my major possession into the living room, and then I prepared myself a peanut butter sandwich, had a glass of milk and, sitting on the couch with an end table lamp at my elbow, began taking a crack at my studies.

As the teacher had cancelled her class for that day, there was no need to leave the house, and I decided not to. Instead, I planned to direct myself to my studies. The house had already taken up far too much of my attention, and to be honest, even at this point I thought that what I might be dealing with were vandals, and that tomorrow, when I went into town, I would file a police report. Mostly, I tried not to think about the other side of the house, and instead concentrate my efforts on my studies.

This went well throughout the day, until late afternoon. I had by this time become a bit more confident – fool’s confidence – and I chose to unlock the door from the living room to the dining room and to make my way to the kitchen to see if I might find something more appetizing for dinner than a peanut butter sandwich. As I reached the kitchen I noticed a curious thing; the hinges on the door to the porch were losing their screws; they were twisting slowly from the hinge. One of them fell to the floor with a small clatter. The hair on the back of my neck spiked up.

I observed this for a moment, until another screw began to move, and then I will admit quite freely, I broke and ran for the living room, closed the door – quietly, lest I somehow aggravate whatever was out on the back porch further – and locked it. I picked up a poker from the fireplace and moved to the couch. After awhile I heard a noise, and I knew immediately what it was. The back door had fallen off its hinges and there was nothing the lock could do for it; the door had dropped into the kitchen, and if that wasn’t enough, there was something moving in there now, and even two rooms away, I could hear it breathe.

The breathing became louder as it moved through the house, toward the living room. I gripped the poker so hard I tore the skin on my palm. And then it was at the door connecting the living room to the dining room. I could hear it breathing, and there was a shadow at the bottom of the door where there was a thin crack. The shadow remained for a long time, and then it shifted, and I swear to you that the next thing I saw was a long finger, or what looked somewhat like a finger, slide under that gap in the door and run along its length, wiggling, as if feeling the temperature of the room, which had become almost unbearably cold. Then I saw it wasn’t a finger at all, but a limb, or a thin, knobby branch. It clutched at the bottom of the door frame, and then more fingers appeared, and more, until there were far more woody fingers than could be part of a human being, and they began to pull at the bottom of the door. The door moved; it heaved, but after a long fearful moment, it held.

There was a sudden yanking and then a screech so strange and so loud I almost thought I would faint. This was followed by a rush of wind, an appearance of light at the bottom of the door – the artificial light of the dining room bulb – and then there was a popping sound and the light was gone. This was followed by banging and what was obviously the clattering of pots and pans.

And then everything was still and silent and the room warmed up.

I didn’t leave the living room until the morning was so bright it bled through the blankets. I unlocked the living room door and made my way through the dining room and kitchen. They were a wreck. The dining room table was flattened and chairs had been thrown through the windows that led to the porch. In the kitchen, pots and pans were tossed about, along with flour and sugar, and there were broken plates and glasses. Some of the plastic glasses I had collected from fast food places to supplement my dishes had been ripped apart as easily as you might tear wet newspaper.

I had a class that morning, and a test, but they were the farthest things from my mind. I drove into town. I went straight for the Mud Creek Rest Home.

 

 

MUD CREEK REST Home actually turned out to be Mud Creek Retirement Home. It was a community home where the elderly could have their own rooms and shared facilities. It was very nice, actually. I found out which room was Matilda Wright’s. When I came to her door, it was open and there was bright sunlight pouring through her windows and the room was stuffed fat with easels and paints and paintings. Matilda, who I had somehow expected to look ancient and be confined to her bed or a wheelchair, was standing at one of the many easels, painting. What she was painting was a large multi-coloured flower, unlike any flower that actually existed was my guess, and the rest of the paintings were of beautiful, but twisted trees and rivers, all nature paintings.

Matilda was so deeply into her work I hesitated to interrupt her. She was a tall lean woman, and quite attractive for someone I had to guess was in her late seventies. She had her hair dyed blonde, and her face, though creased with wrinkles, looked lively, or at least the side of it I could see. She was actually quite beautiful for a woman of her age, and I could imagine that even twenty years earlier she must have turned quite a few heads. She was wearing a paint-splattered, over-sized shirt and blue jeans, white canvas shoes dotted with paint. She didn’t look like a woman who would know about weird things that crept up on the porch where she once lived.

