His first impression of Annette being very old was incorrect. She was ancient. Her eyelids hung loose over sunken eyeballs that were glazed, a fog of years covering them. Her cheeks were lined with the loss of fat that had no doubt filled them full, and resembled two sails hanging limp on a windless day. Her toothless mouth was ajar, but surprisingly, no spittle dripped out of it.
“Hello, my name is Lance,” he began. “I know you don’t know me, but … I’m your grandson.” The words were out of his mouth before he had computed them. The emotion that clung to them stunned him. The longing for a family he had felt while growing up alone came rushing back to him in an instant. The feelings of envy and resentment at seeing other kids with parents and grandparents over the years surfaced from deep within him, and then submerged once again, pushed below by the questions that had drawn him here. “I wanted to ask you about some things. Would you like to talk with me?”
Annette didn’t move. Her eyes remained locked on the window. Lance frowned and leaned closer to the old woman, the smell of aged skin cloying the air around her.
“Annette, do you remember your house? The one at the lake? Do you remember what it looks like?” He thought he saw a movement beneath the sweater, a shiver. “Do you remember where you lived with my father? With your husband?” He stared at the side of her face, examining the lines there. Her jaw shifted, up a fraction of an inch and then back down. Lance blinked. Had she tried to say something?
He continued, hoping his voice would spur her on. “I moved there a little while ago. I didn’t know it was yours.”
The events that had transpired over the past weeks replayed in his head. In this dark room, they seemed all too real. Strange and otherworldly, but real. That was really why he had come to see this catatonic woman. To see if she could tell him why these things were happening to him. To give an explanation other than what his mind kept creeping toward like an open grave.
“I’ve been seeing things,” he started, his voice much lower than before. “Strange things in the house. I don’t know why, and I’m beginning to worry that nothing’s really there. That it’s just me. It’s always been me, and it’s something that’s broken inside my mind.”
His breath came in short bursts and he felt the clawings of anxiety. He sat back in his chair and tried to calm himself. The atmosphere of the building pressed upon him. He felt its institutional presence like a hand on his shoulder that waited to steer him into a room of his own in some quiet, dark corner. Maybe someday he’d see what the man in the hall saw. Maybe someday he would run from it too.
Lance tried to shake the thoughts and calm the panic that threatened to spew out of his chest. Annette still hadn’t moved, her arms resting at her sides, her face slack. What was he doing? Sitting here in a room with a woman he didn’t know, asking her questions about his own sanity when she hadn’t spoken a word since the day she had seen her husband’s gray matter sprayed across the floor of their home. Tell her the stain is still there, the voice intoned evilly.
Lance almost stood from his chair and left the room, knowing that his present location and his thoughts were terrible company, but something stopped him.
The surface of the desk before Annette held a folded piece of paper and a short nub of a pencil. He hadn’t noticed them before. Lance leaned forward, squinting in the dim light of the room. He realized that a crossword puzzle lay before his grandmother, its small boxes completely filled with letters. He reached out toward the puzzle, half expecting the old woman to lunge at his outstretched arm and tear at it like a snarling beast. Annette remained motionless as he slid the paper toward him with a soft scraping sound.