the gingerbread shutters were closed , but as an imaginative boy ( as mark petrie was now ) , you could fancy that one of the shutters was being folded back ( as indeed , one of them seemed to be folding back now ) by a long white hand , and then a pallid face would be looking out at you , grinning with long teeth , inviting you into this house beyond the world in its slow and endless fantasy-land of false snow , where time was a myth .