Home

What do I remember most vividly about summers at Aunt Wig's house? Besides the soul-sucking horrors from the old cemetery less than a mile up the road--that graveyard of ravenous ghouls that lay between us and civilization? Or the lake in front of the house: Lake Gunnygoogoo, shunned by even the most fanatical cryptozoologists, because of the reputed presence of UNGL, a monstrosity so foul that even the merest glimpse caused madness and death by imploding eyeballs? No. The thing that I recall most clearly--with such awful immediacy that even now, thirty years later, I still leap out of bed in a stark cold sweat, was the trap door in Aunt Wig's pantry. Don't get me wrong...I loved going to Aunt Wig's in the summer; she was the quintessential Fun Auntie, a superb cook and storyteller, with an encyclopedic knowledge of racy limericks ("Don't tell your Mom," she'd giggle, watching me roll on the floor in fits of epileptic mirth)...and she was tough as nails, which one had