Fourth Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest Winners (2006)
Fiction
— Third Place
Anton
By Mary Ellen Walsh
(continued)
The pastor had told her there was a Bauer still here in this town, in the nursing home, an elderly woman named Claudia. When Anna went there, she met a big, cheerful-faced nurse named Kath Zirgg at the front desk. Kath knew English well enough to translate for her. They walked to Claudia's room at the end of the hall, which faced the back wall, just like Anna's room at the hotel. In fact, if Claudia looked out of her window, she could see Anna's window, as the buildings were across from each other, divided by a brook.
Anna felt a stab of shock at the sharp features of the women sitting in the chair. Her eyes were slightly uplifted, and she had a jutting, almost deformed chin. Her features were softened a little by white pink ribbons in her sparse white hair and a look of vagueness, as if the world was a mystery to her. Or perhaps the world was actually no longer a mystery to her. Anna wondered if Claudia had always had an infantilism about her — the desire to look young, almost childlike?
Claudia happily pointed to a picture of her late husband, which she kept on her night stand. The old black and white photograph showed a man who strongly resembled Claudia. While Claudia was being helped to the bathroom by another nurse, Anna asked Kath about this. The head nurse told her Claudia and her husband were related, second cousins. This happened often in this village, though not so much the last two generations. But it had been especially prevalent among the Bauers.
It was an unsettling thought.
Claudia often drifted in and out of reality, though sometimes, Anna thought she saw a look of shrewdness in the old woman's eyes. Maybe it was just a trick of the light making her eyes turn from pale gray to shining nickel for just an instant. Claudia and her husband had had no children, and she seemed happy to have company.
When she drifted off, Anna knew it was time to go. By now it was getting dark, and she wanted to go back to the hotel. As she walked, she felt something was in the streets, following her. Not someone, but something. Anna didn't know for sure. It just seemed like shadows were forming out of nothing. Well, she was just tired, that's all.
Anna was walking down the hall of the hotel later that night, when she saw it.
It was a shape down at the end of the hall, not human — a tall shape similar to a human, but not human. It looked blacker than its surroundings-the opposite of a ghost. It may have been her eyes playing tricks on her, from looking at records all day in a dimly lit church.
Did the shape have arms that were uplifted, or was it just a shadow coming through the windows caused by passing car headlights? But she didn't hear any cars. It was very quiet, too quiet; she wasn't alone in this whole hotel. How could that be possible? She blinked, and the shape disappeared.
Now, despite
the soft bed, sleep would not come. There was a face on the ceiling
above her.
"Where are you buried, Anton?" she asked.
Underneath this hotel.
Then his face disappeared.
Finally,
when dawn came, so did sleep. She awoke around noon.
