Sometimes it seems as if the unit I keep watch over at night is in some way haunted. There are so many times I would see something move toward me down the long dark hall—something there and yet not there, tangible and yet intangible—only to watch it dissipate back into nothing once it reached the cone of light cast from the bathroom.
The kids, asleep in their rooms, would stir as it moved past. And once in awhile it would dip into a doorway, followed a moment later by an anguished cry from the child that sleeps there. I would go down to look, only to find the child sound asleep and nothing else, save a strange cold sensation in the air.
Presence
A shadow slips
from the corner of my mind
beneath a random lintel
joined with darkness
A muffled sob
stirs beneath gray sheets
as walls absorb
the thuds of restless sleep
The shadow blurs
across the long dark hall
and slides between
the jambs of dreamless rest
A long strained moan
struggles from the gloom
and crawls half noticed
toward faded shades of light
The shadow flickers
dust from mothen wings
into the hollows
of one more dusky room
A sudden holler
echoes down the hall
a broken sorrow
cursed into the night
The shadow rustles
like shaken autumn leaves
into the twilight
waking in the east
