The Ghost of Winn Peterson

43. Winn

10 January

I have much to write, and far too little time to do it. My excursions in the cold have proven my undoing, and if I'm to save any of these notes for whoever might find use of them in the future, I'll need to get scribbling quickly. How unfortunate that the cold makes pitiful use of one's fingers!

After my final meeting with the dying Reverend Barnes, I promised myself I would visit my house and unearth for good the bones of the past residents. How peculiarly unlucky of me, to have been settled into the one home in all of England where the doctor would send his wives off to die! I felt quite keenly for Atticus, who had been unfortunate enough to dig the graves that nourished the soil my dear Evie had dug around in. It was a most peculiar situation all around, I should say. Something sinister guides our actions, and I cannot help but wonder what God wants any of us to know by placing us in these horrible positions at these horrible times.

I'm losing track of my own thoughts! The garden: Lord DeCourt was kind enough to escort me to my home, though I suspect he joined partially to see how I was living before I came into the company of Evelyn and the doctor. The first sight of my small home gave him a start once we drove up to its meagre lawn, since demolished and covered by the severe storms. Just barely visible were the fences Evelyn had hammered in place around the garden, lone metal bars that shivered and knocked together with each gust of wind. Digging would surely be impossible in such conditions, and I gave up at once the idea of finding any remains. Perhaps I could show the Lord my attic, instead, and reveal the presence of the bed where another woman had once lived, rejected by the very man who'd doomed her to death in the first place.

As the Lord creaked his way upstairs (very nearly making more noise than the poor roof on the smaller third floor), I rummaged through the kitchen in the pitiful hope of a small meal, and found that the rats had been graciously avoiding the frost in the comforts of my pantry. A sea of squeaks and screams erupted from the flour bags as we all fled at our respective presences and I soon gave up the idea of a meal, as well. That which didn't currently possess a cold rodent had been chewed through, anyway.

Concerned for what was left in my house (how very long it felt, since I had slept in its comforting arms), I sneezed my way around to inspect the damage the cold and the rats had inflicted upon it. The couch by the window was no longer a reasonable place to relax and write. Nothing was safe from the rats, it seemed! Stuffing had come leaking out of the arms, taken to whatever lair the rats hid in, and the cushions, the cushions!

Leaving my couch for another day, I traipsed upstairs to find the Lord staring strangely at the desk in the attic. Snow had collapsed part of the roof, and he looked an angel in the falling light, his own pale hair and skin glimmering in his impromptu shower. Upon hearing my entering the room, he tapped his cane on the ground and sighed.

"You must be drawn to tragedy as a moth to flame, Ms. Peterson!"

"What prompts you to say so?" I ducked into the room and shivered, looking sadly at the desk. A small clump of snow had begun to grow where a candle once stood. The drawer Evie and I had pulled out so long ago was also filled with the cold, white fluff of the sky, drowning anything we may have missed.

"Everywhere you've the misfortune of moving to in the country, someone's dying, dead, or well on their way." He pulled me close and pat my head, reminding me very much of my father. I leaned into him and began to sniffle. How very different this would all be if I was home, if I had never left and simply hacked my way to death before inflicting this poor country with my presence. As we stood there, I was struck with the idea that we were perhaps gravestones ourselves, the only markers of lives past, lives lived and lost. What a curious pair of graves we were! The Lord leaned on his cane, bones creaking and knocking together in the violence of the cold; me, sneezing and sniffling against his arm, only my hair a natural barrier against the frost. I could only hope, as any more evidence revealing the true nature of those we had tangled ourselves up in was lost to time and weather, that we did not leave behind any horrid mysteries for others to solve, that we didn't spread the curse of becoming gravestones to anyone else.