Murder Recall

Changes

Fascination with the abandoned house gripped me and I returned many times drawn by forces I couldn't recognize. It seemed perfectly safe to go. The boundary lands were not being patrolled. I have been trying to recall the house as it once was when I lived there. Whether the feelings, images and sounds that come to mind associated with the house while I was so young, are memories at last brought to light as the result of my concentrated effort to remember, or whether they are constructs of my imagination in answer to a empty gap I seek to find something in, I do not know, but whether they were actual true representations of what I had experienced or not, didn't much matter to me. I enjoyed the thoughts and I liked being there, exploring the rooms and grounds. It was introspective and haunting.

I hadn't the opportunity to ask Maya about the dream journal yet because Maya was in Marhaven investigating. Doug wasn't at the cabin either. So I left a note on the table saying I wouldn't be returning for a few nights, and stayed at the house. I was able to curl up in the crib and slept there which inspired thoughts of my earliest years, imagining myself as a baby and toddler - doing so was giving me the same sense of fulfillment I had when I was a child playing, pretending to be someone other than what I knew myself to be where things in the world I was in were other things; for example, I loved to pretend I was a fox and the floor beneath the table was a pond I would drink from. I assumed the dream journal was my mum's and found it shocking that she dreamed of killing me and that some unknown figure was pursuing my mum with intent to kill her. It must have been horrible to have these nightmares. Mum never spoke of them to me, and as far as I know, she has never had any since.

As I went around the house, I dusted and tidied up. I often saw apparitions, including the woman I saw the first time I returned here. They weren't scary. There were many paintings covering the walls and stored in cupboards, all floral. I experimented in the bottom corner of one, carefully wiping with a damp clean cloth to remove the dirt. The colour shone luminously and I realized the paint was oil based. I cleaned all the paintings. They were all signed 'Winnie Laymuir'. The freshly revealed colour gave new life to the premises.

I straightened all the hanging paintings. In one room, a larger painting was hanging crooked and one side was slightly away from the wall behind it. I was having trouble righting it and took it off the wall thinking that the nail it was on needed adjusting and there I found a safe. I discovered that it was not locked shut and the door not being firmly pushed into place had caused the painting in front of it to hang strangely. I pulled the safe door fully open and inside there was a wooden box with a latch. On the cover a flowering tree had been carved. Birds sat in the branches and roots could be seen going underground. The skill and the detail were awesome. It felt like a treasure in my hands. I sat on a chair nearby and opened the box. Documents were inside. I took them out, one by one, examining them.

The first was a long form birth certificate: mine! Gwen Laymuir born to Winnie and Hudson Laymuir! What did this mean? My mum's name is Hilda Conner and my father was Conrad Conner. The birthdate was exactly mine. The next was a will and inside the front cover was a death certificate and a property deed. It was Winnie Laymuir's death certificate. The deed was for the abandoned premises I was in and the surrounding lands which belonged to Winnie. The will left all her property to me! Hilda was officially my guardian. I had to confront Mum about this. Was she or wasn't she, my mother? She always avoided talking about our years lived here, was this why? In any case I love my Mum, meaning Hilda. Whether I was her birth child or not didn't matter. She raised me and without her I wouldn't be who I am today.

I put the documents back in the beautiful box and closed it with the latch. I didn't want to put it back into the safe, in case it would lock shut and of course I didn't know the combination. I put the box with the dream journal and planned to take them both away with me and show Mum. I knew this property and house had been expropriated and that's why we had to leave when we did. The place had just decayed since then and nothing was done with it. Maybe it was due to the heightened security being enforced at that time. We were under the tight grip of totalitarian rule then. Times have changed.