Doll With the Opal Eyes
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Roslyn Stratton had come close to dying before she was a year old. A particularly nasty case of flu, her mother had always said. But if that was all it had been, why had her father, within days of her recovery, sold his successful business in Fowler and moved the family to another town nearly four hundred miles away? And why had her mother always avoided answering questions about their life in Fowler? Or about the oddly shaped opal that Roslyn had had as long as she could remember?

Now, more than twenty years after that first brush with death, Roslyn has returned to Fowler, not to search out the truth about her past but simply to be a librarian. But her past, she soon realizes, seems determined to search her out. First there is the opal. Too many people are interested in it. Frieda Hannerman, the dollmaker. Horace Macklin, the doctor who had attended Rosalyn during her illness. Benjamin Blassingrame, one of the richest men in the county. Then there is the photo of the fiery-eyed doll that seems to have come directly from Roslyn's own nightmares...

Soon she finds herself drawn into a maze of questions, with each answer leading only to another question -- until the final answer, which seems to lead only to death.

The sound seemed to come from only inches away, and it was all she could do to keep from gasping aloud. It was the door to her bedroom. Slowly, it was opening, a darker shadow in a room of shadows.

As she watched, every muscle tense, another shadow, a bulky shadow, appeared and stood motionless in the doorway.

For what seemed like an eternity the new shadow stood silently, and Roslyn was sure that whoever it was could hear her own heart pounding, or, at the very least, the uneven rasp of her breath.

Then the shadow moved. It detached itself from the doorway and moved the half dozen feet to the bureau and stopped.

There was a faint click and a muffled glow appeared, almost hidden by the bulk of the intruder. Then silence, and the shadowy form shifted as the glow moved slowly across the top of the bureau.

Still Roslyn held herself quiet, not even daring to shift her body, though she knew that such total motionlessness was itself unnatural.

The form straightened and stood motionless and the light vanished. Again the form was an indistinct shadow, only a few feet away.

Then it was turning -- turning slowly toward the bed!
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