IZZY GREEN
I DO NOT OWN TDI OR JADE GREEN
ITS IN COURTNEY'S POINT OF VIEW
I was happy that Justin lived in town, but I resloved then and there that whenever I was in my room, I will close the door, and did that at once. I went to bed for the night, but sleep didn't come easily. Turning this way and that, I rose as to open the window wider that the way the breeze can help me go to sleep. I have no idea what I dreamt of, expect that I was woken up sometime in the night to the sound of a creaking door.
My eyes were soon opened wide, I lay there, one hand on my pounding heat, "Justin?" The door creaked again.
"Who's there?" I called
There wasn't a reply.
I struck a match to lit my candle. The room was empty. The door to the hallway was shut just as I had left it but the door to my closet was open several inches wide.
I lay there clutching the sheet to my chin in terror, I knew I had closed it, especially with mice nesting as they were inseide. I didn't blow my candle out, but I let it burn the rest of the night and the sleep that had seemed like there was none.
The next morning, with the sun fully shining on my curtain, I presumed that I didn't closed the closet door as I had thought and that the breeze coming from the window had blown the door to and fro.
Clearly, the nightmares I have had in the past when my father died, then my mother, were visiting themselves upon me. There was often time that I was seized with the terror that what happen to my parents might happen to me. The slightest sickness would bring thoughts about death to me, with these morbid thoughts, in turn, made me afraid of my mothers madness. Work, to me, was the only solution, and becasue I would not begin at the hat shop until next week. I went downstairs and told Gwen that I would like harder work to help me in my sleep, and she gladlyaccepted. Tieing down a towel arounf the bristles of a broom, she instrucated that to go through the entire house and get rid of all the cobwebs from the ceiling.
"If that doesn't wear you out, sweetie, you can scrun the back and front poarches," Gwen laughed, "but I'll bet that you will scarely hit the sheets tonight before you're asleep."
I went to work at once, sweeping the broom high overhead, running it along the statues, traveling the down corners and around the gas lamps on the walls. I vowed that I wouldn't go in Cousin Justin's room until I was 100% certain that he was out of the house. When Gwen assured me that he was at the horse race. I cleaned the cobwebs from his ceiling also. Wanting to be thorough in my work, I cleaned his closet and I was impressed at the number of suits I found hanging there, even through he lived in town --- clothes of the best cut and cloth. In other words, he had so much, he couldn't keep them all in one place.
"How he lives and what he owns is no business of me," I reminded myself outloud, and moved on down the hall to the spare bedroom next to the restroom.
I knew when I entered it this time that I would not be so easily discouraged from investigating the stairs to the attic. Gwen did tell me to tackle the cobwebs. She didn't tell me where to stop. So I took this as permission -- instruction, even-- to sweep down the cobwebs in the attic as well. I swept about the walls of the small bedroom with my broom, and when I had seen to that task, I turned my attention to the door on one side, slowly opening it, revealing the narrow staircase.
It was noon, the passageway was so dark to where I had to get the candle from my room and holding it in one hand, the broom in the other. I went up stairs a step at a time, my lips parted to let out a breath, my breathing became so rapid.
The candle light cast out huge shadows upon the slanted attic ceilling, and there was little space to walk, for the floor was packed with boxes, suitcases, and furniture that I could take a few steps at a time this way and that. The air was heavy with the smell of paper, old cloth, and dust, and the curtains I had seen at the gable windows from out on the street proved to be yellowed, threadbare things, scacrely more than cobwebs themselves. Up here, the two gable windows struck me as even more fear some, for they seemed to be eyes looking inward, studying my every move. I held the candle at arm's length to light the far corneres, and satisfied myself that there were was nothing out of the ordinary in the attic.
Nothing moved, expect the shadows, and they only was moving becasue my hand was trembling. Finally, after much relieved, I forgot the cobwebs completely and startled down again.
Halfway down, my heart leaped against the wall of my chest, for there was a large, dark shadow on the remaining steps. I stood montionless, fearing that someone might be standing there outside attic door. As my breathing returned and I stepped carefully stepped on one of the darkened steps and examined it more closely, I saw that it wasn't a shadow at all, but a dark stain embedded in the wood.
Holding the canndle over the deep mahogany stain, the pounding of my heart affrimed what my brain first thought -- the color of blood. I hadn't thought it was there when I had climbed up the stairs, yet there it was, as sure as the slippers on my foot, and I wondered if my mind was turning against me.
I took in a deep breath and leaned against the wall, trying to conquer my terror. Yes, it was blood, most certainly. This is where the deed was done, I know it now. I tried to imagine a Izzy Green hiding on the attic stairs and taking her life. What could have caused her to do it --- a girl as spunky and full of life as she had been, according to the cook.
