Day 789

There's an old woman who sits in the old townhouse and weeps.
She keeps asking for her Johnny but everyone knows he died back in 1943.
The police only found half his head but, bless her soul, she still reckons he's alive somewhere.

She says she finds his little footprints leading all around her garden where he used to play.
Of course nobody believes her, she's 99 years of age and only leaves her seat in the townhouse to sleep.
Even then people doubt that she actually does rest, most reckon she's just some lingering spirit.

It's daft but it's what small village minds are wont to do, make up stories to make the unusual bearable.
She's been called all sorts by the regulars from Old Mother Moany to Our Waterwheel and worse.
The townhouse owner keeps her well enough, no rent fee or anything out of pity for a woman who's just lost.

Nothing anyone says seems to phase her and they've long since stopped saying her Johnny's dead.
I talked to her once, you know, just to see what she was like and if she could be helped.
All she did was talk about him though, how good he was and how he'd be back to her soon.

She seemed dead certain that he was still alive and grown and just hiding from her.
Her Johnny was always one for playing games with his dear old mam.
But he'd be back, she said, she'd seen him in the corners of the mirrors, always running from her.

I'd call it nought but a fantasy if I hadn't heard whisperings of a fellow stalking the corn fields.
They were saying he lumbered like a dog or half-formed thing, not quite a man.
And his head was misshapen like it was missing some.