Did I ever tell you about Heyoka? He was the old man who lived in the cellar of the house I grew up in. He had long dark hair and was mostly skin and bones. No one ever paid any attention to him and after awhile I realized that he was probably a ghost, but he never scared me.
Whenever he’d show up I was always overcome with an intense kind of happiness. Everything would became silent and the lights would get brighter and he had a kind of song, it was a hum. He always made me feel safe. Small animals would also appear, they’d grow out of the walls and graze upon the carpet and wallpaper. Heyoka would dance around backwards and do all sorts of silly things. He fit everything together for me in my head because he did everything in reverse. It was like I could finally see the whole picture, so whatever happened I saw its opposite and I knew. Whenever I was intensely alone, I would be alone with everything.
One Christmas he left me a present under the Christmas tree. It was bigger than the others and wrapped in a heavy black tar paper, the kind used to shingle roofs. I was excited to see what was in it and quickly opened it up. Inside was a smaller box covered in a thick dark blue paper and inside of it, another box wrapped in dark gray. Inside it, another box and so on and so forth… the paper and boxes continued until they were so light they were almost bright and too thin to see. I opened them all until I sat there with nothing. I was just surrounded by the endless darkening husks. The attached card read, “I live inside you now.” This of course meant that now I lived inside of him, because Heyoka said everything backwards.
And he was true to his word. I never saw him after that. But sometimes I still feel the bright and hear the hum. And looky here the tree is still full with presents. I wonder whats inside?
