Moonshine

by Joan Sutcliffe

It will always be remembered as the summer of moonshine, because it was when the August moon cast a strange shimmering aura around the freshly tilled earth in a little corner of the wild flower garden that the disappearance occurred. The imprint of a bare foot had been embedded into the wet concrete poured earlier that day to form a bridge over the lily pond, as though to leave the mark that he had actually been here, a true alive and living being.

He was a peculiar little fellow. There was something not quite human about him or the mysterious path he followed. Rumour had it that he was named after one of the moons of Jupiter. When he was suddenly gone that night without hint or trace, it was postulated that the god himself on the wings of the eagle had carried him off to be his cupbearer: for, apparently when he was young Ganymede had been as beautiful as that same prince of Troy so beloved of Jupiter.

I first met him one spring when he was planting trees in a long wasted forest area. In spite of the romantic stories of his youthful charms, he was then middle-aged and pretty rugged looking, face creased by the sun and brown as a coffee bean with a rough tangle of dark beard and a massive forehead crowned by uncombed hair that gave him a wild look. He seemed a creature of the soil, something a bit troll-like that reminded me of those Norwegian folk tales of changelings, those strange beings left in infancy by gnomes and goblins in place of human babies.

Later that year I came across him again in the city working the gardens of the neighbourhood, and I got to know him, that is as well as anyone could know him. Often he was vociferous, mobile in facial expressions and dramatic in his gestures, but just as often he could be moody and silent. Although he ranted furiously about the system, the establishment, the abominable greed of the corporate executives and the exploitation of the marginalized, his speech at times could also be as eloquent as a poet, and unless severely provoked he was courteous to others. But there was something strangely unnerving deep within his psyche.

One morning I passed by a small parkette at the intersection of two city streets and happened to see him digging like a maniac. Close by there was a bench where a sad looking down-and-out young man was sitting. Resting on his feet was a cardboard sign reading “Hungry and Homeless” in misshapen letters with a bowl beside it, into which I dropped a few spare coins.

“That was kind of you,” and immediately Ganymede came over, that was when I found out his name. “Not like that rich bitch over there, who almost trampled over his toes.”

The “rich bitch” dressed in an expensive looking business suit and wearing incongruously high heeled shoes turned to give us an aloof and hostile glare.

“By the way, I am Ganymede,” he said, then continued with a long discourse about the unfairness of the social structure, his voice rising in pitch and his hands gesticulating erratically, until passersby were starting to stare. With a savage grimace he enquired what they had to look so sanctimonious about? One broad shouldered man turned aggressively.

Fearing a fight might be about to start, I took the opportunity of a momentary lull in his rant to introduce a different subject, by asking what he was working on there. His whole manner changed. He loved the earth. In warm, sonorous tones he explained that he was preparing the ground, and later that day would sow grass seeds, “just in time for the rain,” going on to say that a storm was brewing for that night. I looked at the clear expanse of the blue sky and remarked that I could see no sign of it.

“Oh yes!” he smiled. “You can feel the precipitation building in the air like little tears not yet shed, and there’s a ponderous quality spreading through the ether. I always know.”

Perhaps it was the goblin in him that felt something we regular earthlings were unaware of, but he was right. A violent tempest broke towards midnight that kept many a soul sleepless in terror.  

The next day dawned sweet and calm, the earth totally refreshed after the rain, the ambience doubly sweet after the horrors of the preceding night. Of course the grass in the parkette did not sprout straight away, but in several days’ time it started to appear and then proceeded to grow rich and thick. I wondered how he had managed it, my own attempts at growing a lawn always ending up an abysmal failure. 

The next time I met him he had been hired as a temporary gardener by a friend of mine, who had one of those back gardens that descend in terraces down a ravine to a creek at the bottom. We were having tea on the patio and my friend invited him to join us. He never stopped talking the whole time, but we could not gain any tangible information about him, where he came from, who his parents were, where he lived. Every so often he would suddenly start with an almost nervous jump and hold his hand to his ear as though listening intently to something way beyond our perceptions.

“They are coming for sure. They will be here soon,” he said quietly, a fearful expression passing over his features and I thought I saw him shudder.

As to who “they” were he would not say, and immediately went back to work, frantically tearing up weeds, but then very gently placing new plants in the space left. My friend said that he had always been around, as long as she could remember, and even her grandfather had known him, as had all the other long-time inhabitants in the area. He had often been a favourite topic of discussion among the local gossips, his mannerisms being so strange and the company he was occasionally seen with, so ludicrous. It was as though you caught a momentary glimpse of a companion only to have it disappear as quickly from your sight. One such companion had been very small with a huge round head and large glassy eyes above a pencil-thin body. Oh, there were all kinds of stories made up about that, she added, so many weird tales that she didn’t really know what to believe.

It was not long after that, that he found a friend, a young waif-like girl with long stringy hair and sad features. She looked a little like an exile from the fairy world herself. For a while she accompanied him on his rounds of the gardens, working in her own way equally as diligently as himself. She preferred to plant small seedlings, singing to them as she carefully patted the soil close around them. There was a sweet naivety about her as she would talk to the passersby who sometimes stopped to admire the gardens, and they all grew quite fond of her.

After that they were always to be seen together. People enjoyed chatting with the little waif. She had a name and an address and, unlike her eccentric friend, was open to any questions regarding her past and present whereabouts, answering freely. Although a little fey, her sprite-like qualities were appreciated and loved. Together they made a fascinating pair, and often an amused smile could be seen on the face of someone encountering them for the first time.

