Frankenplot Has Ended! Solution Announced!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your wonderful stories written during this Frankenplot event! There were SO many quality submissions! I think that you all have succeeded at making this Halloween very special!

Many thanks to all of Frankenplot's contributors:

marandina

Jane Hyphen

celticman

Penny4athought

Makis

GlosKat

Ewan

airyfairy

luigi_pagano

w.w.j.abercrombie

JuliaB

drhilarius

Thank you so very much!

Now, for the solution! Here was the original Frankenplot:

"A dying woman makes her husband promise that he will not marry
again for as long as their daughter is alive, and the household
keeps that promise the way it keeps its silver: polished,
displayed, never used. Years later a girl is handed over to the
house in settlement of a debt, pushed forward by her own mother,
who asks only that this one be taken instead of her. She is set
to sorting the papers of a dead man while his grand new house
goes up unfinished in the yard, its rooms measured out for a
family that has not arrived. The daughter drowns during her
fourth birthday party. The doctor writes that it was natural, and
everyone who was at the table agrees that they saw nothing.

Afterwards the widow keeps the girl close, dresses her in what
the dead woman wore, calls her by the dead woman's name, and the
girl begins to answer to it. On the last night the girl carries a
candle up to the widow's room and finds the bed made, the dress
laid flat across it, and her own hands, holding the light, gone
thin and spotted and old."

If you guessed the following, you were correct! Announce yourselves in the comments, if you wish...

1. The Other House by Henry James (1896)
2. A Mercy by Toni Morrison (2008)
3. Aura by Carlos Fuentes (1962)

But, wait! There's more!

You didn't really think you were getting off that easy, did you? I have taken the liberty of creating a NEW FRANKENPLOT using three of your submissions. The authors are listed above, go back and read them all. See if you can figure out which three submissions I used to create this Frankenplot:

"A woman drives north up the M1 in the fog with a carousel horse belted into the passenger seat. It was alive when they left London. She's fairly sure it still is, because it keeps nodding.

The carousel it came from is being put back together in a market town outside Sheffield. Every piece has to be in place by midnight, or the ride won't recognise itself. The only help she can find is the Thursday shift from a charity shop. One volunteer is a widower who holds the donated dresses a little too long. The other is the woman behind the counter, who grew up on one egg a week and has never been frightened of anything in her life.

That's a problem, because the carousel feeds on fear, and the volunteers have none to give it.

By dawn the ride is turning in the empty square, and the horse is back on its pole with a new face. The counter woman is holding up a hat that came off the last rider. She says it smells bad."

Good Luck Everyone! Thank You Again and Happy Halloween!

- Jay (SoulFire77)