Mary had a little lamb/ its fleece was white as snow/ and everywhere that Mary went/ the lamb was sure to go/ It followed her to school one day/ which was against the rule/ It made the children laugh and play/ to see a lamb at school…
Unfortunately, the administration was not as amused, and Mary was expelled due to the Zero Tolerance policy for farm animals. The poor young Mary was forced out into the working world. There things did not improve. Mary soon found that most business owners and bosses were completely intolerant of lambs trailing their employees throughout the office . Mary bounced from one job to another. From one failure to another.
Locking up the lamb seemed to do no good. Mary would put several padlocks on the barn door, but somehow the lamb always got out. It always knew where she was.There was the lamb in the grocery store. Here it came to the beauty parlor. Always and ever this lamb followed her.
Of course Mary’s love life went just as poorly. Most men were none too pleased to find a lamb bleating and frolicking during the more intimate moments. The few that didn’t mind…well Mary would have none of that!
Mary grew desperate. She purchased a gun, but deep inside she knew she could never use it on the lamb. It was so innocent. It’s fleece was white as snow, after all. “Get away from me!” she would shout. “I can’t stand you. For the love of God… GO!!” But the lamb just looked at her with needy, pleading eyes.
Mary begged, borrowed and stole money so that she could buy her way away from this awful creature. Then, one night as the lamb slept peacefully at the foot of her bed, she crept quietly out the door. Down the street was her car, with a full tank of gas. Through the heavy raining night Mary drove blindly down the interstate. Soon she was in the next county, then in the next state. Exhaustion overcame Mary but she knew she had to keep going. Up ahead was a bus station. Mary bought a ticket for the other side of the country, and settled back into sleep.
Days later Mary was on a steamship travelling to some remote islands in the Pacific. There she hired a pilot to fly her off over the waters in his private plane. The pilot noticed, of course, the paranoid and mad look in her eyes. But he said nothing. She had the money–what else mattered?
As the plane flew high over the scattered islands Mary spied a single lighthouse perced on the edge of the farthest key. Indeed this island was barely more than a rock that the lighthouse seemed to cling to like a desparate tree. Mary strapped her parachute tightly and quickly jumped from the door as the pilot protested. She landed in the water in the heavy waves and surf. With willful effort she pulled herself ashore.
The door to the old lighthouse stood open. Mary slowly climbed the circling spiral of stairs higher and higher until she reached the uppermost room. In a state of near exhaustion she fell to the floor against the far wall. She kicked the wooden upstairs door closed tightly behind her. From her bag Mary pulled the tiny handgun she had carried with her all this way. In its chamber were six bullets. There Mary sat and waited.
It was around 3 in the morning when she heard the old door creak slowly open at the base of the dark lighthouse. Mary let out a series of sobs as she heard the click click click of four feet climbing the staircase. The winding clicking echo grew louder and louder, and then stopped outside the warped oaken door of the upper room. Then the door creaked open… slowly…
It’s hard to be certain what Mary thought she saw before she flung herself onto the rocks below. The lighthouse keeper who had arrived late to turn on the beam hadn’t made it upstairs ahead of his dog in time to even see her. All he had heard was Mary yell as she fell from above. “She sounded terrified, but at the same time free” is what he later told the authorities. It was the nature of his dog to run ahead of him up the stairs, he said. Maybe the dog had frightened her.
Mary’s psychiatrist talked for a long time with the parents about their poor girl. He had tried to get Mary to see that there was no lamb. That there had never been a lamb. But Mary was convinced otherwise. All her problems were from this “lamb”. Always caused by this “lamb”. "It followed me to school, " she would cry. “It made the children laugh.”
Mary’s death was ruled a suicide. And neither the police, nor the psychiatrist, nor the family noticed the single thread of fresh wool clutched tightly still in her dead cold hand as the body was carried away.
For those of you who enjoyed this story, I recommend the Hollywood version from 1989. When she heard this story, Kirstie Alley demanded it be made into a film. You all know it. It’s called Look! Ewe’s Stalking!"