Keewaydin Part 4

Alex walked to the spot where the girl had vanished. He had heard that ghosts were accompanied by a cold presence, a lack of the warmth of life. Alex didn’t feel anything cold, but he was overcome with a sense of worry.
Sleepless worry, and finally...GUILT.

He looked around searching for the object of the ghosts attention. He fingered gingerly beneath the window sill. Alex remembered the security checks at a previous job... he recalled being told that most people foolishly hid important keys underneath their own desk drawers and other obvious fixtures. There was nothing under the window sill, or above the door frames.
He was sure that the “ghost girl” was worried and searching for something. Something that filled her with a visible anguish.

Alex caught himself. He had become possessed with her emotions. A sense of guilt over something in the past. He looked down at the floor. And caught a glimse of something...
There! Between the floorboard cracks. - A sliver of white; the corner of a piece of lined note paper.
Alex took a needle nose pliers from the kitchen junk drawer. He yanked and pulled and fished at the edge of the paper. He pulled it out from under the floor after years of being walked over and remaining hidden.

After Alex retrieved the note, he sat down and read it silently. It was the tempestuous hand written note of an upset young girl. She protested being left alone so much by her mother and father. She told her father to go off and leave her alone. It was a young girl’s confrontation and threat, and it was signed; “Lorraine”.
Alex guessed that it preceded the death of the girl's father while sailing, casting a dark cloud over her father’s death. Did the father read the note, and did he hide it?

Alex fumbled for his real estate notes and found the names of the family, and Lorraine’s last phone number in New Haven. Alex sat back, poured himself a cup of black coffee and dialed the number.

*** *** ***

Lorraine awoke from her sleep with a sickening start. She had been having a recurring dream. The dream had variations, but theme remained the same: She was back in Minnesota, alone in their old house by the Lake. She was searching the living room for a note she wrote to her father so many years ago. What had happened to it? She needed to get the note back and destroy it so that no one would know the terrible things she had written! But a strong wind from a window blew her backwards, pushing her out the front door and away from the house. Then there were the voices, and police lights, and the rush of people around her... she went spinning away.

Now Lorraine sat up in bed. Once again she had been visited by the nightmare of her father’s death. She was filled with sadness, and the pain of a secret she had kept to herself for so many years.
Lorraine’s attention snapped back to the present. - The telephone was ringing....
Lorraine answered it and heard a gentle voice at the other end.
”Is this Lorraine?” Asked the voice.
"Yes" she replied.
“My name is Alex. In my house where you once lived, I have found a note you wrote many years ago”.