The man with the bag was scary.

Thomas ran toward his mother, his little legs pumping. He’d caught a glimpse of the man over his shoulder. He was tall and lean, and he wore a baseball cap which cast a shadow over his face. His facial features were lost in the shadow, except for his eyes. His eyes seemed to glow.

Up ahead, his mother turned and, laughing, called for him. “Come-on, buddy! Hurry up!”

Thomas threw his arms back and forth. He was wearing his new sneakers. They made him faster, carrying him away from the shadow man toward the safe embrace of his mother’s arms.

As he reached his mother, he dared to look back. The shadow man’s long gait had given him an unfair advantage. While Thomas ran as hard as he ever remembered running, the shadow man had lumbered at a leisurely pace, and yet, he was upon them. A cloud rolled across the sky and his face disappeared almost entirely, except for those eyes. And his mouth. Looking at Thomas, he spoke.

“Hey there, little man,” he said with a crooked smile. Thomas could feel his mother’s arms tighten around him. ?Stranger danger, ?he thought. ?Stranger danger, stranger danger, stranger danger!

Looking up to Thomas’s mother, the man smiled wider and said, “I have a grandson I reckon to be about his age. How old is he?”

Thomas’s mother loosened her grip.

Stranger!

Danger!

“He’s…uh,” she stumbled over her words. “Three!” she said, laughing. “I’m still getting used to using years instead of months.”

The man laughed with her, a deep, rolling belly laugh that sounded like Santa Clause in the cartoons.

“They grow up quick,” the shadow man said. “Like weeds.” The two adults shared a conspiratorial chuckle.

Meanwhile, Thomas was eyeing the bag in the man’s hand. Perhaps it held the secret to the shadow man. Maybe its contents would betray his motive, be it good or bad. Thomas stared at it intensely. The words on the side meant nothing to him, save for their blocky look and the dark ink in which they appeared to be stamped. The bag looked foreboding.

After a few seconds, Thomas realized all was quiet and looked up to see the man looking down at him. Stranger danger!?

“Wondering what I got, little man?”

Thomas didn’t move.

“Been out shopping. Got me some pants. But…I got something else, too.” He bent down, his shadow face coming close enough to Thomas that he could smell coffee and cigarettes on his breath. He scooped a hand into the bag and snatched something with lightening speed. Showing it to Thomas’s mother, the man asked, “May I?”

Thomas’s mother smiled and the man knelt. He held out his hand, and there, in his palm, was a handful of candy. Just as Thomas saw the candy, the clouds parted and light reflecting off the foil of the candy illuminated the shadow man’s face. He had a kind smile and gentle eyes. And candy. The shadow man had candy.

Thomas smiled then, too, and took the candy.

As they walked away, Thomas stuffing the first piece of candy in his mouth, his mother asked. “Why were you so shy back there?”

“Stranger danger,” Thomas said.

She smiled and knelt beside him, bringing herself eye-level with him. “Thomas, I’m glad you remembered that, but there’s no danger if I’m there. Momma won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again.”

Thomas supposed not. After all, the shadow man had candy and his mother’s approval, which was two things more than his father had.

Perhaps all men weren’t made of shadows.

The cellphone ring jarred him out of a restless, dream-addled sleep in which  a kindly, elderly man kept trying to take his backpack saying, “Lay down your burden while you still can.”

Pressing the phone to his ear he heard a curt “Today” and then the line went dead.

“Hurry, hurry, I slept in and we’re late” she said to her young son, who was playing, as always, with his cereal. “We’ll take the shortcut to your school today.”

Dressing quickly, he chose his favorite jeans and sneakers, grabbed his backpack, now heavy with nails and ball bearings, and quietly slipped  past his parent’s bedroom door, not wanting to awaken them.

Heading for home, the old man walked slowly, carrying a plastic bag containing undelivered food. It had been a slow nightshift at the  takeout. He was tired and decided to save a few minutes  by walking through the outdoor pedestrian mall.

Connecting the wires from the backpack to the detonator, he slipped it into the right pocket of his jeans as he got on his bike. He started pedaling down the main road toward the Embassy, turning left into the pedestrian mall. Few people were walking there at this early hour. Just an old man and a young mother with her kid. Nobody to prevent him from cycling through.

“Mom! Watch me!” He started to hop backward, trying to make his mother laugh as they hurried to his school. He didn’t see the bike barreling down on him. ” No! Come here! No!” cried his mom as she saw what was about to happen.