Finally, I knocked. She turned, slightly startled, and saw me. Her face lit up and she said, “Yes?”

“Miss Wright?” I said, not entering the room.

“Actually, it’s ‘Mrs,’ but my husband is long dead. I prefer Matilda. Do I know you?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I live in what used to be your family home, or so I’m told. Would it be all right if I came in and spoke with you?”

“By all means,” she said.

She hustled to lift a box of paints out of a chair and offered it to me. I took the seat and she sat on her bed and looked at me. “You live in my old house?”

“I do.”

“How interesting. I think about it often. It’s where I grew up.”

I nodded. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about it. They might seem like silly questions.”

“By all means, ask.”

It turned out I didn’t so much as ask her a question, but broke down and told her all that had happened since I had lived there. I felt, as I feel now speaking to you about these events, a little silly. But I couldn’t stop telling her all that had occurred, and she didn’t once interrupt me. When I finished, I asked the actual question. “Did anything odd ever occur while you and your family lived there?”

“Nothing of that nature, no. And my family and I were very happy there.”

This was a disappointing answer, and I’m sure my face showed it. I said, “I don’t know what difference it would make if I knew what’s responsible for what goes on there, but I keep thinking if I knew something, then maybe it would make a difference. Though, now that I say that aloud, I can’t imagine what it would be.”

Matilda looked at me for a moment, as if measuring my character. “I didn’t say there was nothing odd that ever happened there.”

My ears pricked.

“I said there was nothing of the nature you describe, and that we were happy there.”

“Then there was something?”

“Quite different than what you describe. I had an invisible friend.”

I was immediately disappointed. “So did I, when I was very young,” I said. “Lots of children do.”

“That’s true,” she said. “The thing is, well... shall I take some time to explain?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s why I came.”

“When I was very young and we lived in that house, we owned a large amount of acreage. I don’t know how much of that is left.”

“Ten acres and the house and barn,” I said.

She nodded. “It was a hundred acres then. Right behind the barn there were woods.”

“There still are.”

“The woods were thick, and I often went there to play. And one day I came upon a grove of trees. It’s impossible to describe how surprising this was, because they weren’t just trees. Here I was in the middle of a forest, quite comfortable walking about, and I came upon what can only be described as a kind of grove. It was broken apart from the thickness of the woods, and there were a number of trees that were clutched together, but they were not like any of the other trees. They were thick limbed, and they didn’t grow very high, and they were amazing in the way their boughs twisted, and underneath them it was cool and pleasant. None of the other trees were near them. There was instead a field of flowers, blue bonnets, and they were the buffer between the grove and the other trees. I would suspect that the grove was surrounded by two acres of those flowers.

“The trees appeared very ancient, though I can’t say that I knew that at the time; I say that in retrospect. For me then, they were merely odd and beautiful. Thinking back, they seemed to me to be among the first trees to ever grow on the earth. They had not aged like other trees, or grown high, but they were thick, and their bark was soft to the touch.

“I sat under those trees and took a rest, and as I did, a little girl stepped out from between them and looked at me.”

“A little girl?”

“Yes. She hadn’t a stitch on, but she seemed comfortable with that. She told me her name was Elizabeth. That’s my middle name, young man, Elizabeth, so there was a kind of small bond immediately. And here’s the interesting part. She looked just like me.”

“Your imaginary friend?”

She didn’t respond to my remark, she just continued talking. “She was very pleasant. She and I began to talk, and it was amazing. We had so much in common, and pretty soon we were playing together. She wouldn’t leave the grove of trees, however, and stayed under their shadow. That was all right. I liked it there, and the grove was large enough to give us plenty of shadow to play under. It was hard for me to tear my way free of her and go home, but night was coming. I became aware of it suddenly, and wanted to go home. I was, as I said, comfortable in the woods, but I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable there if night came, as it was easy to get lost, so I told her goodbye. She begged me to stay, but I told her I couldn’t, but that I would be back as soon as possible. She finally relented, and as I was about to leave, she stepped between a gap in two of the trees, and was gone. I looked, but there was nothing there but the trees.

