![]() The old stone house, covered with encroaching scarves of ivy, was left full of its antique furniture and strange knickknacks. There was no one to come and collect an inheritance, or to dig through the rickety attic for long-lost treasures. Her nearest relative was a distant cousin who had recently died in Shanghai, after a severe allergic reaction to a bowl of turtle and arsenic soup. McMartin’s face had been eaten by her cats. And there were various theories as to just how much of Ms. Hanniman decreed that she had died of old age, plain and simple-he had heard that she was 150 years old, after all. McMartin had collapsed on the living room rug in front of the fireplace, while a sheaf of secret family papers went up in smoke behind the grate. McMartin so badly that she fell down the stairs. Dewey that it had happened in the hallway, where someone-or something-had startled Ms. Nivens, who had lived next door for as long as anyone could remember, told Mrs. Rumors soon began to fly regarding where and how Ms. They locked the ancient front door behind them and drove away, stretcher and all. Soon the uniformed group reappeared, rolling a white-sheeted stretcher onto the porch. All the neighbors held their breath, watching through the gaps in their curtains. They marched in a group up the porch steps, knocked at the door, waited for a moment, and then picked the lock with a handy official lock-picking tool. The authorities arrived in a big white van. After a few days of listening to that, the neighbors had had enough. McMartin’s three cats, somewhere inside the house, began the most terrible yowling ever heard on quiet old Linden Street. ![]() ![]() The gigantic jungle fern that hung from the porch ceiling keeled over for lack of water. The rusty mailbox began to bulge with odd and exotic mail-order catalogs, which eventually overflowed the gaping aluminum door and spilled out into the street. However, there were several notable clues that things in the McMartin house were not as they should have been. It had taken some time for the neighbors to grow suspicious, since no one ever went in or came out of the old stone house on Linden Street anyway.
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