It’s a simple story really. A simple story with a big impact. I’ve tried to elaborate it. I’ve tried to embellish it. But in the end, it all comes down to a three minute conversation with a five year old. Here it is.
I stared across the room at my oldest child in her bed, then five, and wondered if I’d heard her right. She looked so calm, so straight faced…so normal.
“What did you say?”
“Someone walked across my room today.”
I looked around the large bedroom she shared with her newborn sister. Toys were scattered bout, a window on one wall, a long closet on the opposite wall. She was tucked into her Barbie blanket, sitting up, reading a book.
“Like a mouse?” I asked.
“No, someone,” she said. “A clear boy walked across my room.”
Heather was not a typical five year old. She’d taught herself to read the year before with Hooked On Phonics…just dragged that big box into her room and taught herself. She didn’t say, ‘no’ to me. She had full adult conversations; could add and subtract double digit numbers in her head; and had never, to my knowledge, lied…at that point. She learned that at thirteen…boy did she learn it. So when she said she’d seen something…or someone… I had every reason to believe her.
“Let’s go talk to daddy,” I said, and didn’t wait for her to respond before I bolted for the living room. Every woman and child for herself when the hair on the back of your neck stands on end.
We sat on the living room couch, I curled on one end, Dan on the other, and Heather stood before us I her pink satin nightgown, long dark hair falling down her back.
“Tell me what happened,” we asked…not sure we wanted the answer.
“I was looking for something in my closet,” she began. “And I turned back towards my room and there was a boy walking across my room. He was by the door, and then he came across and stood by the vacuum. “ (middle of the large bedroom)
“What did he look like?”
“He was clear. With a black outline.”
“What do you mean clear?”
“I could see through him…but he had a black outline.”
“How big was he?”
“About as big as Sonja.” (the ten year old down the road)
“And then what?”
“He turned and looked at me. And then he kept walking. But his legs didn’t move.”
“His legs didn’t move? How did he walk?”
“He just went forward.”
“And then what did he do?”
“He walked through my wall.”
“Through your wall?”
“Yep.”
“And what did you thinkof that?”
“I thought it was rude that he didn’t talk to me.”
And that was that. She didn’t seem to mind. She wasn’t scared. She didn’t make a big deal of it. She just went back to bed, pulled her door shut, flipped off her light, and went to sleep.
I, on the other hand, never slept the same again.
