It was a long time ago. We were playing war. We had our broom sticks for rifles, and for
the most challenging battlefield of all, we picked the cemetery.
I know it was not politically correct, but
this was so long ago it was before politics and correctness.
After the
sun set we climbed the chain
link fence and hid behind the grave stones. Of course the fence was there to keep us out, we knew
that, but there was a war going on and we had to save the world.
Bang, bang, etc., for a few minutes. We were winning.
And then: “WHAT is that?”
The words started loud, then got soft,
quickly.
“Oh my
gosh. Oh my golly. Oh no.”
It was
not our
imaginations. About thirty feet
in front of us, maybe two or three
car lengths, a white figure
floated by.
“I’m
scared.” Someone with a broom
stick rifle said. “I’m getting out of
here,” someone else who had just
saved the world said.
I was
trembling. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I had
just seen a second white figure,
sort of round but then changing shape float by, then they went back the
other way.
I wanted to run but I was shaking so bad I had trouble getting up.
Then there was a third. They started
coming toward us. We dropped our weapons
and ran. We hit that fence so hard I
don’t remember climbing it. We were just
up, over the top, cutting our hands on
the twisted ends of the wires, and then
falling to the ground on the other side.
We ran
home. We did not stop. We ran into our
homes and apartments without
saying anything.
“Where were you,” our parents asked. “You
look frightened.”
“Nowhere, nowhere, I’m
going to bed.”
We told no one about it in school the next
day. No one would believe us, we knew. We all carried that night and
those memories for decades.
Twenty years later I passed by that same
cemetery in the day time. I walked in.
There
was a large pond in the middle
and three white swans slowly swam by.
“I
knew that all the time,” I told
them.
Happy Halloween.
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