Dressing quickly in another pair of sweats borrowed from Sam, I grabbed my notebook and headed downstairs for breakfast. Rummaging through the fridge, I saw a new bag of spinach, a fresh container of strawberries, and Greek yogurt. It looked like Annie, Sam’s housekeeper and good friend to us both, had gone shopping. I hadn’t even heard her this morning. I tossed what I needed in the blender, adding a banana and one of the nutrient packets Dr. Rhea had recommended I use—to make sure I was getting a ‘complete diet’—from the bowl on the counter, and looked around for Elmer.
“Elmer?” I called softly, feeling foolish. “You here?”
Nothing.
At a bit of a loss, I finished making my smoothie, quickly cleaned up my mess, and walked to the sliding glass door at the back of the eat-in kitchen. The back of Sam’s house faced the back of mine. Smiling ruefully, I thought back to how we had celebrated when I surprised her with the news that Steven and I managed to snag the lot for a great price. The building process was harrowing, requiring constant decisions—which, of course, spurred numerous arguments with Steven over everything from the layout of the kitchen to the brand of paint used on the walls. Sam helped keep me sane through it all.
Shaking my head, I knew I would have to go back to the house soon, for clothes and my own makeup, if nothing else. I sipped my breakfast, turning back toward the kitchen—only to come face-to-face with Elmer. I yelped and sucked a chunk of my smoothie down my windpipe.
“What. Were. You. Thinking?” I choked out when I was finally able to speak again.
“Sorry Roxanne. I didn’t mean to scare you, but you seemed pretty lost in your thoughts there. I just figured I would let you find your way back in your own time,” he did look truly remorseful.
“Give me a minute to let my heart slow back down.”
“Take your time,” he grinned sheepishly. “I thought I would show you something you might find interesting,” he paused. “Something that might help you and . . .”
“And?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about yesterday. And about my grandkids.”
His grandkids? What did they have to do with this?
“Um, okay,” I felt more than a little lost here.
“You asked if any of my kids had the Sight. None of them did, but—I think one of them was like Birdie.”
“Like Birdie?” Maybe it was still too early for me to have an intelligent conversation. My mind was scrambling to remember as many details as possible about his wife. Then it hit me. “Oh! Like with the Vampire? Like the stuff she could sense that you couldn’t? Like that?”
He nodded. “Her name is Eleanor. We called her Ellie for short. She was our youngest child and was just like her mother in almost every way. She would be almost sixty by now.”
Sixty. I remembered when that sounded so old. Crap, I remembered when forty sounded ancient!
“What makes you think she was like Birdie? What exactly could she do?”
“Just how she looked at the world. She noticed things that others didn’t. She noticed some things before her mother did, even. We were never sure, mind you—we only suspected. This area doesn’t have much in the way of Others. That’s pretty much why my family settled here.”
“Really?” That made me perk right up. “What about the witch that got the ghost? The one you told me about yesterday?”
“Oh, that was maybe fifty years ago, or so. I haven’t seen a witch around here in a long time. Not that I get out much to look these days, mind you. But you still need to be aware of what’s around you.”
Relief flooded me. Maybe I would be able to sleep soundly again, after all. “I can do that. Now what were you going to show me?”
“Come on. We have to go upstairs. I’ll meet you up there.” He winked out, reappearing at the top of the staircase.
I huffed and puffed up the stairs, following him down the wide hall. I really needed more time on the treadmill. At the end was a door that I was pretty sure closed off the stairs leading up to the attic. I had never been up there—heck, I don’t know if Sam had ever been up there.
“Are you going to open it? It’s not as though I can,” Elmer said with amusement.
“Oh! Yes, I can do that.” I only hesitated a moment before turning the knob. I expected the door to creak open loudly, but it opened smoothly and silently. The stairs were narrow, inclining sharply. I could see light at the top, filtering in through one of the transom windows that were spaced evenly under the front and back of the roofline of the house. Funny, I had never really thought about those windows before, though I had noticed them. I guess I figured they were decorative.
