The Ghost of Winn Peterson

8. Winn

29 August

Apologies a hundred times over for my poor updates! If this journal had feelings, I would know for certain they were those of a great depression and worry. I promise you, my little book of personal reflections, I am neither dead nor injured, and beg of you my utmost apologies!

Sensational personifications aside, I have been busy with not only my garden, but with writing. Evie has taken it upon herself to make her way inside my home at her discretion (which I see no issues with, as I had intended to invite a permanent guest regardless), and has used such oppourtunities to rearrange my cabinets, establish a small fence outside of the kitchen window where food is to grow, and relocate the homes of various ferns, flowers, and animal homes to the newly instated garden. She has been quite busy, and completely refused my help. "You will learn, hopefully sooner than later, that I require a project of solitude," she'd explained, waving a spade at me in an almost menacing manner. Had she not also been covered in dirt and a worm or two, I would have been almost worried. "You may not help, except to do something for yourself. Write, if you will! Let this be the time you pen a great many words under the watchful eye of this old house. Your thanks, it would seem!" The more she spoke to me, the more I felt a sense of ancient, odd wisdom in Evie. Almost every time she spoke after those first few days we knew each other words of seemingly random and timeless origin tumbled from her shapely lips. Give thanks to an old house? I was attached to inanimate objects as though they were friends, but it had never occurred to me to give thanks to a house before.

At any rate, I tried to write more of this meandering mess of a novel I'd begun before my move overseas, but in truth, I spent most of my time watching Evie work her magic from outside the window. Her hair would often come undone at the slightest movement, and she must have fought with it more than the actual earth during her visits. At least momentarily inspired, I found that the curling of each strand in the wind could have been used to describe the leaves of a particularly vine-laden tree. My spying was useful after all! I bent my head over my page and scribbled the simile, before finding myself at a standstill once more. How difficult this was! Eventually, the plot emerged in my wild draft, each one at least making the next vaguely easier to pen. Soon enough, the days would pass where I caught the fevre of invented characters, and Evie struggled and strove to erect something worthwhile in my garden. Six days after she'd originally come over and pondered about what could be planted she came into the kitchen, covered in mud and sporting a black eye. I would have asked, but she saw the questioning look in my eye and waved it off. Rising to pour her a cup of tea, I inquired how the garden was coming along.

"It's far from done," she began with a sigh and a smile. "Still, we'll have a proper home out of you yet!" The prospect of having a house, not in need of repairs, and decorated with my own food and vegetation, thrilled me. Had I not been absorbed in the arduous task of writing make-believe, I would have been more vocal in my excitement.

"I really should compensate you in more than tea for all of your help."

"Think not on it - your company is payment enough."

"Hardly as of late," I laughed, passing over her cup and toasting the air with my own. "I may as well have put up a bed in the grass for you." We laughed at this and peered over the kitchen window to inspect the progress, as though something had changed in the minutes it took Evie to wander inside. As though attempting to match our hesitation and sudden fear, the very sky thundered and rumbled, threatening yet another downpour of rain. Exchanging worrisome glances, we set down our cups and gazed fully at one another.

"There are aspects of this house you have yet to investigate, correct?"

"You are not mistaken."

"Have you enough candles to light our way for the evening?"