The Curse Оf Hollister House

Saturday

Gracie and I arrived at the library to find the reading room packed with men and women anxious to find out their assigned Harvest Festival duties. As a child and a teen, I’d attended the festival as a visitor, but I’d never stopped to consider the hundreds of man-hours that went into making the event happen. Hope started off by thanking everyone and reminding them that the festival was an important fund-raiser for the town as well as an important income-producing weekend for the small businesses that lined the main drag where the event was held. She briefly went over all the various volunteer duties, including the haunted barn, food vendors, kiddie carnival volunteers, and the pumpkin patch, among others. She sent around a clipboard with dates and times and asked everyone to sign up for whichever duties they were interested in. There was also a column for those of us who were flexible and willing to be used where needed. That is the column where I signed my name. My schedule was a lot more flexible than that of most of the men and women in the room, so I figured I’d be flexible too. There was a space to indicate times I was not available, and I entered Monday morning from ten to twelve, when I’d be at Naomi’s training class, and Tuesday and Friday afternoon between two and six, when I would also be at the shelter. By the time the assignments were handed out, I ended up with a spot on the decorating committee tomorrow in the late morning and an early afternoon at the barn that would be used as a haunted house, a three-hour shift selling tickets at the barn on Friday night from seven to ten, and a four-hour shift manning a booth at the kiddie carnival on Saturday morning from ten to two. Suddenly, I felt like I had a full week. Being busy, I realized, was a state of being I was very much ready for.

Once Gracie and I had received our assignments and we’d both made small talk with a group of people we knew, we headed back to the lake house. Gracie planned to use the afternoon to finish winterizing her garden with Tom’s help, and I’d decided to clean and organize the attic with Alastair’s help. The room under the rafters really was the place I felt the most comfortable. It was still where I most wanted to spend time every day. I supposed this deep-seated appreciation for the space had been rooted in childhood, but I was happy to say that the feeling of peace and contentment I found while sitting in the window seat overlooking the lake was the same feeling of peace and contentment I’d found as a child.

“I wonder why Gracie has all this glassware up here,” I said to Alastair, who was sitting in the window watching me struggle to lift and move boxes with my injured hand. “It seems if the glassware is functional, she’d have it in the kitchen, and if she no longer was interested in using it, she’d donate it to the women’s auxiliary at the church.”

“Meow.”

I shoved the box aside. “Yeah. I guess I should ask her.” I glanced out the window. Gracie was working just below it, so I opened it and leaned out. “I’ve come across several boxes of glasses. Is there a particular reason you’re saving them?” I called down.

“Blue glasses of various sizes?” she called back up.

“That would be them.”

“The kitchen used to be blue, but when I redecorated, the blue glasses and dishes no longer matched. I just stuck everything up in the attic.”

“Maybe we can donate them to the women’s auxiliary at the church.”

“That’s a good idea,” Gracie said.

“Do they still hold a rummage sale once a month?”

“They do. They use the money for little extras, like flowers. Just push the boxes aside, and I’ll help you carry them down later. I can drop everything off tomorrow after services.”

I pushed the boxes out into the little hallway and continued to open and close boxes, which I then either pushed into the hallway for donation or stacked against a wall to keep.

“What are you doing?”

I turned around and found Paisley standing in the doorway.

“Paisley! I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.” I glanced around the cluttered room. “I’m cleaning the attic, so I have more room to move around.”

“Can I help?”

I noticed the hope in the young girl’s eyes. “Sure. As long as you have on something you won’t mind getting dirty. It’s pretty dusty up here.”

She grinned. “I don’t mind the dust. What should I do?”

Good question. I looked around the room until I noticed a box I knew was filled with old clothing. “We are going to donate a lot of this stuff to the church auxiliary. These three boxes are full of old clothes. If you want to help, you can go through the boxes and try to pare things down a bit. Maybe we can donate two boxes of clothes and keep one.”

Paisley crossed the room. She opened the box. “What sort of things are you looking to keep?”

“Anything that is particularly interesting. When I was a kid, I used to play dress-up with the clothes in those boxes. Many of my Halloween costumes came from there as well. If you find anything like a formal dress a princess might wear or a leather vest befitting a pirate, keep it. If it is an old T-shirt or boring wool slacks, toss it. If you aren’t sure, ask me.”

“Okay.”

I returned to my work on the other side of the room while Paisley began sorting the clothes. She’d started by making two piles, one to donate and one to keep. That was a good idea because it afforded her the opportunity to take a second look at everything as she put the piles back into the boxes. While she did that, I started moving the furniture I knew Gracie would want to keep toward the back of the room.

“I love this.” Paisley stood up. She held an old gown with a full skirt that had belonged to some long-ago ancestor in front of her.

“I used to wear that dress all the time when I was your age. Whichever Hollister it belonged to must have been petite because it wasn’t all that long on me. Either that or someone hemmed it at some point.”

Paisley twirled around. “It seems like something someone would wear to a ball. Someone like Cinderella.”

“I used to play Cinderella when I was a kid. I’d make Archie wear a vest Gracie had made for him, and he would be both my fairy godfather and my coachman.”

“Archie?”

“The family cat at the time.” I glanced at Alastair. He was still watching us, but he hadn’t moved from his place in the window.

“What about a prince?”

I smiled. “I had a friend named Cass, and sometimes I would give him some of my best trading cards to be my prince. Other times I’d dress up the dressmaker’s mannequin and twirl it around the room.” I glanced around the room. “There used to be a large hanging chair up here that I would use as my magical carriage.”

“Do you still have it?”

I bit my lower lip. “I’m not sure. I guess we can look for it. It was this egg-shaped thing that hung from the top. You could slip in through one side and sit on the cushion.” I didn’t see anything that stood out as being egg-shaped, but there was a lot of stuff stacked in the attic, and most of it was covered. I headed toward the back of the room. I didn’t find the chair, but I did find a box of old photo albums. I picked the first one from the top.