I also noticed all the cobwebs and frowned. They looked fairly abandoned but one could never be too sure. Freaking freeloaders.
“What was that, Roxanne?” Elmer asked.
Oops! Did I say that out loud? “Nothing,” I mumbled. “It’s just that I don’t really like spiders. When was the last time anyone came up here? Doesn’t Annie, er, Sam’s housekeeper, do any of . . . this?” I fluttered my hands at the staircase.
“The last time I recollect was when the contractors were here working on the remodel. Before that, it was probably when my kids moved some stuff up here before the house was sold. They came through and freshened the paint and redid the floors. I’ve never seen Annie come up here.”
“Why would they move anything to the attic if they were going to sell the house?”
“I don’t think they had planned to sell it outside the family originally. One of the grands was going to move in at one point but then had some financial problems and decided he couldn’t afford the place. So it was put up on the market. Birdie and I had really hoped it would stay in the family, you know?” His expression was so sad, I automatically reached over to hug him. Of course when my hand passed through his shoulder, I withdrew my frozen fingers fast.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” he chuckled. “I know it’s not pleasant. Done it once or a dozen times myself, back when.”
“It’s all right. My fault. So, maybe I should grab a broom or something? You know, for the . . . ,” I waved at the webbing.
“You're okay with seeing ghosts, but you’re afraid of spiders?” He seemed baffled.
“I’m not afraid! I just . . . don’t like them,” I insisted. Steeling myself, I started up the stairs, one hand in front of me to keep stray webs away from my face. The other hand kept a death grip on the rail while I carefully watched my feet all the way up. At the top I looked up and let out a squeaky scream when Elmer appeared in front of me.
“Elmer, if you keep that up, I’m going to be joining you in the ghost world when I have a heart attack! Or break my neck falling down these stairs!”
He shook his head at me but seemed distracted as he looked around.
Blowing my hair out of my face and brushing more cobwebs away, I turned and followed his gaze. There were quite a few boxes and totes up here, all neatly stacked against the far wall. I made my way into the room, ducking away from the sloped ceiling. The space looked as though it was divided into two areas. There was a door at the far end but, judging by the size of this main space, it must lead to a much smaller room.
Elmer started toward the door. Following close behind, I looked over at the boxes as we passed them. All were neatly labeled.
“Hey Elmer? Are all of these boxes from before? They don’t look like anything of Sam’s. And there are an awful lot of them.”
“Yes, Roxanne. This is all mine from before I passed. I don’t know how my children managed to forget about it up here. I guess they didn’t want to be bothered with any of it.”
Feeling awful for him, I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. I gave him a moment before I gingerly skirted around him to the door. “I take it that whatever you want to show me is in there?”
He took one last look at the boxes as he stopped behind me, careful not to make physical contact. Bracing myself, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. The r
oom was much darker than the main area. I fumbled for a switch on the wall, finding nothing but a few cobwebs. I quickly withdrew my hand, wiping it on my pants.
“It’s one of those pull cord types. It’s in the middle of the room.”
I reached forward, cringing inside as I felt around for a hanging cord. Finding it, I pulled. Breathing a sigh of relief at the instant illumination—I really hadn’t expected the light to work after this long—I stepped further into the room. It was considerably smaller than either of the bedrooms on the second level and contained only two plastic totes and a large wooden trunk. I looked back at Elmer.
“Well?”
“The trunk. It’s not locked. What you need should be toward the bottom.”
Flipping the latch on the trunk, I lifted it carefully. Though the trunk looked old, it had obviously been well cared for. There was a gorgeous quilt on top, hiding everything underneath from view. I ran my fingers over it, marveling at the beautiful colors. The patches of fabric were soft with tiny precise stitching. I gently lifted it out, surprised at the hefty weight, and laid it on top of the totes stacked to the side.
