As he went in search of information, Ian remembered hearing of one person who had seen something strange at 211. A few months ago, the local handyman, Mr. Vinik, claimed he saw something. He had been hired by the real-estate agent to fix up the place a little, clear the overgrown garden and do some handiwork around the place. Then she fired him when he started talking about the place being haunted.
After asking around for Mr. Vinik, Ian spotted his truck in front of a house on the other side of town. The man himself was up on a ladder. He was a familiar sight – portly, balding, with that puffy, red vest he always wore. It looked like he was cleaning out old Mrs. McKay's gutters.
Ian waited for him to finish then invited him down to Carlton's Bar for a beer. Once they were sitting down with a beer for Mr. Vinik and a coffee for Ian, who was a year shy of drinking age, they talked about his dad's health for a while. Then Ian asked him about what he had seen.
"And why do you want to know about that?" Mr. Vinik asked.
While he was waiting outside Mrs. McKay's, Ian had come up with a reason he hoped was plausible. "It's for school. I wanted to write something for my short story class. I decided on a ghost story, so I wanted to find out about ghosts from someone who has seen them. You did see something, right?"
Mr. Vinik shook his head, and Ian thought he was about to deny it. But he took a swallow of his beer and said, "I saw it, heard it, and felt it down to my bones. It was like cold fingers reached right through me, grabbed onto my bones and shook me up." Mr. Vinik shook his fist in midair to demonstrate.
"And what did you see and hear?" Ian asked.
"The girl, Lorna. That poor thing." Mr. Vinik made a pained face. "She's cold as the grave now, and if you go near her, you'll sure as hell feel it. I didn't see much of her, just enough to know what I was looking at. And I didn't hear her voice exactly. It was more like I stepped into a wind tunnel or something. It was loud. I couldn't breathe. I thought that might be the end of me. But once I got myself inside the house, I was all right again."
"So this didn't happen inside the house?" Ian asked.
"Oh, no. She got to me when I was clearing out the garden in the back. Didn't even get to finish. Ms. Hughes at the real estate office said I must have been drinking on the job and fired me. I was not. I saw what I saw. And if you don't feel like taking my word for it, it's not only me," Mr. Vinik said, getting mad now.
"Who else saw her?" Ian asked.
"Lorna's own grandmother. She didn't outlive her by much, but she saw the girl too. And just like me, nobody believed her either. Everyone figured it was grief talking or that she was losing it."
"So she's been haunting the house since she died?" Ian said, not sure if he could believe something like that. "Tell me more about Lorna, how she ended up dead."
"You've lived here practically all your life. You heard the stories," Mr. Vinik told him.
Ian had, but he wanted his memory refreshed. "I've heard bits and pieces since I was a kid. Put it all together for me."
"Alrighty. Lorna came to live here when she was a little kid, four or five, after her parents died. Her grandmother took her in and raised her. Then Lorna went off to college and came back from college pregnant. Just about the time she was close to deliver, maybe some weeks away, she got killed right outside of town. That was at this time of year twenty years ago now. She did manage to give birth to her baby before she died. You know the spot, where someone put up that memorial." Mr. Vinik pointed through the bar windows toward the west side of town.
"Someone?" Ian said.
"No one knows who. The night before it wasn't there. There were only some flowers that people left right on the ground and a spindly, little, white cross. Next morning, that contraption was up with Lorna's name on it. That's just another unsolved mystery for you. The case of who killed her was never solved either. No wonder she haunts her grandmother's place. Spirits that don't get justice can't rest easy."
"Who do you think killed her?" Ian asked, just out of curiosity.
"Oh, it's not up to me to say."
"What's the most popular opinion on the subject?" Ian asked, trying to push past his reluctance to accuse someone of murder.
Mr. Vinik sighed. "The only one who had any reason to harm her and her baby was the father of that child. He was her boyfriend from college, a rich kid hoping to get richer by marrying a girl with serious money. Didn't want to be saddled with Lorna and her kid so..." he trailed off. The rest was obvious.
"What happened to Lorna's baby?"
"Lorna's grandmother took care of him, but the poor old thing didn't last long. When Lorna's grandmother wasn't well enough to take care of him, the baby was sent to live with relatives somewhere in the Midwest."
Finishing the last of his beer, Mr. Vinik went on his way. Ian was left to mull over what he told him and to wonder why he had been so determined to hear it. Most of what Mr. Vinik said was stuff he sort of knew already but never paid much attention to. It wasn't anything he ever needed to know. Maybe Lorna was haunting her grandmother's house. Maybe that little boy was just playing around. Why did it matter?
After that conversation with the handyman, Ian thought that might be the end of it. He satisfied his curiosity. Now he could drop the whole thing. The weird goings on had nothing to do with him. But every time he passed the back garden of 211, he stopped and stared at the spot by the bench. What he had seen just wouldn't leave him alone.
*
Jacob had been busy with dinner while Toby did his kindergarten homework. Once Toby was done, he went out to play in the garden. Of course he complained when Jacob made him put on his jacket. The evenings were cold now. Leaves were dropping. Jacob felt like he was raking that garden every single day.
Toby had been out there for almost an hour now while the chicken, potatoes, and squash were baking. Seeing that Toby's school things were still on the kitchen table, Jacob decided to call him inside to clear them off and set the table. It would be much easier to do it himself, but parenting wasn't about what was easier.
As he looked for Toby through the kitchen window, Jacob saw him standing by the stone bench. It seemed like he was talking to someone. Toby shook his head then said something Jacob couldn't hear. From the kitchen window, Jacob had a good view of the garden, and there was no one there.
Stepping outside, Jacob shivered. It was much colder than he expected. The cold made him short of breath and the sound of the wind was too loud in his ears. Actually it wasn't windy at all. He couldn't tell where the sound was coming from, only that it was unnerving. It made his jaw clench.
Jacob called Toby to come inside. He was relieved when they went into the house. It was so much quieter and warmer.
"Weren't you cold out there?" Jacob asked as he watched Toby take off his jacket.
"It's not cold," Toby told him as he hung his jacket on the back of a chair.
"Pick up your stuff and help me set the table," Jacob told him then he asked him about what he had seen. "Who were you talking to out there?"
"The lady," Toby said as he stuffed his things into his book bag.
"A lady? What does she look like?" Jacob asked.
With his chin raised, Toby thought about it. Jacob was half expecting him to say that she was invisible, but Toby simply said, "She has a blue dress."
"Anything else?"
"Like what?" Toby asked.
Jacob picked a piece of information at random. "How old is she?"
"She's a grown-up, but she isn't too old."
"OK. Is she your friend?" Jacob wanted to say imaginary friend, but he didn't think that was the right way to talk to him about it.
"Yeah. I think she's lonely so I tell her what happened at kindergarten and at Ruth's. But she never laughs at anything, not even when it's really funny," Toby said peevishly.
"I see. And what's the lady's name?"
"I asked her, but she never tells me."
"Can't you give her a name?"
Toby seemed puzzled by this suggestion. "Little kids can't give grown-ups names. Can they?"
"But she isn't a regular grown-up," Jacob said though he wasn't sure if Toby realized that.
"I guess not. I'm gonna ask her her name again, but she isn't good at talking," Toby said.
"OK," Jacob said and helped him set the table.
He wanted to know more about this, but he wasn't sure how to ask the right questions. Having imaginary friends wasn't unusual. It was a little strange that Toby hadn't mentioned her before though. Also, he couldn't help but wonder why Toby would have a nameless lady as an imaginary friend.