Thread by @marccold

A HALLOWEEN STORY.

Part 1 of 3.

"It's been twenty years since anyone was killed in the library," Miss Eliot pointed out as she wheeled the book truck down the hallway. "I'm sure everything will be fine."

"I don't know," I said. "It was bad, last time."

She sniffed.

"You need to consider the laws of averages," Miss Eliot said. "That's the trouble with your generation. You don't take risks."

My generation? I'm almost forty. I don't have a generation anymore.

"It was bad," I said stubbornly. "I remember."

I did, too. I was the one who was supposed to open the library on that November 1. I was the one who noticed that it was seeping out from under the doors. It still had that bluish tinge blood does when it's fresh.

"I think we should continue being closed on Halloween," I said.

"All the other libraries are open on Halloween. It's good for outreach. Halloween's a Saturday this year. We could do story time all day."

"Story time? On Halloween? On the same rug that-"

"We'll put down a tarp of some kind. That would probably be for the best anyway."

Miss Eliot kept talking about cupcakes and candy corn. I leaned back and shut my eyes. I remembered that blood. It had touched my shoes. Then it had surrounded my shoes. Then it had consumed my shoes. All red. Red, red, red. You know what they say about girls in red shoes, ha ha.

"You're not paying attention," said Miss Eliot. "I don't know why I keep you on."

"I know too much."

Her face went white.

"About cataloging," I said hastily.

"Go do it then," she said huffily, and turned around to her computer.

I went down the hallway and entered my own office, which was promoted from closet at the same time that I was promoted from clerk. The Jackson City Public Library was never really meant to be. No Carnegie guilt money had been showered on us; we had never had a dedicated building.

Instead, we had moved from a room in the old City Hall to a wing of the Jackson City High School to our current and quite probably final home, the old Vitale mansion on Front Street, after Lester Vitale went to join his forefathers in the St. Aloysius Roman Catholic cemetery.

The Vitale family had been big on stained glass and civic responsibility, so it was not surprising that they'd willed their house to the library. Unfortunately, the beauty of the old drawing room and parlor, where Fiction lived, was not replicated elsewhere in the building.

The 900s were housed nicely in the master bedroom suite, which had lost its doors in our renovation plan (history must have no boundaries), but as you moved backwards down the classes, the areas allotted got smaller and smaller. The 000s, poor things, were in the basement.

Even before the last murders, people had been frightened of the basement. I don't know why; nothing bad had ever happened in it, to my knowledge. Something there is that doesn't love a cellar. Anyway, our copies of Vista for Dummies sat blissfully undisturbed on their shelf.

And the staff areas were in what had been the servants' quarters, back when the Vitales lived here. The library director was housed in the office made out of the butler's pantry, IT and Shethi the reference librarian had the maid's rooms on the third floor, and I had this closet.

I didn't mind. No one ever haunts a closet. No maid ever dies and is like, you know, I want to spend my afterlife mopping. Same reason they're always wearing upper-class 19th-century garb, even if they died during the Carter administration. Ghosts like to feel classy, same as us.

How do I know so much about ghosts, you ask. Am I a ghost? Is this like that movie?

No. You'll know the ghosts when they come along. I'm a person. I'll bleed if I'm pricked.

blood

fuck

BACK TO WORK

I turned around and faced my computer. Connexion wanted me to know that it had timed out but I could still save to the local file, if I wanted to. My spreadsheet of jobs to be done still glistened with rows of problems. A Post-It reading "DID IT DIE?" wabbled on my monitor.

In my current mood, I stared at the Post-It in horror before realizing that it referred to a local alternative weekly. And it had died; I'd confirmed that with the proprietor that morning. I ripped off the Post-It, typed the details into a GDoc called "Now," and sipped some tea.

There was a knock on my door. There was tea on my keyboard.

"Oh, dear," Shethi said. "Did I startle you?"

"A little bit," I said.

"Everyone's nervy," said Shethi. "Did you hear-"

"Yes."

"God," said Shethi. "I'm taking the day off. No way I'd be here Halloween."

"Who will cover the desk? Children's will all be busy."

"You could."

"I can't do reference! Last time I tried to find out how to fix a running toilet I wound up reading about polar expeditions for three hours."

"The only thing people will be asking about will be the murders."

