Part 21

[look out, it's a long one - wanted to get caught up, and a bit ahead, today. but there are older people bantering, so it's all good.]


      Sitting down to draw that night, I think over the day's events, and all the sudden it hits me---
      I touched her. Evelyn's hand was solid in mine, she saw me, her father and the dog all saw me. The dog was nervous, but aside from that... it was as if I were really there, and supposed to be there, like I was seen as I would normally be, not like a ghost or anything. Evelyn was certainly no ghost. I'm tempted to call Anna, but from the way she reacted to my initial story, I don't think she has any experience with something like this. With seeing ghosts, sensing spirits, yes, but actually physically touching things, touching people, that have been gone a hundred years?
      Why didn't I try taking a photo? I'd feel less crazy if I had a photo of that past garden. I'd know this whole damn thing wasn't in my head... though something in my gut tells me it wasn't, that it was as real as the world I walk around in every day.
      Groaning, I let my face fall into my hands, shaking my head. What the hell is going on? I'm not just having visions, I'm having full sensory hallucinations... but I've never had dreams this clear, no character I've imagined has ever been this sharp in my mind. I can see Evelyn's face as clearly as I can see my little sister's.
      I've been trying to keep myself from thinking about all this, from moment to moment I change my mind on whether I'm crazy or there's a logical explanation, if this is all real or not... I've got to take a photo. Then I'll be sure it's real.
      ...how it can be real, I haven't the faintest idea. But if it is, then it is. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes, I think? And Holmes wasn't anything but rational and logical – far more so than I am, anyway, which is what matters here.
      I brace my arms against the floor and lean back, letting my head fall back. I stare steadily at the ceiling. I am not crazy. I'm an artist, which means I'm freaking weird at times, but, I'm not crazy. My ear is still there, and I feel no absolutely no imperative to hack it off. There's some explanation behind all this, and while it may be totally bizarre, and something other people – or even I – would think totally absurd, it's happening, so it's real.
      The explanation doesn't matter, it's going to keep happening, so I may as well get all I can from it. Who needs musty old library records, when you can talk to the family themselves? I grin at myself, shaking my head and turning my attention back to my drawing. I'll still research the hell out of this place, I have far more questions than these quick glimpses can answer... But I'll gladly take the images it's given me.

      I poke around the website for the college in town. I remember my art history professor's name, but I don't think I ever needed to check his office hours. The guy was full of fascinating stories, but he knew so damned much, I would never have felt worthy of talking to him. That, and I never had anything to ask him about – I just tried my hardest to keep awake in the two-hour lecture periods, full of slide projections. Slides always make me conk out, no matter what the subject. (Power Points go double – they don't even have the retro appeal factor in their favor. And people always try to make them “fancy” and “artsy” and it's just freaking painful.)
      His hours aren't posted there, but the number for his office is. Summer sessions are running right now, and I know art history's a popular requirement to try to get out of the way in the summer. I'm not a fan of calling people, but maybe I'll just get a voice mail. I'm home from work, so maybe he's done for the day as well.
      “Hello. You have reached the office of Dr. Reiff, head of the art history department at the University of North Carolina. I'm not in the office right now, so please leave a message. If you would prefer to speak with me directly, my office hours for the summer session are Tuesday from two until five, and Friday from eleven until three. Thank you.” This is followed by a beep, and I suddenly panic, realizing I haven't decided if I want to actually leave a message or not. I have no idea what to say. I hang up. I'll drop by his office hours next time I'm free, I'm not going to try making an appointment via an answering machine. I'm still close enough to a student that I can get away with just dropping in unannounced.
      But checking my work schedule, it's going to be a whole two weeks before I'm free in either of those time frames. Damn it. But that reminds me... am I free Tuesday night? I am! I can jump on someone at the historical society's meeting, and pick their brains about the Masons. If anyone's heard stories about people seeing things in the garden, I'm sure they will have.
      For all the running around I'm having to do, for all the people this project is making me talk to, and going out and doing things outside my cozy little comfort zone... I'm feeling oddly happy. I think it's a really, really good thing, to have some to focus on, outside of work and chores. I don't know if... no, I guess I do feel like my life has a little more purpose now. Who else can draw this garden long-gone? Who else can capture images of these people who might otherwise be forgotten?