I went swiftly on down, and when I was in the room below, I closed the attic door behind me and sat down on the spare bed until my pulse finally slowed. The better I knew the house, I was postive, the less I would fear it, no matter what its tales, and the better I will sleep at night. The blood on the staircase distrubed me greatly.
I worked so hard all day that I slept very well the evening, and the next and the next. When I woke up the morning of my first full day in Katie's Hat Shoppe, it seemed like, summer had come overnight to Whispers. Leaves that had only been tight little curls before was now unfolded, and a green world was appearing beyond my windows.
"Oh, Gwen!" I cried, entering the kitchen, "It is a beautiful day!"
"Yes, it is!" she replied, "Trent took his coffee in the garden this morning before going to work, and biscuits and jam waiting for you too under the beech tree."
To tell the truth, I was so eager to get to the hat shop that I had hoped to skip breakfast altogether, but the garden did look inventing, and so I took my place at the wrought-iron table out on the grass and let Gwen served me, as it gave her great pleasure to do so.
It didn't please me that Cousin Justin decided to join me, who came around the side of the house and sat across from me. It didn't escape me that for a man who lived some place esle, he managed to show up regularly at mealtimes.
"Good morning," he said pleasntly, as he waited until Gwen served him his coffee and gone back inside he said, "Tell me, Courtney, what was your financial situtation of your father, my Uncle Geoff, at the time of his death? It seems inconceivable to me that he should penniless as you have us believed."
I could barely believe his rudeness, "How can you doubt me?" I said. "What have I done to make ask such a question as that?"
"I didn't mean to be rude," he replied. "But as you are now considered family, you may be treated like family, and it's the type of question I would freely ask a sister."
"Perhaps not, if you do have a sister then you know what her finacial situtation is. Next time come with a better saying," I thought. I could hardly expct to embraced as family yet treated as a guest.
"Very well," I said. "My father did not have the business sense of Uncle Trent, and some of his decisions were poor ones. While we did not live in poverty after his death, he owed so many people that Mother, your Aunt Bridgette, and I were forced to see our most valueable processions to pay off his debts."
"He left you nothing at all? Surely there was the family silver, your mother's jewely, paintings, furnishing ..."
"You sure do listen well don't you?" I thought but replied, "All that we had we sold, Cousin Justin. Mother and I moved into a set of rooms in a neighbor's house and lived very simpley. And, simply put, ..." "Becasue you don't simply listen," " I came to you penniless."
"Well, that is unfortunate, if that is true," he said. "Not, of course, that it makes any difference."
"Thank you," I said, wishing deeply with my heart that I could believe him.
I took a bite of biscuit and a sip of tea and when I looked up again I was diconcerted, for this time his frown had been replace by a smile that no more comforting, and his eyes were not on my face, but my figure.
I could fell my cheeks burn and dropped my eyes once again. He laughed, and set down his cup. "Well, I see you are off to the gossip shop in your dinery," he said. "Tell Leshawna Morrison that if she keeps talking, her tongue will fall off." With that he left the garden.
"I will not let anyone ruin this day," I told myself determined and, with gathering up my plate and cup, took them inside the house. Indeed, when I started out to the hat shop, the sun warm upon my face, the trees a wonderful shade of green -- the green so new, the flowers so fresh, and the lightness of air -- I began to think that Whispers was the prettiest town on this east coast.
There was several customers inside the shop, when I arrived, and next thing I knew was that fetching the ribbon and thread for Katie, going in and out of the back to get first one color of the veiling, then another, and hoped that I could make it past the first day without making a mistake.
Finally, at lunchtime, Leshawna and I went next door to the Bib and Bottle for a meat pie to eat on a bench outside. If I could take slippers as well, I would've be content, becasue they pointed at the ends and pinched my toes.
"There won't too many days like this," Leshawna said, "It'll be hotter than a stove lid come summertime." She took a drink of her ale and then asked me, "So, what is it liked living in the Sparrow place?"
"I like it well enough," I told her, "I have a fine room overlooking the garden, and they ask so little of me. In short, I am treated as a daughter."
"AT NIGHT!" Leshawna went on, her eyes looking directly on mine. "What do you do then?"
"What do you mean? What almost everyone else do? I sleep."
"Haven't seen or hear her?"
"Who?" I asked, even through my heart I knew the answer before she spoke, and goosebumps appeared on my arms.
"Izzy Green," she answered, "She's there, they say. If you haven't seen her yet, you will."
No author's note
~Snowleopardlover~
