Eddie Wickham had been brought away from his family by his great-aunt Theodora with the promise that she would help him get schooling to overcome his handicap—he could not speak and had not learned to read and write. But Theodora seemed to keep him busy working, chopping wood, feeding the animals, milking the cow. All for no pay and a straw mattress in the top floor of her huge old house. Life would have been very lonely, except for the company of five year-old Katrina that followed him ev...

Felicia was not quite fourteen years old the night that she disobeyed her mother and took a path home through the woods after nightfall. She was attacked. When she came to, she vaguely recalled the incident, and could not identify what or who had attacked her. Celta, a servant who had been with the family for decades, helped her recover and keep the attack secret. However, four months later her pregnancy could not be disguised. Felicia's mother felt strongly that they should keep that baby...

After her parents passed away, Tara sought to escape the inevitable marriage to the wealthy Albert if she stayed in town. After traveling to San Francisco with almost no money, during a heavy rain she found shelter with a small group of people that seemed to be penniless and without resources. She learned that young Amy, one of this "family", was pregnant and needing help. After the men returned from an evening outing, they expressed an urgent desire to leave. Mysteriously, they had a car ...

Heather was young and beautiful, but had ongoing man trouble. She decided to allow her older sister to care for her two daughters from a previous marriage. As a parting gift, Heather gave the girls a beautiful doll . . . Zenoa. The doll, with those penetrating brown eyes, was a reminder of a mother's love—wasn't it? The doll that seemed to have motives of its own . . . and would persist for decades to come. The doll that surprised and overpowered those no longer useful to her. In the dark ...

Amy and Jodi hardly remembered their father who lived and worked in a carnival, but now they were going to live with him. This could be great fun! Jodi soon went exploring, got lost in the House of Mirrors, and there discovered a mysterious talisman. Her father asked that she check with India, the carnival owner, on what to do with it. India freaked out, saying that the talisman was very bad and must be destroyed. Jodi threw it in the trash, but Amy slyly fished it out and hid it. Shortly ...

Dirk was feeling lost and lonely. His wife Patricia had announced that she was struggling to feel any purpose in her life and had decided to move into an apartment for a time period to sort things out. Dirk is strongly motivated to change something to put his family back together, and decides to sell his share of the business and invest in a summer resort based around a beautiful, remote, spring-fed lake in Arkansas. Unfortunately, he didn't ask enough questions about the history of the la...

Heather was forced to go live with her Uncle. Uncle Reece, her mother's brother, felt obligated to take her in. But, Aunt Pansy and her cousins resented that she was upsetting their lives. Heather hoped that her mother would soon save her. Coming home from school one day, a strange old man caught her eye and carefully laid a package on the lawn for her. When she opened it she found an old fortune teller's pendulum. Experiments soon progressed, and Heather seemed to have a unique ability to...

The youths began appearing across town one evening. They seemed to exactly match descriptions of missing children, some gone for 30 years, several more recently. When a dog was killed, the threat could not be ignored. After the tent revival, Reverend Walsh was called to sit and pray with Matt Reed, a trapper who had been accidentally caught in one of his own steel traps. Matt had freed himself and staggered home before collapsing. Now he seemed possessed, with sounds of children's voices c...

Sheba is impulsive, unconstrained by convention, and fond of men. When she comes into a small amount of money, she decides on a lark that she wants to purchase an old house—sight unseen—and turn it into a hunting lodge. The house and many surrounding acres are priced very attractively. She talks two sisters and her roommate Donna—her good friends—into quitting their jobs and coming to live and work with her, but each of them wants to give one- or two-week notice. Impatient, Sheba jumps in ...

LONG-LOST TWINWhat a wonderful doll! Real hair, perfect features, and clothes there were stylish a century ago. Amazingly, it was soon realized that the newly discovered doll was an almost exact twin of the one that had been featured in the local antique shop for several years. The dolls seemed so real, it was as if their eyes followed you when you moved. Two priceless dolls, surely worth even more when united. What was Grand-Dad thinking when he carefully planned the destruction of...

The dreams kept coming to Magret—the baby, its head rising right out of the earth, its piercing eyes staring at her. She tried to remind herself that this was just another nightmare. But then her daughter Sheena reported seeing a little girl, an infant, in the forest behind their house. Surely she was confused about what she had seen. The police searched, finding nothing. Then came another sighting, soon followed by a brutal murder in the house beyond the woods. Magret reluctantly began to...

Ellen returns home from college hoping to spark some interest from Rodney, the man that she has loved since her teenage years. She seeks peace and comfort in her childhood home and the surrounding ranch. However, a recurring nightmare from her childhood returns after a three-year break. Moving from her old room in the third story to the second story seems to help settle things down. A short time later, her Uncle returns from a long absence and introduces his new bride Tina. Surprisingly, E...