by Cory Hiles
Miss Lilly diverted her attention from the window to look at me for a second and said, “You don’ see, Boo? You keep watchin’ you be seein’ in time.”
I glanced back at Miss Lilly and wondered what that cryptic sentence was all about, but quickly shrugged it off and returned my gaze to the crazy goose that was running circles around the tree.
The longer I stared at the goose, the more I began to think I might be seeing things. There appeared to be a shadow—albeit a dim one—chasing the goose around that old willow tree. I blinked hard a couple times and rubbed my eyes, but when I looked again, not only was the shadow still there, but it was darker and more prominent than it had been only a few seconds before.
The longer I watched the more material the shadow became, until it was no longer a shadow, but a fully solid man that was chasing that old goose. I looked at him in wonder and tried to figure out how I had not seen him to begin with.
The man was hard to make out from a distance, but he appeared to be an older black gentleman, in his mid fifties or early sixties. He wore a red and white checkered shirt, with the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a pair of blue denim overalls, and brown work boots.
His hatless head revealed a somewhat bushy salt and pepper afro that covered his entire head except for one small shining bald spot on the back, near the top of his head. I could see from a distance that he wore a neatly trimmed beard, of the same salt and pepper colors as his hair.
The man was running rapturously behind the poor goose, every movement of his body displaying a pure unadulterated joy, as he lunged and grabbed for the goose over and over again with his long outstretched arms.
Occasionally, the man would leap into the air and click his feet together with all the grace of a ballerina, and seemed to hang in the air for just a fraction too long to look completely normal.
I was mystified by the man. For one, why was there a strange old black man running around on my aunt’s property? For two, why in God’s name was he chasing a goose? For three, how in the Hell was a man of his age able to keep up with the goose and perform his lunges and jumps with a dancers grace and agility? For four, why didn’t I see him to begin with? For five… well, in other words, the situation completely baffled me.
As I have mentioned previously, since my salvation from the basement I have seen a shimmering aura around all physical objects. This aura extends only about an inch or two around the entire perimeter of the object I am looking at and appears to be primarily silver in color, though it has a multitude of other colors swirling through it, like oil on water.
The single most baffling thing to me about this strange man in the yard was the fact that he had no aura. To anybody else, not afflicted with my peculiar vision disorder, the man would appear completely normal, but to me, he just looked…wrong.
“Miss Lilly, who is that and why is he chasing Howard?” I asked, trying to sound casual rather than fearful or weirded out, which was exactly how I was feeling.
Miss Lilly turned to me, still with tears running down her chubby cheeks and decided to remain cryptic. She said, “You don’ know him, Boo, but Miss Lilly knowed him long ago. I ain’t been seein’ him fo’ a long stretch o’ time, but now him back, now him done find me at last.”
Having successfully confused the crap out of me, Miss Lilly returned her gaze to the window. I stared at her with my mouth agape for several seconds before snapping it shut with an audible pop.
I looked back out the window and that saw the man was sitting down beneath the tree, with Howard in his lap. The man was looking towards the house and appeared to be petting the goose.
“Well,” I said, frustrated with Miss Lilly’s apparent desire to be mystifying, “I’m going to go talk to him, and see what he wants.”
Miss Lilly turned to me with a broad, toothy grin and one arched eyebrow and said, “You go right on ahead an’ do dat, Child. But I gonna told you right now, him ain’t gonna be talkin’ back.”
“Oh?” I asked incredulously, “Why’s that?”
“Him on’y jes’ learned how to be showin’ hisself, he ain’t had no time to be learnin’ how to talk yet.”
Miss Lilly was driving me crazy with her asinine half-answers and I decided it was time to tell her as much. “Ok, Miss Lilly, I love you to death, but you are driving me bat-shi…crap crazy right now! Can you please explain just what the heck you’re talking about?”
Even though Miss Lilly was driving me bat-shit crazy, I still respected her far too much to curse much in her company.
