Thursday, 23 May 2019, School Day
Paxwood, Whatcom County, Washington, USA
Eyewitness: Kerry
Rowen’s advice to talk to Char kept me up all night. No amount of internet research and taking notes on mysterious phenomena would settle my mind. Rowen was right. I had to do this. I had to make sure Char understood my feelings. Even if she didn’t feel the same way, at least I’d know.
I got to school early—no point in lingering around the house—and stopped by Mx. Cardoso’s room. Most mornings, ever since she discovered she loved making things with her hands, Char would be here before the bell.
“Still working on that dream protector,” Mx. Cardoso told me as I came in, first student there. It would get busier soon enough.
I thanked them. “Have you seen Char around?”
“She hasn’t been hanging around here much since her accident. She’s giving her arm some time to heal,” they said. “You’re welcome to wait for her, though.”
“And there’s nothing… off about her, otherwise?”
Mx. Cardoso shook their head. “Aura’s fine.”
I took out my laptop to do a little homework and pass the time until Char arrived—but she didn’t. The five minute warning bell rang, which meant I’d have to try again at lunch.
Before I left, Mx. Cardoso waved me up to their desk.
“This afternoon, I’m planning to do a perimeter walk around the outside of the Paxwood House property to make sure that everything is status quo. Would you like to join me?
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow, incredulous.
“Might be a good idea to hone your instincts, so you can identify trouble yourself,” Mx. Cardoso said. “Are you in?”
“Of course! Just say when.”
“Let’s meet there at 4:30.”
Instead of shutting me out, Mx. Cardoso was including me. Teaching me. Preparing me to face the world of magic. I practically floated through my morning classes to lunch. I’d go to the library after school, conduct a little more research, and arrive prepared to impress.
With lunch came the returning weight of uncertainty in my gut. I spotted Char in her new circle of friends. Either one of the cafeteria lights shined a brighter beam on her and gave her a radiant glow, or that was all in my head. I had to do this.
“Char,” I said, grasping the shoulder strap of my backpack a little tighter. “Can we talk a minute? Just the two of us.”
Char turned toward me, and I caught a flash of silver necklace chain around her neck. Whatever necklace she was wearing, it was tucked under her shirt. Her expression was… sad? Concerned? Disappointed?
“If we have to.”
She followed me out of the cafeteria, down the hall, around a corner, where we had at least as much privacy as anyone could expect at school. Words stuck in my throat as we walked, and she offered nothing to break the silence.
“I…” Looking at her now, that little down-turn of her lips, anything I might have said fluttered away. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay?”
She held up her arm, still in a cast. “I mean, as okay as anyone with a broken arm. It’s healing. I’m making do.”
“Right.” I tucked a lock of hair behind my ears, fretting. “I know you asked for time and everything, but I wanted to–”
Char cut me off, rolling her eyes. “You wanted to feel okay. It used to be all right that you took me along on your adventures so that you’d have an audience, but now it’s getting me hurt, Kerry. I need to focus on my story and my own goals.”
“That’s not what I want,” I objected. “You’re right. Sometimes I get a little deep into an investigation, and you’re right that I made a mistake and things got dangerous. I’m not denying that. I just… want you to know that I care about you.”
“You need to fix yourself. I can’t do that for you.” Char turned, tossing those words back over her shoulder as she left me standing in the hallway.
Alone.
I didn’t have the stomach for lunch, so I made my way to the school library and found a study carrel off to the side to get myself right for the rest of the school day. I guess that was my answer. That was how Char really felt about me.
Nothing I could do about it but let her go. I grasped at the threads of the Paxwood House story to keep myself afloat.
I started from the high level surface details—the facts on Wikipedia pages about the city of Paxwood, John Paxwood, and Paxwood Lumber Company.
John Paxwood. Wife, Florence Paxwood. Three daughters, no sons: Marjorie, Nellie, and Luella.
John Paxwood and Nellie Paxwood died on the same day, presumably from the same strain of flu in 1904.
After John died, Florence and Marjorie took over operations of Paxwood Lumber Company, until all three surviving Paxwood Ladies died, also presumably from the flu, in 1922. Another Pacific Northwest lumber company swallowed up Paxwood Lumber Company. Paxwood House became city property, and the city council made it the mayor’s residence.