My hand, which had been mopping up tea, stopped. I looked at it. Why had it stopped?

"And you know more about the murders than I do."

My hand resumed mopping. Good little hand.

"I don't know anything."

"You were there!"

The red shoes. Wasn't that a movie? "Yes, I was."

"Well?"

"I don't remember very much."

"Tell them what you do remember."

"I don't want to. Anyway, I was only there for the 1999 murders. Most people here remember those. Except the teens. And they weren't as bad as the ones in the fifties, or the eighties."

But still bad.

"See, you know more than I do," said Shethi. "You know more than anyone, probably, except the murderer."

(I'm not the murderer either. This is not an Agatha Christie.)

"And the cops," I said.

"The cops never found out anything."

"I did call them."

"I didn't say otherwise."

That's right, she hadn't. They did at the time, though.

WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL THE COPS WHEN YOU FIRST SAW THE BLOOD?

I did. I did.

YOU DIDN'T. THE BUS DRIVER SAYS YOU GOT OFF AT 7:53. IT'S A FIVE-MINUTE WALK TO THE LIBRARY. YOU DIDN'T CALL THE COPS UNTIL 9:08.

Didn't I?

Shethi waved her hand in front of my face. "Look at me."

I blinked.

"If it's really freaking you out that much, you don't have to take the reference shift, okay? Just...just do one thing."

I looked at her.

"Tell me the whole story. So I know what to expect. If..."

I leaned back.

"The whole story," I said.

"Yes," said Shethi. "I need to know."

I took a deep breath. "Well..."

END OF PART 1.

PART 2 TO COME ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22.

A HALLOWEEN STORY.

PART 2.

"Tell me about the murders," Shethi said insistently.

"It really began," I said slowly, "with the disappearance."

"The disappearance?"

"Yes. I don't think there were any stories about the house until the nurse's disappearance in 1947. Nothing that the Vitales let get into the newspapers, anyway."

"A nurse? Why would a nurse be here?"

"Lester Vitale's wife was an invalid, and housebound."

"He hired a young local woman who was studying nursing to come and live with them to take care of her," I continued. "But it didn't go well. Things began to happen."

"Ghostly things?"

"Mysterious things. She- the nurse- kept getting...hurt."

"Hurt how?"

"The first time was in August. Late one night, Lester Vitale and his wife were in the kitchen- where the patron restrooms are now- when suddenly they heard a crash from the hallway, and the nurse staggered in. Someone had smashed a vase over her head from behind."

"Who?"

"They had no idea. They were the only ones in the house, as far as they knew. By Lester's time, the Vitales couldn't really afford live-in servants anymore; they had a housekeeper who came in during the day and left after she had cooked dinner, and a gardening service."

"Lester searched the house while the women waited in the kitchen, but he couldn't find anyone. He called the police, who couldn't find any sign of anyone having broken in either. No sign of forced entry, no footprints, nothing missing."

"They told the Vitales to be careful about locking up after themselves. And they were. But a month later, it happened again."

"Another vase?"

"No," I said. "Worse."

"This time, the nurse was going up the main staircase to fetch some pills. When she turned on the landing to go up to the next flight, someone- or something- was waiting there for her. She said later that she had screamed, but afterwards they all claimed they hadn't heard her."

"She wasn’t found until the housekeeper stumbled over her as she was going upstairs to finish preparing the bedrooms for the night. It looked as though she had been hit in the face multiple times- her nose was broken, both her eyes were blacked, and she had a concussion."

"But she was alive."

"She was alive. They rushed her to the hospital."

Shethi wrinkled her forehead. "I don't get it. You said she disappeared."

"She disappeared when she came back to the house."

"SHE CAME BACK TO THE HOUSE? Why, for crying out loud? That's crazy!"

"She'd quit her job immediately on recovering consciousness, but after they let her out of the hospital she wanted to get her things, apparently. Her father drove her her in his car, and as they pulled up she told him to keep the engine running, that she wouldn't be long."

"According to her father, she walked up the steps of the house, unlocked the door with her key, and walked in. And that was the last that anyone saw of her or has ever seen of her."

Shethi shivered. "The same door as now?"

"The same door as now."

"After waiting for half an hour, her father walked up the path and hammered on the door. The housekeeper answered, and told him that not only had she not seen the girl, she hadn’t even heard her come in. They went to her room, but her things were just as they had been before."

