I spent the morning rummaging through the boxes in the billiards room. I regret it. I still struggle to find inspiration from the image of a mangled body on a cross, and this is coming from a woman who was raised in a Christian home and married a devout Christian man and tried to raise a Christian son.

　　Thomas. I wonder if he`s been to church recently. I wonder if he prays for me. I wonder if he has also rejected God. He rejected his parents. The parents that taught him to pray. Did he reject everything we taught him? I wonder if he is happy. I wonder if things worked out with his boyfriend.

　　Religion is what tore my family apart. Well, the version of religion that Fred believed in. The version that preaches the mangled body of a Savior tortured beyond comprehension to pay the price of sin. The religion that once existed in Soward`s mansion. The religion that accuses sinners of wanting to inflict pain. Punitive. Unyielding. Fire and brimstone and guilt and shame. When Thomas left, I had to ask myself if it all made sense. A crisis of faith at the age of 60. Fred never waivered. I think I resented him for it. I resented him more for his unkindness that day. No. It was more the way that he refused to see our son. My son. He rejected Thomas. Fire and brimstone and guilt and shame&. Like Thomas wanted to be gay. Like Thomas chose that. Like he wanted to inflict pain and torment. But he was never like that. Thomas was always gentle, even as a child.

　　Thomas and Walter liked to have water fights. Walter liked scaring the neighborhood cats with an errant stream of water from the garden hose. Thomas didn`t. He preferred the rainbows. Even then, he was a rainbow child. I find a better sermon in creating rainbows.

　　I look down, determined to find inspiration in the artistic rendering of suffering, but the effigy in my hand repulses me. It depicts violence, cruel mutilation, and excessive gore leading to martyrdom as an act of love- the act of love. I`ve struggled to reconcile those two concepts since I was little. Death is perhaps merciful at times when one discovers that which is worse than death. Is that the point? He suffered so we suffer less?

　　I put the crucifix away, struggling to put its image now living rent free in my mind to bed, and I determine to be productive today. Soapy water was Jay`s recommendation. Soapy water and scrub brushes. I collect the recommended supplies plus my thick, rubber cleaning gloves and a step ladder to help me reach the top of the walls, and get to work.

　　Scrubbing the walls is mindless but satisfying. Physical labor has a way of clearing one`s mind, and the amount of carnage I`m creating with little more than soapy water and variously sized scrub brushes&. The old toothbrush is my favorite, running across the mortar, dislodging probably over a century of grime, mold and other build-up. The faces in the rocks are changing with dust no longer emphasizing certain edges or grooves in the imperfect stones. Fading. The faces are fading away& hiding& waiting for time to bring them back to life& faces born from neglect and dust& mangled& silenced& fading&.

　　Creak&. Lottie&.

　　Erased in time.

　　Erased by time.

　　Aren`t we all?

　　Sigh&.

　　How many people have lived in this house? How many have passed through this room? How many of them are still remembered? How many have simply been erased?

　　I got a call from Betsy the other day. I don`t remember exactly when. She asked me about how Fred was doing. She could hardly believe me when I told her Fred has been dead for two years. Then she accused me of not telling her, but when I told her we`d talked about it just last Christmas when I went to visit her that one time, she started to cry. "You visited me?!" Apparently she`d forgotten my visit. She got really quiet after that and asked me if she was crazy. I didn`t know what to tell her. Her roommate, Eliza, is bed-ridden now, and she doesn`t recognize anyone. Sometimes she doesn`t even recognize everyday objects. At least, Betsy said she can`t think of the word for everyday objects half the time. She is reverting back to the communication levels of a toddler. Betsy, in a moment of lucidness, told me that she thinks she`s not far behind Eliza. And I pity them both. I just& ache for them. Time is doing more than erasing them after they are gone. Time is erasing them while they are still here. It seems too cruel. It is too cruel. Yes. There are some fates that are worse than death, and the grotesque rendering of the suffering Lord returns to my mind`s eyes.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　And I take no comfort from it.

　　Sigh&. Lottie&. Help me&.

　　***

　　"I`ve been working on the railroad,All the livelong day.I`ve been working on the-Oof! Come on!"

　　This one board is being stubborn. Or maybe it`s the one and a half centuries old, bent and rusty nails holding the board in place. I grunt against the crowbar I`m using for leverage until I hear the cracking of wood giving out under the sustained pressure.

　　"Finally!"

　　Sigh&.

　　"Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow your hor-r-rn.Dinah won`t you-Oof! Okay, come on. You were ready to give up just a second ago!"

　　Oh, Lottie&.

　　"Quiet! I`m busy!"

　　Sigh&.

　　"& I`ll invite you to my mansion,Feed you on goose and terrapin.I`ll invite you to the racetrack,When my ship comes in."

　　The board pops out unwillingly, and I take a moment to wipe the sweat on my face onto my sleeve before moving to the next board. Bent over like this, I`m going to feel this in my back tomorrow.

　　"Someone`s in the kitchen with Dinah,Someone`s in the kitchen I know.Someone`s in the kitchen with Dinah,Cause I can`t hear the ol` banjo."

　　The next board pries up easily. Too easily. There wasn`t a single nail holding it down, and I nearly fall flat on my face for the lack of resistance against my leveraging of the crowbar. Huh. Shaking off the startling feeling of falling, I look at the wood board and then look at the space where it used to sit, not nailed in place.

　　Is that&!? No way&.

　　It is!

　　A box. A tin box.

　　And I feel drawn to it.

　　Deja vu.

　　It`s just like before!

　　Except the lid isn`t rusted in place as far as I can see. This one was stored in the dry space between a solid foundation and the floorboards instead of the walls absorbing the drainage of a leaky roof.

　　What secrets do you hold?

　　Sigh&. Lottie&. Help me&.

　　"I`m trying!"

　　I scoop the box out of its hiding place, noting the location near where the chapel altar once stood, and, fingers trembling with a sudden adrenaline rush, I tug at the lid. With or without rust, the lid is stubborn. It takes some doing to get the slip-on cover to budge, but once it gives just a little, the rest comes without much fuss. I look inside eagerly.

　　The contents of this box& confuse me.

　　Rags. Dirty rags? Cloth, stained with something brown. Who knows what that even is or if it`s safe to touch.

　　Where are my rubber gloves? I know I had them just yesterday while scrubbing these stone walls. "Rubber gloves. Rubber gloves&." I find myself chanting as I search, eventually locating them in the kitchen and immediately slipping them on so I can return to the tin sitting on the floor.

　　What is that?

　　With the safety of my gloves, I carefully rummage through the box`s contents. A cluster of cloth, a bundle of some sort, rests in the center of more less-stained fabrics that still bear the yellowing of time. Whatever is at the center of the palm-sized bundle, I couldn`t tell you without ripping or cutting the cloth away. There isn`t an obvious way to unwrap it at least. That, and the brown substance is thick and has created a hardened shell of the cloth around its contents. I settle for simply removing it, setting it inside the box`s lid while I sift through the layered padding beneath it. The only thing to find besides more rags is a single slip of paper folded in half.

　　And now my hands are shaking violently with some half-formed thought.

　　Brown stains. Splotchy, brown stains. Almost like ink stains.

　　A torn, jagged edge.

　　The dimensions of the paper are familiar.

　　I unfold it to find a few words penned in an easily recognized hand:

　　3 July 1875Raemond Atwood Soward.Dead before birth.Loved by his mother, Sarah Atwood.Rejected and murdered by his father, Reginald Soward.

　　Sigh&. Creak&. Oh, Lottie&.