Miss Scott

we walked three miles in the country in the dark down the lonely roads and past the deep swamp too far away from home to be intimate with, to the nearly deserted farmhouse whose family was all dead or gone but for three: our country school teacher and her brother and sister we were ushered inside the door creaked all i remember is the living room, dimly lit in faded greys and yellows to our left, sat the thin grey-haired sister rocking and laughing quietly to herself the whole time to the right, stood the brother – small white-haired man wearing worn-out bib overalls – silently leaning against the door frame to the kitchen miss scott bustled past him and brought a plate of poisoned cookies fresh from the oven, and we had to eat them knowing we would soon die after a forever visit, we escaped to continue our trick-or-treating we never died, and i’m not sure miss scott did, either it must have been at least twenty years later that i told my children this story as we drove to their grandparents’ and we passed that very place eyeing the old farm skeptically, the kids gasped as they saw a wraith-like old woman step up onto the porch