"When they found Lester Vitale, he swore that he and his wife hadn't heard a thing- they had been in their bedroom. The girl's father lost his temper and began shouting at Lester- they had a longstanding dislike of each other, apparently, dating back to Vitale's term as mayor."

"While they were arguing, the housekeeper had gone for the police, and they showed up in time to keep things from getting physical. They searched the house again and found nothing and no one. There was only one possible witness."

"Who?"

"A guy from the landscaping service. He had been working behind the house when she arrived, so he hadn’t seen her go in, but about ten minutes afterwards he had looked up and had seen a man carrying a woman in his arms go past one of the windows in the second-floor hall."

"He had assumed, of course, that it was Lester Vitale carrying Mrs. Vitale, who everyone knew was frail. But Lester denied it utterly. He swore he hadn't left the bedroom all day, and the housekeeper confirmed that she hadn't heard their door open from the kitchen."

"So it was the nurse?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Who knows? Like I said, no one ever saw her again, dead or alive. No body was ever found that even came close to her description, and there were no credible reports of her being seen anywhere. She just vanished."

A thought seemed to strike Shethi. "When did she disappear? You said she was attacked or whatever in September."

I met her eyes directly. "Halloween," I said. "She disappeared on Halloween."

"Yikes," said Shelley. "But it wasn't like-"

"No. Like I said, they never found her- any of her. It wasn't like the Halloweens afterwards."

There was a pause.

"Anyway," I said, "Mrs. Vitale died shortly afterwards, and Lester Vitale died four years later. We moved in then."

I sighed.

"It was unlucky from the start, the move. Nothing went right, apparently. And people were a little nervy about the place, ever since the disappearance. But nothing really bad happened until that Halloween in 1953."

Shethi eyed me. "What exactly happened?"

"It was a busy day, and at first no one noticed that patrons were disappearing. Patrons who make noise are more noticeable than patrons who make none. This was, if you remember, the Shushing Era. But as they were closing for the night..."

"Yes?"

"The circulation clerk, who was in charge of nothing entrances and exits- early days of assessing gate count- mentioned that there were a lot of discrepancies. Entrances without exits. So they made an announcement, did a quick search. Nobody. Absolutely nobody."

"And they all left, after making fun of the circulation clerk.

The next day, they discovered that she had been absolutely right. For there the missing patrons were, on the big rug in front of the fireplace. Of course, it took a while to make sure they were all there."

Shethi shuddered. "They were..."

"Not whole, no."

"They were in tiny little bits," came a voice from the door.

Shethi screamed.

"Thank you, Tim," I said. "Utmost clarity is so important."

"Can you imagine the cleanup job after that?" Tim said brightly. He was IT- information technology, that is, not a murderous clown. I don't think.

"Yes," I said. "I was here in '99."

"So cool!" Tim enthused.

"Yuck," said Shethi. She hates Tim. We all do.

"Anyway," I said. "That was 1953. It didn't happen again until 1987-"

"I was just reading about that!" said Tim brightly. "One of them was literally-"

"-and then again in 1999. And that time I found them. Story time is over now."

"She was on the news," said Tim to Shethi, indicating me with a gesture. "She was SO FREAKED OUT. She was like, crying. And her feet were super bloody. Even her LEGS were bloody. There must have been a lot of blood," he said, turning to me.

"Go away, Tim," I said.

"I've never even seen a dead person. Let alone a dead person who didn't look like a person anymore, the way they did. I mean, of course I've looked at pictures on the Internet, but looking at a picture isn't really like seeing them, is it? Is it?"

"I don't remember," I said.

"I have the interview you did with the reporter- well, it wasn't really an interview, you were mostly just crying, but on TV. I downloaded it. Have you ever seen it?"

"No," I said.

"Come on, Tim," said Shethi.

"It's gonna be so cool on Halloween!" he said, following her out.

Halloween came, as it must, and we opened. The mood was edgy. Most of the locals stayed far away, but the news had evidently spread to the fan world, because true crime fans and ghost hunters were everywhere, carefully traveling in pairs. It was like we were running an Ark.

I came to work, but I didn't really do any. Time didn't seem to have any meaning. I considered leaving, but I couldn't seem to make my feet move to the door. I just kept circling dully, like a dog that can't really get its bed right.

