Taking a seat on the creaking wood of the old picnic table, his feet on the bench, Gabriel placed the little chest beside him and contemplated it. It wasold, dusty and a bit banged up. It was a conglomeration of metal and leather and wood, in the same fashion as antique trunks. On the front was a small brass lock, the key of which Gabriel turned over in his hands. Leaning to the side, he used it and unlocked the chest.

Leaving the key in the lock, he opened the chest. The lid came up with a groan and a show of dust, and Gabriel huffed to blow it away from his face. After the air cleared, he peered inside. The interior was pasted with sheet music, sepia toned. A few he recognized, others were indiscernible. Boots knocking on the wood bench, Gabriel shifted to get a better look inside.

The first thing to catch his eye was a worn snapshot tucked against the back. The edges were torn and browned, but the color was still good, even if a bit blurred.It was of himself as a very small child sitting beside his father by the lake. He smiled, a little sad, faint memories of that day they all spent fishing and barbecuing on Memorial Day. There would be no more days like that.

The next thing was a leather drawstring pouch, which once opened revealed a rosary. It was mother of pearl beads wire wrapped in dark bronze, with tiny, vibrant orange garnet accents and a caravaca crucifix. Gabriel ran it through his hands, the faceted stones cool and shining in the early morning sun. He looked at the rosary for a long time, recalling his grandfather sitting in the den early in the morning before anyone else was awake, praying quietly in the low light and silence. Gabriel didn’t realize his grandmother had kept it, had thought it had just gotten lost with time.

Returning it gently to the pouch, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and set it aside. He sifted through the contents of the chest, finding a cassette tape with no label, a battered paper crane he vaguely remembered making when he was ten, a golden Irish claddah ring that had been for her engagement. At the bottom, underneath a tattered leather bound copy of Watership Down, he found a fine Damascus knife, bone handled, tiny rust spots on the flat of the blade. He ran his thumb alone the blade, a thin line of bright blood following. Still sharp. It was his mother’s hunting knife. Again, something he’d though lost, after everything happened. Somehow, his grandmother had managed to hold onto all the things that held the most memories of their family. All stowed away in a small chest in the attic closet.

With a heavy, shuddering sigh, Gabriel swallowed around a knot in his throat and looked up at the house, standing tall and empty, memories wondering it’s halls like ghosts, smiling in the pictures on the walls and chiding from the notes on the fridge. It was alone as he was, just as he was bound here and unable to leave, built up on the rocks and red dirt of the mountain side, unmovable with time and age.

Looking around at the sprawling green fields and corn crops and barns, at the glint of the lake in the distance, he smiled. There were worse places to die, and you weren’t really alone when you lived in a house full of ghosts.