The Night The Cricket-Man Came
Stranded.
The pain in my chest never leaves. It won’t go. If my eyes hadn’t dried up to dust I would cry until the stars fell drunkenly out of the sky like ash from distant fires. As you can see, I’ve neither eyes nor ears nor any tongue to speak of. But I know you’re there; I can feel you. I know you can hear me, too. Stay.
Listen, please. I can’t get up and make you. Humor a dying old man, a dead and gone old man. Listen.
You’ve probably heard of me.
My name is Brom Bones, and I can see it all now, as though I were perched atop the tallest trees.
~*~
He came like he went, but the way he came back was completely different. Terrible. I’m sorry. I’ll try and go in order. The events of that dark time have run again and again across the hollow space that was my mind, behind the black pits that were my eyes. I’ll try and go in order.
Ichabod Crane bobbed up to town sitting in the back of an applecart, two cases with him, his knees up to his chin. I remember sitting with some friends, when the children dashed past us, speaking of the new schoolmaster, calling him “the Cricket-Man,” due to his long legs and reedy voice. My friends and I dashed off, the summer air warm in our lungs, following the children, mainly out of curiosity.
