Eye On Northampton - Creepy Edition

It's getting close to Halloween, the walk home last night was particularly creepy.

Late last night, Lesa and I were walking home from town. The evening was strangely warm with a misty breeze. It felt coastal, like we were strolling through a deserted Cape Cod fishing village. The clouds were low and ghostly white, glowing from the light cast off by street lights and headlights. Leaves crunched beneath our feet. It was particularly quiet.

Up ahead of us, we saw a dark figure standing still on the side of the road - leaning on a bike. As we approached, the shadowy person came into a focus, a young man with an intensely excited face looked up at us as we passed, his eyes white against his silouetted face.

"Have you ever caught a possum?" he asked, and it was only then that we noticed cradled under his arm was a large, terrified possum.

"I just caught this one in the woods." We kept walking.

"Be careful" I said, not knowing what else to say in such a bizarre situation.

"They don't bite." We heard him say as we passed. The frozen image of that alien possum face was flashing in my head. Its mouth open but motionless. Its eyes black and open intensely.

As we walked away from the crazy scene we didn't really know what to say. We each glanced back occasionally and saw the kid carefully walking his bike away from us.

In hushed voices we discussed the situation. Did that really just happen? What does he mean, he just caught it in the woods? Who catches a possum? And what was he doing in the woods? And hey, there really aren't any woods around here. And where was he going? What was he going to do with the possum. Do they really not bite? Was he a ghost? I think that might have been a ghost.

For the whole rest of our walk we heard noises from behind the trees, rustling in the leaves, strange voices of children. Happy Halloween.