The Weekly Visitation

At twenty, I thought I had left the strangeness behind. My name is not important, nor is the precise name of the dusty Queensland town where I grew up, but suffice to say it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and the pub was the social hub. When my savings ran thin, I moved back in with my parents, into the same room I’d had as a kid, with its peeling floral wallpaper and the window that looked out onto the neighbour’s sprawling backyard.

My grandfather, a stoic veteran of the Pacific campaign, had died when I was ten. He was a reserved man, not given to flights of fancy, but he loved lawn bowls. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, he’d walk the fifty metres to the local bowls club, a modest brick building surrounded by immaculate green. After he passed, I often sat on our front step, staring at that green, expecting to see his familiar slouch hat and pipe smoke. And one Tuesday, I did. He was standing at the far end of the green, looking directly at me, his arm outstretched as if beckoning. I blinked, and he was gone.

I told myself it was grief, a child’s imagination. But the next Tuesday, at the same time, there he was again. Same position, same reaching hand. I didn’t tell my parents; they were still raw with loss. The visits continued for months, every Tuesday at 4 PM, never Thursdays. As I grew older, I stopped sitting on the step, avoided the view, but I felt his eyes on me through the window.

When I finally moved out, I thought I was free. My new place was a flat in a town two hours north, a bland post-war building with a shared laundry and a noisy neighbour. I was nineteen, pregnant, and terrified. I prepared the nursery with care, painting the walls a soft yellow and hanging a mobile of paper cranes. The room was at the top of the stairs, with a window that faced a cemetery on a hill.

One night, when I was about seven months gone, I stumbled up the stairs, heavy with fatigue. As I reached the top, I saw a figure in the nursery doorway. It was my grandfather, just as I remembered him, but his face was grey and his eyes were hollow. He pointed to the window, then to my belly. I screamed, and he vanished. I rushed into the room, heart pounding, but there was nothing. Only the mobile swaying gently, though the window was closed.

I told myself it was hormones, exhaustion. But the visits became more frequent—not just Tuesdays, but every night. He would appear at the foot of my bed, or in the corner of the nursery, always pointing, always silent. My daughter was born, and for a while, the visits ceased. I thought he was satisfied.

When she began to sleep in her own room, I would sometimes find her awake, staring at the corner with a smile, as if watching someone. She started pointing at nothing and babbling, and I felt a cold dread. One night, I heard her giggling at 3 AM. I crept up the stairs and found her sitting up in her cot, gazing towards the window. “Grandad says we must come with him,” she said, her tiny voice clear in the dark.

I froze. I hadn’t told her about my grandfather. I hadn’t even shown her a photo. I managed to ask, “What do you mean, sweetheart?” She tilted her head, as if listening. “He says the green is waiting. He says it’s time.” That’s when I saw it—a wisp of grey at the window, a shape that coalesced into his outline, hand outstretched towards the cemetery. I grabbed her, ran downstairs, and didn’t sleep for days.

I tried to rationalise: a child’s imagination, a nightmare. But my daughter kept repeating his words. The next week, I received a letter from my mother. In it, she mentioned she’d found some old diaries in my grandfather’s footlocker, ones she’d never seen before. She enclosed a photocopy of one page. It was dated a week before his death. He wrote: “I see them now, all of them, lining the green. They’re waiting for the next one. I must show her the way.” I dropped the page, my hands shaking. My grandfather had been seeing something too, and he had chosen me, and now my daughter.

The visits continued, and my daughter thrived, but she grew paler, more withdrawn. She spoke of “the green place” and “the old men in uniform.” I knew I had to leave, to break the cycle. I packed our things and moved to a city, far from the bowls club and the cemetery. The visits stopped, but sometimes, at dusk, I see my grandfather in the reflection of a window or the corner of a park, his arm stretched towards my daughter. And she smiles, and waves, and I know that the green calls to us all.