“Birdie’s mother made that quilt for our wedding. Her family didn’t have much money, so she never had a hope chest. I bought this trunk for her a few years after we were married and we used it for memories.”
“That’s so sweet. And the quilt is simply . . . amazing.”
I glanced back at him when he didn’t respond. He just nodded at the trunk but I thought his eyes looked a bit teary. Turning back to the task at hand, I began removing more, setting it all on the floor next to me. Several thick envelopes, a few framed pictures, a huge bible, four smaller blankets that looked handmade . . .
“Those were our children’s baby blankets. Birdie knitted each one. Not a one of them wanted to take theirs with them when they left home.”
I paused at one of the pictures. A much younger Elmer, dressed in a suit, stood tall and proud beside a petite woman in a formal white dress.
“Our wedding picture,” he explained.
“She’s beautiful. And you were quite the looker yourself!”
He guffawed at that, looking over my shoulder at the photo. “Oh, just look at my Birdie! She was the prettiest girl I ever met. When she smiled at me, I would darn near forget my own name.”
I set the picture aside on top of the quilt. Peering down into the trunk now that several of the more bulky items were gone, I went back to work. A small wooden box came out next. The lid was decorated with beautiful designs and scrollwork. He said nothing about it so I kept going. In the very bottom was a small stack of books. They looked like—diaries, maybe? Or perhaps journals of some sort. They also looked old.
“Those are for you, Roxanne. For now, anyway. They belonged to my Grandmam. Some she wrote, some were written before her. Those were written by the women in my family.”
“Y-You want me to have these?”
“Yes. I think you’ll need them. They’ll be able to tell you more about, well, everything, I guess. They’re not doing anybody any good just sitting up here forgotten.
“I never read all of them, myself. Just bits and pieces. I wanted the kids to read them, so they would know what all was out there, but they were never interested. Even if they couldn’t See what I could, I figured that if they at least knew about it, maybe they could teach their kids or grandkids. Just in case any of them got the Sight, you know? I would like for you to do me a favor though, if you would.”
“Of course! Anything.” What was I thinking? I wasn’t. I had no idea if I would be able to do what he was going to ask or what it would entail.
“When you’re done reading these, would you make sure my youngest gets them? My Ellie? And I think I would like Samantha to have the quilt. She’s been good to this house, and to you. I think she would like it.”
“Um, yeah. Sure, I can do that. And Sam will go nuts for this quilt! But, what about the rest of your things? Don’t you want your kids to have any of this? Especially the pictures?”
He lifted a shoulder, shaking his head sadly, “They knew that trunk was important. And they knew what was in it. Ask them if you’d like, I’ll leave that up to you and Samantha.”
“All right. But, I do have a question. How am I supposed to track down Eleanor or any of the rest of your kids?”
“Didn’t you used to work for Samantha’s law office?”
“Technically, I still do, kind of.”
“And didn’t you ever have to locate people?”
I smacked my forehead with my palm, feeling stupid. Maybe I can blame lack of sleep, head trauma, and the fact that I’ve been thrown into the deep end of the pool with no life preserver. At the pool analogy, my stomach flipped in warning. Nope, I definitely wasn’t ready to go there yet.
“How about I just give you their names and enough information to make it easy for you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Now he was making fun of me. But I wouldn’t turn down what he was offering.
I gathered up the books from the bottom of the trunk and then began carefully placing everything else back into it. As I picked up the beautiful little wooden box, Elmer spoke up again.
“You keep that. Its contents will no doubt come in handy for you at some point,” he said, almost hesitantly.
“Oh. Can I open it up now?”
At his nod, I lifted the lid. There were several pendants and rings, a bracelet that appeared to be made out of leather and possibly hair, and a dried white flower. Picking up the flower carefully, afraid it would disintegrate, I studied it. It might have been a tiny rosebud but I wasn’t positive. I placed it gently back in the box and turned over one of the pendants. Startled, I almost dropped the entire box when I saw the opalescent stone front. It looked a lot like something my grandmother used to wear. I looked back up at Elmer.