“Young as I was, nine or ten years old: I don’t remember exactly. But young as I was, I accepted all of this freely. I went home and told my mother that I had met a girl in the forest and that we had played together, and that the little girl didn’t wear clothes and had disappeared inside some odd trees.

“Mother laughed at this, and thought I was playing, and didn’t take alarm at the matter. I went back the next morning, and Elizabeth was there, but this time she wore clothes. The ones I had worn the day before. Or clothes that were like them. We played that day and it was even more fun than the day before. I don’t remember what we played, but there were no girl games of tea and pretending to be married. None of that. Chase, I suppose. I don’t remember, but by mid-day I grew hungry and went home. Elizabeth was pouty about it, but I assured her I would be back after eating, and that’s exactly what I did. But when night came and I started home, she decided to go with me. As I had played past the time I should have, I was growing frightened of the forest, and I was glad to have Elizabeth as a companion.

“As we went through the woods, I heard my mother calling, and I hastened to reach her. Elizabeth held my hand as we went, and finally when we arrived in the yard, there was my mother, in her apron, worried looking. When she saw me she ran to me and scolded me. I still had hold of Elizabeth’s hand. I introduced her to my mother, and my mother smiled, and said, ‘So this is your imaginary friend.’

“It was obvious she saw no one and was humoring me. But Elizabeth was there. To shorten this up, she stayed with me for several years, or at least she was with me nights. During the day she told me that she went back to the grove. When I came home from school, after supper, when it began to turn dark, or sometimes on rainy days, she would be in my room, waiting. We had wonderful times together. I finally quit trying to convince my mother Elizabeth was real. This had eventually resulted in me being sent to a doctor – not a therapist, I might add, as there were none available then, least not that we knew of – and frankly, I had come to the conclusion she was not real at all. But, I didn’t dismiss her from my memory. I enjoyed having her around, even if I aged and she did not. In fact, she never changed or changed clothes from the day she walked out of the forest with me. Then, all of a sudden, I was twelve and we were moving.

“Elizabeth was very confused. We had a long talk about it, but she didn’t understand. I invited her to move with us, but she said she couldn’t. That she had to stay near the grove. And then we moved, and that was it. No more Elizabeth. I came to the conclusion that moving had been an excuse for me to cut the bonds to this imaginary friend I had invented, and though we always had good times together, when she was no longer there, I felt a strange sense of relief. Elizabeth is the only thing odd that I know of that ever happened in that house.”

I looked around the room, and back at Matilda. “So many of your paintings are of flowers and trees. Especially trees.”

“I like nature,” Matilda said. “But that grove... I have spent my life trying to duplicate those trees. Here’s something odd. After the night Elizabeth came home with me, I began to paint. It was an obsession. I painted for one reason and one reason alone, and that was to somehow put the images of those trees on paper. Oh, I painted other things, of course, but I always came back to them, and in time, I became known for them, and they became a large part of my career as a painter.”

“Did you ever paint Elizabeth?” I asked.

Matilda shook her head. “No. There was no need. I knew what she looked like. She looked like me when I was a child. But where she came from, that intrigued me.”

“I think I saw some of your early drawings in the barn,” I said.

“Really?”

“Perhaps, or one of your siblings.”

“I had two brothers,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge they didn’t paint or draw.”

I sat for a moment, thinking about Matilda’s invisible friend, but there was nothing in that story that told me much.

“May I have a look at the old homestead?” Matilda asked.

This took me by surprise.

“Of course, but after what I told you about the house... are you sure?”

“You said it only happened at night and on dark days,” she said. She nodded her head toward the blinds and the harsh light seeping in. “It’s still very much day and there doesn’t seem to be a cloud in the sky.”

“Certainly,” I said. “I can drive you out for a look, and then I’ll drive you back.”

Though I had gone in to see Matilda with high hopes – even though I was uncertain what I was hoping for – I was leaving with less enthusiasm. I was in fact thinking I would take her to see the homestead, bring her back, and then use a bit of my fading bank account to stay at a cheap motel. And then, the next morning, I was going to concede defeat. I had already missed a major test to hear about Matilda’s imaginary friend. It was time to dissolve my old plan and start thinking of another, as had my erstwhile room mates.

 

 

IT WAS COLD outside, but there was no wind blowing and there was plenty of sunlight, so it wasn’t unpleasant. Matilda was dressed in a lined leather coat and wore a kind of cloth hat that made her look like the cutest grandmother that ever lived.

