Click here to listen to The Visitor by Linda Manning as read by Robert Eccles
The Visitor
by Linda Manning
There was a ghost that frequented my garden. In the new moon, I saw him, barely discernable as he walked through grape leaves draped across the arbor. He would wait until my eyes found his silhouette. Then his movements responded to the rhythm of my breath. Only in the black of the new moon he'd come, a whisper in a garden lit only by moonflowers, scented with night jasmine.
I ran out to him once. Traversing the dew-soaked grass, I could see that he took notice, leaning just so around the trellised peas. He did not seem frightened as I stopped on a jagged flat rock to catch my breath. It seemed, joyously, that he waited for me, watching as I opened the garden gate. The well-worn path was cool beneath my feet and an evening breeze tickled my moistened toes. Something grabbed my hem, and I turned. There, where the path forks toward that fragrant bed of jasmine, a grinning stone monkey squatted, winged creature, imp to tease trespassers in my garden. But it was the ghost, I knew, not the statue, who distracted me.
I rushed down the path, through palm-shaped leaves and up the steps to the arbor, but by the time I'd gotten there, he was gone.
Under a brightly waxing moon, my ghost visitor retired to his shadows. Whether he sought refuge behind clouds or trees, or simply dispersed himself under the leaves of my garden, I couldn't know. His presence could no longer be felt.
I cut a sachet of lavender and sage in day, and wrapped them in my kerchief. Beside the bleeding stalks, I saw a curious thing. Ringlets in the soil, as though the injured herb had something to say. I looked around for some sunny silhouette. Can a shadow live in light? Only the sun itself was there to greet my face, and a breeze to lift my perspiration. I pulled some onions and smoothed out the soil.
Days passed and the moon waned once more. I watched from my window as the nights grew darker. As I sat with my embroidery, heathered flowers in the colors of night, I conjured a wicked and devious plan. I thought to trick my visitor.
That night, while the falling sun purpled the clouds and flashed its last torch to heaven, I crouched in the grape leaves, low beside the arbor. Evening insects buzzed around me as I listened for his footsteps. A warm breeze rustled through the squash and the aroma of sun-teased grapes filled my nose. Hours passed as the night grew darker. I watched a stellar canopy slide across the sky.
Finally, I stood to peer into the arbor. Only a few dry leaves whisked abandoned across its floor.
I stepped out of my hiding place as the foliage wiped its dewy tears across my arms. Down the path I walked, empty for that lover stranger. Moonflowers climbed the posts around me, their round white faces witness to my defeat. The winged monkey was still only stone and the foot path still only dirt.
Fleeting thoughts passed through me and I looked back to that empty place. There was no one in the arbor, no shadow moving through the vines. The onion bed held no message. My breath was my own, but now my heart had been stolen away.
Back through wet grass to a house warmed only with a single lamp, I climbed the steps to my door. I took one last glance to that strange meeting place. Empty now, it stood cold with the absence of his shadow. Watcher of that night garden. Tender of my loneliness. Had I dreamed it, I could not find myself more sad.
I turned to open my door, but oh! Already, it hung wide open. With knob in hand behind the door, under the mottled shades of night, he stood. He looked right at me, right through me, and it was then that I remembered.
As he'd waned through that last harvest month, his whispered promise to never leave sent through me, the only breath to sustain me. Beneath that stone monkey I'd buried him with all of his spent strength and funny mischief. His message, steady through a flood of emptiness, floated still in the peace of my garden.