( susan and her girt friends had tortured themselves deliciously with the stories they had gleaned from their elders ; amy rawcliffe had a log playhouse in her back yard and they would lock themselves in and sit in the dark , scaring each other about the marsten house , which gained its proper noun status for all time even before hitler invaded poland , and repeating their elders ' stories with as many grisly embellishments as their minds could conceive .