Greenbriar Manor

Destruction and Decisions

The nurse at the hospital checked on the old horse handler. She had caught him talking in his sleep to his wife. She smiled every time she heard him. Someday soon, he would go home, but she had grown fond of him. Unaware that Martha was more than a simple figment of his imagination. She would sing songs to her husband and tell him stories about the homestead. She had desperately hoped that the oven fire had not been the end to her quiet and constant place of calm. She wished she could contact the children, but the phone went days without ringing. Something must have happened. Fern was good at keeping Mari busy, and everyone knew that Brooklyn could handle all the ups and downs of that old house. Myrna could no longer take out her dark distaste on any Grey. One way or the other, they would always return home to stay. Daniel had never lied to Brooklyn. Somehow, the children would be fine in their absence. She hoped that the old angry women who wander and wield dark things would move on as so many others had in the past. Though the Manor was named for brambles none pricked the hearts of the owners for long without extrication.

Martha watched as an alarm sounded down the hall the nurse who loved her husband so well flew down the hall there was another person here from home. She could feel it. Her heart sank as she saw Ingrim wheeled past the open door and into another unit. She had been here with Brooklyn many years before. Nothing could repair the fears that grow up in the heart of knowing something was coming that you could not stop. She did not feel that Vivian would have the same fate, but she did worry that the dark woman's evil, angry intentions in her kitchen had come calling for another young child. Ingrim looked up to the ceiling and smiled a sleepy smile as the pretty nurse connected him to the IV bag full of medication. A sheriff was questioning his mother about his symptoms. He thought about his horse and meeting Mack's cousin and her tiny tea set. He wanted just one more time to be well enough to ride the horse and to see the friend that had walked this long, winding path with him. The cookies had been made with old extract he heard the nurse say. A mistake that in some people could prove fatal. He knew that Brooklyn's mother would never harm anyone. It was an accident, surely. His mom had to keep Fran and all the others on staff. He smiled at the strange woman in the room she looked just like Mari but much older. Her hair was slicked to her head like oil. The dress she wore glinted gold like stars. 

At Greenbriar, 

Mack and Brooklyn stood at the gate of waiting all morning to see when Ingrim and his father would return. Fran was the only parent on the Manor land that could help. She and Fern had been working on linens for bedrooms for all the children. Fern had been thinking about her mother and the strange occurances lately. She could not shake the  eery feeling she had returning to find that old wig wearing woman in her old apartment and the feeling that what happened to Jake and Ingrim would be blaimed on her. Mari had not talked to her since her mother had been loaded into an ambulance the night that Brtttney left. Mack had mentioned Mabel coming here and now Fran would have to change those plans until Vivien and Jake had some idea of what would happen next. The whole Manor had transformed over night. Daniel coming back was a calming yet chaotic presence. Brooklyn caught that old angry woman walking toward Mack and cast a glance at the old spectre. Her eyes grew wide and she disappeared. The reckoning had come. She would not get to lurk here and harm his home! 

Fern patted the stallions velvet fur as dark as midnight. His nostrils flared deep and he stamped his feet. She was not the only thing here that wanted to break and run. But she needed to learn where that was now that things had changed. Sometimes, she felt that she belonged in the dusty stacks of Daniel's library rearranging the past and the present. She would take her mother home after the owners returned. She went to talk to Daniel. She knocked on his door but found him in the library holding a picture of a blonde girl. She asked who it was and he told her his cousin Vera who had lived in Vermont at the other house long ago. She was a strange and superstitious woman and she had never been the same after losing her cousin long ago. He told her above a whisper not to let ghosts take up so much space in her future that she did not gow beyond the walls. The Greys would always be taken care of by the Greenes but family and home could become words that held as well as harmed and if at some point she saw it was time to tale her mother to a safer place not to stay on an old mans's account. The books would outlast them all anyway. She hugged Daniel and told him it would all be okay. She hated to see her friend so upset by his visit home. He smiled and went back to his room. She pickd up the picture and all the blood drained out of her face. This cousin was who was in her home. She had no doubt. Maybe the woman had an agreement with Jake like she said. What would become of the business. She trusted Daniel but there was so much she did not understand. It seemed like things from the past blurred into the present. Nothing really made logical sense. She decided maybe some things kept in attics and hearts should remain there. She went to check on her mom. She found her staring at the wall singed from those infernal cookies. The smell of burnt almonds lingering in the air. She tried to get her to come back to bed. She noticed her mom was holding something in her hand. An invitation card of green filigree paper and a picture in it was a dark haired little girl and a blonde girl and another smaller girl that looked just like her grandma. She was holding the picture so tightly that it was creasing the slick vintage sheen of the poloroid. " She was invited all along. That bitter old woman stole their heart and then my mother. That little girl will learn the truth in the old broken homestead" She muttered and threw the picture as she rambled wobbly back to bed. Fern made her some of Mari's tea. It settled her mom and she thought about what Daniel had told her. Maybe there was something her mother was hiding too...She had a shiver cover her spine. 

As he closed the door to his old bedroom, Daniel was  becoming increasingly restless. His brother had called the sheriff had given his nephew a seventy-two-hour warning that the house would be imploded. Gone would be the place of so much pain and secrecy. He could hardly believe it. He thought of Brittany that little girl who looked and acted much like his beloved and broken sister. She had returned to a broken dream. Her father had bought a skeleton on his mother's good name and the skeleton of decades of borrowed time.  How many times had her father told her the next place would be their forever home? Had that been what happened to Salem the night she had her accident and lost everything. Her husband had taken her far away and her talent had bought her acclaim but all she really ever needed was love and security. Something about the Manor had picked all the family that could be happy in the spaces where time met treasure and kept them. Yet there would be places and people it would never allow to settle here. He thought of the rolling pen and Vivien's and Martha's stricken faces so much pain. Long ago, sirens and faded dreams. Cousin Vera hoping against logic that someday Bridgette would come home again so much so that she kept the Vermont house full of old antiquities that had come crashing down by storm and stubborness. Three days that place would turn to ashes. A horse sat in a stall and two little boys waited for their parents to return. 

Bridgette heard a clap of thunder in the distance. She heard the melody on the wind. Almonds in her nostrils. She walked along the  stream and thought of Vera. Wherever she was the house she loved would soon be gone. She had made it home. But the house here  was not full yet. Some children were not back home yet. She had to make sure that the old woman did not get her dark clutches into Fran andx on the wind to the West she wondered who would return  next. Somehow she felt the spirit of that tiny willful child. It had been lingering by the barn like lightening in a bottle. Salem whispering on the wind her icy words of woe. Daniel needed to call the Manor to order and that would take a warm soul without guile or contempt. She thought she knew who would be next. She smiled in the mirror in Fran's room at dusk. Forgetting that Mack wandered the halls. He saw the girl from the piano room and ran to get his mom. By the time he had told her what happened he suddenly felt tired. Maybe it was a dream it had been a long day.  As he drifted off to sleep he saw Brooklyn riding his horse down to the creek...