I had that icy-brained, half-nauseated calm you get in the presence of ghosts. I knew they were there. I kept expecting to see one sliding down the stairs in that angle-scorning way they have. But they weren't feeling visibility that day, I guess. Not to me, at least.

I had to make my decision. I had to. I knew today was the day. There might never be a chance like this again, never. I had prepared my tool several days before, telling myself I didn't need to use it if I didn't want to. But suddenly, I wanted to.

I grabbed it and headed out to where Fiction abuts Circulation. I thought my quarry was there. And so she was. Together with about twenty true-crime podcast listeners, of course.

I walked up to her, pulling my tool out of my pocket.

"She's got a knife!" a Murderino screamed.

Miss Eliot barely reacted to this.

"No," I said, "I don't have a knife. I have something better."

She looked up then, and she saw what I had in my hand. "No," she said.

"Yes," I said. And I pressed the date stamp against her forehead, like a dry library kiss.

END OF PART 2.

PART 3 TO COME ON OCTOBER 29.

A HALLOWEEN STORY.

PART 3.

Our eyes locked. Hers were wide and terrified.

And as I smelled the fear emerging from her pores like worms coming out in rain, I remembered that day in 1999. I remembered the whole horrible day.

I didn’t get off that bus at 7:53 AM on November 1, 1999. The bus driver lied about that. At 7:53 AM on November 1, 1999, I was prone on the back seat of the bus while the bus driver forced his right hand up into my underpants while his left hand held a pocket knife to my throat.

When I made a sudden upward jerk, trying to kick him, his knife hand automatically grabbed at my leg and I got a jagged cut along the back of my thigh. It bled and it bled. Oh, it bled.

I got off the bus at 8:19 AM, somewhat to my own surprise, after he slipped on my blood and fell down. I ran for it. Ran to the library, where there wasn’t any blood coming out from under the door, not yet. The only blood I was aware of was that dripping out from under my skirt.

It was still dark outside, and I could barely see to insert my key. I took a moment and leaned against the door.

I shook my head. I could still smell him. Damn it, I could still smell him! He lingered in my sinuses like an infection. What was I going to do? Only one thing to do.

I unlocked the door and went in.

And immediately froze.

Something was wrong.

I couldn't tell quite what it was, but it was wrong. It was so very wrong. And I was frightened.

I shook my head, trying to free myself. I reached out and flipped on the weak overhead lights, hoping the alleviation of darkness would help.

And that’s when I saw it.

A snake in the air is the only way I can describe it. Like a purposeful breeze. It came towards me, slowly.

The ghost, I said to myself, the ghost. This is the ghost.

And then the air became somehow more substantial. And I knew who the ghost was.

The nurse.

I could not see her, not really, but I could sense the bruising around her eyes from her beating. The throbbing tenderness.

We stared at each other for a long time.

"I was in the backseat," I said. "The backseat of the bus. The bus driver will lie if I accuse him, but I was. And you, you were in the backseat too, the backseat of the car. Your father lied. You were dead in the backseat."

She nodded.

"We’re doing a lot of taking men’s words for things, aren’t we, when we tell the story of this place?" I said. "Your father, who swore you went up the stairs and entered the house. Lester Vitale, who said they were both in the bedroom. The bus driver, someday."

"But really, the only person whose word we can rely on is the one who had no personal stake in the situation. And that's the housekeeper. She didn't hear you come in, because you didn't come in. She didn't hear them leave the bedroom, because they didn't leave the bedroom."

"That's what happened, isn't it?" I said to her. "Your father killed you. Your father attacked you. You had a key to the house, as he knew, because his lie was that you unlocked the door. He made a copy of that key. He was the one. He was the one!"

The nurse nodded again.

I was a little dizzy. I had figured it out! I had solved it. Her body had been in his car the whole time the police were searching. They didn't search his car, why would they? He was the grieving father. And later, they wouldn't search his cellar or garage for a grave- her grave.

I had solved it!

"I need to open up the library," I said.

The nurse shook her head and began to guide me to the door.

"No," I said, "I need to open up the library."

She became more insistent.

"No," I said, "I need to turn on the lights, the computers. I need to."

I started limping forward. My leg was still bleeding and it was beginning to pool under my instep, but it wouldn't stop me. I reached the stairs.

And then the something wrong became much stronger.

