Raven Summerisle

In the summer of 79’ my brother and I made a friend.  He was a homeless man who made a home under the small bridge near our house.  He was kind and looked like an old steamboat captain, or maybe a department store Santa Clause.  We brought him food and little things we thought he could use.   He was lonely, so we hung around with him and played cards. Sometimes, we’d climb down the embankment under the bridge and look for treasure along the shoreline.

I can see how a parent might have cause for concern.  I do, but, he wasn’t a threat.  He was sad and alone in the world.  Looking back, he was probably a war vet, or maybe he struggled with mental illness, or both.  Whatever he suffered from, he was only ever kind to us and he showed genuine concern for our unsupervised activities. 

Our home life wasn’t easy so we looked for kindness elsewhere.  We felt isolated from people, because we often lived like gypsies.  My brother and I found secret places to feel safe in.  Places like an old overgrown cherry tree we used as a fort or the dilapidated garage we made into our clubhouse.

At some point during that summer our mother became aware of our activities.  We were seen sneaking home late one night by a neighbor and she complained to our mother.  Neither of us told her about the man under the bridge, but she found out.  She was angry with us, not for our safety, but because she thought we made her look bad and she was embarrassed.  She told us to stop visiting him.  We didn’t because no matter what we did the outcome was inevitably the same. So, we did as we pleased.  She would either forget the whole thing, or react with shocking violence.  It never occurred to me her anger would reach beyond us.

The sirens cut through the early morning air and startled me awake.  I ran downstairs and found my brother pulling on his cloths.  We went outside and got as close as possible to the tragic scene.  Our friend was dead.  His bedding and all his worldly possessions were lying in a wet heap on the sidewalk with tendrils of smoke drifting upwards into the gray morning sky.  Sometime in the early hours he had burned to death in his little bed.  The firemen said he’d fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand and lit the mattress on fire.  We just stared at the ground.  We knew he didn’t smoke.

I’ve heard it said the easiest person to murder is a junkie.  I guess that applies to the homeless as well.  No one looks beyond the obvious, but we knew.  As we walked back to the house hand in hand, she came out onto the lawn, wrapped tightly in her robe, and watched us with a sickening triumphant smile.  Her smile, that was never really a smile.       

We had been living our new house for less than a month, and one night, while doing laundry in the basement, someone knocked sharply at the back door.  I ran up the stairs and opened the door wondering who would walk to the back of the house and knock.  It was weird.  Looking into the darkness from the porch to the yard, I could see there was no one out there.  I wondered how they’d gone so quickly.  As I started to close the door something shoved it back into my face.  I pushed it shut and locked it, maybe too late. 

As time passed little things began to bother me, the feeling of being watched,  small things went missing.  I started seeing someone sitting in an armchair in the living room from the corner of my eye, and when I was alone in the house, I often heard footsteps above me when I was downstairs, in the basement.  A slow halting gait would drift down the stairwell.  I wanted it to be one of our cats, but I knew it wasn’t. 

I love moments when I’m alone, to sit in silence with my coffee and listen to the world outside.  Except I’m never alone.  The guy in the chair is there.  I can never see him straight on, he has always been no more than an impression, a dark shape in the chair.  I still can’t see him, I don’t want to.  Did he come with the house?   Was it him at the door, or does he protect us from something far more sinister.  Maybe he’s attached to one of us, or maybe the house.  Maybe that’s why he’s still here.  Sitting forever, in the chair no one sits in, no one but him.

I was so late getting home one night I sneaked through the back yard of an old mansion.  It was on the edge of an ancient enclosed park.  As I crept through the twisted undergrowth, along the old stone fence, I tripped over a tiny headstone buried in the weeds.  It was too dark to read and I guessed I was in a little pet cemetery.  I kept moving forward and found a few more.  I was wondering about the people who buried their pets so lovingly, when the soft crying of a child startled me.  I called quietly, “Hello, are you alright?”  There was no answer, but the first cry was answered by the soft wail of an infant.  Whatever was happening, it was all wrong, and I wanted out.  I ran until I was free of the yard and on the street.  I stopped under a streetlight and looked back into the darkness, but there was nothing there. I’m not sure what I expected to see.

The next evening I decided to sneak back and see what I had been walking through the night before.  Very quietly I crept back into the garden along the fence and found the little headstones.  The little ovals on the grave markers were portraits of children.