An Afternoon Walk — Dorothy Eden

On a leisurely afternoon walk one summer day Ella and her five-year-old daughter come upon an abandoned house with an eerie overgrown garden. For the attractive young housewife and her imaginative child, the old house conjures up fantasies of grand parties and bygone fashions. But in the midst of the reverie they hear a horrible, throaty scream and, from a second-story window, see the spreading white wings of an owl taking flight.

At home that evening, Ella describes the experience to her husband, Max, only to be reminded that, having recently lost a child at birth, she is still emotionally unstable. Later, pointing out her strange lapses of memory, he insists that she needs more quiet and rest. Ella reluctantly agrees with him and all but forgets the experience, even though she feels it is somehow connected with the sudden disappearance of a woman in the neighborhood.

Then she begins receiving a series of anonymous phone calls. Trapped between the cold neglect of her husband, who openly questions her sanity, and the increasing terror of the calls, which hint that her child is in danger, Ella herself comes to question her own sanity...