by Lee Mather
My mother was in the kitchen stirring a cup of tea; the light was dimmed. She looked surprised to see me. I hadn’t been to her house in months. I stood there staring, suddenly unsure as to why I had felt so afraid.
“Peter? My goodness, you look awful. Are you okay? What are you doing here?” She stopped. Her mouth fell open. “Is it the flight?”
Words escaped me. I couldn’t cry—I am ashamed to say it, but I was unable to cry in front of her. Eventually I nodded. “Dead. They’re dead. It…” I stopped and gasped for air, a sudden pain in my chest.
“…came down,” she whispered, finishing my sentence. She placed a hand on the worktop and leant there for a moment.
“I—I needed to see you.” I paused. There was something I had to say to her, something long overdue. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
She smiled, masking the pain of the trauma I had brought her. She put down her tea and offered me her arms. “Of course I do,” she said, and I had to stoop to fit in her embrace. The demons that had plagued our relationship since my father’s death left me all at once. I started to sob, and she rocked me like she would have done when I was a child. I was weightless; this was the closest I had felt to my mother since I was a young boy.
“I’m sorry—sorry I haven’t been here for you.”
“You’re here now,” she said softly.
Eventually I let her go and we took the tea into the living room. It was then I noticed how strained she looked.
“I’m glad you’re here, Peter. I haven’t been well at all today.”
The niggle returned, and I felt a creeping shiver down my spine.
“Peter?”
I was conscious of my racing heartbeat. I stared at her dully for a moment until it softened. “I’m okay. It’s just been a shocking day. I’m not myself.”
She nodded. “I can’t begin to imagine—I wish you’d listened to me.” She paused. “I’ve never lied to you about his visits.”
I felt a twinge of anger, and I wanted to scream at her for putting me through a torture that had corrupted my very belief system, wanted to call her warning a fluke. I wanted to question her coping strategy. The plane crash gave me fear, gave me perspective. I couldn’t dismiss anything out of hand anymore. At that stage I was no closer to any real faith of my own, but the difference was that I did not want to take a risk in denouncing anything. I realized I had too much to lose.
I softened my stance. “I’m glad you phoned yesterday. We should talk about it, about everything. It might help.”
She smiled, and my heart breaks as I write this because in that precious instant, I was at peace in the knowledge that the gap between us had disappeared. I took a sip of my tea. I looked again and my mother was perfectly still in the armchair, her head tilted gently to one side as if she were sleeping.
“Mum?”
No answer. No movement. She wasn’t breathing.
I screamed and the cup fell from my hands, the china splintering as scalding liquid splashed over my shoes. I rushed to her, held her, hopelessly lost. Her skin felt strange, warm and yet unmistakably dead, like the essence that made her human was gone already. I sank to my knees and cried for what felt like hours.
* * * *
A piece of me died with her, and a hole still exists inside me even to this day. It is smaller now, shrinking with the passing of time, filled maybe by happier events that have occurred in eight years. It is there nonetheless, and occasionally it gets ripped wide open. Loss has made me vulnerable to the world and all the evils in it.
I knew then the Green Man’s fourth visit was not to warn her about my flight.
Ultimately this memory is not a hopeless one. Evie asked me about Heaven and, by association, faith. I may never have found the strength to get off my knees that day without my mother, without understanding that the Green Man was not just a coping strategy.
Clearing my eyes, I felt something change in the room, like the moment before you switch on a television and a hum of static fills the air. I shivered and the hair on my arms began to quiver. I stared uncomprehending as the magnolia-colored wallpaper behind my mother’s chair shimmered, and I scrambled backwards onto my haunches in surprise.
I’ve privately questioned myself over the years since my mother’s death, but in my heart I know what I saw, I know that the next few minutes of my life were as real as anything that has happened to me previously or since. Maybe reading this you’ll think that it was shock or anguish, or maybe just a way of me making sense of the senseless. Who knows, maybe you’re right, but understand one thing: I am adamant that what I am about to describe is the truth.
It was an aura, I’m sure, the type of thing sensitive souls claim to see in people. It was not like any color I’m familiar with, but if I had to classify it I would say it was closest to green, the type of sea green that you’d associate with paradise. It was a small glow at first, just above my mother’s head, and it hovered for a moment before floating into the middle of the room just a couple of feet away from where I sat, gaping open mouthed.
The green light shivered and then stretched, expanding quickly until it was about the size of a person. I had stopped crying, mesmerized by the sight. The aura took shape, the shape of a woman. She took a step closer and I recognized her eyes, her smile.
This was not the Green Man. It was my mother.
Where my great-grandfather had returned for her, she in turn had returned for me. She smiled and held out her arms. The rest of the room was shadow, and I often wonder whether I was somewhere else in those moments, like I had been brought into some pocket of reality, a portal to the heavens maybe.
My mother held me one final time, and the warmth I felt was like nothing I can describe. I wonder if this is what it would feel like to be back in the womb, to be impossibly safe. All that pain left me at once, and we stayed there together for a time that I cannot define. It might have been hours, days even. I felt something like a kiss, and then I had the compulsion to close my eyes. I shivered, opened them and I was suddenly alone in the room, my mother lying motionless in the chair once again.
I reached for the phone then and made the call.
* * * *
I’m back at the end now, where I started to write. Blue is the color I see, not green.
I was lost in the rain until Hannah came for me, helpless as the paramedics took away my mother. I was confused, my rational mind in pieces. I believe now that my mother came back to help me through the worst of it, to repair me and give me something that I was missing after I lost my father—some hope.
I finish what’s left of my cold coffee, tidy the papers and place Evie’s report card on top of the pile, and then I make sure that my mobile phone is charging, ready for the morning. I feel somehow lighter.
I will read this back, I think, then go up to bed. I’ll slide in next to Hannah and hold her while I wait patiently for the morning. When the world wakes I will tell my daughter that I do believe, not in the Green Man, as she does not need the burden of this knowledge, but in the human spirit, in a divinity that separates us from any other creature on this earth. I believe now that I will always be there for her, even after death. This gives me the comfort I once coveted, because I trust that I will watch over her and protect her just as my great-grandfather did for my mother and then as my mother does for me. Experience, all the highs, the lows and the bits in-between, has helped me to understand that at times my family are the reason for my fears, but always, above this, they are my purpose. This is what the Green Man represents. I was afraid of him for a while, afraid of trusting in something not easily explained by the culture I’ve been immersed in since birth. I was wrong to be scared. He is love, the love of a family pulling together in times of crisis.
Tomorrow I will talk to Evie about faith.
About the Author:
Lee Mather is 32 years of age, and lives in the North of England with his partner of nine years, Jennifer. He has a degree in Business Studies an
d works full time in retail. He enjoys most sports and has a keen interest in cinema, music, and literature.
Stories have always fascinted Lee and creating his own is sometimes a way to make sense of the world. Although he writes horror, he tries to ground his work in the everyday. His aim so far is to create recognizable worlds now tainted by the supernatural. He hasn’t been writing long but it quickly became a passion for him.
When pressed, he is still unsure of whether he writes as an escape or if it is simply a release for some fo his deep-rooted creative frustration. Either way, Lee hopes you will enjoy reading his work.
You can read more about Lee’s work at
www.leemather.org.uk
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