He lay on the ground, his right leg entangled in the frame of his bike. Swerving to miss the little kid who was about his brother’s age, he veered too close to the old man. The plastic food bag became entangled in the front wheel spokes and he had gone down hard. Very hard. His right forearm bent the wrong way. The broken tip of the ulna poked through the skin near his thumb.

Through the haze of pain he felt someone tugging on the straps of his backpack. ” NO…NO…detonator…” he mumbled.

“How heavy this is,” said an elderly male voice, “you’ll feel better with this burden off.”

The boy and the girl sat behind the bush, looking at the elder man make his way through the graveyard. They had been playing among the tombstones, and the sound of the iron-gate, being opened and closed, made them run and hide, afraid of being found.  It had been an inexplicable fear, and one that had engulfed them in the quick moment that had occurred; they probably remembered the last time the owner of the church close by found them playing alone among the graves. They sat, the boy shivering and the girl attentive, listening as the elder man began to cry.

His cries and moans and sobs were inaudible because of the rain. It was drizzling lightly, but the forest at the children’s back had a way of echoing every response to the raindrops that fell—the bush marked the edge of the graveyard and the beginning of the deciduous trees; the little children were tipped on the edge of civilization and a strange wilderness that was relatively tame. The man carried a bundle of white roses, and a letter, drenched by now in the light downpour; he wore a trench coat, further adding to his phantasmal resemblance, and a beaver hat, echoing Victorian times.

He made his way and crouched, finding his own respective ancestor, friend, or deceased wife. Mechanically, he fell to his knees and began screaming in an instinctive and almost primordial way, affecting the children nearby. They huddled closer together for comfort and warmth. The mud and weather had long ago pierced their coats, and now they became aware of that fact. He left the roses and the letter hastily and got up; he began to run, awkwardly stumbling over the uneven ground. Along the way, he accidently kicked the mud-castle the boy and the girl had been making.

Hearing the iron-gate crash again, they came out from behind the bush. Feeling the wind again, and the rain, they felt more secure. They looked at each other and began laughing, releasing their built-up tension. Out of curiosity, they found the grave the man had been mourning over. Picking up the roses, the girl put them in her hair—in the process streaking their blankness with her muddy hands. The boy picked up the letter, opened it, and began holding it close to his face.

The girl, jealous, snatched the paper from him and began peering over it. After a while, shrugging, she put it back down, not bothering to place it back in the envelope. They both couldn’t read.

The boy saw the roses in her hair and plucked them out. The girl begged him to give them back, but he ran, and found the mud-castle smashed. Feeling like crying, he sagged down. The girl did too, after she had caught up and seen the destruction; they both had been working all evening on the thing, making stables for the horses, a garage for the cars, a helicopter pad, and other miscellaneous loosely related features a castle didn’t have. The result was a heap of mud; it was a castle nonetheless, and the children thought so, and it was worth despairing over. The girl, looking at the roses the boy had in his hand, had an epiphany; she went back and found the paper, heavy with the water and mud it had absorbed. Then, she came back and created a hollow in the mud, placed the paper over it, and divined to the boy that it was a tiled roof.

He saw the roof and was inspired, and he gave the roses back to the girl in gratitude. Together, they began working on the mud-castle again, forgetting all about the strange man, and that they were in a graveyard, and that it was beginning to rain much more strongly. They lost themselves in their work.

The rain became unbearable and the children left, going home for hot chocolate and an unconsciously expected correction from their mother; the mud-castle was swamped and it dissolved into the ground, along with the letter; the words were leeched by the water and the mud; and the ink swirled into the muddy ground.

The storm-driven waves pounded the sailing vessel against the rocky face of the cliffs. The crew had already abandoned ship, leaving on board the drunken captain, passed out in his cabin. On deck,  exposed to the dreadful elements, was a family. Crying, praying, trying to cling to each other. One by one, they were washed overboard, leaving only the eldest daughter, her red hair seemingly electrified with the storm’s every lightning flash. 

Horrified, the villagers watched helplessly from  cliff tops adjacent to the old burial grounds. Waves repeatedly washed over the deck as she struggled to climb the rigging, her cape flapping in the wind, and then she was gone.

After the storm abated,salvagers working the shingle beach found her body. Face down, still wrapped in her cape, her hair was spread over the rocks like some beautiful red seaweed, covering her head. She was carried up the steep, rocky path and laid to rest  in the graveyard overlooking the sea.

