The women all looked to be in their late-50s or early-60s. His mother seemed to be the oldest, the Sophia to the rest of their Golden Girls. According to the trophy Ruby held up along with the gloved woman and the woman with the kerchief, the tournament had occurred in 1980, just a few years after he was born.

He chuckled quietly to himself and slipped the framed photo back into the box. Through the closed door, he heard Sheila climb the stairs and begin washing up. He couldn't help but think warsh and was struck by a moment of sadness and anger, thinking of Tish and what she'd gone through, what she'd put him through.

The toilet flushed and a few minutes later Sheila's footsteps creaked softly down the hall. Her door closed with a slight squeak and click.

A good half hour later, sifting through the assorted junk of his childhood, he came across a book he hadn't seen since he was maybe ten years old. It was his favorite when he was very little, but he'd forgotten all about it until he pulled it out of the box.

The Big Book of Fairy Tales.

He flicked through its pages, crinkled and warped from water damage and age, looking over the illustrations.

There was Perrault's Bluebeard, handing a set of keys to his new bride with a murderer's gaze. The stepmother and evil stepsisters from Hans Christian Anderson's "Cinderella." The Brothers Grimm's Pied Piper leading the children of Hamelin into a cave in the mountains. The troll lurking under a bridge as the Three Billy Goats Gruff stood at its edge, preparing to cross.

No wonder I'm so obsessed with the macabre. Look at these things. Other kids had Walt Disney and Judy Blume and I had this. They sure don't make them like this anymore.

The two following pages were stuck together. He had to peel them apart, tearing the edges.

What he saw caused his hands to tremble, the page fluttering audibly.

He must have scrawled the word in red crayon on the page himself when he was very little judging by the jitteriness of the handwriting, but he didn't remember it at all. He knew it was him because he'd used the same crayon to scribble in another of the books he'd already found. The well-worn nubs lay at the bottom of the box, rattling when he'd brought it down from the stack.

The illustration from the Grimm Brothers' "Hansel and Gretel" was of the children nibbling on the gingerbread house, while the evil old woman lay in wait, her fingers curled around the wall, a hungry grin displaying her sharp teeth.

Young Martin had scrawled a single word in red crayon, circled several times for emphasis, a squiggly arrow pointing toward the witch.

The word was MOMMY.

Nadine Hinkley had never felt at home in Barrows Bay, despite having been born and raised here. Now that she had everything packed up and ready to ship to her new apartment in Providence, she wondered why she'd waited so long to leave.