The Old Willis Place

into the shadows.
    Behind us Miss Lilian called, "Diana, Georgie! Diana, Georgie!"
    On we ran. On she came.
    At the end of the driveway we realized we could go no farther. We'd come to the fence between us and the rest of the world. I yanked Georgie to the right, planning to run along the fence, but he slipped in the snow and fell by the gate, pulling me down with him.
    We scrambled to our feet, but we were too late. Miss Lilian had us trapped between the fence and a thicket of bushes and vines heaped with snow.
    She was close enough for us to see her clearly. She was old, she was ill, she was thinner than ever. She stretched her bony hands toward us and chanted our names, "Diana and Georgie, I have you now. Don't try to escape. I've chased you more than enough!"
    I thrust Georgie behind me. She mustn't get him, she mustn't hurt him. I'd protect him this time. "What do you want?" I cried. "Haven't you done enough to us already?"
    She lunged at me, seized my arm, and pulled me close. Her cold fingers pressed my skin, chilling me to the bone. "You've given me no rest, no peace. Not while I was alive. Not after my death. And now, now—"
    "Leave my sister alone." Still holding Alfie, Georgie tried to pull me away from Miss Lilian. "You hurt us, you made the bad thing happen!"
    "You!" She turned to Georgie, her face filled with fury. "You were always the bad one. Making faces at me behind your mother's back, teasing and tormenting me, stealing my things. Why, you have my bear right now. Give him to me!"
    Georgie drew back, clutching Alfie. "This is my bear, not yours! Lissa gave him to me."
    "Let us go," I begged her. "We can't harm you now."
    "Oh, no." Miss Lilian held us both, her grip too strong to break. "I can't let you go. Not yet. We have old accounts to settle, the three of us."
    Georgie and I clung to each other in dread. What accounts? Tweaking Miss Lilian's skirts, knocking pictures off the walls, breaking knickknacks, slamming doors, hiding her jewelry, taking her money—small things compared to what she'd done to us.
    "Just look at you," she said suddenly. "Hiding on my farm like fugitives, one of you dressed in my clothes and the other wearing almost nothing but feathers in his hair. Filthy. Rude. Stealing and lying. You're a disgrace to your parents. To my parents. To society itself."
    "Its your fault we're here!" Georgie cried.
    Miss Lilian stepped back as if he'd struck her. "My fault? How dare you say such a thing? Nothing is my fault. Nothing!"
    "Liar" Georgie retorted. "You know what you did."
    "What happened was your own fault," Miss Lilian went on. "You deserved to be punished. Someone had to teach you a lesson. Your parents never raised a hand to you. They let you run wild. So the duty fell to me."
    Too angry now to be afraid, I thrust my face into hers, daring her to harm me. "You chased us into the cellar and locked us in that room, and then you left us there—"
    "To teach you a lesson," she repeated. "That's all I meant to do."
    "A lesson?" I stared at her in disbelief. "You killed us!"
    She released us then and began fidgeting with the string of pearls around her neck. "No," she whispered. "It was an accident. An unfortunate accident. Surely you realize I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to!"
    Georgie brushed me aside and walked right up to Miss Lilian, storming with anger. "You're a murderer!" he shouted. "You should have gone to jail. They should have executed you!"
    "I had a stroke," Miss Lilian shouted back. "A stroke! You upset me, my blood pressure shot up, I collapsed at the top of the cellar steps. Your mother found me on the kitchen floor, unconscious. Your father called an ambulance. They put a tube down my throat, they put something over my mouth. How could I tell anyone where you were? I was more dead than alive."
    Miss Lilian smoothed her dress, touched her hair, wrung her hands nervously. "I was in the hospital a long time. Weeks, months, I can't be sure. I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. It's a wonder I didn't die." She toyed with the pearls, sliding them between her fingers one by one as if she were counting them.
    She peered at Georgie and me, her eyes sharp. "When I finally recovered, what happened in the cellar seemed like a dream, a nightmare—not something I'd really done."
    I stood in the snow, almost mesmerized by the soft click, click of the pearls, and tried to understand what I'd just heard. Miss Lilian hadn't meant to kill us. It was an accident. She'd had a