Just Listen

The voices i first heard in circa 1870 during my youth, when I was 14. I was a wanderer, you might say. A loner. I was vibrant and moody and bold and naive and still unpolluted by the cold menace and grip of civilized, industrialized society. Fishing was on my mind that particular day. Off I I went to one of the lazy and quiet, fresh-water streams on my grandpop’s rural farmlands.

Seventy acres awaited me. Every step of the walk was a delightful adventure. I was excited and alert. Small-mouth bass were just over the horizon. Bright-eyed deer, wary rabbits and tiptoeing pheasants were also aplenty. They greeted you more than surprised you and roamed about unbothered, in a kind of native bliss.

The landscape was a multicolored tapestry. The golden morning sun was hypnotizing it and bringing fresh vitality to a cloudless day. Bluebells in the pasture danced gaily like mini-ballerinas amongst bright yellow daffodils. Their thinness waved easily in the early-summer breeze. Intertwined, they appeared like brother and sister warmly embracing after a lengthy separation. Underneath them, the seasonal splendor of the rich verdure grew thick and steady; along side ran mud-caked banks of a rock-bottomed creek. You could see bugs and insects dance dizzy and wet on its surface, oblivious to dangers below.

The voices came as a whisper. And suddenly as a wave. I heard them as a soft but intensifying reverberation; they were more an echo than from a singular source.They came from deep within the woods, whose vast trees lined the meadows and ascended a steep obscure hill. The woods were cave-like. They opened to depths of darkness within a jungle-like mass of twisted vines, overgrown branches, triple-layered leaves and marshy wetlands. The woods were opposite the stream, or creek, to which I was originally heading. My buddies and I had been there once before and were mystified by the area. We called it Hideaway Mountain.

The voices were more spirit than substance. They were more sounds of unfolding silence than utterances from any corporeality. And they were a collective, not singular, sound, like the regulated hum of a disembodied choir. It was like when the wind howls late at night: you are walking alone on a country road, and you hear it, a curious sound, over there somewhere, or maybe over here. It’s distinct and overt yet an uncertain sound in the near-far distance and grabs you. Again and again you hear it, in the unseen beyond but within the portal of the wind itself, never exactly sure what you heard or even if you heard it ever before. The species as a vocal plea seems to seek cosmic acquaintance. It’s a hushed yearning. That’s the best way I can describe it.

But I know I heard voices-and so had no choice but to investigate them. I say no choice because youth especially has a destiny to search for stuff, as I did, even at my own peril. Except here is when I must delay the narrative a bit. I’m sorry. Yes, I am. Go ahead, raise your arms in the air like a functioning maestro and display your angst. I’ve cheated you, if only a bit.

Here is where I tell you that I am fast forwarding fifty years, to a moment when this story comes full circle-and to a moment of mortality. This is where I tell you something else, peculiar as it were, surely as I know that I am conscious. Those voices I first heard during that quixotic moment of my youth are the same voices that come from beyond the grave.

Fast forward to 1920, when I last visited my grandmother’s grave. She died from a heart attack some half a dozen years prior, and I was paying my somewhat untimely respects. I had not visited her since she was buried.

There is a half-broken iron gate that serves as entrance to the cemetery. It is entirely fenced in. Some 100 or so of the deceased earmark their former existence, courtesy of family or friends. Most are visible on fading stones, with the prosaic norms of etched names and dates. I entered through the gate with more trepidation than respect; I proceeded on, nevertheless. Nearby, an old man with a wooden cane and black hat was bowed over and immersed, it appeared, in a session of prayer or solitude. A chill in the air surrounded him.

My grandmom’s grave aligns with that of several relatives. Side by side, in vertical order, sits my grandmom’s, grandpop’s, aunt’s and great grandmother’s graves. Withered wreaths and dried flowers are spread about them.

Viewing her grave, an odd sense rushed upon me. There was sentimental symmetry to the occasion as evinced by what before me was Generation One of my heritage. It was looking at me as a whole through some transcendent portal. Gazing at me were the lineage, the ancestry, the Alpha and Omega of my family’s known mortality. The past meeting present, perhaps. A sullen, introspective thought raced through my mind. I was reflecting on things, of past times-happy and sad-when something happened, something suddenly began to stir.