She walked briskly, as if she was twenty years younger, and climbed into my wreck of a car without comment, or any obvious examination, and we were off. It was as if we had known each other for years.

When we arrived at the house, the first thing Matilda wanted to do was see the old drawings I had told her about. Out at the barn I found them and showed them to her. She smiled. “Yes, these are mine. Interesting. You’ll note that my brothers are not in the drawings.”

I smiled and she laughed.

“This one,” she said touching the one with the shadow, “is Elizabeth. It’s feels odd looking at this, now. I drew Elizabeth like a shadow, my shadow. How unusual for me to see her that way. I had totally forgotten about this.”

“You should take those with you,” I said.

“I will,” she said. “I’ll leave them here for now, but when you take me back, I’ll bring them. Would you like to see the grove?”

I hadn’t the slightest interest, actually, but I was trying to be polite, and to tell you true, I was glad to have company after all I had been through.

“Certainly,” I said.

Matilda led the way. The woods were thick, but there was an animal path through them, and we followed it. It was narrow and a little muddy from the rains of the day before, but the walk felt good in the cool winter air.

There wasn’t a true trail, and it appeared even the animals were no longer using it, as it was overgrown and hard to follow. I felt certain Matilda would give up shortly, but she didn’t. She moved like a squirrel. Far better than I did. The woods were thick on either side of us, and there were an amazing number of brightly colored birds flittering about from tree to tree, singing their songs.

Finally, the trail came out in a clearing, and in the center of the clearing were the trees. They were as Matilda had said. Strange. But I saw them with less warmth than she had depicted them. There were a large number of them. They were squatty in construction, and the limbs had a twisted look. I swear to you, a few of the limbs were actually knotted. The leaves that grew on the trees were black and chunky. The bark had fallen off of them in a number of places; the only way I truly know to describe those trees is to say they appeared cancerous. The clearing around them wasn’t spotted with blue bonnets, or any kind of flower, but instead yellow weeds grew knee high on all sides. There were no birds singing now. There were no birds in sight.

“My God,” Matilda said. “They have aged so. They look so... sad.”

I couldn’t disagree with this assessment, and actually, when I think about it, it’s a far better description than my saying they were cancerous-looking. ‘Sad’ is exactly the word, and now that I remember that, and tell it to you, I have to emphasize that no other word would be as accurate.

We walked toward the trees, and as we did I heard them shift. It was not the wind that did it, and I didn’t actually see movement, but there was a sound akin to ancient lumber being stepped upon by a large man. Had I not felt I was in some way there to protect Matilda, I would have turned around then and gone back. But she was like a juggernaut. She walked into the shadows beneath the grove of trees. The leaves rustled. The limbs creaked.

Matilda bent down and picked up a chunk of bark lying on the ground and examined it. She dropped it, touched one of the trees. There came that creaking sound, but I swear to you no limbs moved and no wind blew.

“They have suffered so,” she said. “Elizabeth, are you there?”

The limbs began to move and thrash about, and one of them stretched long, swept low, and knocked me off my feet. I tried to get up, but the limbs came thrashing down on me like whips.

“Come on,” Matilda said. “Come on.”

Next thing I knew, she had helped me to my feet, and we were both running. Matilda, in spite of her age, ran spryly, at least until we were away from the grove and back on the trail. She had to stop then and catch her breath. Her face was red and she coughed a few times, leaning one hand against a pine to hold herself up.

I felt like an absolute fool having let her talk me into taking her out into the woods to see a grove of trees, and now that we had seen them, I felt not only like an idiot, but like a very frightened idiot. If there was, anywhere in the back of my mind, an urge to stay on and deal with this odd problem, it was now gone. I wanted one thing, and one thing only. To leave that house and that property.

 

 

MATILDA MOVED SLOWLY after that, one arm around my neck as we walked. By the time we made the house she had grown weak, and insisted on going inside. I was ready to put her in the car and leave, but as it was still light, and we were away from that infernal grove, I waltzed her inside and let her stretch out on the couch. After a few minutes she felt better, but she didn’t move. I fetched her a glass of water and sat it on the end table, but she didn’t touch it.

“Elizabeth, she was there,” she said.

