Howard and Grace

I recently read a horrible story about two children abandoned by their parents in the woods. It makes me sick. The father, Greg Cutter, had called authorities to report his wife had died in her sleep, and that his two children were missing. Search and Rescue teams equipped with
search dogs and thermal imaging equipment teamed with local fire departments,
and combed a twenty square mile area for a week until the search was called off. The community was devastated. Local search teams were formed and continued the search efforts
with no success. Church services included the children in their prayers and
shrines were erected in various parts of the town. After a month, a large funeral
was held Howard and Grace Cutter in the park, with most of the town attending.
Five weeks after they were reported missing, the children showed up at their fathers’
house. The news spread through the town like fire. The Sheriff learned about it,
and went to the house to question the children. They told him that their mother
had abandoned them in the woods not once, but two times, and the father had
been made to go along with her plot. They said she drank a lot of whiskey and
beat their father. Greg had then burst into tears and told the sheriff about
how controlling his wife had been, and how they had no money for food, only
whiskey, and how she had called him a sissy and made him go along with leaving
them by a fire, telling them they would return. The children then confirmed
this and said they had found their way back to the house the first night only
because Howard had dropped white pebbles as the parents led them into the
woods. By these they found their way back. The mother had been furious when
they returned, and locked them in their rooms and got very drunk and bellowed
curses around the house. The second night they had been unable to find their
way home because the crumbs from the éclair Howard had dropped had been eaten
by the birds. They were lost in the woods for three days and stumbling with
starvation when a nice old lady saved them, and fed them and gave them water. They
had stayed there in her clean beds, regaining their strength while she read
them stories and kept a nice fire burning. After that she was always giving
them treats and being nice so that they would stay there with her. They had
thought her to be a lonely old lady, so they had stayed a while out of
compassion. It turned out she was a member of a satanic cult who believed that
power was gained by eating children. She had locked Howard in a cage and made Grace
feed him all sorts of fatty foods like Doritos and spam, and she would strip
down to a g-string and sing and do all sorts of wild dances around his cage.
One day she told Grace to light the big oven in the back of the house, it was
time to eat the boy. She told Grace she would have to participate in the meal.
The girl thought about this and then told the lady that she couldn’t figure out
how to light it. It was an electric start. So they old lady crawled in to look
at the switch mechanism and Grace shut the door on her, and turned on the oven.
The old lady was confirmed dead. She then she let her brother out of the cage
and they easily found their way home in the light of day. Except they had
almost been stuck when they had come to a large expanse of water, but they had
seen a duck swimming nearby, so they sang him a song so he would help them. He
ferried them across one at a time. Grace had wanted them to both jump on, but
Howard told her that was silly: the duck was clearly too small for both of
them. Other than that their trip back was uneventful.