Though I felt I’d pulled the punch at the last second by not cursing, I still must have said enough to get my point across because she finally gave me a direct answer; I almost wished I hadn’t asked.
She looked at me with her cheeks still wet from her tears and said, “Him dead, Johnny. Dat be my dead Louie. Him done lost me when I move here, an’ though I been to de old place lookin’ for him many time, I never find him, because him been out lookin’ for me, an’ now him done found me.”
“When we done lost each other, him din’ know how to make hisself visible, but sometime him could make hisself into a shadow. Now him done learned to control his energy enough to make hisself visible, but him got a long time b’fore him be learnin’ how to talk yet.”
I stared at Miss Lilly with my mouth agape for the second time in as many minutes, and turned my gaze back to the man at the pond. I was just getting ready to challenge the honesty of Miss Lilly’s answer when I watched the man fade rapidly from sight.
When I say fade, I don’t mean to imply that he walked slowly away until he was so distant that he was no longer visible. I mean what I said; that he was sitting there, petting a goose, and suddenly he just faded away until he was no longer visible and the goose that had been sitting contentedly on his lap suddenly found itself dropping about eight inches to the ground, with nothing beneath it to hold it up any longer.
I gasped audibly and stepped back away from the window, turning towards Miss Lilly as I did, and asked, “Where’d he go?” In my panic, and my ever inconveniencing puberty, my voice came out rather more falsetto than I would have liked in that instance.
Miss Lilly smiled, even as she still cried, and replied, “I tink him comin’ to say ‘hi’, an’ meet de fam’ly, Boo.”
I wanted to tell Miss Lilly that I really didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be meeting dead people so early in the morning, but was distracted by the sudden overpowering smell of pipe tobacco.
“Miss Lilly, do you smell that?” I asked with a breaking, wavering voice that was bordering on panic.
Miss Lilly gave me one of the sterner looks she’d ever given me up to this point in our relationship and reached up to pinch her nose as she said, “Smell what? You bes’ not be fartin’ in my kitchen, Boy, else Miss Lilly be findin’ a way to plug up dat hole!”
“No I didn’t fart! I smell pipe tobacco. I smell it real strong. You don’t smell that?”
My panic was growing as I suddenly remembered back to my first summer at June’s and the smell of roses that accompanied many odd happenings during that time. Although those odd events had all been benign, that certainly didn’t necessitate that any odd happenings that might occur under the scent of pipe tobacco would not be more malignant.
Miss Lilly’s eyes widened as she exclaimed, “Pipe smoke! You be smellin’ pipe smoke? Louie, Louie? You be in here, Louie?”
Miss Lilly began frantically searching around the kitchen for the invisible man, but evidently could not see him, for she kept looking and calling. I, on the other hand saw him, but was far too frightened to speak.
I suppose that to say I saw him may be a bit misleading. What I saw was a shadow of him, right next to Miss Lilly. I saw him appear there suddenly, right after I told Miss Lilly I had not been letting off butt bombs in her kitchen.
His shadow was not as dark as a shadow caused by the sun and a solid object, but was instead, just a light gray transparent form, in the distinct sh
ape of a human being, standing right next to Miss Lilly, with one transparent arm wrapped familiarly around her back.
Miss Lilly finally quit calling for him and instead looked at me accusingly and said, “How you be knowin’ my Louie smoke a pipe, an’ why you be pullin’ my leg like dat—like you be smellin’ him? Ain’t nobody done never smell de Shadow b’fore anyway. I should’a knowed you were joshin’ me! Dat were a mean-hearted ting you just done right there, Johnny Krimshaw.”
I was frozen with fear, and unable to make a sound beyond the briefest “ahh…tss... ahh…derr…” until I saw big angry tears leaking out of Miss Lilly’s eyes. She truly thought I was poking fun at her about her dead husband, and she was deeply hurt to think that I would do such a thing.