“I didn’t see her,” I said.

“Which would be why I called her an invisible friend,” Matilda said. “Actually, I couldn’t see her either, but I could sense her.”

“What I sense is a change in my plans,” I said. “I’m going to leave this house like my comrades, and not come back.”

Matilda ignored me. “The trees, they reflect Elizabeth’s mental state.”

I sat down in a chair and put my hands on my knees and listened.

“I don’t now exactly how all this has happened,” she said. “But I never truly doubted that she was real, and invisible to others, in spite of what I said earlier. I realize now I lied to you. It was an unintentional lie, but it was a lie. I always felt, on some level, that she was real and invisible. Or refused to reveal herself to others. I can’t say. But when we left here I had a feeling not only of sadness and loss, but one of euphoria. It was as if I knew somewhere inside of Elizabeth was something dark, just waiting to take control.”

“But how could this be?” I said.

Matilda sat up slowly. “I don’t know. I think it may be that Elizabeth is like those spirits of old. That the grove is one of a handful left that hasn’t been chopped down and plowed under. Groves like that had to exist all over the world at one time. I don’t know any other way to explain it. Trees like those, they’re the homes for something that is unworldly.”

“You’re telling me,” I said.

“I remember reading about nymphs in Greek mythology. Some of them were sacred to a particular stream, or lake, or grove.”

“You think she’s a nymph?”

“An elemental,” she said. “One of the last ones left. One of the ones that is connected to the earth when it was raw and new. One of the ones that has survived. I have been thinking about this for years. I’ve wanted to come back here for years, but didn’t for one simple reason. I was afraid I might be right. That Elizabeth might be real. And that she might be angry.”

“How could you know that?”

Matilda shook her head. “I don’t know. But I always thought there was something dark in Elizabeth, and that it was just waiting to get out. And as I said, I was glad to move away. She was my friend, but I was glad to leave her.”

“I think we both should leave her,” I said. “I admit defeat.”

“Would you consider staying?” Matilda said. “Just one more night?”

“Why would I do that?”

“So I can see her,” she said.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I feel as if I owe her,” she said. “I feel somehow responsible for how angry she has become.”

“Why didn’t she show herself in the grove?” I said.

“The trees were her,” Matilda said. “But this house, where she and I were happy, this is her focal point now. She wants you out.”

“And I’m more than willing to go,” I said.

“Will you stay?”

Until moments before I had been ready to grab a few things, stick them in the car, and drive Matilda back to the retirement home, and drive myself back to my parent’s house, but she was convincing.

I gave her a tour of the wrecked house, and even managed to put the kitchen door back in place while Matilda twisted the screws through the holes in the hinges. Then I made us a sandwich of peanut butter, and we sat at the dining room table and ate. About us was the carnage of the night before.

I said, “Why didn’t she come in the living room?”

“If I understand what you’ve told me,” Matilda said, “the opposite side of the house is where she’s strongest, and that’s because that’s where she and I played. The back bedroom was mine. She feels comfortable there, as if she belongs. This side was where the family congregated, and she preferred the privacy of the other side of the house. My parents had a bedroom there, and there was my bedroom, but my guess is she associates that side with me, and this side with the family. And another guess is that this is the heart of the house. The part that is most powerful.”

“That’s two guesses,” I said.

“You have me there,” Matilda said.

“But she did come on this side, and she broke the door down.”

“She’s getting stronger and less fearful of coming here. Maybe she could do at any time and just chose not to. Perhaps she didn’t have any intention of harming you, but just wanted you to go away, and is trying to scare you off.”

“It’s working,” I said.

“But I believe this is the strong part of the house, where the family was most comfortable. Some people claim all dwellings have a center, a heart, a source of power, something that is inherent, and something borrowed from the living things around or in it, and this place must be it.

“American Indians believed all things had power, that they were alive. Rocks. Trees. They had spirits inside of them. Manitous, they called them. Nymph. Elemental. Manitou. Spirit. All the same thing... what I can’t decide is if Elizabeth is angry because I left, or because someone else has moved into the house. Most likely a little of both.”

We waited in the living room. The only light was a fire in the fireplace and a single lit candle I had placed in a jar lid on the end table by the couch. The night came, and as soon as the sky darkened, I knew it was coming, and I wished then I hadn’t listened to Matilda, and that I had gone away as I had originally planned. There was a change in the air. It became heavy and oppressive, and within moments, on the back porch this time, I heard a heavy sound as if something were dragging itself.

