For now Samantha dropped little Molly off with Phyllis. Always a sullen child, Phyllis had grown into a sullen young woman. "I'm not a babysitter," she groused.
"I'm sure there's plenty Molly can help with," Samantha said. She felt Molly press against her leg in fear.
"Yeah, right," Phyllis said. Phyllis snorted as she bent down to look Molly in the eye. "Try not to break anything."
"It'll be all right, Molly," Samantha said when Molly didn't move. "Be a big girl and help Aunt Phyllis."
Molly nodded and let go of Samantha's leg. Samantha kissed the little girl on the forehead and then left her with Phyllis to prepare supplies for the voyage. Samantha waited for Phyllis to slam the door shut before she started out on her own errand.
After strapping on her snowshoes and finding an empty bag, Samantha set out for Pryde's hut deep in the forest. The trip was difficult, requiring her to stop three times to rest and twice more to extricate herself from a deep patch of snow. She checked the snow for any footprints that might indicate any of Pryde's dogs in the area, but no one had seen any in four years.
Pryde's hut was invisible in the snow except for the doorway, which had somehow missed being drifted over. Samantha opened the front door to the mud hut and found everything unchanged. She opened the cellar door next to the bed and climbed down the steps into the basement. Here she found a grim memorial in the clothes scattered around the floor. All of the garments had once belonged to women Pryde had killed over three hundred fifty years. Samantha stepped gingerly over the clothes, not wanting to disturb them.
She went into Pryde's trophy room. At one time he'd kept piles of bones from his victims in this room along with pictures taken from them. All of these now lay in the ground a short distance away, the ghosts of his evil laid to rest forever.
A sick feeling came to her stomach as she knelt down in front of the safe. She put a hand to the necklace she wore around her neck, a half of heart engraved with the first half of the words, "Best Friends Forever." Pryde had taken this necklace off her as a trophy. She didn't know what had become of the necklace's other half.
Samantha spun the combination to the safe-the numbers still burned into her mind-and yanked the door open. Inside the safe, gold and silver treasures glittered. She reached out to scoop them up, but then hesitated. These necklaces, bracelets, and broaches had all belonged to Pryde's victims. By taking them now, was she any better than him?