Portrait of a Dead Lady — Mary Ann Taylor

A prisoner in her own house?

As night creeps into the old, timeworn house, Sally huddles in a corner, alone. Without any apparent reason, her husband has strangely disappeared.

Outside the window the hovering trees make low, morbid sounds as they beat tormentingly against the glass. “Oh, my God!” she wonders in terror, “could there be voices in the cellar?”

Sally rushes to the phone, her heart pounding wildly, like a fish dying in a pit of sand. The phone is dead. The lines have been cut.

Frantically, she stumbles around the house, locking the doors and windows. Then, moving stealthily into the kitchen, she grabs a knife, hiding it in the folds of her skirt.

Trembling fiercely, Sally edges toward the basement door. She open it but hesitates at the top of the stairs. Abruptly the lights go out. A faintly sweet smell assails Sally's nostrils as her body convulsed with sobs. Emanatling from the depths of the basement, a yellow glow dances in the black air.

“SALLY, SALLY, SALLY,” chants a chorus of soft voices rising from the darkness below…