Lilly Dawson, January 2015

I approached the old house with skeptical eyes. The property had once belong to my great-grandparents, and now my family was finally claiming the house and property that had been left to them in my grandmother's will. The house was in northern Florida, a long drive away from our house up in New York and from the Florida beaches. Yet my parents insisted, saying that it would mean a lot to Grandma Dawson if we did something with the house.

The house itself wasn't that bad. It was a small two-story house with chipped white paint. The shudders on the windows had seen better days and they were a faded blue color. There was a wire fence surrounded the property, but there were also areas where the fence had fallen apart. The yard was overgrown; wild grass almost as tall as my younger brother Will. There was a swampy pond a little ways away. I moved towards it, curious and wanting to explore the property.

"Hey, Lilly!" My dad shouted at me from the front porch. "Be careful wandering around over there. You don't want to be eaten by gators!" I glanced back to the murky pond beside the house, completely still. If there had ever been alligators in this pond, they were probably long dead by now. I left the pond and joined my parents where they stood on the front porch.

My mom was running her hand on chipped and faded paint work. "Did your mother tell you how this house is in the family?"

Dad shrugged, looking at the door. "She just said that it was her mom's. I don't remember her ever talking about it." He had the key in his hand. He sighed and ran a hand through his dark black hair, which my dad only ever did when he was nervous. "Well, let's not waste time staring at it. Let's go inside." He moved forward and unlocked the front door before pushing it open with a deafening creak.

I walked inside right behind my parents. Will, who had been exploring the garden area, ran after us to come inside too.

The inside could only be described as dark and dusty. It was mostly empty, except for a few articles of furniture such as a moth eaten couch and a coffee table with wood that looked like it was about to rot through. Mom pushed her blond hair back, eyeing the dust with distaste. She had always hated messes, so this house itself was going to be a challenge.

"Be very careful, kids." Mom said. "This house has been abandoned since the sixties. Right, Will?" She was talking to my dad now-my dad and brother were both Williams.

"Right," Dad said. "I have no idea why my grandmother left this place. If I remember correctly, she went out west; probably California."

I had never met my great-grandmother. Like Dad had said, she had moved to California some time during the sixties. She had died in the late nineties, a year or two before I was born. From what I had seen in my grandmother's photo albums, she had had dark black hair and bright blue eyes. She had been surprisingly muscular, especially around the shoulder area. In all of the pictures, my great-grandmother had a tough look to her, something that made her seem meaner and grittier than everyone else's grandmothers or great-grandmothers.

We continued exploring the house. The kitchen had rats in it, to my mom's horror. There were only two bedrooms, the master and the spare. "You and Lilly would have to share if we fixed this place up." Dad told Will at some point.

It wasn't long until I found the very steep set of stairs leading to a solitary door. I stared up at it, thinking that it looked like something from a horror movie. "Hey Dad," I called, looking away from the second floor door.

"Yeah?" Dad shouted from the spare bedroom. He poked his head out of the door.

I pointed up the stairs to the door. "Is there a key for that?"

Dad followed my gaze. "I don't think so. Do you want to wait for me to go up there?"

I couldn't explain it, but I wanted to go up there alone. "I think I can handle it." Dad nodded before disappearing back into the spare bedroom. I started climbing the stairs; they creaked with each and every step I took. I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door. It didn't move at first, but I finally managed to shove it open. It creaked loudly and I stepped into the attic.

The attic was the most crowded room in the whole house. Trunks, baskets, a tall wardrobe, there were several lumps of darkness amongst the room. A window was at the far end of the room, but it wasn't able to let in a lot of light due to the thick dust coating the glass. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned the flashlight on, shining it around the attic.

I opened the wardrobe first, finding a few womens dresses that look like they came from the thirties or forties. I ran my free hand over the clothes, feeling the moth eaten clothes. I imagined them in mint condition and thought that they would've been really pretty. The baskets in the attic were also filled with clothes. I sat down my phone so that the light shined upward. I shifted through the clothes, feeling the now rough cotton and wool clothes.

Bringing my phone, I moved on to the trunk underneath one of the baskets. There was a large buckle on the trunk, but it was easy to open. The trunk lid creaked as I opened it. It seemed that every door in this house creaked as loudly as it possibly could.

I stared at the contents of the trunk and shined the light into it. It was filled with books and papers. I brought out one stack of letters, tied together with a thin cord. I untied the cord (which took a while because the knots were fantastically done) and stared at the name on the envelopes. They were all addressed to this house for a Nora Swartz, and they were all from a man named Eugene Sledge.

There was another stack of envelopes tied with a cord. These were addressed to Ellie Swartz, and these were from a Norman Swartz. I found a final stack, smaller than all the others, but they were addressed to Eleanor Swartz from Diana Liebgott. I frowned for a long moment before realizing that the names Nora and Ellie were just nicknames for this Eleanor Swartz. For a moment I was confused as to why this woman's letters would be in Grandma's old house, but then I realized that this had been great-grandmother's house before Grandma Dawson's.

There was a pretty big photo album inside the trunk. I pulled it out carefully, the old leather feeling like it could fall apart. I opened the album up, and was greeted by black and white pictures. The very first one was of a couple with the lady carrying two babies in her arms. Both parents had black hair and I couldn't tell what color their eyes were due to the back and white photo. Underneath the picture, in a sort of scrawl, said David and Norma Swartz, 1922.

The next picture had a brother and sister, most likely twins because they looked so similar. The scrawl said, Norman and Eleanor Swartz, 1942. On the very next page was two separate pictures of Norman and Eleanor, both wearing military uniforms. Norman's said that his was a uniform for the Army's airborne, while Eleanor's was for the Marines.

I blinked. I didn't remember learning a lot about history, but I had no idea that there were women allowed in the military back then. I was probably being ignorant, so I turned the page. It was a copy of Eleanor's transcript, telling me when she volunteered for the Marines, when she went to basic training, and where she was sent to for service. I expected her to be in Australia or someplace like that, but nope. My great-grandmother had been sent off to the frontlines of the Pacific.

Shifting through the letters, I found out the chronological order of them and stacked them in that order. If I was going to read them, I wanted to read them thoroughly. The only problem was that the letters from Eugene Sledge and Diana Liebgott didn't start until long after the war was over. I dug through the trunk some more and found a thick diary of sorts. I opened it and was intensely relieved to see that the diary was written in the same scrawl as before.

Something at the bottom of the trunk caught my eye. Against the darkness of the attic, the bright white material down there stuck out completely. I frowned and sat down the diary before reaching down and grabbing something silky.

I pulled out a big Japanese Rising Sun flag. It was still silky and soft, and there were some Japanese characters written on it in the top corner of it. I held it up, trying to get a good look at it. The red was faded due to age and lack of sunlight, but there was no mistaking what it was.

"Lilly!" Mom's voice called from below. "C'mon, we're leaving!" I glanced down at the door and then back to all that I had found. I wanted to read about her-my great-grandmother. As fast as I could, I gathered the letters and diary, making sure to keep them in chronological order. I folded the flag back up before setting it back into the trunk. We'd be back tomorrow to finish deciding if we wanted to demolish the house or just give it an extreme makeover.

"What's that there?" Dad asked when he saw my stack of letters and the diary. I merely said that they were something I found and crawled into the back of the car. As we pulled away from the house, I opened up Eleanor Swartz's diary, and began to read the first page.