Time Well Spent as a Ghost

Chapter 15

I put the shelving and towels back in the closet and shut the door, making a mental note to think of an excuse to tell Myles if he asked about the exposed plaster. I had been excited at first, but when I copied the figure onto paper, it was just a grouping of lines, squares, and circles, and I couldn't make any sense of it. It looked more like a drawing a five-year-old would have made. But there had to be a connection between the flower drawn in the Bible and the carvings around the house. And were there any other daisies to find? Maybe the figure I'd copied down was just one piece of a larger puzzle. Or possibly this is all just nonsense and I'm reading way too much into these bits of information from more than a century ago. But what about the ghost? I couldn't get away from the feeling that she's waiting for something, that she was never going to just leave. If Sylvia Crickler Gettins lost her husband and son when she was only 28 and then died four years later, wasn't that the sort of experience that could leave a person with a restless spirit? Could she have killed herself out of grief or misery and the carvings were a sort of suicide note? In her weakened condition, she might have died of natural causes. Diseases like tuberculosis or scarlet fever were fatal in the 1850's. What was she trying to say and to who? It seemed as if she was trying to communicate information that she'd had to keep secret from her immediate family.

***

There are numerous species of Chamomile that grow in the northeast; small, white pedaled flowers with a yellow center and thin, light green leaves. They're from the Asteraceae family and some varieties grow wild while others are cultivated for medicinal use and for brewing herbal tea. I was guessing that this was the flower Sylvia had drawn. When we had first viewed the house in June, the border of the east side of the yard had been awash with a brightly colored chaos of swaying wildflowers.

***

Thanks to another advisory meeting, we'd had a late dinner. Myles and Cody were up in his room while I was at my laptop, finishing a glass of wine and determined to turn these vague bits of information into solid clues that were somehow connected. I powered down the computer and went into the kitchen, setting my glass on the table. As I turned to get the bottle of wine from the fridge, I noticed that the egg basket wasn't on the table. I looked in the living room, then walked back through the kitchen and snapped on the pantry light. Sure enough, it was sitting on the hutch. What the heck? Had Myles placed it out of the way when he was carrying dishes in from the dining room? Looking around, there didn't seem to be anything else out of place, so I picked up the basket and put it back on the kitchen table.

Wait a minute. I leaned against the sink and looked around. Assuming the ghost was Sylvia, what was she again trying to communicate about the pantry that I wasn't picking up on? Her response to my first attempt at communication ended with a piece of glass in my heel. How could I tell her to just rest in peace and leave us alone? I sat down with my sketchbook and drew a larger version of her chamomile flower with the small blossom. I tore it from the pad and set it on the hutch. Then, getting a glass canning jar from the basement, I filled it with a hand full of Cody's colored pencils and placed that next to the drawing. Making sure the back door was locked tight, I turned out the lights and went upstairs. I wasn't halfway up, though, when I heard a scraping sound coming from the kitchen. I retraced my steps and flipped on the pantry light. The low bench under the window had been pulled away from the wall on one side, and the jar of colored pencils was set there.

The drawing was gone.

I tried to get some sleep, thinking I'd work on this newest mystery in the daylight, but it was nearing three a.m. and my mind was spinning fast and beginning to ache. I quietly got out of bed, slipped on a pair of jeans, and cautiously walked downstairs. I felt around for the flashlight in the toolbox under the kitchen sink, not wanting to turn the lights on. As I stood and listened to the silent house, the shadows around me didn't feel threatening. Actually, I felt calm, not as self-conscious in the dark. As a reasonably skeptical adult, I was aware of the fact that I couldn't explain any of these actions without sounding like I should be heavily dosed with an anti-psychotic. This was real, though. I felt a connection. And I was compelled to understand why and how this woman, who was alive a century and a half ago, seemed to be trying to get my attention.