Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

The Witch of Wilton Falls by Gloria Ericson

As I scanned the rest of my mail, I absentmindedly opened the one letter my secretary had left sealed, thinking it might be personal. Absorbed as I was, I failed to notice the return address, so its message came as rather a shock: Since we could find no evidence of next-of-kin, and you seemed to be her only correspondent and visitor, we thought you would want to know that Miriam Winters passed away quietly in her sleep on the 25th.

The sun pouring through the Venetian blinds of my office seemed suddenly chilled. I had been standing while I opened the letter, but now I sat, swung the big leather chair around, and gazed out the window. So she had died — at last. Her only visitor. I wasn’t even that. When was the last time I had seen her — five years ago? Six? I remembered receiving a card from her this past Christmas and making sure Meg sent one in return. How lonely she must have been these last years. Suddenly I was filled with the worst kind of remorse — the kind you feel when someone’s gone and it’s too late to make up any neglect.

I was only a kid, no more than sixteen, when they let Old Man Winters out and, since I was the one responsible for his release, I went around that summer swaggering like a damn hero. It wasn’t until later that I came to think differently of myself. I haven’t been back to Wilton Falls in a good many years, and I wonder if they still tell their kids and their grandchildren about that summer. I wonder if they still tell it the wrong way, too — making Miriam Winters out to be some sort of witch. Well, they’re wrong. She wasn’t a witch. I talked to her enough later (too late) to know.

Swinging my chair back to the desk, I looked at the letter again. It was strange, but I was probably the only living person who had ever heard the full details of her side of the story. Certainly the newspapers had never given her her due. They were too busy making sensational copy out of the horror she had perpetrated — and it was horror. I have never denied that, or condoned what she did, but it was my fate to get a more rounded picture than anyone else, and so I always have felt differently about Miriam Winters...

Miriam stopped to wipe the perspiration from her brow. There were two more shirts to iron. Harry was due home tonight, and he’d ask about them first thing. He had a lot of shirts, enough to last him four weeks on the road while an equal number were being done up at home. A salesman had to be well-groomed, Harry always said. Still, it seemed that he took more shirts than necessary. Miriam, after her first blunder, never mentioned it when she found lipstick or powder smudges on any of them.

She looked fearfully at the clock over the kitchen sink. Why had she waited until the last minute? Well, it had been a difficult month. Bobby had been sick, and then she’d had so many of those awful headaches. Ever since Harry had knocked her against the stove the last time he’d been home, she had been bothered by the headaches and that funny confused feeling that came over her from time to time. She put down the iron and rubbed her head. She didn’t mind the headaches so much, but worried about the confused feeling. She wondered if she blacked out at such times and fervently hoped not. Bobby was pretty self-sufficient for a four-year-old, but who could tell what he would do if he found his mother unconscious someday?

Fortunately she had just put the final touches on the last shirt when she heard Harry’s car drive into the old barn behind the house. He came banging in — a big man, a good twenty years older than Miriam — set down his luggage without an answer to her quavering “hello,” and went out again. He returned with a couple of paper bags which he carefully placed on the kitchen table. Miriam’s heart sank. It hadn’t been a good trip, then. She could always tell by the amount of whisky he brought back with him to ease the few days’ rest at home before he started off again.

“I have your supper all ready,” said Miriam, poking at the pots on the stove.

Harry, fussing with the seal on one of the whisky bottles, stopped only long enough to glare at her. “My shirts done?”

“Yes — oh, yes — all of them. Now just you sit down and I’ll dish out your supper.”

He grunted and seated himself heavily at the wooden table.

Two hours later he was wildly drunk.

He would not allow her to go to bed, and although she was able to avoid his drunken lunges for a while, he finally had her backed into a corner. The whisky fumes of his breath and the feel of his fumbling hands at her clothes sickened her. “No, no, H-Harry...” Her voice involuntarily rose in a crescendo.

Then there were other hands plucking at her, and she looked down at Bobby. Aroused by the noise, he had come weeping into the kitchen. “Mama, Mama,” he said, trying to pull her away.