The tour leader, walking ahead of the group, tightly furled umbrella held high so that  none would lose sight of her, droned on. Local limestone crosses, imported marble tombs, her voice drifted back to Oswald. Still full of the  wine that flowed too freely at lunch, he was feeling a little fuzzy and drowsy. But not so much that he failed to notice the young woman who had just joined them.

She had the most extraordinary red hair. He couldn’t see her face, but from behind she resembled one of those Pre-Raphaelite beauties captured on canvas by Rossetti . It came to him that she must be one of the villagers dressed in period costume, for she wore a billowing  1850′s style cape.  They were supposed to explain to the tourists, village life as it was lived one hundred fifty years ago . She seemed to be searching for someone, reaching out here and there, dropping her arm before touching as she made her way to the front of the group now stopped in front of a tomb.  

She seemingly stumbled and disappeared from Oswald’s sight. Puzzled that none of the group had seen her fall, he hurried forward to help. There, lying beside the lichen-covered wall of the old tomb was…nothing. Then he noticed the weathered carved lettering on the stone slab top of the grave:

ETERNAL REST

Younge Woman Known Only to GOD

1851

The voice of the tour leader droned on, often sighted…said to be searching…looking for her lost family…

Oswald noticed several coppery-red strands of  human hair caught in the lichen on the tomb top, like some long , exotic threads from a spider’s web.

The group moved on.

The graves stood quiet amongst the mists. The graveyard had once been a place to sit and think. Now, not so much. It was unfortunate, I had enjoyed spending my time here. Back in those days, I could sit and read. No more. Now I had to get up every few minutes, and step very carefully to avoid getting rotten flesh on my shoes. Petty, perhaps, but nobody made shoes any more.

Zombie movies always seemed so dramatic, so life-or-death. There were explosions, gunfire, frantic escape attempts. None of that was true. Admittedly, some of the freshly dead could bite, but they kept rotting, and after a few weeks most could barely walk. It was depressing to stride along and see the old dead trying to get up, their half-decomposed muscles leaving them helpless. Their one purpose in death had been thwarted, they could not even catch a toddler. They were upside-down turtles, struggling forever. Like us. Whatever had changed the dead had changed the living too. We did not age. We did not change. We did not sleep. Many died, not because of the zombies, but because of the unending boredom. They simply cold not take any more and killed themselves. Most had the decency to do so in a locked room, or away from the cities, so their corpses would not give the living any trouble.

We tried to rebuild, we really did. Once things had quieted down, groups went around, trying to restore fresh water and electricity. After a while we gave up. Bodies plugged up and contaminated the waterways, and the dead blundered into power plants, always seeming to fry themselves and cause a short circuit. And what was the point? We wouldn’t die unless they bit us. Only when the mists were so thick as to be nearly opaque did I even come close to getting attacked. Even then, it was only because I stumbled over one and fell onto a couple more. I survived, losing only my jacket.

At first I thought it was purgatory, but I was wrong. I was not tormented with eternal pain, but rather with eternal boredom. It was very rare to see another survivor any more. When I met one, we would stay together for a time, until exhausting what little there was to talk about. Then they left, or I left, or we tried to kill each other. Anything for some excitement, really.

I had gone to the chemical plant, hoping to find some sort of acid, so I could become nothing but a mist of particles, peacefully dead. When I got there, the containment vats had broken, or their contents had evaporated. The best I could do was get vaguely nauseous by drinking something from a capped test tube. Then I got my idea. I would go to the ocean. I would steal whatever boat was available. Then I would tie myself to the anchor and dive. It would take a while to dissolve, but that did not matter. I would be gone. But first I decided to see the city one last time.

I walked through the graveyard, and the dead stumbled close behind.

Folgers in my cup?  No, an entire universe!  Cup of coffee…cup of life.  I can’t believe what that girl created by simply swirling the cream in my cappuccino.  I wonder what I could create in my own life if I were as bold.  I think I’m about due for some swirling of my own.  Things have been, for far too long, static, merely mocha, murky, sitting in the middle.  It’s time to venture, at least, to the outskirts of my self-imposed circle.

Here I sit, alone,

while no one smiles in recognition

or nods in mere cognition

of my presence.

Here I sit, alone,

while a flood of faces runs its  course,

mindless of my pain, of course,

and I brood about my essence.

Here I sit, alone,

accusing those who dare not see.

amusing, no one’s handcuffed me

yet I withhold myself as well.

Fear and love too commonly dwell

in this same cell.

Oh, what the hell…

“This seat’s not taken…sit with me?”