The Ghost of Winn Peterson

2. Vicar

As much as there was to poke and prod through in the attic, Vicar still spent an unfortunate amount of time looking around, helpless in deciding which item to inspect first. Upon seeing a chest of clothes, similar to old German folk wear, Vicar felt he'd found a suitable start, but lifting the trousers of this set revealed a pile of silverware, and lifting that exposed an absolute mess of snake skins, not very carefully secured in a glass jar missing half of the lid.

Vicar put the chest aside for later inspection. Chests did not possess human emotions or motivations, but he still felt a sense of betrayal from the wooden container.

In an attempt to open the room up to a little more light without a candle (he neither wanted to risk setting the room aflame, nor making a beacon for those downstairs to his location), Vicar tried to make his way to the window and found himself standing in a pile of familiar-looking glass shards. A quick nudge with his shoe revealed that the window had broken before and been replaced, but none of the mess during the break had ever been removed. Why someone would go through the trouble of replacing the window - a markedly more time-consuming task than a quick sweep of a dangerous pile of glass - only to leave the old window shattered on the ground, Vicar hadn't the slightest idea. He picked up a piece and inspected it, wondering what histories it had illuminated. How many cracked experiments had shone under the multicoloured glass of the window? There was so much it had seen of Gaston Andrews, and Vicar found himself moderately jealous. Then again, had he not left for the obtaining of a life, he would have known everything the window did.

There, he was doing it again! What use was there in bemoaning and lamenting his past decisions, when he was here to remember his brother before death made him irrelevant? "I will not regret my actions!" Vicar sniffed and raised his chin, holding the glass at arm's length and scowling at it. "You shall not distract me." Tossing the piece back in the pile, he swept the mess to the side with his foot and continued his quest for more light. It took the efforts of his entire shirt sleeve (something his cousin, who he was certain had been calling earlier, would not have liked, as it was a rather expensive suit she'd loaned him for the funeral) to rub the grime from the window, but once it was clean, a multitude of lovely colours sprinkled over the mess of the attic.

Vicar was satisfied, and continued his roaming of the boxes.

Nudged under the window in a corner was a trunk, rather large, and uncommonly free of any obstructions. Vicar sat promptly beside the heavy object and leaned forward to admire the craftsmanship in the paint and designs. What a beautiful object! It had been painted on the top lid a deep, royal blue, filigreed over in a silvery-golden sheen of fanciful knotwork. The lock itself was hooked in a curious claw shape, tying down the blue to the reddish-brown of the rest of the trunk. Running a hand over the surface, Vicar couldn't help but wish he knew who'd constructed the chest, and why it was trapped under the dust in the attic of the Andrews house.

Inspection over, Vicar tenderly slipped the lock out and raised the lid, surprised at its weight. Peering into the darkness, he at once smelled the familiar age of old paper and he smiled. Home across the sea had been a library in a university in America, smelling every bit like this obscure trunk in an obscure attic. How pleased he was to smell it again! Before the unfortunate accident at the university, before the History Professor had been hospitalised because of said accident, and before he'd found himself without a job in the following lawsuits and accusations, the smell had reminded Vicar of safety and the comfort books held.

It was rather hard now, he admitted to himself as he dipped his head into the darkness of the trunk and inhaled, to associate the heavy scent with only good thoughts, but there was not much use in thinking too hard on the bad. It had been an accident, after all. Was it really his fault that he'd set the whole precious library on fire, with the unlucky Professor inside? The accepting walls of the trunk let him wince freely, unjudging of his past mistakes. He would obviously take it all back if he could, not stay up so late reading the night before that he'd slipped unconscious in front of the candles, but, as he had and would tell himself a hundred times, what's done is done.

Vicar was rather annoyed that he kept thinking about this, and so he continued reaching into the container, letting his fingers slide over the bumps of spines and covers unseen. Which one would be lucky enough to emerge first? The excitement sent shivers down his knobbly spine (the events after the fire were unkind to his eating habits, and this spine was a victim of such habits).

Sitting up suddenly, a grip on a book, Vicar closed his eyes and felt his heart tremble. It was a curious reaction, anyone not in the Andrews family would have felt, but Vicar was indeed his brother's brother and his father's son. Each one of them had their peculiar quirks, their obsessions strange and fancies unusual. Was it really so strange, Vicar found himself defending to no one, to be this thrilled by something so unique as an unread book? Well, there was the fear that he'd already read it, that it was merely a copy of something classical he'd devoured before, but that was all part of the thrill, the fear of disappointment. Considering its state in the trunk, hidden in the attic of an eccentric's house, Vicar felt confident that he wouldn't need to face this particular fear. Gaston had always read the strangest things, or collected the most outlandish and obscure papers for as long as Vicar could remember. If anything could be counted on, it was the late Gaston Andrews possessing a book Vicar hadn't read. He was really the only one with such a talent, and for that, Vicar kept his eyes closed an extra moment, his brief display of mourning before the exploration began.

When the moment passed, Vicar looked down and breathed out a shaking breath. Despite the attic's height in the house, and the presence of at least some sun left outside, frost still seemed to form at his lips and pass over the book. Was it an active imagination, spurred on by grief and isolation, or had the room grown considerably cooler? He swallowed and tried to hold his fingers still. Cold or not, he was going to open this book of considerable luck, and he felt himself calm at the thought.

He'd known it would be strange, but Vicar found that he was not at all expecting a journal, and especially not one attributed to a creature named Winn Peterson, and not Gaston Andrews.

Upon opening the thick cover, he'd found that pretty name, scrawled across the inside page, in shaking, but elegant handwriting. It was dated some hundred odd years back, and he wondered if a child hadn't penned their name there. Perhaps it was something so simple (and unfortunate) as a sneeze, timed at the moment the pen touched down on the virgin paper. He smiled faintly and turned the proof of ownership. It was all too easy to remember the day he'd been forced to turn in a paper with the very same mistake on the cover, eliciting a concerned look for the Professor who'd assigned the project. Vicar hoped he was the only one who'd ever been unlucky enough to have such an embarrassing event occur, but then, there had to be other fumbling academics in the world who thought the very same.

He really did get carried away too easily.

After checking that the attic door was closed and not easily opened, Vicar arranged a few sheets and blankets on the trunk, hunched over, and covered his vision with the journal. Hair falling down over his face, eyes obscured by the darkness of the room, he could very well have been just another item forgotten about in the treasure room of a dead man.

And for a few hours, Vicar was able to forget about that very dead man, and those left alive, and those left forever ruined because of his mistakes.