Miriam swallowed and tried to speak calmly. “You must go back to bed, Bobby. Come, I’ll take you.”

But Harry held her firm. “You’ll do no such thing. You can just stop being the damn mother for once. When a man comes home from the road he wants a little comfort — a little wifely comfort.” Then to the child, who still clung, “G’wan, dammit. Get to bed.”

But the weeping child did not move, and swift as lightning the big hand of the man swung out. The body of the small boy seemed to fly through the air before landing in a crumpled heap at the base of the sink. From the gash on the forehead blood spurted first, then flowed in a horrible red sheet down the face of the child. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

Even Harry seemed stunned by the sight and made no move to stop Miriam as she tore from his arms with a strange animal-like sound. The child’s breath had come back, and his sobs mingled with hers as she rocked him in her arms and sponged at his face with a wet dish towel. There was no hope of outside help in this emergency, for there was no phone and Harry was too drunk to drive to a doctor. The house itself was isolated, situated as it was on the edge of a meadow. Beyond that stretched a wooded area. The nearest neighbor, Miriam knew, was at least a mile away.

Finally, thankfully, the flow of blood lessened and then stopped. As Miriam gently swabbed her son’s head, she noted how wide the gash was and how frighteningly near his eye. Tomorrow morning she would have a doctor look at it, but now bed, probably, was the best therapy. She picked the child up and went past Harry, who had again settled himself at the table, silently drinking. She improvised a clumsy bandage, and tucked the still faintly sobbing child in bed. He did not want her to go, so she sat on the edge of the bed until, with a last convulsive shudder, he allowed himself to be overtaken by sleep.

She went quietly back to the kitchen. Harry had succumbed finally, and sat sprawled at the table, his head on his arms. Miriam shook him, but when he did not respond, she went to the knife drawer and selected the largest, sharpest knife she had. She shut the drawer and went and stood behind her husband, hefting the knife, gauging the angle of thrust that would be best...

It was odd. Her role in life up to this minute had been that of follower. She was ever stumbling after some stronger-willed person, often hating it but never knowing how to break away; indecisive. That’s why it was odd that suddenly she should know just what to do. She didn’t have to agonize over her decision or consult someone else. Harry must be done away with. It was right. She knew it.

What stayed her hand, then?

A haunting phrase from her childhood Sunday school: Thou shalt not kill? An awareness of how difficult it would be to dispose of a dead body? Perhaps. But more probably it was the sudden image that flashed across her mind, an image of herself behind bars and Bobby alone. Murderers were always caught, weren’t they? She had made no plans to cover her “crime,” nor had she any belief that even if she did, the police wouldn’t find out sooner or later. She was not that clever — merely right.

Slowly she lowered her hand. Perhaps she could not kill Harry, but he must be restrained in some way — the thing tonight was too close. Miriam shivered as she recalled the bloodied face of her child. No, just as wild beasts must be killed or locked up...

Locked up? She thought a moment. Of course. That was the answer. The big old house with its large expanse of fenced-in grounds had been purchased less than a year ago from former kennel owners. They had been breeders of Great Danes, as a matter of fact, and in the cavernous cellar one area had been sectioned off with sturdy cyclone fencing set in concrete. The area was about nine by nine feet, with the fencing extending even across the top. This “cage” had been used for whelping bitches and their puppies. Harry in such a cage would never be able to hurt Bobby or herself again.

She stared at Harry’s bulk. Tomorrow she would wonder how she had been able to drag such a heavy man across the kitchen, down the cellar steps, and into the cage, but tonight she merely knew that it must be done.

Harry stirred and moaned once or twice in the tortuous journey but never fully awakened from his drunken stupor. Perspiration trickled down Miriam’s back and between her breasts, and by the time she had hauled her unconscious husband into the caged area she was wringing wet. A wooden platform, raised a few inches from the floor, took up a portion of the cage. Apparently the dogs had slept on this. Miriam went upstairs and dragged two blankets from their bed and threw them in on the platform. Then she closed the cage door. There was a heavy padlock on the latch. She clicked it shut. She had no key for it, but that did not matter because she did not expect to open it again — ever.

