The customer that wasn't there.

I thought sure that I had entered this post; however, seeing it not, I must not have. Several days ago, toward the end of that last artic blast of snow, freezing rain and subzero temperatures, I had to run my wife's store alone. My wife has a serious leg problem and our house was surrounded by a frozen moat. In fact it was so bad that when I attempted to take our dogs out for necessary things I found myself flat out on my back and had no memory of falling. Only by crawling onto a mat was I even able to stand up and retreat back to the house. So, needless to say, my wife was going to stay home on this one and I had to run the store alone. Things went normally, we actually had a few more customers than I expected. By 5:00 pm I was pretty pooped. About a quarter to 5:00, considering the fact that we had had no customers for roughly a half hour or so, I started closing the store down. I shut off all display lights, brought in articles displayed outside including an open sign. Then I took care of the till and shut off the open sign in front. The last thing we do is shut off the large overhead lights. I had just gone to our second sales room and started to close a curtain that opens into a small workroom. Just as I started to pull the curtain closed I saw a rather large customer in a heavy dark overcoat come down the main aisle in the second salesroom directly towards me. I said, "Sorry sir, I thought everyone had left", and I closed the curtain and turned to face the customer. There was no one there. There was no one in that store but me. There is no way he could have walked past me in the two or three seconds it took to close that curtain. I admit I was tired; but I saw this fellow well enough and long enough to actually speak to him. Maybe I'm hallucinating. I hope not. But what did I see? I finished closing, turned off the lights, locked up and left. The next day my wife was able to make it to the store and luckily nothing more transpired.