William Royden

The paper had been posted by the state police and provided a number to call with information, as well as the date the boy had last been seen.

The child's name was Daniel Cottrell, age nine.

The photograph was identical, absolutely identical, to the one fastened to the end of the wooden stick inside my grandfather's horse stable.

Because the size of the photo was also the same, one could easily surmise that the one taped to the wooden stick had, for whatever reason, been cut carefully from one of the state police flyers.

Walking closer to the house, we could begin to see into the windows.

The glass had long since been broken and removed.

Standing on my toes, I could see that while the exterior of the house had gone to seed, it was true what they said about the inside.

It was clean and untouched.

There was no graffiti, no vandalism.

The walls and floors were...

bear of even cobwebs it seemed like no one had ever dared enter i had to remind myself this was not a real house but the prop of some force beyond my understanding that had put it here to taunt us toward the end of our inspection of the property

I spotted something inside one of the rooms, something taped to the wall of what was probably Irwin Settle's bedroom.

The layout of the house suggested it.

The dusk shadows obscured this second exhibit, and my eyes could not make out what it was.

The camera failed to do so as well, no matter how I zoomed in past the window pane and into the room.

I got up on the air conditioning unit outside the bedroom window.

Standing on it, I had to lean way over to my left, balancing myself carefully, to get close enough to the window to set one elbow on it and push the camera into the room.

I got a very shaky shot of the object on the wall, and then jumped down.

Cording asked me what I had been looking at, and I told him it wasn't important.

He was satisfied with that, and then gestured for me to start walking again.