Hidden

“He sat alone on the bed, nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. He remembered his mother and father, all the years they’d used this bedroom. Saturday mornings with egs and bacon, Sunday with waffles or pancakes. There was the time he’d thrown up on their orange shag rug and there was the time the dog had died in the chair over by that window. He looked over at the window.

“And out that window, he gazed, he saw the back yard sloping down to the forest, the valley beyond it, and the view of neighboring Farleigh Drive where they’d lived when he was born, all those years ago,, in that tiny flashbulb of a house. He could remember sledding down that hill with his brothers, he could remember playing croquet in the bottom, the only flat segment of the lawn. And he could remember dodge ball with his boyhood buddies.

“And what remained of the house today? None of them lived there any more, just those strangers wandering the downstairs rooms and coming upstairs to sleep at night. They were all gone now, his parents, his brothers, and their ghosts remained hidden from view.

“He got up from the bed and knew it would soon be his time to leave, too. The people downstairs didn’t know he was there, even when he walked among them in this house. They went about their business, unaware he was watching them, living their boring lives. And he went about his business.”

George took a break from talking. It was tedious, speaking aloud, when there was no one there to listen. But it was a lot better than the silence.