The first few days were terribly noisy, of course. It was fortunate the house was so isolated or surely Harry’s bellows of disbelief, anger, and frustration would have been heard. Miriam took Bobby to the doctor the next day to have his wound attended. The doctor was aghast and wanted to know why she hadn’t come when it happened, and how did it happen?

“He fell against the latch of the sink cabinet last night and it would have been too difficult to come all this way on foot in the dark. My husband isn’t home with the car,” Miriam lied, confident that Bobby would not refute her story, and he did not. He was a quiet, obedient child, solemn beyond his years.

When they returned from the doctor’s, they could hear Harry’s shrieks of rage as they walked in the door. Bobby shrank against his mother. Miriam sat down on the straight chair near the door and took her son onto her lap. “Listen, Bobby, you mustn’t let those noises in the cellar bother you. It’s only...” She paused a moment, suddenly thinking of a different approach. “You remember those fairy tales we were reading the other night?”

Bobby nodded.

“Do you remember the one about the prince being turned into a frog?”

“Yes...”

“Well, something like that has happened, I think, to your father. He has been turned into a bear, a great shaggy bear, as punishment, I imagine, for not — for not being more kind. Well, anyway, he’s in a cage in the cellar so he cannot hurt us.”

Bobby’s eyes were round. A particularly loud bellow rose from below at this point, and the child trembled. “He-he c-can’t get out...” he quavered.

“No.” Miriam’s voice was firm. “He absolutely can’t get out — and after a while he’ll probably stop making so much noise.” She slid the child from her lap and stood up. Then she added, “By the way, Bobby, you mustn’t tell anybody at all about this, or they will make us let him out.”

Glancing down at him, she saw his eyes widen with horror at the thought. She smoothed down her dress, satisfied. Bobby would never tell.

Miriam allowed three days to pass before she went down to Harry. He was lying down, seemingly exhausted by three days of shouting, but at her approach he sprang up and clutched with trembling fingers at the heavy cage meshing. Miriam stopped a few feet from the cage and set down on the floor the plate of food and shallow bowl of milk she was carrying. Then, as if repeating something she had rehearsed many times, she picked up a broom that lay nearby and shoved first the plate and then the bowl toward the “gate” of the cage, which cleared the floor by about three inches.

Harry’s lips twitched. “All right, you, what’s this all about?”

She did not answer but continued to shove the food toward him.

Harry’s voice was shrill. “Dammit, Miriam, let me out! Miriam — Miriam, do you hear me...” His voice became uncertain. Her silence seemed to unnerve him. Was this the same woman whom he had browbeaten so king? The same woman who had heretofore quaked at his every command? He tried again, a conciliatory tone suddenly in his voice. “Listen, Miriam, I admit you may have a beef. Look, I know I had too much to drink, but you can’t keep me locked up here forever, can you?”

She answered him then. She straightened up and looked with her unblinking clear blue eyes into his. “Yes,” she said.

He was taken aback. “W-What?”

“Yes,” she repeated. “I can keep you locked up forever. I can and I must.” She indicated the food with her foot. The two dishes were half under the gate. “Here’s some food. I’ll bring you more tomorrow night.” Then she turned and started up the stairs.

He was apparently shocked into silence for a moment, but then an outraged bellow of venomous anger escaped him. “You’ll never be able to get away with it, Miriam!” he screamed. “People’ll find out. Don’t you realize, you idiot, you can’t get away with something like this. You’ll be arrested...”

The young woman on the stairs continued ascending as if she heard nothing. At the top she switched off the cellar light and shut the door carefully, quietly, behind her.

