Lexie's Last Resort

The Move

Sam headed toward the front door as her daughter headed for the front stairs. She turned back and said, “You know there are some pulleys on the stage we might be able to move some of the heavier stuff up by that, instead of having to lift everything ourselves."

This prospect brightened Lexie’s attitude measurably, but with her arms still full she was still going to have to go up and down the stairs a lot.

They did end up using their make shift elevator for several things. They were getting all the dust off of everything and singing their way through every musical they could think of, when they began to hear piano accompaniment. They both stopped cleaning tables and chairs on either end of the bar and looked at each other. The music stopped a few notes after they did. They slowly looked toward the stage where the music had sprung to life and there was nothing but the small completely empty stage. No piano sat anywhere in the building. Sam decided to shake it off. But Lexie had already seen someone at the bar, so she wasn’t going to just shake this one off. She needed to make her mom see that the place was haunted and they should leave faster than they came.

Sam reasoned with Lexie. “Are you hurt? Did this ‘haunting’ do anything other than make itself known to us?” She asked using air quotes. “Lexie, we are in a place with a lot of history and I am certain some of it stuck. I would not be surprised if there are attached spirits here. But so far all they have done is say hi and join in on our fun so let’s say howdy back and get back to work.” Lexie was unconvinced but how could she argue. She knew her mother’s strong belief, in the hereafter and in the angels all around us. So there was no negotiating this one. She would just be very careful. Besides for now it seemed to be concentrated downstairs.

Once they were settled, Sam made them a fabulous meal over the open flame grate in the large saloon fireplace. Sam discovered there were closed ovens carved out above and to the side of the fireplace, for warming and baking. Lexie was glad at how good the food was and very tired. It had been a long day and there had been so much to take in and get used to. She had helped her mother settle in, gather wood from the forest area behind the town, she had had to learn to use the well pump with her mother and that had been funny when they were both soaked by the splattering, first, few pumps until they really got the water flowing. She was dealing with the unexpected ghosts in the ‘ghost town’. And she was dealing with the fact that they were only going to be allowed to SHARE an hour worth of generator electricity a day. That wasn’t even enough to charge both phones and the computer all the way. Sam had made very clear, that charging the electronics, in the car was out of the question, because if the car battery died, they had no way of getting out of here. It was so much for this fourteen year old to take in, that she faded as soon as her head hit the pillow. She never even had time to mourn for her almost dead laptop.

Sam was pretty exhausted, too. She had driven them through a very early morning to this nowhere town and had had to keep her happy face on all day for Lexie. They had had a very full day and she had so much more to do. It would have to keep for the morning, though. Upstairs in her room she got a bit of a start, when she walked in all the red curtains were back in place and the bed was drawn and a candle was lit on the side table by the rocking chair. The rocking chair that was rocking with a quiet rhythmic clicking as it moved over the wood grains of the floor. Sam took a steadying breath and spoke to the air in the rocking chair, “I cannot see you, but I know you are here. I want to thank you for your hospitality, but this is mine and Lexie’s home now. We will take good care with it, I can promise you. I thank you, for turning down my bed. If you mind that I am in this room please do let me know. But I am very tired so if you don’t mind blow out the candle, so I can sleep. We can discuss rooms, in the morning.” The candle blew out with no draft of any kind and Sam went to sleep to the click of the rocking chair.

Sam decided it served no good purpose to tell Lexie of the ‘Madam’ living in her room. So she kept it to herself. She had enough to deal with. Every meal was going to be a serious labor. She had to have water from the well pump; she had to clean the dishes in the horse trough because she hadn’t come up with a better solution yet. She was probably going to try and drag one of them behind the bar and dig a drain out the back of the building for the run off. When she could figure out how... She had to start a fire in the fireplace which required lots and lots of wood and she started to consider the tables and chairs… She wouldn’t do it, but it would’ve been easier. She wanted to investigate the other buildings today, too. But first she needed to plan lunch and dinner so they could be simplified in some way. She decided that grilled kebabs would be the easiest to make and clean-up for dinner and sandwiches and cheese for lunch would do. They needed to boil more water for drinking and she really couldn’t watch it to make sure it didn’t all steam off, so she gave this chore to Lexie. She would have to wait for the water to boil, take it off the fire and let cool, to pour into old juice jugs, for storage and later use.

When Lexie was just five years old, she had burned herself with oatmeal, in the microwave, thinking she could do it by herself. She had learned a very healthy respect for hot things and safety first. Sam showed her how the crane worked, to pull the pot in and away from the flames and to use the poker tool to move the crane, before using the hot pads to pull the pot off onto the cooler hearth, to let the boiled water cool. This chore was pretty important and would take a while so Sam let Lexie charge her computer so she could sit at a table by the fire and play on her laptop, while she waited for the water to first boil and then cool.