After Dark . . .

"Law, it's been many a year since the last of the family died . . . and there it sits. Got a good roof yet but the woods'll take it afore long . . .

"It was a young cousin from away heired it. Come by one summer, oh, a good many years back of this, and told Lawyer Morgan he aimed to 'renovate' the place. Folks saw the young feller - a nice-looking somebody, they said -- that first day carrying his plunder up the steps in the late afternoon."

"Several days went by afore anyone noticed they hadn't seen him no more.  I believe it was old Miz Honeycutt down the branch who finally called the sheriff and said maybe someone had ought to take a look...

"Well, the feller's pickup was still there and all his things in it.  Sheriff's deputy rapped on the house door and it swung open. . . law, he said that he went up and down in that house but nare sign of that feller did he find. Said they was a sleeping bag laid out on the bed and a shirt and britches folded up on a chair beside it . . .

"Signs of a struggle? Naw, not a bit of that. But that boy was gone, clean as a whistle. The deputy unzipped the sleeping bag looking to see was there blood or such but there weren't none -- just a undershirt and a pair of drawers laying there kindly collapsed -- like whoever had  been wearing them had swivlled away to nothing.

They never did find out what went with that feller. And don't no one go near that place any more . . . especially after after dark."