Every evening she took him food, seldom speaking herself, letting his increasingly hysterical screams of abuse cascade over her with no comment. When the stench in the cage became unbearable she employed the same means of cleaning it the former kennel owners apparently had used. She coupled a hose on a nearby spigot and hosed off the cage floor, the water and filth easily channeling themselves into the slight gully in the cement floor outside the cage. The gully led to an open drain in the floor, and this she kept sanitary by a periodic sprinkling with disinfecting powder. Several times a week she also slid a shallow basin of soapy water in to him so that he might clean himself if he wished.

As the weeks passed, Harry’s vilification, his threats, became less. He tried a new tack. It was just a matter of time, he assured her. His company would be checking up soon. And, anyway, how long did she think she could hold out by herself? How would she live? How would she earn money? If his questions did not seem to disconcert her, it was only because she had given those same questions great thought herself.

For instance, Miriam had already telephoned Harry’s company. She was sorry, she told them, but her husband had taken another job and wished to terminate his employment with them. As Harry had never been one of their better salesmen, they were not overly upset. Fine, they said, they wished him luck, but would he please send back his sample case and stock book. Miriam said she’d see that they were in the mail that day, and they were. Thus the company, which the man in the cage so desperately counted on to start a hullabaloo over his disappearance, quietly washed its hands of him.

The weeks immediately following Harry’s incarceration were idyllic ones for Miriam and Bobby. They went to the nearby fields to pick wild strawberries, they frolicked in the woods. Never had Miriam been so happy. Her childhood had consisted of one indifferent foster home after another. Her marriage to Harry, which she had thought would be an escape, had merely had the effect of putting her in a new foster home with a new foster parent — and a more brutal one, at that. But now she was free — free for the first time in her life. Even her headaches and that confused feeling seemed to be bothering her less. In the fall Bobby would be starting school, and she must then consider her future. Harry’s remarks about her inability to support herself were not lost on her, but there was enough money in the savings account for the present, and she was determined not to worry about anything until the fall.

In the fall her decision not to worry was completely justified because things fell into place beautifully for her. Old Mrs. Jenkins, the town librarian, died, and Miriam, ever a lover of books, applied for the position. There were few applicants for the job, and Miriam, although a comparative newcomer to town, made by far the best appearance. She was quiet, neat, and seemingly conscientious. Also, her implication that her salesman husband had abandoned her didn’t hurt her chances. If anything, it aroused the town board’s sympathies, and they gave her the job. The position didn’t pay much, but Miriam’s wants were few: merely enough money to maintain Bobby and herself and to feed the “Shaggy Bear” in the basement. The latter epithet had become particularly appropriate, for Harry had grown quite a beard and there were times when Miriam had difficulty recognizing the shaggy lumbering creature in the cage as her husband — so much difficulty that she soon stopped trying. He was merely the “Bear” who must be fed nightly and ignored as much as possible the rest of the time.

Ignoring him became more difficult during the winter months, for a change came over him. Until then he had been an abusive, vilifying creature, shaking the cage mesh violently, slamming his metal dishes around, screaming deprecations upon her head. But one night she went down with his food to find him holding onto the mesh and whimpering. He saw her, and a great tear rolled down his cheek and glistened on the rough beard. It was followed by others. The Bear was crying! “Miriam, Miriam,” it sobbed.

How strange that a bear should know her name. But then, she must remember, it really was Harry in that bear suit.

“Miriam, please... please set me free. I know I haven’t been good to you, but I promise I’ll go away and never bother you again. Just set me free...” Great sobs shook the creature’s frame.

Miriam felt tears well up in her own eyes. She was a sensitive person and could feel great sympathy for this caged creature. Carefully she set the dishes down for the Bear. “I’m sorry,” she said softly before turning back to the stairs.

That night she had difficulty sleeping. What sadness there was in the world! How sorry she felt for that poor Bear. If only there were something she could do to ease his unrest, but of course there wasn’t. Many was the time in the years to come that she had to remind herself that, sorry as she was for the Bear, there was nothing she could do about it, really.

Bobby, destined to grow up in such an unusual household, knew without asking that he must never bring boys home from school to play with him. His friends soon came to accept this eccentricity, just as the townspeople came to accept the fact that their sweet-faced librarian, although friendly enough at the library, lived a rather hermit-like existence with her son, and never asked anyone to visit.

