I have been told that worlds lay beyond ours, other creatures right beneath us, intertwined in our world all the time.
But we choose to ignore them.
Well, everyone except my father. He says he was born with the ability to see the other side, whether he wants to or not. That most people have to try to see it, put effort and train to have ‘clear eyes’ as he would put it, but he was born seeing the impossible.
My bedside tales as a child always revolved around a new creature he saw walking down the sidewalk that morning when he went to get the morning paper in his underwear.
I was always full of wonder as he described the small, or rather large, creature that he happened across. “It was as tall as my knee… The color of stars… Teeth gleaming as it sneered… A stench that made my vision go blurry…” he explained as he waved his arms frantically to express his tale.
I would sit at attention every night, feeling as if I was there myself. They weren’t good bedtime stories in the sense that I often got so riled up from the story that I couldn’t fall asleep, always wanting to know more. I would jump up in down till the bed springs squealed; but my dad would just take my hand gently in his, guide me down into the bed, kiss me on the forehead and say “The world is full of wonder, Eliza, a new surprise waiting around every corner, you just need to open up your mind.” And with that he turned out the glaring light, revealing the glowing stars on my ceiling and whispers “Goodnight.”

Sometimes I would wake up crying in the middle of the night, distressed that I couldn't see the other side. Dad would come in and tell me that with an open mind like mine, I would learn to see and have 'clear eyes'.
Well time passed and those bedtime tales became just became stories, fiction to me, as I matured, leaving my childhood behind like a leaf in the wind. My dad would every once and a while try to tell me about a new creature that flew over his head that morning and I would nod and say how nice that was, not really into it any more.
He saw it on my face, I’m sure of it, knowing we lost that special little bond between us. The stories stopped.
I grew old, graduating high school and then college, eventually starting a family of my own. We were happy.
But dad grew old too, and sick, essentially bed bound the last year of his life. I came to visit often, carrying my own baby daughter to see him. His tired eyes would light up at the love we shared, stroking her feathery hair.
He passed March 3, 2013; quietly, in his sleep.
There was a hole in my soul, gaping even as I held my daughter close to my chest, feeling the rise and fall between us. My father had been my whole life, raised me on his own to the very best of his ability; kind of a daunting task for me to live up to with my daughter.
So I would follow in his footsteps.
As she slept I whispered in her ear tales of creatures among us, existing in our universe but only in the corners of the mind.
A tale told once over, for only the second time but not for the last. A legend, told on.