Because I don't want to, the Rev. Lowe thinks petulantly. This whatever it is - is
nothing I asked for. I wasn't bitten by a wolf or cursed by a gypsy. It just . . .



happened. I picked some flowers for the vases in the church vestry one day last
November. Up by that pretty little cemetery on Sunshine Hill. I never saw such
flowers before . . . and they were dead before I could get back to town. They turned
black, every one. Perhaps that was when it started to happen. No reason to think
so, exactly . . . but I do.

November