Surely Bobby could not have long believed the father-turned-into-a-bear story. There must have come a day when curiosity overcame him and he peeked into one of the cellar windows. While still quite young, he may have been fooled by the sight of the shaggy creature, thinking it really was a bear, even as his mother had come to think of it as a bear. But as he grew older he must have looked again and known, and knowing, what could he do? Go to the police? Have his father, whom he only dimly remembered as a bellowing brute, freed? And where would his gentle mother be sent? To a jail — to a madhouse? No, no. He did not know — could not afford to know — what was in the cellar.

However slowly the years may have passed for the Bear, they passed quickly enough for Miriam and Bobby. Grammar school. High school. War! War was in the air. Hitler was marching through Czechoslovakia... Poland... Then Pearl Harbor. Bobby enlisted the next day in the navy. He kissed his mother’s tearstained face and hugged her comfortingly. It would all be over soon, now that he was in it, he said to make her smile, but she did not smile. Her whole life was leaving.

Miriam told the Bear about it that evening. Over the years she had developed the habit of sitting outside the cage in an old rocking chair in the evenings when Bobby was at a basketball game or at some other school activity. She enjoyed chatting with the Bear — now that he had learned not to talk about the possibility of his freedom and instead quietly listened to her tell of things in the outside world: Bobby’s athletic exploits, incidents at the library, and so on. It was quite cosy, really. She had placed an old floor lamp next to the rocker and sometimes she would read aloud from books she brought home from the library. The Bear seemed to appreciate that. This evening, when she told him of Bobby’s leaving, he seemed most sympathetic.

“Miriam,” he said, his voice rusty with disuse, “I-let me out now. Let me take care of you while Bobby’s away.”

She looked at him, stunned. After all this time and he still didn’t understand — still could bring that up! Sorrowfully she got up from the rocker, snapped off the lamp, and started up the stairs. At the top she shut the door quietly but firmly on his pleadings. After all these years he still didn’t understand that you don’t let wild beasts loose. No matter how sorry you feel for the lions and tigers in the zoos and no matter how tame they seem, you just don’t go around letting them loose on society.

Soon there were long newsy letters from Bobby, which she read to the Bear at night. (He had apparently learned his lesson after his last outburst and had become more docile and quiet than ever.) It didn’t seem long at all before Bobby was home on his first leave, healthy, bronzed, wonderful to look at. Miriam wished the Bear could see him.

Bobby used his leave to good advantage, too, by painting the house and making other repairs that were needed. The morning before he left he stood staring out the kitchen window. Miriam went over to him, and he looked down at her thoughtfully. “Mom, I noticed some kids cutting across the back lot yesterday. The fencing must be down back there.”

Miriam nodded. “I dare say. After all, it’s pretty old fencing.”

Bobby shifted his weight and frowned. “I don’t like it — kids cutting across the property. I’m going to town today and get some new posts and barbed wire.”

He worked all that day and until it was time for him to leave the next evening. He came in hot and sweaty, but looking satisfied. “I put ‘No Trespassing’ signs up and strung the fencing real tight. I’d like to see any kid get through all those strands of barbed wire.” He came over and put his arm around his mother. “It’ll be good for years, Mom. Long after I come back...”

But he didn’t come back. She was at the library when the telegram arrived. Everyone was terribly kind. There were offers of lifts home, but she refused them all, preferring to walk the two miles by herself — the last mile over the now overgrown private road that led to her house. She did not break down until she had sought out the Bear, and then she slumped down on the cold cement outside his cage and sobbed over and over, “Bobby’s gone, Bear. Bobby’s gone.” Through the heavy wire mesh the claw-like fingers with the unclipped nails pushed, as if trying to stroke her. Tears rolled down the shaggy beard, but whether the Bear was shedding tears over the loss of his son or over the futility of his own life is not known.

