Starlight Sees Phillip

Starlight saw him first; she was sitting in my bedroom window and she said, “Therrre’s a little boy overrr therrre who’s dead.”

I crowded the window and peered out, squinting.  “I don’t see anything.  How do you know he’s dead?”

“Because I can’t smell him and he has no shadow.  He is only shadow.”  She never took her eyes off where she was looking.  I kept trying to see but I didn’t.  Finally she began to lick her paws.  “He is gone now.”

“Where?”

“In the grrround.”

“Into a grave?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you know which one?  I could read his name.”

“The stones talk to you.  You may know.  Not this rrrow.  Not that rrrow.  The rrrow afterrr.  And into the stone just underrr wherrre that point is on the shorrre… do you see it?”

“I think so… I think so.  Hey, I’ll be right back, okay?  I’ll look back, and when I’m at the right one, bat your tail three times, okay?”

“If you find the rrright one.”

“Thanks, Starlight.”

“Rrreaccchhh,” she mouthed, stretching.

I ran out of my room and across the big open space of the cottage.  “Where you going?” my mother asked.  “It’s getting dark.”

“Just going out for a minute, I’ll be right back!”

“Craig?”

I hauled the heavy glass door shut before she had time to compose an objection that would make sense to her — whether or not it made sense to a ten-year-old boy was, ultimately, immaterial.  So I left her composing while I still had my liberty.

My parents called her Ginger, but her real name was Starlight, and I know that because she told me so herself.  I had long ago realized none of the others around me understood her.  I did.  I don’t know why.  But I did know enough to have long ago ceased getting them to hear, or even believe I could.  Now when it was brought up, I would laugh it off with the rest of them.  To Starlight, I was Reach, because when we got her and I was four, I would always reach for her.  As she quickly outgrew me, she decided, firmly, that whoever my parents might be biologically, ultimately, I belonged to her.  Reach, the giant forever-kitten.  That was who I was to her.

And now I scampered through the field beside our cottage and jumped the stonework fence into the churchyard across the little dirt lane.  Third row in… that much was established.  I sighted the point.  Sighted my window.  Put myself between them.  Pointed.  Here?

Starlight stared, passive.

Here?

Nothing.

How about this one?

Pat.  Pat pat.

I dropped to my knees in the grass.  The headstone was white, flecked with lichen, and weathered by over a century, but it was still legible.  Phillip Jacob Jaeger.  Born, May 18, 1851.  Died, November 26, 1860.  I whispered his name, running my finger in the letters, the numbers.  I rose to my feet, feeling creepy in the rapidly deepening gloom, the grass already clammy, and I realized I was standing on his grave.  I leapt back.  “Sorry,” I said.  “Sorry…”

I looked up at Starlight.

Pat pat patpatpatpatpat… flick flick flick flick, pat patpatpat…

Goosebumps rose all over my body, despite the summer heat.  I strided back to the fence and lifted myself over it.  I did not look back.