Part 2

     On my next journey to the garden, I try sketching out a better map of the place as I walk. There's got to be so many spots I still haven't seen – there has to have been some kind of carriage house, there may yet be some trace of the original drive up to the house. The house... it's beyond words how badly I want to just walk its hallways, and look into its rooms. If I could even follow the lines of its walls and foundations, that would be something, but there was so, so little left. Still – the visions are always of the exact place in which I stand, so, in theory, if I keep standing inside the outlines of the house, I'll see more of it?
     What happens if I'm standing in the middle of what was a wall, and then the wall suddenly reappears around and/or on top of me?
     I have to laugh at this, but, the idea does actually freak me out a little bit. Part of me feels like there's no way that could happen, the visions wouldn't come at a moment like that – but that would require some kind of intelligent motivation behind the visions, and how could I expect that to be? I'm not a total heathen, I believe God exists (clearly, I can't help but believe in a spiritual side to existence!), but, I in no way expect Him to be hand-delivering each of these little glimpses into the past. And I have to giggle again, picturing an Godzilla-sized hand of God scooping me up and plunking me down in front of Mr. Mason. Definitely not. But... what is behind it? Some force of nature, some weird side of gravity? I took an intro to philosophy class back in college, I remember just how many mindfucks the chapter discussing time put me through. For as linear as human existence is, the idea that Time is its own dimension, and all times exist simultaneously, we just can't perceive them from this third dimension... I really kind of like that concept. A two-dimensional creature wouldn't be able to comprehend a three-dimensional one, so why wouldn't a three-dimensional one have trouble with a fourth? (Or fifth, or whichever one Time is supposed to be. I feel like A Wrinkle in Time explained this all far more clearly than my professor did, but it's been a few years.)
     In my meanderings, I discover I've ended up by the ruins of the mansion. I slow down here, trying to piece together the occasional stone remains of the foundation, and match it up with the blurry photograph I saw of the place. I'm going to have to get a copy of that photo – I'm sure I wouldn't be allowed to handle the original, but maybe I can at least have a look at it. Did they tell me it was in the town record office? I'll have to check those hours – yet another errand to run! But at least I've already broken the ice with the people involved – that makes it a much less intimidating prospect.
     I walk slowly along the tenuous remains of the pathway leading to the front door. I partially close my eyes, trying to imagine into place the rose bushes that ran alongside of it, the lilies that fronted the face of the house... Lilies! My eyes pop completely back open, and I almost skip in delight over to them. Only one is blooming, though there are a handful of buds – I'm sure it's too early in the season for them to really have come in yet. But it's a beautiful white flower, with dark brown freckles at the throat, its graceful petals with just the slightest bit of a curl as they spread apart. Its stem, though, is a bit bent – it seems the flower is almost too heavy for it, I can't imagine how it's going to manage when all of these buds open up. Frowning, I look around for a branch or something I can use to stake the plant up with, and soon spot a tree not far away. It's not one of the giant trees that were in the photo – now that I think of it, they were awfully close to the house, and I suppose they must have burned down with the mansion. Which is really sad, they were such gorgeous old trees. This one is a scruffy looking thing – and overgrown apple tree or something, maybe? It looks kind of like an apple tree, and there are definitely little green fruit-like things scattered among the rounded canopy of the branches.
     There are a handful of fallen branches on the ground, not yet entirely covered by the summer growth of grasses and wildflowers. I pick up a few that look sturdy enough, and, realizing I have nothing to tie anything together with, break off the longest strands of grass and stems of wildflowers that I can see. Heading back over to the lilies, I hum along with the song blaring in my headphones, dancing a little as I hop over the uneven ground. “I search the room but you're not there, your perfume lingers everywhere, but it's... only a memory...” It really shouldn't surprise me so much when my iPod plays something particularly apt. I've always loved ghost stories and haunting things, it's not like this is really new for me. Not that The Smithereens are an artsy atmospheric band by any stretch of the definition, but, even in this '80s take on classic blues-tinged rock, there's still that yearning for something beyond the immediate present. Which, clearly, I'm a sucker for. “Only a memory, only a memory...” Oh Calvin! To have such a sweet little life made so brief as his was... it's so ridiculously unfair.
