Invisibility is not that hard to achieve. Of course, it was dusk
turning to nighttime and the kids and the parents were watching where they were
walking. And they could see that our porch light was on. But I was certainly watching
them as they came, illuminated by that same pale light. I stood next to the limestone
porch pillar, the last of the summer’s morning glories and the oak leaf
hydrangea about my head and shoulders. I was clothed in the color of shadows,
standing motionless except for some deep breathing. There really was no reason
to expect a 210 lb. man to be standing there at all - except that it was
Halloween night. I was invisible.
I could hear the kids telling each other that this was the house as they hurried past
me. Last year there were these two dummies, and then one turned out to be real.
It was Pumpkin Head. And there have been years before that.
From where I stood this year, I could hear a kid tell my
wife who was handing out candy at the front door that ‘that guy’ had scared him
so bad last year that he had nightmares. Of course, I was happy to see that he
had come back for more.
The girls from across the street paid me the high compliment
of saying that I looked creepy even when they knew it was me underneath my cloak
of invisibility. They had skipped my house several years earlier - even with
their mother with them. Back then, even candy couldn’t entice them to our
porch.
A neighbor, from two houses over, walked up the walk behind his
daughter as she climbed the porch steps. I moved soundlessly up behind him as
he asked Dawn, who was standing with the candy on the porch, “Where’s Bert?” A
pumpkin-headed dummy was sitting at a card table just to one side of the
sidewalk and physicists aren’t easily fooled.
I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and exclaimed,
“Claude Rains!” I had my face wrapped in an ace bandage, my eyes covered by
plastic purple slatted glasses. My fedora was a little rumpled. I looked the
part of The Invisible Man - if you could see me.
It had still been dusk when Keller, the seven year old girl
from down the street and her dad walked past me, waiting by the pillar where I
could easily overhear them talking to each other as they went by. They turned
and then they stopped part way up the front walk to wait for Keller’s brother,
Owen, to catch up. He was still across the street. I took one quiet giant step
out from my shadows as he was crossing and Keller was looking the other way. I froze
again.
I couldn’t figure out who she was dressed as, but she was aqua
colored from her head to her feet. Then I called out her name in a low voice,
“Keller.” Her dad saw me then but he didn’t give me away. Her older brother
came up and I called out again, just loudly enough to be heard, “Owen.” He
looked over at me and figured it out right away. I had talked to him earlier in
the day about his own costume. I had not really changed that much since then.
He walked confidently to the porch, but Keller was
uncertain. She had suddenly seen The Invisible Man standing still where there
had been no one standing only moments before. She stood frozen in her own way
to the sidewalk. Her dad urged her to hurry and go get the candy and then they
could run away. But she wasn’t sure enough about what she was seeing to do
anything at all and she kept looking at me for some sign that nothing really scary
was there.
Her brother came back from getting his candy, and then
finally Keller grabbed her dad’s sleeve and hurried him up to the front door with
her. And then, as they reached the sidewalk and turned up the street, I could
see her aqua face looking back at me from over her shoulder. I had remained
almost motionless, but I do hope that she saw me eventually waving.
At some points in the night, The Invisible Man just wandered
the yard. Sometimes the kids came so fast, I just couldn’t make it back to my
shadows. I grabbed a bold one or two and chased a few – an advancing step and a
word were all that it took. I materialized as a very large dark scarecrow in the
tall zinnia stalks in the flowerbed near the street - three girls daring each
other to go touch my outstretched hand.
And I was back in the middle of the front lawn when a young
mother turned her head and noticed me standing there in the grass. She stopped
about where Keller had paused. I was no more than three or four giant steps
away from her. Her husband and her child had already gone up to the porch.
“That’s not real?” she half-queried her husband. He quickly
replied, “No that’s real.” I stood, motionless as a statue, as husband and wife
disagreed back and forth several more times. Eventually, as these things go, the
father and their child came back from getting the candy and the young mother
said emphatically one more time, “That’s not real!”
I took one step towards her and she screamed.
Music to my ears.
And the kids just keep getting younger – and older.
**
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| The Invisible Man - All Hallow's Eve - 2015 |
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