Stitch by Samantha Durante

office use.
     
    Alessa noted that there were entries for other properties recording when they were converted to residential rentals or office space, and there was no such log for 33 Mason Manor prior to this one in 1933.  From what she could tell, it sounded like the house had stood empty from 1917 until the university acquired it in 1933.
    Alessa tried to list the plausible explanations for this series of events in her head.  She thought perhaps it was possible that the family had just moved away and sold the property to William.  That didn’t explain why he had chosen not to live there or at least to rent it out to another family, though she supposed that perhaps he was wealthy enough that an empty second home wasn’t a concern.
    Inspecting her notes, Alessa remembered something vague that the librarian said in the article that Janie had clipped, something about “the passing of a wealthy family.”  If Isaac’s family had died, that could provide a sound rationale for why William didn’t live there.  Maybe the house was still damaged from whatever tragedy had struck them, or maybe William just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  It might have been too painful to be in the house where he’d lost his brother’s entire family.  And it would also explain why he eventually relinquished his family’s farm to the university, since it wasn’t going to do him much good sitting there abandoned.
    Of course, with this little information to go on, it was impossible to know which of these theories might be correct, or if there was another explanation entirely.  But Alessa had a hunch.
    She felt fairly certain now that Isaac was indeed the ghost.  He seemed to be the only possibility given that William had apparently lived well past his teenage years, and Albert, having fathered two children, presumably had as well.  It also seemed like an uncanny coincidence that all record of Isaac’s family mysteriously vanished at the same time when Isaac would be the right age to fit the description of the ghost she was seeing.  The simplest explanation was that they had tragically died, leaving the property to William, who was too haunted by their memory to make use of the house.  And the simplest explanation was usually right.
    It was two in the morning and Alessa’s buzz was slowly twisting into a dull throb in her temples.  She’d probably learned as much about the ghost – about Isaac – as she could on this particular night.  She decided to return home and sleep off her impending headache.
    As she packed up her belongings, Alessa hoped that this new knowledge would be enough to lay her recent preoccupation with the ghost to rest.  For the sake of her sanity, she at least had to try.  If she hadn’t known it before, the evening’s events had made it abundantly clear that her fixation was getting in the way of her life, and it wasn’t healthy.
    There was nothing she could do for Isaac.  His life was in the past, and she would have to let him go.  Now it was time for Alessa to take care of herself.

13. Connection
     
    Laying on her stomach with her face pressed into the pillow, Alessa squeezed her eyelids together, but to no avail.  The relentless drumming in her head had kept her awake the better part of the morning, and the bright light creeping in her bedroom window was only magnifying the sharp pains surging through her skull.  All she was asking was for a couple more hours of sleep.   She knew she was just delaying the inevitable; eventually she would have to face the debacle of the night before.  But maybe not quite yet.
    She closed her eyes for a few more minutes, but it was no use.  Until she got some water and food in her system, Alessa would never get comfortable enough to fall back asleep.  Covering her head with a blanket to block out the sun, Alessa blindly reached out from her bed, groping the floor for her backpack.  She withdrew the half-empty bottle of water from the night before and