That shocked me out of my stammer and at last allowed me to talk. “Miss Lilly, no! I am not lying, or teasing! I can smell him! And now, I can see him too; well sort of see him anyway. He’s beside you; his arm is around your back… and now he is nodding, like he’s agreeing with me.”
And indeed the Shadow of Louie was nodding, and offering me a thumbs-up gesture that was rather difficult to make out, since it was devoid of any features or depth, and was mostly transparent.
Miss Lilly continued to stare at me doubtfully, not quite convinced that I was not trying to prank her, until the Louie Shadow stepped in front of her (she did not see him, but continued to stare through him, at me) and started picking at her hair, lifting her bushy braids up in the air one at a time and then dropping them.
Miss Lilly’s eyes widened once more as she reached up and grabbed at her hair, and her gaze shortened, her eyes nearly crossing, as she tried to focus on the invisible phantom only inches away from her face.
She obviously could not see him as well as I could, but she must have seen something, because she finally broke out in a huge smile and began slapping the air in front of her, like she was batting away a swarm of gnats, and said “Louie, you ol’ devil, you bes’ be knockin’ off dat horseplay, or I gonna go pee on you’s grave…again!”
Apparently Louie believed her, for he immediately let go of her braids and stepped off to her side once more. Miss Lilly broke into a deep laugh, puking her joy into the kitchen in her usual way that always made me joyful right alongside her, and said “C’mon, ol’ man, let’s go walkin’. We got us some catchin’ up to do fo’ sho’!”
As her and Shadow Louie walked by me, Miss Lilly stopped and touched my cheek tenderly, and said “Boo, I am so sorry dat I thought bad of you, an’ said you was bein’ mean-hearted. I was no’ thinking right. I know you are de best young man in de world an’ I love you wit’ all my heart. Please fo’give me.”
I smiled honestly at Miss Lilly and moved towards her and kissed her cheek, which was still moist with salty tears and told her there was nothing to forgive. Then I turned towards Shadow Louie and said “Louie, you better treat this young lady right, and have her home before midnight!”
I offered the transparent shadow a wink and expected no real tangible response, but for just one split second, like the flickering of a fluorescent light when you first turn it on, Shadow Louie pulled his energy reserves together and became Solid Louie again.
Solid Louie looked at me with a huge smile, his eyes twinkling with joy and mischief, and gave me a quick wink and slight shake of his head before flickering back into Shadow Louie. That brief glimpse was enough to convey to me that though he might be dead, he would still ravage Miss Lilly in a most un-gentlemanly way if only given the chance.
I immediately liked the old man and was able to see why Miss Lilly had fallen in love with him. As they walked out of the kitchen together, I said a silent prayer for them, “Lord, please give him the chance. Amen.”
CHAPTER 24
I stood in the kitchen staring out the window towards the pond for several minutes, thinking about a lot of different things.
Mostly I wondered about the ‘eye’ that Miss Lilly had told me about. I could not discredit her claim that I had the gift since I had been able to see the dead guy in my kitchen even more readily than she had, but I did wonder what it would mean for the rest of my life.
As I considered the gift it seemed to me that its potency might be increasing as my body raced towards maturity. When I had been younger, I had seen glimpses of shadows, and experienced some rather uncanny events, but I had never had an experience as real and material as the one I had just had in the kitchen that morning.
My thoughts eventually drifted towards the rose smelling spirit and the note that had been left to me so long before. I realized that I had a strange longing in my heart for that particular spirit to manifest itself again.
Though I had never seen the spirit responsible for the note and the scent, I was convinced that it was the spirit of a young lady and could still recall the impressions of supreme femininity that had pressed upon my mind as I read the note that she’d left behind for me.
I stared out the window for only another minute before deciding that the chances of encountering that Lovely Shadow again were slim. It had been seven years since her last investigations into my life, and it seemed that she must surely have moved on by now.
Sighing, I grabbed up my book off the counter by the sink and headed for the door, forgetting all about the banana and water that I’d originally been seeking. I had seen enough of the dead for one morning and decided that some time spent in my book would be time well spent.
