The house itself wasn’t very ominous. In fact, it sat perfectly still and quiet in the middle of the grounds. She wouldn’t say the ghosts or ghouls would walk about in any malicious way among the living. There wasn’t any reason for them to hurt the living. Though, I suppose any one on the outside would tell you otherwise. They might find conflict with the cracks in the plaster in the guest bathroom, or the curling of the wallpaper and squeaky floorboards at night. But the grounds keeper had no issue with the likes of these. She found herself at home with the imperfections of the home, imbedded herself in them. She didn’t mean to fix it up, she found it quite charming in its finicky and unreliable ways. She liked the chill air of the parlor room and didn’t mind the wind through the windows at night or the kids on Halloween that tried to play pranks on their friends. Sometimes the door knocking and frightened little kids would last all night.
She’d played tricks on the groups of kids every so often. Once, she had left the backdoor open so that they could get through. When they were inside she had set up a number of “traps” that would surely frighten anyone, even if they claimed to be the bravest of all. There was the one that made the electrical currents short circuit so that the trespassers were left in the dark. (She had learned how to do that from her father. And likewise how to fix it.) Then another one, she had made a batch of very special liquid to look like blood and left pools of it in the kitchen and bathroom. Easy enough to clean and worth the mess for the reactions she would never forget. (She got the recipe for the fake blood from Madam Josephine, her grave was a ways up the hill. She was an actress in her day! and never let anyone forget it!)
She had eventually given up these antics for a worry she might get injured or someone would be injured tripping around in the dark. It was fun while it lasted and she did enjoy the tales she would later hear in town—her own home the terrible setting of a haunting and a murder. She was sure some of the adults in the town would know it was her that lived there. Especially because she had been there for a while already. But just like the house, she too was just part of the legend and tales of the grounds home. She was just surprised to never have the police knock at her door for anything very serious. But those kids had cried wolf all the life of the house itself, no one would believe something bad had happened, even if it was true.
The home had belonged to a man she had met in passing. And as the two became acquainted she started to check up on him every now and again. They were a strange pair indeed, no stranger than the house itself, but it was a friendship no one had expected. The two became friends. His heart warmed by her bright eyes and willingness to hear his stories. The stories of the deceased don’t sit well with most, but here was this girl so ready to hear everything he had to say about each person buried along the paths. As it happened, he left her the house when he departed. She took it on in memory of him. It kept her close to the tales that she had become so accustomed with. She couldn’t just leave the people here either. He had introduced her to everyone living here. So she took the title of “Grounds Keeper” because it was already her home. And these spirits already her family.
She wouldn’t tell anyone, but she always rather liked visiting the graveyards in town. Ever since she was a little girl, she would visit to see her grandmother quite often. She liked the organized rows and how respectful everyone was. She liked that the tree branches hovered low as to hold the mourners in an embrace and that the crows tried their best to sing a pretty song as the other birds did, though all that came out were squawks that unsettled the mourners. She thanked them all the same. She felt like the cemetery had it’s own force field, or that entering it was like entering another dimension. The skies seemed clearer and the air seemed crisper. It was an oasis. The grass forever green and the customized flower arrangements left at so many of the gravestones. She liked to study the arrangements sometimes. She would take note of which of those would get flowers and she would take those same flowers to them when their loved ones hadn’t visited in a while. Sometimes she would bring flowers from the local shop back to those that didn’t get flowers very often. She liked to take care of the people all along the grounds.
Nothing here was as bad as everyone made it out to be. She wasn’t afraid of what might lurk in the shadows. In fact she danced with the shadows, they were familiar and friendly with her. Some might say the shadows were her kin. She didn’t mind walking the grounds at night because she was never alone.
You see, she knew very well the shadows would never hurt her because she had spent so many hours speaking to them. She attended to their needs and listened to their stories. She had her favorites of course and she would spend some of her free hours in the house writing down the tales that she had heard along the paths.
She loved talking to Mrs. Morris in row G up on the hill, under Mr. Morris’s tree. He liked to say he grew it himself, which in a way she thought, he did—not without help of course but everyone let him take credit. It was a beautiful tree indeed, it was no wonder why he took such pride in his tree. She would bring purple hydrangeas for Mr. and Mrs. Morris and she would sit and laugh with them for hours. The pair would bicker and she would smile and she would head back to the house in a meditative bliss.
She learned lots from Old Man Thomas by the riverside. He would tell her how to tend to the garden she kept in the back of the house. Of course he said he didn’t care what she did with her plants and that he didn’t care wether they lived or died but she would catch him back there whenever she found herself in the kitchen in the dead hours of night. He would check on the cauliflower and pumpkins along with the roses and lavender bushes all while chewing on a spearmint leaf. Some times she left him alone, sometimes she would go and give him a hard time about caring. And sometimes she would bring him a cup of tea and invite him to stay a while, she enjoyed his company. He would tell her about the garden he had back at his home. He had an arrangement of different flowers his partner loved and herbs and vegetables. He has lots of war stories about the hours he would spend pulling the weeds. He would tell her that his partner would always give him grief about spending more time outside in that garden than with them. The grounds keeper would smile to herself because she could picture Old Man Thomas out there in his gardening attire while being yelled at, pretending not to hear. She wondered what his garden had looked like and what his partner was like. Old Man Thomas had been traveling when he died, he was very far from his home.
The grounds keeper hadn’t any reason to feel afraid or lonely in the home on the hill. It wasn’t just her home, it belonged to them all. She shared the hearth and they shared stories. It was all she ever craved, more stories. And as time went by, the more stories she got. She had met every kind of person imaginable as the years slipped her by. She hoped that one day she might get the stories published. She wanted the world to know the people like she did, to know the house and the grounds like she did.
Before she herself died, she passed along her manuscript and the rights to the house to her niece. The Grounds Keeper’s family eventually wanted to get rid of the house. They saw it more as a burden than anything. It was sold, torn down, and rebuilt to suit the next grounds keeper. The people on the grounds mourned the loss of their friend, as her family decided to bury her elsewhere. And mourned the loss of their shared home.
Her manuscript never made it out of her niece’s attic and the next grounds keeper never learned which flowers to take to which people or about the garden behind the house. He would never know any of the stories that lived within the grounds. He would start to hear an occasional bump in the night but he never knew it was just Old Man Thomas trying to find a way in to share a story next to the fire with a cup of tea.