The Visitor

He didn’t know why he came – he just felt the pull, every year. Every year, and he just had to come. To see this grave, that he’d seen a hundred times before. To see this grave again.

He’d wanted to, ever since he was a child. The first time they’d passed this cemetery, he’d been twelve years old, and he’d wanted to come in here.

His parents had refused, like parents all over the world, and had promised to take him to a better cemetery some time else. They also brought him ice cream to see if that stopped him crying. But it hadn’t helped – he’d wanted to come back, and that was that. So they’d brought him back, cursing their luck in getting such a weird son.

And he’d come back again, the week after that, secretly, hiding from his parents because he’d known they didn’t want him to come here. He’d come, and stood near this grave, and he’d stared at it – just the way he was staring at it right now – and he’d suspended all thinking.

He’d found out, later, that this was the grave of P.B. Shelley, a poet from the past. The name had meant nothing to him.

He’d done a poem of his later in school, and had liked it a lot. So much, in fact, that he’d bought the book and had read every poem this man had ever written. With some poems, bits of - something – had come to him – like he should be remembering something but couldn’t figure out what it was. He’d tried re-reading those poems, again and again, to see if he could actually remember what he felt he should be remembering.

But he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t remember anything more than those fragments of – something – that made him try to remember WHAT it was that he should be remembering.

He’d come again, that once, a week after he’d first stepped in when he was twelve, and then he’d forgotten about this grave.

Until the day of his birthday – and P.B. Shelley’s birthday, both of which, by a curious coincidence, fell on the same day. It was his thirteenth birthday. He’d been cutting his cake happily when his lungs had started hurting, and he hadn’t been able to breathe. He’d fainted.

As soon as he’d woken up, he’d asked to be taken to this cemetery. His parents had stared at him weirdly, but had brought him here, because they would rather not argue with their crazy son when he was in such a weak condition.

He’d been brought here, he’d placed some flowers on P.B. Shelley’s grave, and then he’d felt much better.

Who was this? Who was P.B. Shelley and why did he have such an effect on his life? He knew the answer to the first question – but when would he find the answer to the second? Why did he have to come here every birthday? What crazy coincidence, if that was what it was, had made both of their birthdays fall on the same day? Why did he almost remember – something – every time he read Adonais?

He couldn’t understand it. But sixty-two now, fifty years since the first time he’d come in, he decided not to try to understand why, or what, but just accept things as they were. He bent down, laid flowers on P.B. Shelley’s grave, nodded at the coroner, who remembered him from the time he was twelve, and walked out of the graveyard.