When I got to the pond I looked around the base of the willow tree, searching for footprints or other evidence of Louie’s presence but found nothing aside from some goose droppings on the far side of the tree.
Across the pond, at the furthest edge of the property I could see Miss Lilly walking beside a shadowy form. As usual, she appeared to be having a wildly animated conversation and was using her arms as much as her mouth to get her point across. I smiled at the strange couple in the distance as I sat down beneath the tree.
I opened my book and stared at the pages. I read nothing. I looked up towards the house and saw movement in the kitchen window. Assuming it was June getting ready to start her day I went back to staring at my book.
I tried in vain to read for at least thirty more minutes before giving up completely and heading back to the house. As I entered the front door, June was just coming down the stairs, with her hair looking frighteningly Medusa-like and her eyes still squinted mostly shut.
“Morning Babe,” June stammered out in a yawn choked voice.
It was obvious that June was only just getting out of bed, and Miss Lilly and Louie were out walking the far corners of the property, which led me to wonder about the movement I’d seen in the kitchen.
After offering a very distracted—and squeaky—good morning back to June, I headed for the kitchen to investigate. Nothing appeared to be out of place, or out of the ordinary. There were no shadow figures walking around, and no traces of any odors besides the fresh brewed coffee that Miss Lilly had made earlier in the morning.
I was sorely disappointed, which confused me. I could not understand why I should be disappointed that there were no dead people in my kitchen.
June entered the kitchen only seconds behind me and distracted me from thinking much about the reasons for my disappointment. She grabbed a cup of coffee and headed over to the small table in the corner to sit down and enjoy it. I grabbed a cup and joined her there.
Over the previous seven years, June and I had developed a ritual in the mornings. The ritual had been one of my favorite things on earth. The ritual was simply sitting with June at the kitchen table and chatting, early in the morning, before the worries of life had a chance to intrude for the day.
I had been afraid that as I grew older I would find the morning ritual tiresome or less pleasant than I did when I was younger and would eventually give up on it altogether, probably hurting June’s feelings in the process. That did not seem to be the case however, and as I grew older, I found that, if anything, I had grown to enjoy our morn
ing ritual more than ever.
Occasionally Miss Lilly would join us for morning coffee, and that was always a wonderful time, but I think she felt that the morning ritual should be a private time for June and I, and more often than not she chose to take her coffee in the dining room where she could “read de paper an’ find out what kinda trouble all dem dum-dums in de gov’ment was gettin’ into.” That is, when she actually got up early enough to have an opportunity to join us.
On the morning I met Louie, June was able to sense right away that I was distracted and immediately began trying to get to the source of my discomfort. I tried in vain to brush it all aside, not knowing how she would feel about having Miss Lilly’s dead husband for a new roommate or my longing for a shadow girl I had not even thought about for years. But June’s concern for me was deep enough that she would never be content to just let me have a problem without her knowing exactly what it was.
Finally I just decided to come out with it, or at least part of it. “Do you believe in ghosts, June?” I asked seriously, proud that my voice had not cracked one time during the question.
June cocked her head to the side a little and looked at me before responding, as if she was trying to discern whether or not I was honestly getting to the real reason for my discomfort. “Yes, Johnny, I do. I’ve never seen one, but I reckon they exist. Why?”
Figuring that her belief in the walking dead was a good enough reason to continue I went ahead with the rest of my story about how I’d found Miss Lilly that morning, and Louie, and the goose, and the walk that Miss Lilly and Louie were currently on.
After spilling the whole story—with the exception of my longing for the girl I was calling Rose—I sat back and waited for June’s response. I have no idea how I was expecting her to respond but I know that I had never considered that she would respond the way she did.
“Oh, how wonderful!” June said, smiling broadly and clapping her hands together. “I’m so glad that he finally found her. They haven’t seen each other since she moved here, you know.”
