Around this same time, I had vivid nightmares and heard voices in the middle of the night. The strangest thing I saw during that time, however, happened one day when my father was doing some work on the house with some other men. I was on the back porch, and the small door that went to the crawl space had been left open. I had seen that door open many times before, of course, but my father would always tell me to stay away from it, and to not go under the house.
Looking back, it is easy to understand why he wouldn't want me under the house: it's filthy. This time, though, I knew my father was on the other side of the house and that there was nothing to keep me from kneeling down and having a good look at that crawl space that fascinated me so much.
I looked underneath the house -- and in a split second the three-foot crawl space turned into an open field with an early evening sky as far and wide as I could see. In the middle of that field was a black man with a gardening hoe working the soil. He was dressed in khaki pants, a white, button-down shirt with long sleeves. He had his sleeves rolled up. He was also wearing a hat typical of the ones worn by men in the 1930s and 1940s.
I watched him in amazement for a few seconds... then he stopped working, looked up and turned his head to look at me. The look on his face was one of, "What in the world?" He seemed to be just as curious of me as I was of him. This scared me, and I can remember running inside to mother. The only explanation I have is that some other dimension in time opened for me -- and, I guess, for the black man, too -- for just a few seconds.
The last time Clifford was seen was after my family had moved to Tennessee. My sister was in the attic, which sat behind a loft in our parents' bedroom. My sister remembers Clifford telling her that we were safe now, and that we did not need him anymore. My sister sat crying, sad at the thought that she would never see him again.
Then I was to discover the possible reason for Clifford's appearance and my vision of the black farmer.
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