      ...and who else would have saved Evelyn from a beating today? I shudder at the thought, I can't help it, she may be a hundred years gone but the fear in her eyes is still fresh in my mind.
      I'm serving some sort of purpose, being involved in the garden like this... and whatever end it might be toward, even if all I get from it is these drawings, and the meeting with Evelyn, that alone has already made my life all the richer.

      Tuesday night, I walk into the library a little after 5:30. Should I approach someone before the meeting, or after? I kind of feel like after would be more natural, but, they're probably a very social little bunch, and they probably sit around chatting about their families after the meetings, maybe go meet somewhere for coffee or something. I'll ask someone beforehand.
      I wait until there's no-one in line at the counter, then approach the lone librarian at a desk by the door. “Hi... Do you know where the historical society usually meets? I just wanted to ask one of them a question, when they come in.”
      She beams. “Anyone in particular?”
      “Uhm... no, I guess not, I don't actually know any of them, I just...”
      “Well, you know one now! I'm the secretary, actually. Mary Sueter.”
      I can't help but smile back, she's so effusive. “Kimberly Bennett. ...do you want me to wait until the meeting, or..?”
      “Lordy, you think I'm busy around here?” She laughs, gesturing at the empty counter in front of her. “Nothing but the ghosts of cranky dead authors around here in the summertime, when there's not a story hour for the kids or something. The historical society generally treats this place as their club house. Cheaper than renting out the Moose Lodge every couple of weeks, and more convenient for me, anyway.”
      She's somewhere around middle-age, maybe a bit older than my mom, with bits of gray in her light brown hair. It is, indeed, tucked back in a neat librarian bun, but she's not wearing glasses or a blouse with a pencil skirt. She's wearing a light yellow short-sleeved sweater, and a rather artsy necklace of hand-worked glass, with big splotches of bright colors. Her eyes are bright and interested, and her smile is one of those that you can't help but return.
      “What was it that you wanted to know? And call me Mary, I hate standing on ceremony.”
      “Kimber, then,” I respond with a smile. “I actually want to know about the old Mason place.”
      Her eyes widen a bit, knowingly. “So do a lot of people... you know a little about it already, I presume?”
      I nod. “I've heard the basic story, that there was a gorgeous garden when the Masons lived there, but a fire pretty much destroyed the property, and killed Mr. Mason. And that Mr. Mason had said his brother had built the place, but no-one knew who that brother actually was, Mr. Mason kind of appeared out of nowhere.”
      “A very mysterious man... and his brother, even more so. Do you know, for all the public attention that estate drew at the time, we don't have a single picture of Mr. Mason? A few of his wife, Cora, and their children, but none of him. And no visual record of his brother and wife, either. Absolutely none.”
      The memory of the man and young woman, curled close around each other beside the fountain, blankets my thoughts. No photos... nothing by which to see them is left in this world, apart from what I carry in my memory.
      “Jerry knows more about the place than anyone, but it's mostly a technical knowledge – what the house looked like, the layout of the gardens, how much the place was worth before it burned, things like that. He's not all that big on gossip – but I am.” She grins and her eyes sparkle. “I never thought I was much of a gossip, but over the years, I've learned that I am downright nosy. Especially when it comes to people's stories. Eventually, I realized that that means I am, in fact, a gossip. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.”
      Mary laughs, and I join in.
      “But I'm talking your ear off and you're stuck standing there. Let's go over to the table there, the others will be here before long, and they can fill in any gaps in my story.”
      Following her to a long table in the middle of the room, I ask, a little timidly, if I won't be interrupting their meeting.
      “Interrupting!” She laughs gaily. “Dearie, you'll be the highlight of our month. There's nothing we old bookworms love more than showing off all the things we know, and it's so rare that anyone as young as you is actually a willing participant. Are you still at the college?”
      I shake my head – I hear this a lot. I'm learning that it's pretty rare for most people to stick around town after they graduate, unless they grew up here, in which case the whole town already knows them. “A few years out, actually.”
      “History major?”
      “Art, with a concentration in drawing.”
      “Oh! That just makes you more interesting. What piqued your interest in the Masons?”
