Fiction: Aunt Zelda's Nursery (a strange story)

Another short story from my friend, Angela Best:

This is the one year anniversary of my Aunt Zelda's death. (This was a real aunt, not one of those people you call Aunt even though they're not.)

When I was young, I never liked visiting Aunt Zelda, even though I kind of liked, or at the very least didn't NOT like, her. But she lived too far away for us to just visit and then come home the same day, so it was always an overnight.

And I didn't like overnights in Aunt Zelda's house.

The house itself wasn't a friendly house, although I'm the only one that ever noticed this, or ever seemed to at least. The paint on the outside was a dingy color, not that it was old paint that was worn and faded, just that the color itself was dingy. It had a front porch that sagged on either end, making it look like the house was frowning or maybe depressed. And inside, the lights gave weird shadow shapes to everything, so that the shadow of a floor lamp might look like a rat trap, or that of an overstuffed chair like a troll's head.

It was a small house and a mean house and how Aunt Zelda could live there for so long has always been a mystery to me.

Worst of all was the room where I had to sleep when we visited. There was only one proper bedroom, and my mother and Zelda would take the bed in there. My father would sleep on the couch in the living room. And I would be forced into the nursery.

It was never called anything but the nursery, although Sarah was almost four years old when she died and hardly a baby. It was right off of the bedroom, and since the only way to the bathroom from there was to go through the bedroom, I always had to use a chamber pot if I needed to pee after bedtime. (The chamber pot was very pretty, hand painted with a scene of a Mommy pushing a young girl in a swing tied to an apple tree.)

Although the room had two beautiful sets of velvet drapes, there were no windows. The drapes, which were always closed, covered bare walls. Windows had once been there, but they had been bricked, plastered and painted over soon after Sarah died.

No one would ever tell me why.

The lack of any ventilation made the room stifling hot, both in the summer from the natural heat and in the winter from the radiators. Sleeping was almost impossible, and when I did sleep, I had disquieting dreams.

One night, after I had tossed and turned for what seemed like hours and was ready to scream in frustration, I suddenly felt something. It was very faint, almost imperceptible, but there it was - the slightest of breezes.

It seemed to be coming from behind the drapes, from a bricked-up window.

I cautiously got out of bed. It was definitely a breeze. I walked toward the drapes, and as I got closer it seemed that the breeze became a wee bit stronger. I reached out my hand and pulled back the drapes.

And yes, there was a window there, a window that was open just a fraction of an inch. As I stepped nearer, the window moved slightly. I looked closely and saw, on the outside of the window, a very tiny but very ugly creature of some sort. It had a vaguely human shape, but scaly skin and ferociously sharp teeth and eyes that burned red. And it was struggling mightily to open the window.

I made a move to close the window, but as soon as I did, something quickly appeared behind the tiny creature. It was a burning red eye, just like the little creature's. But this one was as big as the entire window.

Naturally I ran out of the room screaming, waking the whole house. And of course when the grown-ups came into the room, the drapes were closed, there was no window and it was once again hot and devoid of breeze.

I never slept in there again, spending the night with an accomodating friend of Zelda's whenever we visited after that.

Aunt Zelda had not been in good health for a long time when she died, so I wasn't surprised when the call came. Jessamy found her, on her weekly grocery visit. She knew something was wrong when she opened the door and Zelda didn't call out "Who's breaking into my house all fresh like that?"

Jessamy put the groceries down in the kitchen, and looked in the living room and bedroom for her, then knocked on the bathroom door. When she didn't get an answer, she entered, but there was no one in the bathroom.

Then she made her way to the nursery, and that was where she found her. She was in her nightgown and was sitting in the rocking chair, slumped over on her right side. The chair faced away from the door, so at first Jessamy couldn't see the claw marks on Zelda's face. Nor could she at first see that the nightgown was open, and that Zelda'a right breast was exposed.

Tiny drops of milk dripped from the nipple, forming a little puddle on the floor. Some feet away from the puddle, right by one of the drapes, were several shards of glass. The kind of glass, the police said, used in window panes, not drinking glasses or bottles.

No one was ever able to explain the claw marks, or the glass, or how a woman in her 60's with no baby was lactating. And so when I arrived, I did not bother to add to the myserty by pointing out that the painting on the chamber pot now showed merely an empty swing on an apple tree, with neither a child occupying the swing nor a mother pushing it.

The house is now mine. A real estate agent is working on selling it, and she has begged me to let her remove the chamber pot, because it makes a negative impression.

I tell her the chamber pot is part of the deal. After the house is sold and no longer my responsibility, they can do with it what they will. But I won't be responsible for its future.