And we're back.

Picture it: April 2002. Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden's former residence, which has been converted into a bed and breakfast. Rob and I drove up to spend his birthday night on the very spot Lizzie's stepmother was murdered, a victim of the infamous "forty whacks." (She was in the guest bedroom, making the bed, at the time.) Rob awakened early the next morning to the groggy sensation that Goblin was walking around on top of the covers by his feet. Not mentioning this to me, he went into the bathroom and left me to rest for a few more minutes. While he was gone, I had the very distinct feeling that someone was pressing on the sheets on the part of the bed where Rob had been (I was turned toward the other side of the bed). The overall effect was as if someone had either sat on top of the sheets that covered me, or else had tugged them taut and had tucked them under the mattress with me still underneath. They pressed on me, held me down, and I could not move.

This was not in the least sinister, I must point out. As I came slowly awake, it seemed to me as if I had merely become tangled in the sheets. However, as Rob walked back into the room, I realized this was not so. In fact, he had left the sheet untucked and tossed halfway down the bed.

At breakfast (at which the establishment provides the same meal eaten by the Borden family on the morning of the murders), we learned that what we had experienced was common in that room. Lizzie's poor stepmother wanted only to finish making the bed, a task left eternally incomplete by the unfortunate intervention of an axe.