      “I actually live near there, in the apartments on Watercress? I was walking around in the woods one day, and found the fence around the Mason property... Eventually I found a way in, and started walking around.” I decide to keep quiet on the whole vision-thing, at least for now. Instinct tells me Mary wouldn't judge me poorly if I told her, but... I'm still pretty wary of talking about it. “Even though it's so overgrown, there are so many traces of how beautiful it used to be.”
      She nods, her eyes going a little distant. “Isn't it a sweet kind of sad place? You can just feel the stories lurking there.”
      I smile happily. “Exactly.”
      “Well, that's plenty of reason to be nosy about it, then! Let me tell you what I know... oh, and here's Susan! Susan! This is Kimber. She's an artist and wants to know all about the Mason place.”
      “Well isn't that nice! Are you doing paintings of it? It used to be such a pretty place. We have a few photos of it somewhere in the town records, you'll have to come by the office and see them sometime. We're right in town hall, there's someone there most afternoons.”
      “Doing a few drawings, actually... so I'd absolutely love to see the photos.”
      “Now, where to start... We really don't know a thing about the original owners. Can't even find the original deed to the property, if you can believe it! It was probably lost in the fire, but there should have been some kind of copy in the town records, only we've never turned one up.”
      “Could have settled the place before the town was built,” Susan puts in.
      “Well, yes, the town wasn't really a proper town until about ten years before the Masons we know about moved in. We have no idea how long the house was there before that, though to judge by the gardens, it was easily decades.”
      “When people first started filtering in, nobody was exactly worrying about paperwork,” a male voice breaks in, as a man with scant white hair pulls up a chair on the opposite side of the table. “Far enough from the capital that it was pretty much wilderness being settled, the bureaucracy didn't move out here until there were enough people to make bossing around worthwhile.”
      “Why, hello John! You're here awfully early.”
      “The wife was cleaning. I thought it would be prudent to relocate before I got recruited.”
      “Well, this is Kimber, John, and we're telling her about the Masons.”
      “Always a good story. You know more of the gossip than anybody, Mary, I'll let you continue.”
      “Why thank you. So, we have no idea what the original owners were like. All that ever got around town was that it was a man and his young wife, and no-one ever saw them or learned their names. It doesn't seem like anybody even knew the place was there until the Masons turned up and moved in. The town was pretty small then, and their place was really out of the way – no real road was ever built too close to it, I have a feeling Mr. Mason made sure of that.”
      “Such a recluse, that man was,” Susan clucks.
      “Now don't jump ahead of me, Susan! I'll get to him in due time. For all that no-one ever saw the man and his young wife, there were still plenty of rumors that went around town later on. Mr. Mason was always making his wife angry by contradicting her claims to being responsible for the splendidness of the garden. She tried to take the credit for it, and he always made some snide comment about how it had already been there, just so, when they moved in. His brother did it all, created this little Eden for his much-beloved wife.”
      “Didn't she die young?”
      “Well, that's one of the rumors. Tuberculosis, cholera, take your pick of the major diseases of the time, I've heard they all killed her. She was always a frail little thing to begin with, though very beautiful. I've also heard that he killed her himself. She went into town one night, desperate for companionship, and he caught another man walking her home, killed them both in a jealous rage.”
      “No record of that one in any of the old newspapers,” John puts in.
      “I know, but it's such a delicious story, I just had to mention it,” Mary responds with a twinkle. “I've also heard that she ran off on him, never to be seen again, and he killed himself in despair.”
      “No record of that, either.”
      “I don't care if there's a record or not! It's been passed down in the oral traditions of the town, so it still counts for something,” Mary snaps, though her eyes are still sparkling.
      “But it's my job to point out the accuracy of things against the known written record,” John responds calmly, obviously used to playing this game with her.
      “Yes of course... but the record is never half so interesting. The most realistic story is that they simply moved away. There seems to have been a good deal of money in the Mason family, I'm sure the brother had as much at his disposal as Mr. Mason did. And he must have been quite young at the time, so I'm sure the young couple just flitted about as the whim took them. There's really no evidence at all about their time here, apart from Mr. Mason's insistence that they were the ones who built the mansion and its gardens. How much was theirs, and how much were later additions by the Mason family, no-one knows.”
      “I have the impression that Mrs. Mason, Cora, did quite a bit,” Susan puts in. “She was quite the woman in the town's social circles.”
