Part 6

      Another two weeks slip by, busy with work and keeping up house and, you know, feeding myself occasionally. There just never seems to be enough time to go into town and do research... and I want to have a whole day to dedicate to it, I have no idea how busy the town hall is, or even where I'm going to need to go.
      But finally, I find a day off, when it's not raining, and I have food in my refrigerator, and I make my way into town. I did manage to find the hours they're open on their website, and I have a good whole afternoon ahead of me.
      The woman at the desk is very friendly – and she's the only other person in the building besides myself. I feel shy, my voice echoing in the large, empty space. It's a pretty, old building, maybe 1800s. Wood floors with about an inch of ancient varnish, wood paneling and warm white stucco walls. A little chilly, too, though I barely needed my spring jacket on the walk over.
      She directs me down a hallway and up a flight of stairs, where I find an older man at a desk surrounded by maps. Like really surrounded by maps. Piles on the desk, mounted on the walls, falling out of drawers. Most of them have lines all over the place, but I haven't the faintest idea which would be the one I need...
      “What can I help you with today?” He's super-friendly, too. But I suppose they don't get a whole lot of visitors in here.
      I've thought over this conversation a hundred times, but still haven't come up with a good way to explain my errand. “Well... I live over on Watercress, in the apartments---”
      That's all that gets out of my mouth before he tugs a satellite map from a seemingly random location in the pile to his left, and lays it on top of the pile directly in front of him. His finger moves without hesitation to what, I realize a second or two later, is the apartment block. He looks up at me expectantly, and I can't help but grin, impressed. “Yeah, that's it! ...these woods back here,” I continue, pointing to the dark green splotch on the map. “I was walking around in them, and I found a fence... I was just wondering if there was a house back there, maybe a road or something I didn't know about...” I trail off, as my eyes scan the map, seeing just what I'd expected – no roads within at least a mile of where I'd been.
      “Well... no, there's no roads there, as you can see. Not until the woods hit Central Ave to the east, and Walnut up north-west. But a house... You know, I don't really know. That much land... and it doesn't look too low...” He reaches for a drawer, and pulls out something like a topographical map.
      “I ran into a bit of swampy area,” I volunteer, feeling pretty pathetic about the contribution, knowing that he can probably read these maps like most people read books, getting far more information from the maps than anyone could by standing in the actual location.
      “Yes... this area here, will be swampy, especially at this time of year... But here, the ground gets higher once you're any distance from that creek.”
      “Does the creek have a name?” I hadn't even thought about that before. “Or is it too small?”
      “Oh, I'm sure it has some name... the town's been here long enough that everything in it has a name, even if it's an unofficial one. There's no name marked on these maps, but...”
      He rolls his chair off to his right, spinning around to haul open a large drawer. He rifles through a moment, then returns to the desk with a pile of mostly older maps. He scans through the first couple, setting them aside as he finishes, then finally settles on a slightly yellowed map, with handwritten names on it. “The historical society did a survey back in the late '70s, going around and asking all the homeowners the names of places. Unofficial names as well as the official ones, just for local color, you know, 'that's the old Williams place', or 'that's Charley's field', 'Lover's Lane', 'the Hill Road'... some of the roads on the edge of town had six different names, depending on who you asked.”
      “I guess that would happen over time... Do the places still keep the names of the people who owned it, even after other people move in?”
      He laughs. “You know, it's funny, but usually they do. I've actually had some old ladies tell me things like, 'oh, you know John Wright, he lives in the old Carter place'.”
      I laugh too – and I'm glad to hear it, the name of my mysterious millionaire might not be so hard to track down.
      “Ah, there we are! That creek has a couple of names... looks like it was mostly called Spring Creek. Going by the topography, I'm guessing it flows out from the woods, its source must be... right about here,” he decides, pointing out the end of the thin blue line.
      I nod. “It definitely flows out of the woods, yeah, I was mostly walking along it the other day.”
      “So there's a spring somewhere in there, must have been used by someone living nearby at one point in time. But it's had a few other names too... “Douglas Creek”, it flows through the old Douglas farmstead farther down... One of the local families called it “Spook's Stream”, no mention of why... “Mill Creek” near town, there was a mill built alongside it at one time. Didn't last long, it's really not a big enough body of water to power anything. Probably was for awhile, before Silver Creek was diverted toward the old textile mill, to power that...” He trails off, then looks up apologetically. “I'm sorry, you didn't come in for a history lesson, I'm sure.”