The old man whom I had earlier noticed praying, tapped me on the shoulder using the end of his cane. Twice he hit me. He caught me by complete surprise, and I shalln’t pretend it did not give me a paroxysm of intense fright. I never heard him approach me. I turned about to confront him. I caught a sliver of his visage and vision. Each seemed to own a dark, evil shadow cast by the eclipse of his black hat.

Such a sight of him, now becoming full-view, further shook my already debilitated senses-his facial figures and eyes both revealed a type of oily putrefaction. A green liquid or substance, like a foam of algae and malodorous like a lingering rot, spread itself upon him. It gave him a hideous appearance of decay, as if he himself had been buried alive. He looked as if he had just emerged from the sepulchral depths.

I could not help but to try and compose myself. After a violently audible gasp or two from me, I took several steps away from him to recover. So I hoped. He stood there silent, though presently turning toward me some more. Then he spoke in a jittery and raspy voice, like a man recovering from an ailing laryngitis.

“ Do you recall that day in the woods so many years ago?” he asked, eyebrows rising, as if he already knew the answer.

“ You were spoken to from afar,” he continued, his eyes now turning dark, as if to match his hat. A few birds darted away at the sound of him. “You were summoned to account, “ he said.

I stood there almost frozen. Aghast, then perplexed I became by the abnormality of this devilish man, entire scene and line of inquiry. My mind was momentarily adrift and unable to acknowledge this bizarre interlude or to even grant it sanity. I ran my fingers through my hair whilst clasping my chin. Finally, I restrained myself no more.

“ I think, sir, that you have me mistaken for someone else. I neither recognize you nor your scope of inquiry. In any case, I would ask that you take your leave post-haste. I am paying tribute to my deceased kin, grandmother and others, and demand a reserve of privacy.” My voice loudened. “This is less a polite request than a command for common decency, especially here in such sacred quarters.. If you persist, my manners will transform themselves, I promise!”

My voice did not quiver. Indeed, I felt encouraged by this confrontation. Anger now grew in me, and i approached him aggressively. He had overstepped his bounds. I had taken maybe three steps toward him when, in a kind of metaphysical flash, his entire presence vanished. He was gone. He disappeared before my eyes. Only his hat and cane remained where he had just stood, a second ago, before me.

My head shook in utter disbelief. The spectacle upon the natural order of things, in that instant, was barely to be believed. An inscrutable twist of events left me transfixed and dazzled. Only a crow, perched nearby and looking more like a raven with its midnight black plumage and empty, marble eyes, stood witness to the event. I caught its icy gleam. It shrieked in sporadic bursts and seemed to laugh at me in mock humor.

That affair remains inexplicable. Still, what I can now finally reveal is what happened that day, long ago, when I first heard the voices. I wandered from the creek over into the deep woods from whence they came. The darkness therein induced a pale of doubt and insecurity as I entered. A few threads of light from the sun gave soft glow to the shadowy depths.

Once in the woods, I tried feverishly to zero in on the source of those voices. Nothing happened. I was unable to locate any precise or distinct origin of them. No voice proper could be found. In fact, no sound was to be heard. Not even a whisper. It was as if my presence-the noise of it-was a counterbalancing energy force that cancelled out other noises.

I searched an hour or so longer. The air was brisk, and my energy had not waned. Yet, still nothing. I finally decided enough was enough, and was leaving. It was just then when I noticed something hanging from one of the trees. And something else just below them was adrift and afloat on a tiny surrounding marsh.

I walked over, cautiously, to better see the items. There was a cane dangling from the tree and a black hat drifting on the pool of shallow water, below. I looked twice to confirm my observation. This made no sense. Was I deceived somehow, or the fool of an odd ruse? I stood confounded, and had no idea why these things were there.

I must now confess to the truth: I had no idea why they were there until fifty years hence at which point my conscience-or something- had spoken once again, when visiting the grave.




































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