Part 24

All of this... all of this beauty is gone from the world, without a trace. I'm the only one still living who's seen it... and I can't just let it all slip away.
      I put my sketchbook away, and take out my camera, wrapping the strap around my wrist to keep it close. I make a slow circuit of the clearing, pushing aside plants now and again, searching to find the ruins of this place, trying to get some sense of its outlines. There are a few low piles of bricks, some still stacked neatly, but no more than three feet of a wall are together anywhere. The stone foundations are visible in a few places, but the plant growth covers nearly all of it, and the long years of plant growth followed by decay means there's probably a good bit that's actually buried now. Nothing is left of the interior walls – I suppose they were constructed of wood, though the outside walls were brick. I do find a rectangle of brick and stone against one wall, that I suspect may have been a fireplace or chimney. But there's nothing more concrete than that... even the outline of the house's exterior walls, I'm largely guessing at. I keep hoping for another flash of vision, but there's nothing... I suppose the historical society may have a photo somewhere, so I'd at least be able to see what the house looked like from outside. Still... the amount of artistry in the entryway alone! I'd love so much to just walk through that house once, just once...
      But all the wishing I can do gives me no glimpses of that long-gone mansion. So far as I can tell, the visions are purely at random. It's like playing a computer game, you can click on some objects and make them move around or pick them up or whatever, but most of them are just background, inanimate. No way to know which it is until you pass over the object – though with a mouse on a computer screen, it's a little less time-consuming than walking over every inch of ground on this estate.
      There's a corner of a wall still standing off to the left. The bricks are only a few feet high, the mortar loose and crumbling away at the edges of the wall fragments, but apparently there's just enough shade and moisture for ferns to want to live in the little nook. I walk closer, taking a few pictures, smiling at the vivid contrast between the smooth, bright green leaves and the dingy, mottled black and rust of the rough bricks, all made the sharper by the wetness left by the rain. Then I spot a cluster of forget-me-nots, their tiny faces of luminous sky blue brightening the dark corner. They're such sweet little things... they're one of my favorite flowers, I think, and they're the perfect shade of pale blue. And the name is so evocative... and so fitting for this place, come to think of it.
      “I promise you'll not be forgotten...”
      I take some more pictures – the tiny blue petals set against the rough, weary brick make for some stunning photos. I don't know if I could draw it or not, the grittiness of the wet brick's texture is more than I think I could do with pastels. Oil or something maybe, were I better at it. Maybe a dense enough charcoal would do it...
      I straighten up, and take a long look around. I want so desperately to find more here... but there's just nothing. Even in my own head, the idea of finding some small trinket – a locket, a kid's toy, an old photograph – in this place, sounds pretty far-fetched. It's been a hundred years, a whole century. Teenagers have probably come out here to get drunk and make bonfires in some corner I haven't gotten to yet. Those who knew Cora, I'm sure, would have walked these grounds after she had left, in memory, or to continue admiring the flowers. Young couples walked here together, little kids have undoubtedly come here to play and make forts, hell, hunters have probably crossed this ground after deer or turkeys or something. Anything that could be found has surely already been found, and if not, it's got to be buried under several inches of plant debris and soil.
      I sigh. Irrational though it was, it's still a hope I hate to part with. I want to find some token of the lives that were here... all those intruders in between the Masons and myself hardly exist in my mind, they were only transient presences, and they left no mark on this place. But Cora, her children, their father, and the enigmatic couple who built the place... those are the ones who are still here, who will always be here.