Life goes on. By spring Miriam had come to accept with a kind of dull resignation Bobby’s passing. She continued her job at the library, of course, for without Bobby’s allotment check she was again the sole support of herself and the Bear. Bobby’s insurance money she did not touch. Someday she might be unable to work and would need it.

The days in the old house at the end of the overgrown road established themselves in a seldom-varying pattern. The Bear had become quite trustworthy, and on weekends when the weather was nice Miriam even dared open from the outside the small window over his cage. It gave her much pleasure to see him rouse himself from his usual slump on the wooden platform and stand directly under the open window, inhaling great breaths of fresh air. Sometimes he would suddenly fling his arms up but then as suddenly drop them as they contacted the meshing on the top of his cage. Sometimes he rose on tiptoes as if straining to see out, but of course he could not. Often she brought him bouquets of flowers picked from the meadow, and he seemed to like that, burying his face in the blooms and sniffing hungrily. She was glad to do these things, for she had become quite fond of him, really, and more and more her prime concern in life became his comfort and contentment.

The years, one by one, passed slowly, quietly by. There were a few times of crisis, of course — the time the Bear was so sick, for instance. It was sheer torture for Miriam to listen to him call out hoarsely for a doctor and know that she could not possibly get one. She could do nothing but pray, and eventually her prayers were answered. The Bear stopped sweating and moaning, finally, and began to get better. Then there was the time she herself was sick. It was one summer during her vacation. She was too ill to go to the doctor and had no way to summon him to the house, nor would it have been advisable for her to do so even if she could for, as keeper, she was in a sense as much a prisoner as the Bear. The fever raged through her for several days and the only thing that kept her from succumbing was the distant sound of the Bear’s plaintive calls. It would be so easy just to let go and die, but she could not. The Bear was hungry — needed her... So she fought, and lived to see the Bear fall upon the food she finally weakly brought to him. It was worth the fight.

Perhaps the worst time of all was when the pan of hot grease caught fire in the kitchen. With frantic efforts she managed to put it out, scorching her arms quite badly in the process. It was not the pain in her arms that left her trembling, though, but the thought of what might have happened had the fire spread. The Bear would have been trapped, burned alive. The thought left her weak. She wracked her brain for a solution to the possibility of such a thing’s happening again, and suddenly remembered that Harry, her former husband (she had not thought of him in years), had owned a revolver. She went upstairs and found it in an old cupboard. She felt much better. This way the Bear was assured of a quick, merciful death.

The time the furnace broke down required even more ingenuity on her part, and the coffee she offered the Bear at that time was heavily laced with sleeping pills. When he fell into a deep, drugged sleep she threw dropcloths over the cage, ranged discarded furniture against it, and called the repairmen. The men worked for an hour over the furnace, completely unaware that within a few feet of them a creature, once-man, slept.

And the years ticked on...

I was kind of at loose ends that summer I was sixteen, anyway. Having lost my mother and father in an automobile accident only a few months before, I was spending some time with my grandfather in his “hunting shack” at Wilton Falls. My grandfather was a judge downstate and normally used the shack only once or twice in the fall for hunting, but this year he had taken time off in the early summer and come up with me. Guess he thought some fishing and general rambling in the woods would be good for me; get my mind off my loss.

I was out in the woods by myself that day, though, when I came across the rusted barbed wire that surrounded the Winters place. I tested it with my foot and it gave way. Nimbly I leaped over the broken strands and soon found myself in a choked meadow, on the edge of which perched a weatherbeaten Victorian house. I regarded the apparition with surprise. Was it occupied? Probably not; much too neglected-looking. I sauntered over to observe more closely, and then bent to peer through one of the cellar windows. The cellar was quite dark and it was a moment before my eyes accustomed themselves to the feeble light. Almost directly under the window there was a cagelike arrangement, with a hulking shape in one corner. A shadow? No, it seemed to move, and suddenly I was looking at a matted tangle of hair, out of which stared the deadest, most vacant eyes I had ever seen. My heart gave a sickening lurch. What I was seeing was impossible. I stayed a moment longer, as if riveted by those terrible dead-man eyes. Then the shaggy head turned away and I was released — released to run across the sunny unreal meadow, over the broken strands of barbed wire that tore at my clothes, through the adjoining woods. I had slowed down somewhat by the time I reached my grandfather’s cabin and was a little ashamed of myself. After all, I was no kid — ye gods, I was sixteen — and here I was running like a scared rabbit. Then the memory of those eyes returned in full force and I felt cold sweat pop out all over me.