“It’s her,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

I looked at Matilda. The fire in the hearth tossed shadows over one side of her face, and in those shadows she looked so much younger. I thought I could not only see the woman she was, but I could almost see the child she had once been.

There was a sudden wailing, like what I would think a banshee would sound like. Loud and raw and strange, it affected not only the ears, but the very bones inside of me. It was as if my skeleton moved and rattled and strained at my flesh.

“My God,” I said.

“She is of older gods,” Matilda said. “Calling to yours will do you no good.”

The next sound was like thousands of whips being slapped against the house, as if an angry slave master were trying to tame it. I heard what was left of the glass in the kitchen and dining room windows tinkle out and to the floor.

And then everything went silent. But I knew it wasn’t over, even though the silence reigned for quite some time. When it started up again, the sound was different. It was of the back door to the dog run being flung open, slammed back against the hall. Then there was a noise like something too large for the door pushing itself inside. I glanced toward the living room door to the dog run. It was swelling, and the cold from the dog run was seeping under it; the cold from outside, and the cold from Elizabeth.

The door warped in the middle and seemed sure to break, but it held. And then everything went silent.

I couldn’t say where Elizabeth was at that moment, but it seemed to me that she was in the dog run, standing there, or lurking there. The door no longer swelled, but the cold had grown so that it now filled the room. Our candle guttered out. The fire in the fireplace lost its warmth, and the flames grew low.

And then there went up such a savage wail that I dropped to my knees with my hands over my ears. Matilda, she stood there, her arms spread. “Elizabeth,” she called out. “It’s me, Matilda.”

The wail ended, but then the entire house shook, and the living room door to the dog run swelled again and vibrated.

“It’s grown strong,” Matilda said, and then the door blew apart in thousands of fragments, one of them striking me in the head as I perched on my knees. It didn’t knock me out, but it hurt me badly, and it slammed me to the floor. The way pieces of the house were flying about, I stayed down, was so tight to the ground I felt as if I might become part of it.

Then the thrashing and the howling of the wind stopped. I looked up. Much of the house was in wreckage around me. The fireplace still stood, but the flames had been blown out.

I managed to get up. I called out for Matilda. No answer.

Where the walls had once stood, there was just the night, and beyond I could see something dark moving past the barn toward the woods. It looked like a knot of ropy coils and thrashing sticks, and in its midst, trapped in all those sticks and coils, I got a glimpse of Matilda.

I looked around and saw the axe lying by the fireplace, where I had split a few chunks of wood to start the fire. I picked it up and ran out into the night after Elizabeth. I was terrified, no doubt, but I thought of Matilda and felt I had no other alternative than to help her if I could.

The thing moved swiftly and without seeming to touch the ground. Trees leaned wide as it proceeded, not trees from the grove, but all manner of trees, pines and oaks, sweet-gums and hickory. They made plenty of room for it to pass.

What had felt like a long walk before only seemed to take moments this time, and soon I stood in the clearing, looking at the grove. The mass of limbs, the elemental, Elizabeth, was already closing in on the place, and there I stood with the axe in my hand, and absolutely no idea what to do with it; I felt small and useless.

I’m ashamed to say I was frozen. I watched as the thing laid Matilda’s body on the ground, gently, and then the limbs whipped and sawed in all directions, and the coils of roots and boughs unknotted, and all those loose projections waved at the night sky.

And then, it was gone. In its place was a young girl in simple clothes, and even though I had not seen early photos of Matilda, I had seen that very child in her features. It was Elizabeth, looking as Matilda had looked those long years ago when she discovered the grove. I was seeing Elizabeth in the same way Matilda had seen her; she was an invisible child no longer.

Matilda was on the ground, but now she rose up on an elbow, struggled to sit. She looked directly at Elizabeth. As for me, I was frozen to my spot.

“Elizabeth,” Matilda said. Her voice was sweet and clear and came to me where I stood at the end of the trail, looking at this fantastic occurrence; I think I was suffering from shock. “You don’t want to hurt me anymore than I want to hurt you.”