I hadn’t seen a single spectral signal of John Paxwood anywhere around the house. The first ghost I’d encountered was a woman. Three Paxwood Ladies hosted the ball in Slumberland, though they’d all been wearing masquerade masks. Hard to say if the ghost in the hallway had been one of the three ladies at the ball. If I could find some photographs or paintings of the Ladies, I might figure out which was which.
Luella’s diary might have some entries that could help me distinguish between them, too.
I noted a single question to follow up on: “Could the Paxwood Dog be John Paxwood?”
Anholts’ interest had to come from somewhere. The dog was protective of the house, especially whatever had been in the basement. And I was still sure the dog hadn’t aged a day since it first stalked me and Char. Could ghosts possess dogs? Did possession halt the aging process? Or was there some magic curse that might have transformed a man into a dog?
The story, the questions, these things gave me solid ground as I made my way through the rest of my classes, then on to the Paxwood Library to do a little more research before I met up with Mx. Cardoso.
No sign of Sly in the library, or anyone else using the records room, but the librarian was kind enough to open it for me. I settled at the study table, opening up my laptop and plugging it in.
While it started up, I sent a message to Sly.
Me: Not studying at the library today?
Sly: Working on homeschool math. Even more boring than history.
Me: No new glass cats?
Sly: Only this dog Anholts brought over
Well, that was interesting.
Me: Black, looks like it might be a Labrador?
Sly: How’d you know?
Me: That’s the dog they found at the Paxwood House. I’m going there again later today.
Sly: Stay safe
I wasn’t sure how to ask Sly if I could see the dog. Our friendship was still fresh. No invitations to visit each other’s homes, although I’d visited her at work. Which was personal. Or was I using her, too?
I did not want to think about that, and my laptop was ready for notes, so I fetched Luella’s diary and started paging through. What was I looking for?
Hidden treasure, buried secrets, something that would be valuable but go unnoticed for a hundred years, through all the mayors and visitors that passed through. The little animated glass cat hidden in a jewelry box’s false bottom proved Florence kept secrets. So, where were those secrets hidden?
Maybe not something in Luella’s words, then. I closed the diary and placed it back on the shelf, then went down to see the librarian again.
“You’re spending a lot of time in the records room lately,” the librarian said. “What’s good reading in there?”
“Luella Paxwood’s diary.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember seeing that listed in our catalog, but then there are more books than anyone could read in a lifetime in here, so I probably missed it. How interesting!”
“It really is,” I said. “I’m curious about something from the diary, and I want to orient myself a bit. Do you have any historical maps? Like the architectural floor plans for Paxwood House? Don’t those have to be reviewed and approved and stored somewhere when people do big remodels, like they did back in the nineties?”
“That’ll be with the city planning office,” the librarian replied. “Might be digitized. Let’s look.”
He walked with me to one of the library computers, pulled up the Paxwood City Planning Office’s website, and in just a few clicks, I had every set of Paxwood House blueprints on record, saved to my cloud and printed out for twenty cents per page.
I took the blueprints with me back up to the records room so that I’d have the space to spread them out and study them all laid out, side by side. The oldest dated around the time when the city took ownership of the house in 1922. Then, there was a 1970s remodel, and then the most recent from 1996. The walls were more or less the same. The 1970s brought in air conditioning, and 1996 updated electrical and communication. Labels for the rooms changed, though the grand ballroom and master bedroom suite remained consistent.
One little surprise? A servant’s stairwell and hallway tucked behind the kitchen and curving around the bedrooms, with door access out into the main upstairs hall. In the most recent update, the hidden passages were marked as a fire escape route. I hadn’t been deep enough in the house to notice these.
By four, I’d added some notes from my own experiences, primarily on the main floor and the basement. The strangest thing I noticed? A consistent blocked-off space in the basement. No doors labeled on any of these blueprints, but I was sure from the position that this had to be the room where Adrien found me when the ghosts had taken me. It merited further attention.
I stashed the papers in my backpack and set off to meet Mx. Cardoso.