It was a pulsing rage, a fury that exceeded what anything human could ever feel. It seemed to press in on you, to pierce your eardrums, to chip your teeth. And yet I had a feeling it had been much stronger, earlier. This was it waning, although maybe preparing for one final push.

I whirled around and looked at the nurse. What was she doing? And then I realized, almost too late.

It wasn't coming from her.

"There's another ghost," I said, my voice choked. "Isn't there?"

She nodded and then gestured frantically towards the door.

"We've been asking ourselves why the housekeeper didn't hear you come in," I said. "But that's not the real question, is it? The real question is, why didn't she hear you scream when you were attacked on the stairs?"

"And the answer," I said, feeling sick but also scared, "the answer is that she heard so many screams of pain and agony in that house that she didn't notice them anymore. She had trained herself not to listen to them. Isn't that right?"

"Lester Vitale said that his wife was an invalid, that she couldn't leave the house. But why couldn't she leave the house? Was it because he wouldn't let her leave? Why couldn't she go up and down the stairs without assistance? Because of illness, or because of...injury?"

"There was another impartial witness besides the housekeeper. The man from the gardening service, who saw a man carrying a woman past the window. It was Lester, carrying his wife. He'd beaten her pretty badly that day, hadn't he? So badly she was bleeding on the furniture?"

"They were in the bathroom when your father came, not the bedroom, which is why the housekeeper didn't hear the door. She died shortly afterwards, so that might have been the last time he ever beat her. On Halloween."

The fury in the air seemed a little stronger now.

"Mrs. Vitale," I said. "The other ghost is Mrs. Vitale. And she is still angry. She is still so angry. And you, you still fetch and carry for her. You bring her victims, sometimes, on Halloween. But why? It doesn't make sense. Why does she take revenge on total strangers?"

Then I felt the fury change a little. It was beginning to move. Soon, soon, it would descend the stairs.

And I realized that I very much did not want to meet Mrs. Vitale.

I ran for the door, which the nurse in one last benediction had flung open for me. I ran for my life.

I was outside! I stood in the slowly lightening morning, staring at the door, which was still vibrating slightly from having been slammed shut behind me.

Suddenly, I heard heels clicking behind me. I spun around. It was a woman I’d never seen before, dressed precisely and professionally in business separates and wearing hose and makeup. “Good morning,” she said. “We haven’t met. I’m Miranda Eliot.”

I couldn’t speak. I just went on staring at her. Another ghost? But no, she was corporeal, somewhat terrifyingly corporeal. She was carrying an expensive leather shoulder bag, which she opened to pull out a compact. “They should be finished any minute now,” she said.

“They?” I said, not wanting to believe she was there. “What do they need to finish doing?”

“Oh no,” she said with a dry laugh, “they’re not finishing anything. They’re being finished, if you get the distinction.” She uncapped a lipstick. “There, look.”

Blood was seeping out from under the door and pooling on the top step, preparing to flow downwards. I said I was the one who had first noticed it. I didn’t say Miss Eliot wasn’t the second.

“Blood,” I said.

“Blood,” she agreed.

She glanced down and then took another look.

“Your leg is bleeding, too.” She gave me a sharp look. “Did you-”

“No,” I said. “No. That was something else. Someone raped me this morning.”

“Did they?” she said, not really paying attention. She was looking at her watch. The blood was now eddying around my shoes.

“Why are you here?” I said. “What do you want?” Then I realized I didn’t care. “What do you know?” I asked.

“I know how to get what I want,” she said, smiling. “I want to be library director.”

“Mrs. Vitale,” I said. “You know how to...activate...Mrs. Vitale. You made her kill."

“Yes,” she said. “I know about Mrs. Vitale. I heard about it from the library director who worked here in 1987. He used the ghosts to get back at his ex-wife. She and her new husband were two of the victims. She was the one who was…”

I cringed.

“Yes,” she said. “That one."

"And he heard about it from the circulation clerk. You know, the girl in 1953. She was the one who found out about Mrs. Vitale, quite by accident, and figured out how to activate her, as you put it. Mind you, I think she didn’t understand what she had done until it was too late."

"She wrote to him from her deathbed, apparently, warning him about the ghosts. Of course, it had the opposite effect.” She stepped back a little as the blood flowed down the sidewalk. “Not a nice man. One of those who talks a lot when he’s drunk. You know. Or maybe you don’t.”