The little girl stood there looking at Matilda, not moving. Matilda slowly stood up. She held out her hand, said, “We are friends. We have always been friends. Don’t be angry. I didn’t mean to leave. I had to leave.”

The little girl reached out and touched Matilda’s hand. When she did, I saw a sort of whipping movement at the back of her head and along her spine. It was like what she really was, was trying to escape.

“We are different, you and I, and both our times are ending,” Matilda said. This seemed like a bad time to bring such things up, but then again, I was uncertain there was a perfect way for dealing with what Matilda had called an elemental.

The wind picked up and the trees in the grove waved at the night air. Matilda continued to talk, but I could no longer hear her. The howling wind was too loud. Limbs from trees, not only in the grove, but from the woods surrounding it, began to fly past me. The air filled with them. I crouched down, but one glanced against my head and knocked me out.

 

 

THERE REALLY ISN’T much to tell after that, and as I warned it’s not all explained. But when I awoke, Matilda was leaning over me, cradling my head in her hands. I had been hit twice in one night, once hard enough to be knocked out, so I’ll admit that my memory of the next few minutes is hazy.

I do remember that I looked in the direction of the grove and saw that it was gone, twisted out of the ground as if by a tornado. But I knew that storm had not been of this earth.

When I was able to get to my feet, Matilda and I walked back to the remains of the house. There was really nothing left of it but that chimney. My car was fine, however, and we sat in it to recover. I got some Kleenex out of the glove compartment and held a wad of it to my wounded head.

“What happened out there?” I asked.

“Elizabeth was lonely,” Matilda said.

That wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for.

“I saw her,” I said.

Matilda nodded. “Besides me, you are the first. I suppose she no longer cared if she was seen. I can’t say, really.”

“She was you?”

“She was a form of me. She still is.”

“Still is?”

“I made her a deal. I would stay with her forever.”

“But –”

“She is inside me. She and I are one. It was my trade off. The grove must go. Her anger must go. And she could be with me until the end of my days.”

I was stunned by this revelation, but I will tell you quite sincerely, I believed it; after what I had seen, I believed Matilda emphatically.

“What happens then?” I said. “At the end of your days?”

Matilda shook her head. “I don’t know. But you know what? I feel really good having her back, and I know now that though I’ve been happy all my life, I have on some level still been missing something. That something was Elizabeth. The grove didn’t make Elizabeth from its elemental powers, it pulled her out of me and gave her to me. She was another side of me, and she was a side I needed. A friend. I was happy because of her, not in spite of her, and now that the other part of me is back, my middle name, I feel refreshed. It’s like having a missing arm sewn back on.”

We sat there and talked for a long time, and some of what she said resonated with me, but most of it was merely confusing. Suffice to say, the house was gone, the grove was gone, and I never saw Elizabeth again. Matilda and I claimed the house had been taken down by a tornado, and who was to argue. Who was to guess an elemental force from time eternal had torn it down in a rage, and that what remained of it was now inside Matilda. Or so she claimed.

My head healed. You can still see a scar. I told Cliff the story, and he acted like he didn’t believe me, but I think he did. I have a feeling he may have seen something strange there before I did, but didn’t want to own up to it. Oddly enough, I never crossed William’s path again. But I’m sure he had an experience in the house as well and that’s why he left.

What else? Oh, the landlady got insurance money. Matilda and I stayed in touch until her death. I suppose she must have been ninety when she passed. They did discover one odd thing after her departure. Matilda had been confined to her bed, no longer able to walk, and in the last few months of her life, not capable of communicating. But during the night they heard a terrible noise, and when they rushed into her room they found her lying dead on her bed, but the room, well, it was torn apart. The window had been blown out and the bed clothes that had covered Matilda were missing, as if there had been some great suction that had take them away, carried them out the window, along with fragments of a busted chair and all the paintings and easels in the room.

They were all gone, and never found. There were a number of theories, but no satisfactory explanations. My explanation is Elizabeth. I like to think maybe Matilda’s soul went with her to some place nice and eternal. Again, I can’t say for sure, and I can explain it no further than that.

I don’t know what else there is to say. That’s my story, and it’s just what happened to me. I apologize for it not being a made-up tale, considering so many stories told tonight were good, and highly imaginative, but that’s all I’ve got, and it’s true, so I hope it’ll do.