The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“People still search the woods for the remains of lost children.”

This phrase is repeated three times in the novel. It connects directly to Cropsey and therefore to The Dual Nature of Imagination. The “lost children” are both the child victims of Eddie King on the missing posters Sage sees, and the children in Willowbrook who are lost to themselves and their families due to the neglect and abuse in the facility.

“An escaped mental patient was not hunting children and dragging them back to the tunnels beneath the ruins of the old tuberculosis hospital to sacrifice them for Satan. It was just easier to believe in the boogeyman than to acknowledge that there were so many evil people in the world.”

This passage highlights The Dual Nature of Imagination, as Sage rejects her fears even though they are partially accurate. The final sentence is one of the novel’s key insights: that real-world horror is worse than fiction.

“But his eyes were cold and calm. Secret-hiding eyes. Sage knew that pictures, just like people, could be deceiving: one moment in time captured on film, everyone looking happy and perfect when the camera clicked—then a minute later, bickering and stomping out of the room. Or yelling and screaming and hitting.”

The description of the threat in Alan’s eyes relates to the theme of Deceptive Appearances. Alan’s ability to keep Rosemary’s existence hidden from her sister for years shows his cold-hearted nature and his lack of concern about his stepdaughters. The sentence fragment “secret-hiding eyes” emphasizes the importance of eyes as a revelation of character, which foreshadows Sage’s detailed attention to the eyes of other people throughout the novel.