This book is dedicated to Willo and Dave Roberts and to Carol and Don McQuinn who have no faults—
except that they live too far away from us A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young.
—Edgar Allan Poe. “Lenore”
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”
Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood.
LAURA was in the cellar, doing some spring cleaning and hating every minute of it. She didn’t dislike the work itself; she was by nature an industrious girl who was happiest when she had chores to do. But she was afraid of the cellar.
For one thing, the place was gloomy. The four narrow windows, set high in the walls, were hardly larger than embrasures, and the dust-filmed panes of glass permitted only weak, chalky light to enter. Even brightened by a pair of lamps, the big room held on tenaciously to its shadows, unwilling to be completely disrobed. The flickering amber light from the lamps revealed damp stone walls and a hulking, coal-fired furnace that was cold and unused on this fine, warm May afternoon. On a series of long shelves, row upon row of quart jars reflected splinters of light, but their contents—home-canned fruit and vegetables that had been stored here for the past nine months—remained unilluminated. The corners of the morn were all dark, and the low, open-beamed ceiling was hung with shadows like long banners of funeral crepe.
