Woken by my daughter early this morning, unable to get back to sleep so I head downstairs to sit in the predawn dark, looking up from my book from time to time as little beads of shadow stream across the floor like dark mercury.
An hour or so later, I hear footfalls overhead.
They move through the laundry room to the back stairs. But they do not descend.
Later that morning, I ask my wife if she got up earlier. She did not.
…and as I turn to put a glass in the cupboard I startle and flinch backwards from the dark figure standing right at my left shoulder.
Vague impressions . . . someone looking into my face . . . a male presence about my height but larger, heavy-set almost . . . broad head, the bare suggestion of something there . . . a hat, perhaps?
And then it is gone.
Waking up in the winterdark, I head downstairs. Cold floors and echoes of early morning dreams.
I pass by the front door and see someone out on the sidewalk, a dark shape bundled up against the cold.
Halfway to the kitchen, I stop.
The dark shape picking its way along the crust of snow, another echo in the back of my head. Old, old feelings.
The shape, slightly too tall . . . too tall and too dark.
Not a person, no.
Back at the door, I look one way and then the other. Up and down the street, far as I can see.
Nothing. No one.