Willow stood at the bottom of the attic stairs and took a deep breath. "I can do this. I can. I can."
Questioning the house administrator had lead her to this spot, up in the quietest part of the house. Mrs. Marshall had assumed Willow was a history buff, interested in the history of the house and its former owners. She had told Willow that all the family possessions had been stored in the attic following the house's sale.
If the diary was anywhere, it was up there.
Armed with a flashlight and a firm grasp on her courage, Willow climbed the steps and tried not to remember certain key scenes from the movie she had just watched -- watched being a loose term, considering how much time she had spent with her hands clapped over her eyes.
The attic was hot and dusty, still holding the heat of the summer day. It was also very dark. Moonlight slanted through random cracks in the boards, making crazy patterns on the floor. Dust motes shimmered in the close, still air.
Willow started poking in corners, lifting lids of trunks, peering into wardrobes. The beam of the flashlight found treasures, alone in the dark. Hats missing half their feathers, faded and torn dresses from time gone by, fans and trinkets and *things* that didn't seem to have any use, and were exotic for their very uselessness.
It was an oddly peaceful way to spend time. Willow felt surrounded by ghosts -- but they didn't bother her this time. There were lives represented by the accumulation of stuff that had been hidden away in the attic. People, plain old ordinary people. Willow almost forgot her mission until she turned to the last piece of furniture -- a big mahogany desk.
Squeezing around a dressmaker's dummy and a big framed mirror, Willow knelt down in front of the desk. It had more drawers than she would have expected a desk to have, and the top one was locked. She tried all the other drawers, but they were empty of everything except for random papers that looked boring.
So she found a long hooked thing that prompted a vague memory of "Little House on the Prairie," and started working to pry the locked drawer open. She hated to damage the beautiful wood, but she'd promised Nell that she would try to find the journal. And if it was up here, it was probably in this desk that Willow was willing to bet belonged to....
A stray rumbling sound had Willow poised to dive into the kneehole of the desk. She was California-born and bred, and earthquake-reflexes were bone-deep with her. But the rumbling stopped and she started chipping away at the drawer again, suddenly scared and eager to get out. She held the flashlight awkwardly with her chin and used both hands, trying to pop the lock out of its groove.
A crash made her scream and drop the flashlight, which rolled over and over, its light careening around the confines of the attic. She crawled out from under the desk and looked around. A glass figurine lay on the floor, shattered. While Willow tried to convince herself that it had fallen after the brief tremor, a music box sitting on a three-legged table nearby flew through the air and smashed against a tall wardrobe. The pieces showered to the floor in a rain of disjointed music.
At that point, Willow realized she was seeing altogether too well for her light source being a dim moon and a fallen flashlight. She really, really didn't want to turn around, but it was a toss-up which was worse: not knowing what was behind you, or *knowing.*
"Not knowing," she whispered, her throat suddenly very dry, and turned.
He was an old man, fifties or sixties, with a thick head of hair and a handlebar mustache. Willow's mouth worked for a few moments, taking in the old-fashioned clothes and the faint luminosity that surrounded his figure. "Are you Mr. Gordon?" she asked.
The ghost didn't seem to hear her, although he could certainly *see* her. His eyes were fixed on her with an intensity that made Willow want to be somewhere, *anywhere* but where he was. His expression was one of fixed coldness, lacking even the most basic thread of humanity. While she was trying to decide the quickest way out of the attic, the drawers started flying out of the desk, crashing into the wall. All but the locked one.
"Please," Willow said. "I just want to find your daughter's journal --"
~Bad move. Very, very bad move.~ The poltergeist didn't seem to like that idea. Willow screamed again as every breakable in the room seemed to fling itself at her head. Terrified, she took shelter behind a bureau and covered her head with her arms.
Only to be trapped when the wardrobe slide towards her, inextoribly coming closer. She was pinned in a corner between the bureau and the wall, and would be crushed...
"Father, no!" Nell's cry seemed to stop the wardrobe's advance, although it was still blocking Willow's escape.
As though a switch had been thrown, the ghost seemed to suddenly come to life. He was still transparent, but there was consciousness, understanding, *soul* in his eyes. "Nell, lass, go to your room."
"I want it back," she begged, tears pouring down her face. "Please!"
"No daughter of mine is going to ruin herself trying to prove herself a man," Nell's father thundered. "What man would marry a woman who played with numbers all day long and couldn't cook to save her life? I'm doing this for your own good, lass."
"Please, Father! You don't understand. My *work* is in there, everything I've learned, years and years of studying. You can't take it away from me."
Willow was watching the drama through the narrow crack between the bureau and the wardrobe, and swore that she saw Mr. Gordon's expression soften. "Lass..." he said quietly, "I don't want to see you break your heart on what can never be. Even if they would allow you into that school, even if I let you go... what would you do? Who would hire you to use the knowledge you would gain? You're better off marrying and having a son who you can teach what you know."
"I don't want to marry and raise a son to have what I cannot. *I* want it! I want to try. Father..."
Crying desolately, Nell's ghost flickered and disappeared.
Mr. Gordon remained behind his desk, staring at the space where his daughter had been a moment before. "I didn't know. I swear I didn't know, girl. I didn't know you cared so... I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."
Slowly, the wardrobe inched its way back from its looming position over Willow's head. No fragile breakables flew through the air as she crossed to the desk. Mr. Gordon was gone. So, too, Willow suspected, was Nell.
But on the scarred and scratched surface lay a small leather book. Inscribed on the flyleaf with faded ink was the name, "Eleanor Gordon."
* * *
"It's not fair. It's not. Somehow, I thought that when I gained the courage to show Father my work, when I proved to him that it was real and true and not just a foolish young girl's imagining... I thought he would understand, and would believe in me. I so needed him to believe in me. To prove to him that I was not just his silly, flighty daughter, that I could make him proud.
"But I failed. He laughed in my face, and said I was a fool for thinking that I could ever gain admittance to the university. Such was not for me. My duty, my fate, was to marry and keep a house and be a mother.
"But... but I had to try. I had to believe I could win. If I had not... then my soul would have been a desolate thing. I *know* that the work I have done in my little book is good, that my mind is equal and more to any of those who will wander the halls of this new university. And that knowledge is my one comfort and solace."
Willow closed the book before any of her tears smeared the ink, clasping it to her chest and thinking. Poor Nell. That was the last entry. She must have died young, of what, Willow didn't know, but young.
Leaving behind this book.
Willow glanced at her bedside clock, blinking in surprise when she saw the hour. At this rate, she was rapidly becoming accustomed to the night-owl hours that so many of her hacker ilk kept. They were often the same hours that Buffy kept, as well, in her duty to pursue and kill the demons who hunted the night.
And she belonged to both. She could take pride in the fact that what she had done for Buffy had helped her. The horrors that she had seen were nothing compared to the love and acceptance she had now.
Tiptoeing downstairs, Willow peered into the parlor. "Nell?" she whispered. "Nell?"
No answer.
Smiling slightly, Willow left the journal lying amid a stack of computer magazines. Someone would find it tomorrow. Someone would read it, and recognize what it contained.
"I hope you're at peace now, Nell," Willow said softly. She turned to the door, to head back up to go to bed, and stopped, struck by a sudden realization. "Because I am."
THE END
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