I was out at night in the rain and passed a glass storefront and saw a reflection—the shadowy image of two people huddled beneath an umbrella.
The problem was, I was completely alone at the time.
My heart stopped when I realized I was one of the shadowy figures.
Have you ever had the experience of seeing a dark figure or shape out of the corner of your eye? The image passes so fleetingly you doubt your senses.
I blinked and by the time I glanced back at the window, the shadowy girl accompanying me was gone—if she were ever really there at all.
Stormy weather—strange things happen in the mist and the rain. You can’t even rely on typical chronology. Time is dilatory—it could be now—it could be the Thirties.
I walked out in rain and walked back in rain. The rain slanted like gold threads beneath streetlights; houses and buildings huddled and conspired in shadows; above me dark clouds were racing.
It was timeless—a blessed moment infinitely suspending laws of beginning and ends and here and now. Anything might happen and could in rain–I always believed that and was more convinced now.
Then, she was beside me in the mist. She was talking softly—whispering like rain, sighing like a breeze. We were splashing and laughing—laughing and splashing.
It was wondrous and magical, sweetness and light. I never wanted it to end. I could have walked on to the end of night, to the end of all sidewalks, to the end of my life.
Several times I made an effort to turn and see her directly, distinctly—but she exerted a slight pressure and laughed gaily as if to say, it didn’t matter. And of course, it didn’t.
All that mattered was being there, in the rain with her.
All too soon we arrived at my house and I felt her leave, somewhere in that last block, somewhere between now and then she disappeared—evaporated into the mist.
I dropped my overcoat, dripping with rain on the floor, kicked off my shoes, trudged upstairs and fell into bed. I slept the sleep of raindrops, the endless passion of storms.
When I awoke to a gray dawn, my arms ached for her. I had forgotten Christine, the lover who jilted me, but my heart wasn’t free.
I was again a prisoner of love, captivated by a nameless, faceless girl whose soul invaded mine and who had won her victory.
From then on, whenever it rained, I walked and she walked with me. I’m hopelessly in love with her—devoted to her, enslaved to my lady of the mist.
And it’s raining again tonight.
There’s a lady outside, waiting for me in the mist – I can see her shape and hear her voice, but I can’t see her face.
She walks with me and talks with me.
By any definition, she’s different from a ghost or apparition. We walk beneath circles of streetlights and navigate dark penumbras. We laugh and talk and walk.
She’s different from everyone else.
As Neil Gaiman put it, somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.
Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop.
You will never see her again.
But, whenever it rains you will think of her.