“What is all this?”
“It belonged to my Grandmam. My cousin Rosemary gave it to me just before she passed and went into the light.”
“I think I’ve seen a pendant kind of like this before. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have one just like it at my house.”
“Have you ever worn it?” he asked, watching me curiously.
“No. It’s just in with a bunch of other things that came from my parent’s estate when they passed away. I don’t remember ever seeing my mother wear it, though. Why?”
He was silent, still staring at me. I fidgeted nervously.
“There aren’t many families that have these,” he said finally.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s not worry about it for now, Roxie. How ‘bout we call it a day.”
I nodded, worried anyway, of course.
Making sure the trunk was shut tight again, I turned out the light and headed out into the main attic area. I stopped at one of the stacks of totes.
“What about whatever’s in these?”
Elmer walked over and peered at the front of one.
“The label says glassware.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Captain Obvious! I just meant, is there anything you want done with these or anyone you want them to go to?”
He shrugged, “Do whatever you want, or whatever Sam sees fit, with all of it. It belongs to her now. Some of those probably have the sets of Depression Glass Birdie collected. I think they might even be worth a little money these days. My children didn’t want any of it or they would have taken it.”
“Elmer, maybe there was a reason they didn’t take any of it. Sometimes things happen or life just gets ahead of us. I’ll talk to Sam about this stuff. I’m sure she would at least want to offer it to your kids. By your reasoning, this stuff,” I held up the armful of journals and the wooden box, “belongs to her, as well.”
He nodded, “Yes, you’re right. But none of that stuff is going to do her a bit of good. You? It could very well save your life. I’ll leave it up to you what you want to do with it.” And with that he was gone.
Sighing, I took o
ne last look around and headed back down the stairs. Well, I thought to myself, at least I was getting some cardio in.
Chapter 8
The next day flew by quickly. I only saw Elmer and Jake once, sitting on the steps to the back deck. Elmer seemed lost in thought and, when I tried to talk to him, he suggested I read through the journals, reserving any questions I had until after I was done. That was kind of out-of-character for him, but I thought perhaps the trip to the attic had upset him, so I gave him the space he seemed to need.
The journals were disappointing to say the least. They were barely readable, a jumbled mish-mash of notes with no apparent order. It was almost as if different people had randomly chosen places to scribble down their thoughts, stopping and starting again, without the proper use of punctuation. Many of the notes were little more than accountings of what had happened to whom, not really detailing much. It was quite confusing. A handful of the entries even appeared to be in some other language.
The smallest of the journals consisted only of hand-made drawings of what appeared to be the contents of the wooden box, one per page, with odd notes penciled in all around them, but the majority of the pages were blank. The etched details on the wooden box matched the ones drawn on the cover of the journal. Between the drawings and the matched details, I figured the two must belong together as a set.
The most detailed drawing was of a pendant from Elmer’s little wooden box. It stood out from the rest as I flipped through the pages. I tried to make out the writing scattered randomly around it but, though the characters appeared neatly written, they were either so tiny I would need a magnifying glass to read them or this wasn’t a familiar language. Maybe it was time to reconsider the reading glasses I had been putting off for over a year now?
The wooden box lay tucked in the nightstand drawer. I took it out several times, opening it and looking at the jewelry more closely as I paged through the matching journal. There was a very unique leather bracelet which had etchings of a variety of different animals burned into it, all around the band. There was hair woven around the band in a tight braid. It seemed to consist of a mix of different colors and textures, so I would guess that there was more than just one type of hair used. I flipped back through the journal with the drawings looking for it, but I didn’t see anything like it in there.
SEEING DEAD THINGS: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Novel (Roxie’s Midlife Adventures Book 1) Page 5