      “She was indeed, and she was so terribly proud of those gardens... But that family moved in somewhere around the late 1880s, the date on that isn't quite clear, either.”
      “There's a notice in one of the town papers that mentions Mrs. Cora in 1889, in connection with one of the local church mission groups.”
      “Thank you, John. Mr. Mason was incredibly reclusive, as I'm sure you're realizing. Mrs. Mason insisted he make appearances from time to time, but I think he purposely made her always regret it, by his rudeness and snide comments to and about her.”
      “And Cora did so much good for the town!” Susan joins in.
      “I saw a photo of her in that book about the town, it listed her being in all sorts of organizations,” I put in timidly.
      “Dan Reed's book? Wonderful thing, isn't it? He ransacked our entire archive, and quite a few ancient attics around the county. Couldn't fit everything, of course, but it's still a wonderful compilation, really piqued local interest in the town's history.” Mary beams.
      “That reminds me, Dan can't make it tonight, his kid's got a soccer game,” John notes.
      “They moved out here for health reasons, the youngest son was a really frail thing. Not quite clear what the issue was, but it kept him bed-ridden much of the time.”
      “Could have been something with his lungs, could have been something with his legs... Medicine was in a pretty sad state still at that point. Mostly consisted of leeches, and getting 'good air' into people. Miasma took the blame for many illnesses.”
      “Miasma?” I know how the word is generally used, but I have no idea how it connects to disease.
      John re-adjusts in his seat, sitting up a little straighter and clearing his throat. “One of the leading medical theories for centuries. It basically blamed all illness on 'miasma', which was really nothing more than 'bad air'.”
      “Pollution,” Mary puts in.
      “Evil spirits,” Susan replies.
      “A little of both, really,” John chuckles. “Leeches are a little more familiar to you? Then you know they were used to draw out the 'bad' blood, which was thought to cause disease. Miasma was pretty much the same principle, it was this atmosphere of disease that was thought to permeate cities mostly, but also pervade any area of illness. Today, we stand back when someone sneezes, envisioning germs filling the air around them. Back then, they had no concept of the germs, but an invisible cloud would settle over an area, and the bad air would cause illness.”
      “That's why you had so much interest in seaside vacations and things at the time,” Mary adds. “And there was some truth in it – getting away from the pollution of the crowded, newly industrializing cities obviously made a lot of people feel better.”
      “Like in Little Women, when they take Beth to the seaside?” I ask, feeling a little childish.
      But Mary grins kindly. “Exactly. And Beth felt better while there, but it wasn't any kind of lasting effect, poor girl. That book makes me cry to this day.”
      Susan sniffs. “You're such a sap, Mary Sueter.”
      “But I'm an endearing sort of sap. What sort of world would it be, if there was no-one around to cry at sad stories?”
      “One without sappy stories being written in it,” John retorts gruffly.
      The rest of us laugh, and John's eyes twinkle.
      “Oh, he's just an old crank,” Mary says to me, rolling her eyes. “Ignore him. Were you finished, John?”
      “Guess I am now,” he says, rolling his eyes in return. “Continue your clucking, women.”
      Mary huffs at that, then returns to her story anyway. I realize that I'm enjoying this meeting immensely.
      “There was a daughter, and an older son as well. They were seen a little more, though still not often. Cora didn't exactly bring them along on social calls when they were young, and the fire happened before the daughter had turned sixteen.”
      John raises an eyebrow. “We don't have any birth record for the daughter, are you sure of her age?”
      “No, but we'd have social mentions of her debut in society if she'd turned sixteen here,” Mary retorts. “So there. I think the daughter was in the middle – again, there's not much to go on, besides a few vague mentions in social columns of the newspaper. The family doesn't come up very often in correspondence of the time, though there are a few mentions in some of the diaries we've found. It seems the children had both nurses and tutors to watch them and teach them, so they really had very little contact with the town.”
      “The daughter was a pretty little thing though, isn't there a photo in the archives, of her in the garden?” Susan asks, idly paging through an issue of Better Homes and Gardens she's pulled from a nearby shelf.
      “There is,” John affirms. “Derick Reese took it, it's in the collection we have of his work. Quite a nice photo, actually, the man was expert at creative portraiture.”