      I walk slowly through the house's vague outlines, my mind warring between trying to imagine the house, and trying not to imagine it, knowing that what I picture has so little evidence that it's almost definitely wrong, and may skew any other clues I find. But I think back to the glimpse I had of the entryway, of the warm rich colors, of the artistic eye that arranged the thousand small touches... What would the dining room have looked like? The parlor? The master bedroom? I'm sure they had some sort of room for entertaining in, the parlor would have done for social calls, but I'm sure there was... maybe there wasn't a room for larger gatherings, if it was built by a honeymooning couple who made no contact at all with the outside. I'd forgotten that, I was thinking only of Cora, with a finger in every social pie in town. Was the entryway I saw hers, or that other young woman's..? My gut tells me it was the original entryway, as first envisioned by a new bride – that wasn't a room set up to have kids running up and down it. And the artistry was the same that I keep finding in the garden... the colors of the drapes against the warm wall, the vivid colors in the paintings, were chosen with the same sensibility I've seen in the gardens. But I wonder... did the Masons find the place empty and vacant, the walls bare and furniture gone, or did the other couple leave everything here, taking only themselves to their unknown destination?
      I stumble on something, and barely catch my balance – clinging to my camera for dear life, terrified of damaging it. But I manage to not fall or hurt the camera, and start poking around to see what it was I tripped over. Another rectangle of brick and stone – probably a fireplace? I've never actually lived in a house with a fireplace, but I'd imagine this is about the right size. What would have been the central part where the fire was placed is actually still fairly flat, though grass and small plants have invaded the crevices between the bricks in places. I sit down tentatively on the brick base, but the bricks don't shift at all – they must go down a few layers deep? Or maybe it's a layer of stone beneath them... there's a bit of a hole a few feet away, and I can see some unusually flat rock at the bottom of it, past the plants that are trying to cover it up. I scan the grasses and small bushes around me, trying to see where the lines of the room would have been... and I do see something, at least, it seems like there's a bit of a depression on the ground on the left, almost a straight line where the plants aren't growing. That must have been a wall... I look around to try to place this room in the larger space of the house's outline. I'm not quite in a corner... though I am beside an outer wall, the fireplace would have butted up against it. Makes sense, I suppose it would have been a pain to run a brick chimney up through floors of the house, it would have been easier to build it into a side wall. There must have been a window, looking outside...
      I shiver, wondering suddenly if this was the library. The library Mr. Mason met his death in... but no, I don't think it is. I know my intuition has absolutely no basis, but... hell, the visions have no real basis either, and if I can see them, why can't I have some weird inexplicable sense about what room this was, a hundred years ago?
      I feel like... I don't know, like it was a bedroom. It feels like a small room – though I can only make out where two walls were. I smile wryly, closing my eyes, and imagining into place a child's bed, covered in a thick quilt, gauzy curtains at the window, stuffed animals everywhere... Then I laugh, shaking my head. That's not at all what the room would have been like, good freaking God. I'm sure society women worked on quilts too, but, there's no way Cora would have used the rough patchwork thing I was imagining. And the stuffed animals would have been pretty different from the ones I grew up with... hell, even some of the ones my dad had as a kid, that are still sitting around my grandparents' house, I find really, really creepy looking. Would these kids even have had stuffed animals? Teddy bears didn't come in until, what, a little after 1900? Evelyn would have had dolls, of course, like the one she had with her... Clara?
      But when I open my eyes... I open them to see what can only be a toy box, though it's made of some gorgeous reddish-brown wood, intricately carved. The lid is open though, and I can see colorful wooden blocks, some tin soldiers... and something that looks like a little felt stuffed elephant. Guess I was wrong there, but I don't dwell on the thought – quickly, I look around the room, not knowing how long I'll have here.
      The walls are papered in a vivid aqua blue and bright sunflower gold – and though the images are cluttered and busy at first glance, after a moment I begin to see the intricate patterns of stylized flowers and vines, and detailed birds in light fuchsia darting among them. I'm taken aback by the vividness of the colors – but I've only ever seen hundred year-old interiors in their faded, worn-out and discolored old age. The wardrobe is of the same color wood as the toy box, and the carvings on it seem even more intricate. There's too much detail to take it all in at a glance, but I get an impression of wild animals, rampant lions and rearing horses and things.