Prologue (walking on Walls Excerpt)

It was late July.

The summer mangoes had dropped from the trees and were lying rotting on the ground, ripped open by feasting bugs and birds. Their enthralling, sweet smell mixed with the immensity of the nightblooming jasmine. This languid perfume made a thick, rarefied atmosphere that at times made breathing hard. In Miami nature is often a mix of colorful abundance and dark decay.

This evening I was walking home from a friend’s birthday party. We had listened to the new Rolling Stones album, Aftermath, then turned off the lights and pretended to make out with the nearest girl. Some party. But then, this was 1966, and I was only fourteen.

It was long after eleven o’clock. I should have been home hours ago but was having too much fun to leave the party. As I approached my father’s household, I realized that I had forgotten my keys. The porch lights were on, my father’s car was parked out front, but the household was completely dark. He must have gone to bed early.

Not wanting to startle him, I knocked somewhat timidly. A cyclone of mosquitoes brought on by the summer rains swarmed around my head.

I knocked again, this time louder. “Pop, it’s me, open up.” No response. Not hearing any movement from inside, I became concerned that a touch was incorrect. I chose to walk back to my friend’s household to use his phone to call my father. As I turned to leave, I heard the front door’s dead bolt click open. Relieved, I spun around ready to greet my father and apologize for coming home so late.

As I stood there, the front door remained closed. I was wondering if the signal I had heard was just a very loud cricket or a buffo toad looking for a mate. Then, ever so slowly, like in some black-and-white horror movie, the door creaked open. From the shadows emerged a tall man with grayish skin. I had never seen this guy before; he had the tallness and demeanor of Lurch. Without any introduction, he looked at me with a cool stare and said in a flat, robotlike voice, “We are currently in communication with the master souls of the eleventh plane. Your father is deep in trance and cannot be disturbed.”

Lurch started to back away and close the door. He then paused and questioned, “Why did you even bother to knock? After all, you are your father’s son. Haven’t you learned to walk through walls yet?”

The above is an excerpt from the book Walking Through Walls: A Chronicle
by Philip Smith
Published by Atria Books;  September 2008;$24.00US/$28.00CAN; 978-1-4165-4294-0
Copyright © 2008 Philip Smith

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