Then, one day they had a quarrel, though not a fierce or bitter one. He seemed to be pleading with her over something, about which she was teasing him playfully. As his pleas took on a more desperate note she laughed outright with a mocking tone, until he grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her, not violently, but rather more with impatience, at which she flounced off in a huff.

The next day she disappeared. No one knew where or why. Ganymede just shrugged, and remained taciturn as the lord of the underworld himself.

A couple of days later she was reported missing, and a massive search was undertaken. Anyone who had known her was questioned and put under close surveillance. When it was recognized that Ganymede had been one of the last persons to be seen with her, he was pursued endlessly for information. But never being one to yield to civic authority, Ganymede proved most unhelpful.

On day three the search began to tighten up, retracing all her steps and seeking out anyone who had seen her on that last day. When some innocent bystander mentioned the argument that he had witnessed on that occasion, Ganymede was taken in for serious questioning. Annoyed by all the harassment he refused to cooperate, his only response being some vague mutterings under his breath about aliens and flying saucers. 

As the day wore on, the sky darkening and a thunder storm threatening, his interrogators grew more and more frustrated with the lack of leads and with Ganymede’s unwillingness to give any information, not even an address where he could be reached. In the end, he was locked in a cell for the night.

Oh, what a terrible night it was!  And how he suffered! How he paced the floor restlessly back and forth! How the features of his face twisted in anguish, his eyes glazed with sorrow! His fellow inmate later described to the newspapers a scene of horror and total misery that struck at the very core of his being.

Outside, the agitation of the natural world built up, the fervour of excited bird chatter reached a pitch and the sound of hounds baying in the distance echoed like a banshee’s cry: while inside his choked up words, repetitive as a mantra, continued nonstop all through the dark hours.

“She wouldn’t listen. Now they’ve taken her. Tomorrow they’ll come for me.”

Frenetic fury of frightened bird chorus suddenly stilled and the storm broke. Thunder roared, electric fibres of raw energy tore the sky apart, hale like crushed pebble ripped holes in the city streets. His last night on earth, he kept howling. This was to be his last night in this world and he yearned to be out in it. He sobbed and sobbed, his passion equalling the rage of the wind and the pounding of the rain. Every muscle of his heart ached to walk out into the wildness and to die beneath the lonely ash tree out on the heath, struck by the angry fire of the heavens.

The next day arrived with a magnificent sunrise, coral pink deepening into vibrant orange, only to be submerged into a mist of blue as the regal sphere of the sun rose red as blood. Early that morning the missing young person was spotted, walking the streets looking a little dazed and babbling in a totally in-comprehensive manner about being abducted by a UFO.

“He warned me,” she kept moaning over and over. “He warned me, but I would not listen…..I just laughed at him……but it was awful…..terrifying……I was scared out of my wits.”

Soon she was surrounded by a crowd of people, sensation seekers gawking blatantly, some sniggering, some a bit afraid, while others overwhelmed her with questions. Someone brought her an iced tea to calm her down, and led her to a bench. Between sobs and hysterical outbursts she told a remarkable tale of being absorbed up into a spaceship, where she was tied down on an examination table to be pricked and probed by weird little beings with huge round heads and big glassy eyes.

Suddenly she screamed out in a panic, “They are coming back…..they are coming back tonight.”

One excited listener, probably a reporter, gasped, “Where? When? We want to be there. This is the chance of a lifetime.”

“Oh, you can’t see anything,” she replied. “The UFO is invisible until you’re on it. Then suddenly everything is glaring in blinding colours and there’s a high pitched monotonous tone ringing constantly in your ears making you feel nauseous.” At this, many people started to disbelieve her and left.

Almost alone now, she was weeping out loud, “He tried so hard to warn me.”

It was presumed by “he” she meant Ganymede, and so he was set free later that morning with full pardons. All that day he worked furiously in a corner of a wild flower garden in a quiet area on the edge of the city, digging like a crazed treasure hunter to prepare a space for cultivating a vegetable plot. 

At that special time in the late afternoon when an almost melancholy sweetness encapsulates the natural surroundings in a golden light of perfect stillness he was seen sitting on a large stone while he unwrapped a sandwich. For a moment it seemed he was accompanied by one of his strange acquaintances, but when you sharpened your gaze there was no one else actually there. He was totally alone, and there was something endearing about him that moment in his loneliness.

The moonrise that evening was particularly memorable, impressively full and trailing a silver sheen that hovered long above the wild flowers. Little sparks of energy like fireflies were jumping and darting, dancing over and around the space where the earth had been newly hoed.

There was a strange metallic smell that night, a bit like a burnt out electrical currant. And later were discovered in the garden huge circles where the flowers were flattened and enormous patches of scorched grass that never healed, suggestive of the exposure to some strange phenomena of intense heat. And nothing at all would ever grow in that vegetable plot, even as the years passed.

I remember the night so well. Standing with feet firm and flat, though his shoulders a little hunched over, he was definitely there, bathed in the dazzling glow of moonshine. Then suddenly he was gone, and that was the last that anyone ever saw of Ganymede.   

Bio


Originally from Yorkshire, growing up in the untamed countryside of the Bronte's where she enjoyed the romantic literature of that period, particularly that which gave voice to the restless spirit seeking the mysteries of its own source. This led her into the field of eastern philosophy and mysticism, and for many years she has been a keen student of Theosophy, as introduced to the West by H.P. Blavatsky.