A MidSummer Evening’s Haunting
When I was a child, not too much older than my oldest son is now, I would play in the backyard. Seeing it today, it does not look half the size it was to me then. It’s perhaps 20 yards deep and 30 yards wide, surrounded by a chain link fence. There was a lone clothes-line pole that I would play on for hours: climbing it, circling around it, and – best of all – after a good rain, jiggling it and listening to the mud.
It was here that I have ever truly been haunted. I remember it vividly.
It was the summer time, and the plants were all in bloom. It was during that part of evening where the sun has passed below the tree line, making the trees silhouettes, and lighting the sky gold. I was standing in the back-left corner, next to Dad’s garden, eating the honeysuckles that grew up along the fence. I can remember the aroma of green garden plants and especially honey-suckle surrounding and embracing me. I can remember the warmth of the evening around me like the warmth of a morning’s bed.
And then I heard someone speak my name: “Spencer”.
It was a woman’s voice: one I did not know: rich and golden like the evening, and she spoke it as though to say hello to a dear friend or her own child.
I turned around looking for her, but I was alone in the backyard.
And, again, she greeted me: “Spencer”.
My heart began to race, and I turned back to the setting horizon, peering through the honeysuckles, looking for she who knew my name.
A third time she spoke my name: “Spencer”.
Fright overcame me for I did not understand what was transpiring, and I ran back to the house and inside.
Later, I related to my father what had happened with a bit of a guilty heart, and he chuckled saying it was not unheard of to hear someone call you in the silence of solitude – that it was nothing but in your head.
I have sought the silence of solitude many times since then, never to have her call me again.
And I am disappointed: I have ever since wanted to answer and see what happens next.
Spooky.