Clayton threw the stump of his cigarette into the fire. “You might think,” he said slowly, “that these things I have told you would have scared me out of my wits, but that part was yet to come.” He looked fixedly at the old man, who returned his gaze across the fire.
“I was sitting there, half frozen with shock, wondering what I should do, when I glanced down, and saw that the deer were still peacefully cropping the grass below me. Neither the sound of the horse, the grating of the door, the sight of the men nor the sound of the shot had disturbed them in the least, and yet, in the minutes that I had watched them, I had seen them put up their ears and stand rigid at the rustle of a rabbit in the honeysuckle vines, and twice bolt and run a few yards when some slight sound disturbed them.
“I knew then that what I had seen couldn’t be real, but was part of these hallucinations that have plagued me since I came to this place. There was no horse, although I could see him as clearly as I see you; prancing about skittishly there at the gate, still held by his dead master’s hand, and snorting with fear at the smell of blood. There was no man in the yard, although I saw him, watched him stand up and lever a shell into his gun before he walked out to look at his handiwork. There had been no shot, although the ring of it was still in my ears.
“I clung to the tree like a man in a dream and watched the ghost with the rifle come out the yard gate and free the reins from the dead man’s clutch, and I saw him send the horse off with a slap on the rump. I was still watching, as he dragged the dead man into the yard, and I saw him bury the body beneath the bush. The moon was right overhead as he leveled the ground over the grave and tamped it with his feet, and I got an idea that I could get down now and sneak away under the shadow of the apple trees. I had nearly forgotten the deer but as my foot scraped on the bark of the tree, I saw their heads come up, staring toward me, bodies poised for flight.
“I sat there a moment, unsure of what to do, but I knew I couldn’t stay in the tree any longer, whatever happened, and I grasped a branch and slid to the ground.”
The old man had not said a word, but the smoke from his pipe had risen in puffs as regular as smoke signals, and Clayton knew that his eyes were open and watching.
“The instant I moved, the deer were gone. I saw white tails leaping and heard the shrill whistling of the bucks. There seemed to be deer in every direction, and as I looked toward the house, one leaped the yard fence and ran by the murderer’s bush; and I saw the flash of his flag as he cleared the back fence. I stood silent a moment, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did, and at last, gathering my courage, I walked to the gate and looked in.”
Clayton paused to get out his cigarettes again and lit one slowly, listening to the cries of the whippoorwills with obvious enjoyment.
“And you saw nothing?” asked the old man. Something in the old man’s tone made Clayton wonder whether the old fellow fully believed him, yet he felt his companion would not be satisfied if he left anything out of his story.
“I saw the murderer cleaning his shovel in the moonlight,” he replied, “and a mound of fresh dirt. I stared at him a moment. He was a big man, with a mustache and sideburns, nearly bald. He had on suspenders and boots. I was so close I could see his jowls quiver with the fatigue of the work he’d just done, but he didn’t see me at all. And then, as I was looking at him, horrified, he just disappeared.”
It seemed the end of the story, and the old man sat for a moment in silence.
“What do you mean, disappeared?” he asked.
“Just that,” said Clayton. “I don’t mean that he faded away, or dissolved; he just wasn’t there any more, neither he nor the shovel nor the mound of dirt. I was standing by the gate in the moonlight, alone, and the whippoorwills were calling, as they are now. I looked around me, and there was no sign of a horse, no bloodstains or dragmarks in the dirt. Only a set of deer tracks where the deer had leaped the fence. And the old house with its vacant windows staring out over the moonlit orchard. I don’t know exactly how I made it back to my car,” he said after a moment of contemplation, “but I made it there, frightened half out of my wits. I drove home, and I said nothing to anyone about what I had seen.”
“I’m not surprised,” said his companion with a grunt. “Most folks would figure you’d need to be tapped for the simples. But that ain’t all, is it?”
“No,” said Clayton, “it isn’t.” He waited while the old man dragged up a dead limb to give new life to the fire. For a moment the flames illuminated them both, and the old man’s face glowed like porcelain in the red light.
“Time is a barrier people can’t cross,” Clayton said, after a while, “a wall you can’t break down or get over. I teach my school children about the Emperor Charlemagne, or Paul Revere, and they memorize the things I want them to, but they don’t know that these people existed. It’s like the theory that nothing exists except while you’re looking at it. You might say that a man only exists while there is still a man alive who has seen him, and after that he becomes a legend, a thing of the past, and as far from reality as the times he lived in. So it seems to me.”
He looked at the old man, as if not sure what he was saying was getting across.
“I think what’s happened to me is some sort of distortion in this wall of time, as if the material of the wall had turned to glass, so that I alone could look through, but not touch the things on the other side.”
The old man scratched his head and set his cap back straight.
“You mean you can see things like you just told me, but you can’t do anything about them,” he said reflectively.
“Yes,” said Clayton, “I have that feeling. I went back to the Reese place the next day, in the middle of the afternoon. I’d left my shotgun in the orchard, and since it was Saturday, I was afraid some hunter would find it. I got the gun and walked up to the house, almost despite myself, not knowing what I expected to see. The house was grey and forsaken in the sunlight, and smelled of rot and mildew. Wasps buzzed in and out of its crevices and the weeds in the yard were so thickly tangled I had to step carefully to get to the porch. Most of the porch had fallen in, but I got close enough to see that the door hadn’t been opened in at least a year. There was a rusty chain which ran through a hole in the door and one in the doorframe, and a padlock on it. By this time I wasn’t surprised. That left me only one thing to do to test my sanity.”
“You had to look under the lilac bush,” said the old man calmly.
“That’s exactly what I had to do,” nodded Clayton, glancing at him briefly. “I carry a trench shovel in the car along with my chains, and I got it and started digging. I only had to dig a few feet, but I never want to work like that again, with the old house brooding over my shoulder, and every creak of its old timbers and every sound in the grass behind me making me stand up to look. I’d spent most of the afternoon, and the light was failing, and the roots of the lilac bush were like iron. I chopped and hacked and scooped dirt like a madman, and suddenly the shovel came up with what I was looking for: a brass button, green with mold. Then I found a bone. Another five minutes’ work, and I’d found a skull.”