     I manage to hash together make-shift stakes for a half-dozen lily plants. Stepping back, I brush off my knees and palms, and take another look around me. I wonder what apple trees mean... lilies, I feel like I read somewhere that they stand for purity, innocence, something like that. (Roses, even in the 1883 book, have always represented love. So not all the old meanings are crazy obscure.)
     I see something that looks like a low wall off to the left – maybe where the tower once stood? I make my way over in that direction, picking my way carefully around flowers grown beyond their original planting borders, and scattered stones and bricks from the long-fallen walls. I grin as a Lady Gaga song comes up on my iPod, it's such guilty-pleasure music and Dad would totally disown me for listening to it – but there's some pretty ridiculous stuff in his stash too, so I let myself groove along to “Paper Gangsta”. Reaching the wall, I find a low stone to sit down on nearby, to have a better angle for looking at the aged bricks. I can almost see-- I lean forward, and pull some virginia creeper away from the bricks. (That, I'm sure, wasn't an intentional planting!) There! There is a pattern to the bricks, it's hard to make out now, with some of the edges crumbled, and the discoloration of years of weather and old traces of smoke from the fire. But there's a Morse code-like pattern, of shorter and longer bricks near the ground. The layers above, it looks like made a sequence of stretched-out horizontal diamonds. Maybe? It's so hard to tell, this bit of wall is maybe four feet long, almost three feet at one end, but chunks are missing so that it's only a foot or so high in other spots. Sighing, I sit back, and half-close my eyes again, trying to sort out how it might have looked, before the flames sapped all the life from this place...
     I realize there's another, very short, section of brick about six feet away, and I think... I think it does curve a bit – and that's about where the tower should have stood, I think. I wonder if there was any special reason for the tower. Was it built to contain any certain kind of room, or just on the builder's whim, or... I suppose that's not something I'm ever going to know, what the rationale was behind any of the design decisions of the estate. The Masons certainly wouldn't know, as they only inherited the place, and... though it's not like I've seen a whole lot of either generation, the original couple that lived here seems to have been even quieter, most secretive. Somehow... I almost don't expect to see them again. “This is our garden, and we wish no-one to ever intrude upon our peace here.” I can still hear his words so clearly in my head... his voice was so solid, so... permanent, I guess, like every syllable that fell from his lips was carved into stone by the sound waves it produced. It doesn't feel like it was English he was speaking, it feels like it should have been... Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian, something more ancient and with more... not quite magic, but, I feel like words were thought to hold more power in ancient days, I know that there's a line of thought in mystical practices somewhere that knowing something's name gives you power over it. Like demons and things, if you called them by their true names, they'd be your servant. I feel like he would have known that language, like he could have commanded anyone as he wished, merely by speaking the correct words in the correct tone. Something in his eyes... I wasn't even that close to him, but his presence was so firm and solid, so authoritative and confident...
     I blink, suddenly wondering – did Mr. Mason, that man's brother, really die in that fire? Everyone said he did, but... whoever it was at the historical society that was telling that part of the story, they said everyone just took Cora's word about the fire, that the roof collapsed before he left the house. Did anyone ever look for remains? ...did anyone even go investigate the grounds? If the family left town the next day, and nobody really liked Mr. Mason anyway, but respected Cora and trusted her word, and thought the place had burned to the ground... Would there have been any kind of formal inquiry back then? Somehow, I don't think there would have been, and if there was, nothing more than a vague formality, it's not like Cora was trying to blame it on anyone.
     I wonder... what explanation did she give for the fire? Rumors said he might have started it, and I'm sure there were rumors too that she did, or any number of other people in town... I'm going to have to find the article in the paper that talked about it. It just seems... I guess it shouldn't seem so strange a thing to have happened, it's not like house fires were rare at the time. I just... it feels like Cora was completely unruffled by it, and that story about Mr. Mason just standing in the library... for all two minutes of time that I spent in his presence, I can't at all picture him just standing there and committing suicide by not leaving the house. He was too strong a personality, too much force in him to do something so docile. Something... it just doesn't work out.
     Sighing, I flop down on the ground by the ruins of the tower wall, leaning against its inner curve. I have way too many questions about this place... questions which I can't possibly answer, in this time. I need to see more of its past... a family this reclusive wouldn't have left enough of a record in town for me to understand them any other way than direct contact with them. Evelyn... your family is such a mystery, did you even understand them?