The woman with the short iron gray hair stood on the staircase that ended at the ceiling. Short of stature, she was able to stand up straight in the shadows near the top of the staircase. The long tapered sleeves of her high-necked long black gown remained crossed over her chest as she regarded the knot of people approaching down the hallway with flashlights.
“If you shine your flashlights over here,” the woman in the lead shone her own light onto the stairway where the woman stood, “you can see one of the infamous staircases leading to nowhere that Sarah Winchester built at the direction of one of her psychic advisers to confuse the spirits of those killed by the rifle her husband championed.” A dozen beams of flashlights crisscrossed up and down the length of the stairway, most at one point passing through the woman at the top of the stairs who remained still, a look on her face as if she had eaten something particularly bitter.
“If you’ll follow me this way,” the leader shined the light back in front of her and the knot of people passed down the hallway.
The woman on the stairs let out a disgruntled sigh.
“Excuse me,” came the voice of a young girl. “Ms. Winchester?”
The woman at the top of the stairs jerked, startled. “Oh goodness!” she said, clutching her chest. “You can see me, dear?” she said regarding the solitary girl who looked to be about fifteen.
The girl nodded.
“My, you look awfully thin, child!”
“Leukemia,” the girl said sadly. She lifted the long black haired wig showing her hairless scalp.
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry,” Ms. Winchester said.
“I grew up down the road,” she pointed west. I always wanted to come here – we drove by it nearly every day. I just died the other day, and my house…” she let out a long slow exhale. “It’s too sad right now.”
“So you came on the flashlight tour?”
“I thought, you know, if you were really here I might…,” she smiled shyly, “Get an autograph?”
For the first time in a hundred years, Sarah Winchester let loose a genuine, belly-shaking laugh. When she recovered and wiped the tears from her eyes, she took the little book from the girl. “What is your name, child?”
“Alice. Alice March.”
“Well,” she said as she scribbled a message and her autograph in the book, “I’m very sorry for your death, Alice March, but I thank you for making my night.”
Alice took the book back. “Thank you, ma’am.” She started to turn then asked, “So, is it true?”
“Is what true, dear?”
“You built all this to keep confuse the ghosts?”
“Are you confused?” Sarah Winchester asked.
Alice shook her head with a smile.
“Exactly,” Sarah smiled back. “I say, if you’re looking for some more names for your book, Steve Jobs is said to haunt his family’s old place in Los Altos…”