The Dollhouse

PROLOGUE

There was something evil about the hill. Even the early Indian tribes wouldn't go near it. It was haunted, their legends told them. Nothing grew there. No animls or birds were ever seen on the large rise of the land that stood like a diseased growth on the landscape.

Maybe that is why the first colonies who'd settled nearby built their gallows there and called it Hangman 's Hill, and buried the executed criminals had been hanged there. Murderers. Thieves. Kidnappers. Burt today was special. Today was the day they were executing a sorcerer---a man who practiced enchancements and black magic.

The town elders, grim-faced under their powdered white wigs, accompanied the sorcerer to the gallows where the hangman waited. The sorcerer didn't look wicked---or even dangerous. He looked old. Old and frail, with wispy white hair and pale, watery blue eyes.

He'd come to town one day out of nowhere, driving a gaily painted peddler's wagon. And in that shiny, colorful wagon was something very special for each and every one of his customers. It wasn't until. . . Afterward. . . That they found to their horror that the real price for their hearts' desire was more, much more, than they'd bargained for.

The hangman settled the heavy noose around the neck of the sorcerer.
The sorcerer smiled.

What happened next was something that would be debated and discussed in the village for many years to come. Some people claimed the sorcerer disappeared in a puff smoke. Others said that when he turned those pale-blue eyes on them, they went into a deep , hypnotic trance and were unable to remember later just what, exactly, had happened. Others said that this was all foolishness--- that the sorcerer died on tbe gallows jut like any other criminal and was buried in a deep, deep grave on
Hangman's Hill. . .