My grandfather, looking strangely unjudgelike in his plaid shirt and denim pants, was fussing at the stove when I came in. “Hello there,” he said. “I was wondering where you were. Lunch is almost ready.”

I stood, my back against the door, still breathing hard. “Gramp,” I said, and there was, despite myself, a quiver in my voice.

My grandfather looked up then. His glance sharpened. “Something the matter, son? You look upset.”

I tried to wave my hand deprecatingly but failed in that gesture, too. “Gramp, who lives in that big old house at the edge of the meadow?”

My grandfather frowned. “At the edge of the meadow... Oh, you must mean Mrs. Winters’ place. Why?”

“I was just over there now and I saw—”

“Over there? That place is posted. You shouldn’t have gone there.”

“But the fencing is all rusted and I didn’t see any No Trespassing signs...”

“Well, maybe the signs are too weathered to read any more, but everyone around here knows it’s posted.”

“Well, I didn’t know, and I looked in one of the cellar windows. Gramp, there’s something in a big cage there. A-A man, I think it is...”

My grandfather pulled out a chair and seated himself at the table. “Now, let’s hear this from the beginning. What are you talking about — a cage, and a man-you-think in it?”

I told him the whole thing, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.

“You’re sure your eyes, and imagination, weren’t playing tricks on you, son? I mean, everyone knows Mrs. Winters lives there all by herself. She’s had a very tragic life, actually. First her husband abandoned her and she had to bring up their son all alone. Then he was killed in the war. I wouldn’t want any wild rumors circulated by a grandson of mine to hurt her.”

“But it’s no wild rumor, Gramp, it’s true. Please, Gramp, you’ve got to go look yourself.”

I guess the urgency in my voice decided him. He stood up. “Okay. Best to squelch this now. You’ll see it was just your imagination...”

By nightfall all Wilton Falls was in a state of shock. The police had sawed off the old padlock and led a stumbling, half-blind Harry Winters into the fresh air of freedom, and the town’s gentle middle-aged librarian had been taken into “protective custody.” She did not seem to mind. Her only concern seemed to be that “The Bear” be taken care of. When assured that he would be, she went along docilely enough. Actually, both of them were taken to the county hospital for observation — but to different wings.

How the town did buzz the next couple of weeks. The story made even the downstate papers with a banner headline: husband kept in cage 30 years BY wife. Under my picture it said: He dared to look in the Witch’s dungeon. Under Mr. Winters’ picture it said: Caged like a beast for 30 of his 75 years. And under Mrs. Winters’ picture: The Witch of Wilton Falls — She turned her husband into a “Bear.” It was all pretty heady stuff for me, being hero-of-the-hour, as it were. But then I looked more closely at the pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Winters and suffered my first feeling of disquietude. They both had the look of puzzled children on their faces as they were led away.

Miriam Winters, of course, was sent to the state mental hospital, but deciding what to do with Harry Winters was more of a problem. The county psychiatrists had difficulty testing him due to his refusal (or was it inability?) to talk, and finally came to the frustrated conclusion that although his mind had undoubtedly been affected by his imprisonment, he was harmless enough, and could be released to proper care. But what was “proper care”? There was a great outcry against sending him to the county home, for it was felt that in the few years that were left to him he deserved to be “free.” The public conscience was stirred on this point and it was finally arranged that the old man go back to his own house. A volunteer committee of townspeople was set up in which one member every day would check on the old man, bring him groceries, take away laundry, etc. Part of the volunteers’ duties included “socializing” — but that aspect was dropped as soon as it became evident that Harry Winters had no desire to chat with anybody.

