I was cleaning up breakfast when I saw Gerard through the window. He wasn't wearing a shirt in the chilly fall weather but it didn't seem to bother him.

Was it bad that I was ogling the pretty gardener? How old was he? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? I still had some pancakes left, so I made him a plate.

"Morning, Gerard. I got you some breakfast," I said, putting the tray on the patio table.

He looked at me with his winning smile and said, "Good morning, Darren."

How did he know my name? I was trying to remember if I told him the other day. I figured that I'd feel really stupid if I had told him and now asked how he knew, so I let it go.

"Aren't you cold?" I asked. His skin wasn't reacting to the chilly weather at all.

"Not anymore," he answered mysteriously.

This was going nowhere. Besides, I had work to do, I couldn't just stand here swooning over him the whole day.

"Shall I show you something? he asked suddenly.

I reluctantly agreed, after which he put his shirt on and walked towards the woods. I followed him quite a way in when I started getting paranoid. Where the hell was he taking me?

That's when I saw it!

The stone altar from my dream. It was a ruin now but it was easily recognizable. It was real? Why had Gerard decided to take me here? The day after my dream?

"This is a place of old magic!" Gerard said stoically.

"How old?" I asked, needing to know more. "As old as the house?"

"No, much older. Not just the Puritans escaped to the New World. What was practiced at this site was magic that predated God; an ancient pagan power that is no more."

I looked at Gerard to see if he was making it up but he looked perfectly serious.

"I dreamt about this place," I said.

Gerard stared at me for a moment before saying, "let's head back."

***

I looked up the region's history and found out that this area had been settled as early as the beginning of the sixteen hundreds.

Puritans were indeed the first people from the old world to populate the land that I was living on but I couldn't find any reference to those that Gerard had mentioned.

Wait! What was this?

An article described how a local historian had spent years going through old records and found a journal that spoke of the Whelm folk.

Supposedly, they were a secret cult that traced their origins back to the times of the ancient English druids. Their customs had been strictly forbidden by the church for unspecified reasons.

The article did not mention how these Whelm folk had ended up on US soil nor did it elaborate on whether their sect had survived into modern times.

Holy shit! I had one of these people's places of ritual in the woods behind my house! Why was it not a national heritage site or something?

Most importantly, how did my gardener Gerard know so much about it?

***

Olivia and Harold were playing upstairs. I called up to see if they wanted a snack but obviously didn't get a reply.

I decided to bring them something anyway and when I walked into Olivia's room, she was talking but there was nobody there!

"Olivia, who are you talking to, sweety?" I asked, kinda freaked out.

She turned to look at me as if she had not realized that I was there until now.

"I was talking to... Mom," she said, hesitating for a moment.

"Aw, sweety. I didn't know that you did that. Would you like me to join you? I have some questions for her!" I said, trying to make the subject as light as possible.

"Uhm, no thanks," she said and gave me a lopsided smile.

"I'll leave these here for the both of you then," I mumbled and left Olivia to her coping mechanism.

Was I doing the right thing? Should I be sending her to some form of grief counseling? She seemed very at peace in our new home and I didn't want to break the balance.