      I smile warmly back, delighted at how well he knows the area. “Actually, I really did... I'm not from the area originally, I came here for college and stayed on. So I don't know a whole lot about the town, and... well, really, while I was on my walk the other day, I saw this really pretty old fence in the woods, and it really piqued my curiosity.”
      He perks up at this. “That must be the old Mason property.”
      I lean forward too, peering at the map. “So there's a house in there? Is anyone still living there?”
      “Oh, there was a house, but it burned down... oh, maybe a century ago? It was a beautiful place in its day, people came from miles away to see the gardens...”
      The gardens. The Grecian boy stumbling in the reeds, the tiles and marble...
      “An odd story around it, actually... The Masons moved in when they settled in town. The lady of the house brought them out of the city, worried about her children's health, and they bought this tract of land a little out of the way. Her husband was a reclusive man, lots of old family money I think. But the house... they didn't build the house. He said his brother had built it some years before, and planted the gardens... But no-one in town had ever heard of the brother. I suppose he must have been reclusive too, family similarity. Mrs. Mason claimed all kinds of credit for the gardens and was always showing them off, and she got infuriated whenever he told people it had been his brother. Nobody could ever prove one side or the other, of course... And not too long later, before the children had grown up and left the house, there was a catastrophic fire, destroyed the entire house. Mr. Mason was killed, but his family got out all right. They moved away, of course, but the property... I think it's still in their name. I know the house was never rebuilt, and the gardens must be all overgrown by now. It was so out of the way, even then, I don't think there was ever a real road out there, besides the dirt path from Central out to the house.”
      “Is that road still there?”
      He rifles through a few maps, and shakes his head. “Doesn't seem to be, no. No use for it in the last fifty years at least. It's not visible on any of the maps, and it was certainly never paved, so I'm sure it's overgrown by now.”
      “Is there any way to find out who owns the land now? ...I'd just hate to be trespassing, if I go on another walk,” I add quickly – and pretty lamely.
      He grins. “Don't you worry about it, nobody would mind someone just walking on through. The only person that minds that is Alex Miller, on the other side of town, over by the fire hall? And he has signs posted on every other tree, you'd never have to second-guess that one.”
      I giggle, feeling a little more at ease. It really is a friendly town, I'm relieved to get the reassurance.
      “I'm pretty sure it's still in the Mason's name, though they haven't lived here in decades...” He pulls out a map with thousands of oddly contorted rectangles. “This is the latest zoning map, showing all the property lines in the county.” He runs his finger over it, then consults a binder he pulls from somewhere in his desk. “Let's see... yes, it's still owned by the Mason family. Jeremy Mason is the current owner, he's a few generations down from the Masons who lived here. Currently lives way out in Nevada – I think your hiking path is safe,” he concludes with a smile.
      “Thank you so, so much, for all your help. I wasn't expecting to find out half this much, I really appreciate it.”
      “Well I'm glad to have helped! It's not often I get company in here, as I'm sure you can imagine. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
      I turn over everything in my mind for a moment, considering. “Do you have any idea where that road used to be, that led from Central to the Mason place?”
      “Hmm...” He scans the area of the woods on the map with all the unofficial names on it. “There's a dotted line here, noted as 'Birch Lane', but I'm not sure if that would be it. There's a small road here, leading back to someone's cabin, but it doesn't run across the Mason property at all.” He turns his chair around and goes rummaging in a bottom drawer, lifting one large sheet of paper after another. He emerges with a vast sheet of yellow paper, covered in faded ink. “Oldest map I have in the office,” he says with pride. “The museum keeps trying to steal it from me, but I've already given them the rest of my old maps. I have copies somewhere, but they're not very good – photocopies of paper and ink this old tend to miss a lot of information.”
      He spreads out the map carefully, tenderly smoothing out the edges. Pulling a magnifying glass from his desk, he examines the woods closely. “Here...” he murmurs, his fingertip light on the old paper. “There's a small note of about where the house stood...”
      I lean in close, staring at the spot, trying to match up the map on the paper to the map in my head of the area. “Is that the road, there? Curving around a little north before it goes east?”
      He nods thoughtfully. “It must be, though it doesn't start until a little distance from the house. I would imagine there was a carriage house or something similar at the edge of the gardens, and that might be where the road starts.”