Element Two. The Face on the Doorknocker

Pulling her red, rough woolen scarf closer still to her neck, she shivered and hesitantly made her way up the steps to the door of the Whitaker home. The roses were all frozen, the grass had gone brown ... Marcia, poor Marcia, was the last little bit of color that lived and breathed on this gloomy eve.

With hands numb from the chill, she located the door, deep within the stone archway that enclosed it. She vaguely felt the rough wood, barely sensed the splinters becoming one with her bluish fingers, fingers which moved only out of desperation in order to find something to hold on to.

Marcia's digits brushed over the door knocker, an antique monstrosity of brass and tarnish. Looking up dizzily, she blinked those uncomprehending emerald orbs of hers at what appeared to be not the family crest, but more of ... more of ... she leapt backwards as best she could, nearly falling down the steps behind her in an undignified mess of limbs, skin, and yellow coat. She was staring at a face that stared back, mute and silent ... a bystander would have been hard-pressed to say which face looked more astonished and horrified. Was it Marcia, or this strange spirit that decided to possess the door of a home that was nearly always silent except for the clacking of keys ...?

But there was no one, and Marcia was alone with this visage she could not recognize.

Shaken, she rose to her feet, and by closing her eyes, proceeded to ignore this strange being on the doorknocker. Again she felt the door with her transparent hands, which were more chubby than graceful, searching this time with a purpose - for the doorknob. When she felt the round come into her grasp, she twisted and practically dashed in, shutting the door and thus the gawking, pupil-less eyes out. It's not my problem, she told herself. Some idiot did that probably to scare me. I don't care. I don't care. I ... don't ... care. She took great pains to emphasize each of those three words in her mind. She repeated them over and over to herself as she took to the darkened flight of stairs, now feeling feverish and hot.