After that blizzard, Ezra completely lost his mind. He was forcibly committed to Ravenscroft Psychiatric Hospital, but it didn't take long for him to escape. From then on, a deranged man began wandering around the scorched ruins of the Vance estate on the outskirts of Kingsport.
He wore a tattered, thin shirt year-round, tightly clutching a piece of broken wood he had scavenged to use as an easel. Every day before dawn, he would sit beneath the blackened, crumbling walls. Using his twisted right hand, he would make wild, erratic strokes in the empty air.
He muttered the same words over and over again. "Rosalind, I don't want children anymore. I only want you. Rosalind, take a look at my painting, doesn't it look beautiful?"
Stray dogs passing by would bark viciously at him, yet he never