“How?” I said. “How do you make her kill?” And then I realized. I remembered my own anger, that morning. I remembered how the library had got possession of the house, and everything that was in it. I remembered that the first person responsible had been a circulation clerk.

“Smell,” I said. “Smell.”

She smiled rather condescendingly.

“Smell,” I said again. “She remembers how he smelled."

"He probably used aftershave or cologne or something, it was more common then. And he had no heirs, and he left the Jackson City Public Library the house and everything that was in it. So it was the staff who went through his effects, and they probably kept the toiletries."

"The clerk took his cologne. And she found out somehow that the scent of it made the ghost of Mrs. Vitale appear. Not just appear. It sparked the rage, the desire for vengeance, that had been suppressed during her lifetime- even during his lifetime, when she was afraid of him."

"So the clerk mixed the cologne with the ink for the date stamps, didn’t she? Back then, everything needed to be stamped. The patron sometimes had to hold the item open, so it wasn't uncommon for a clerk to accidentally stamp the patron’s hand, or otherwise get some ink on them."

"The clerk thought it would be funny if she got cologne-laced ink on some of the patrons, and they got scared by the ghost of Mrs. Vitale when she came out to find them, lured by the smell. A Halloween trick to beat them all, right? Show patrons the haunted library!"

"But she didn't understand the rage, the rage of Mrs. Vitale, the pointless rage that only showed itself too late, when it made no sense anymore. When it was just violent desire for retribution, directed at the last horror it remembered- the scent of that cologne on human skin."

"So the patrons didn’t just get scared, they got ripped to shreds. She never said anything, because she felt guilty. But she told the director in 1987, and so he got a bottle of the cologne somehow, from one of those stores that sells discontinued products. And he did it again."

"And now," I said, "you."

“I got a bottle,” she said, naming the brand. “I poured some on an inkpad and brought it here yesterday. I was one of the first patrons, and I waited until the circulation assistant was distracted and switched mine for the one at the desk. It was easy."

"You want to be library director,” I said. “How does this make you director?”

“Normally,” she said, “a posting for a director job at a library like this would receive hundreds of applications. Such a nice part of the country. So many library schools nearby. It would be overrun.”

"Of course," she said, beaming, "you know all this. You're an MLS working as a clerk, after all. Well, when this job is posted, I shall get the job.”

“Will you?” I said, not raising my intonation.

“Of course,” she said. “Would anyone else want to work at the killing library?”

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. I looked down at my shoes, which were near sodden. Blood within and without. It made me want to retch.

“You did all this- you killed people- for a job? For a job?”

“A library job,” she corrected me. “They told me when I entered this field that there would be a wave of retirements soon. They didn’t tell me I’d have to help them along.”

“But Mrs. Hodges-” I broke off. I looked down at my shoes again, the way you probe a sore tooth with your tongue. “Mrs. Hodges is the director. You can’t be the director, when Mrs. Hodges-”

“Mrs. Hodges is dead in there right now,” she said.

"No," I said. "She can't be."

“I marked her, you see. I marked her for Mrs. Vitale. I went to see her for an informational interview and I spilled cologne on her as I left.” She pointed at the blood pooling at my feet. “Mrs. Hodges is there.”

"No," I said again. My gorge began to rise, my throat to tighten.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll give you a librarian job. I'll make you a cataloger. It’ll be all right.”

“No,” I said. My eyes were full of tears.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Now go call the police. It’s terribly late as it is. The sun's up, Halloween is over. It’s safe.”

“No,” I said again, but my feet were moving, I was flying towards City Hall, where I knew I could use the phone.

The memories faded again, and my mind came back to the present day. It had only been a moment, really. Miss Eliot was standing dumbly before me, the cologne-laced ink date clearly visible on her forehead. Her expiration date.

“Go upstairs,” I said. “She’s waiting for you.”

Upstairs the master bedroom door creaked open. Which was odd because, as I said earlier, we tore out the doors when we renovated the master bedroom suite.

Miss Eliot’s face had gone from white to grey. She adjusted her cardigan.

I had known Miss Eliot would go of her own accord. I had known she wouldn't wait to be brought.

And as I watched her walk up the stairs, I wished I felt happier than I did.

THE END