Just what did Harry Winters’ freedom mean to him after all those years? I found out, unfortunately, one hot August night about six weeks after his reinstatement in his old home. I had been into town and decided to take a shortcut past the old Winters place on the way back. As I approached the house, I noted that it was unlighted except for a faint glow from the cellar windows. I recalled rumors I had heard in town. Nothing in the house ever seemed disturbed, they said — even the bed not slept in. Could it be that after all these years Harry Winters only felt comfortable sleeping in his cage and returned there each night?

Stealthily I crept up to a cellar window and peered in. In the dim light I could make out the outlines of the cage. Next to it was the rocking chair that Miriam Winters had used, but it was a moment before I realized that the hulking shape nearby was Harry Winters himself. He was sitting on the floor with his chin resting on one of the rocker’s arms. There was a familiarity about the scene which I could not at first place, but then it came to me. In my grandfather’s house there was a large painting in one of the bedrooms called The Shepherd’s Chief Mourner. It showed a large dog mournfully resting his chin on the draped coffin of a deceased shepherd, his master. The sudden analogy between that painting and the tableau below sent a shaft of pain to my heart. I could not stand to see more, but as I prepared to rise, the mourning hulk suddenly moved. The shaggy head raised up, the throat arched, the mouth opened, and from it rose a cry of such utter anguish, such complete despair, that my hands flew instinctively to my ears to shut it out. But I could not shut it out. Again and again it came — a cry of longing — the longing of a tame bear for its gentle keeper.

I ran then. Even as I had once fled over a sun-choked meadow, now I flew over a moon-silvered one. This time, too, I was chased by horror, but this time the horror was of my own making and I knew I would never be able to outrun it.

They found Harry Winters the next morning in his cage — dead. His heart had given out, they said.

It was after my grandfather and I went downstate that I began to have the nightmares, though. Perhaps I cried out during them, because one morning at breakfast Grandfather remarked quietly, “I hope you don’t feel guilty about reporting Miriam Winters, son. It had to be done.”

I nodded my head. “Yes, I know...”

My lack of conviction must have shown, for my grandfather became emphatic. “It’s time we laid this ghost away,” he said. “You and I are going to the state mental hospital to see Miriam Winters.”

Although I went reluctantly, the visit turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Miriam was delighted to have company and chatted cheerfully. She had heard that the Bear was dead, which was sad, but then, she added philosophically, he was pretty old. She knew that if he became sick again she would have to put him to sleep permanently anyway.

My grandfather looked at me pointedly at this revelation. Surely I needed no more proof that we had done the right thing in reporting the Winters affair. From his standpoint the visit was a success, but in a way it backfired, for Miriam was a kindly, warmhearted woman. She said I made her think of her son Bobby, and she hoped I’d come to see her again. To my own amazement I found myself promising I would.

And I did, many times. Was it my way of assuaging the faint guilt I still felt over disrupting the Winters couple’s strangely compatible life together? I don’t know, but I do know that in chatting with her I gradually learned the full story of the events leading to Harry Winters’ imprisonment.

I went to my grandfather. “She shouldn’t be in a mental institution,” I complained. “She’s not really insane, except of course about the ‘Bear,’ and he probably caused that insanity, beating her and all...”

My grandfather stared at me and sighed. “That ghost is still not laid, hmmm?” He thought a moment. “The county home in Wilton Falls is a well-run place. I’ll see what I can do.”

Miriam was transferred to the county home three weeks later, and I felt more at peace than I had for a long time. I still went to see her, but less frequently, as it was a longer run up to Wilton Falls. Then I went away to college — later began working — got married — moved farther away. Visits became replaced by letters, letters by a Christmas card, and now...

I looked down at the letter in my hand. Now there would not even be any need for that. Miriam Winters had paid her debt to society, and presumably society was satisfied. I now knew that, for my part, could I but relive that long-ago summer day, this time I would stare into the almost-blind eyes of Harry Winters and go quietly on my way.