An Afternoon with Anna

Content Warning: bullying, child harm, elderly harm, child death

Produced by the NoSleep Podcast- Season 20, Episode 11 (subscription required)

“Have you heard of Anna?” A boy with a grown-out bowl cut and dirty knees asks me. No, I tell him. Of course I haven’t heard of Anna. We just moved to the cul-de-sac in that sleepy little town in Vermont a few days ago. My bed isn’t even set up yet, so I’m sleeping on a mattress on the floor in our living room with my little brother, Kenny.

“Who’s Anna?” I ask.

“Who’s Anna?” another kid shrieks—a girl with wavy red hair under a baseball cap. “She’s, like, famous!”

A famous Anna? Huh. That doesn’t help me. I don’t know many celebrities because I don’t watch a lot of movies or TV. Mostly I read books, but somehow I don’t think my collection of young adult dystopian fiction will help me…or impress them. I want them to like me. I can’t believe we’ve only been in the cul-de-sac since Wednesday and there are kids in my front yard. They just came right up and started chatting like I’m not the new kid in town. Like they want to know me. I didn’t even have to lure them in. Mom wants me to make real friends here and I promised her I’d try. I hope she isn’t too busy unpacking the dishes in the kitchen to see me now, surrounded by four other kids—five if you count Kenny, but he doesn’t count because he’s just my brother, and like four years younger than me anyway. Four kids. Four new friends. But they want to know—they really want to know—if I know who this Anna is. And I don’t.

“You can’t live here if you don’t know.” Another girl, this one in a dress, her hair tied back in a huge, floppy bow, states. As if my family will actually have to move if I lack this important knowledge.

“Don’t be a jerk, Katie,” the fourth kid, a boy with spiky hair and freckles, says. “What’s your name? I’m Trevor.”

“Hi Trevor. I’m Mary.”

“And this is Brenna and Kyle. Don’t listen to them about Anna. They’re just being dumb because you’re new. They’ve never even seen her.”

“I don’t understand. Who is Anna?” I ask.

He grins, but it’s a shade darker than friendly. “She’s your neighbor. See that house back there? Behind yours, behind the cul-de-sac?”

“Yeah?”

It’s a tall Victorian, the once-white paint chipped and fading. Not at all like the cookie-cutter homes around it, the ones that all look like mine.

“That’s Anna’s house. She’s an old woman who lives in the attic.”

“She’s probably not even up there anymore,” Katie says.

“She is,” Trevor insists.

“What’s so special about that?” I ask.

“Because she’s not a normal old lady. She’s—”

“You’d better not tell her, Trevor,” Brenna says, adjusting her baseball cap. “She won’t believe you.”

“Believe you about what?” I ask. “Will someone just tell me what the big deal is about Anna?”

“She doesn’t have a face,” Trevor spits out.

I stare at him, mouth gaping. He’s joking. Brenna was right—how could I believe that? A woman with no face? Of course, they’re messing with me. I feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment and fresh anger. This, Mom. This is why I don’t play with other kids. They’re jerks. Jerks!

“That’s not funny,” I say, trying to contain myself so I don’t cry. I always cry at the wrong times—not because I’m sad, but because I’m so angry. It started in fourth-grade three years ago when a little boy named James called me Mousy Mary. Mousy because of my frizzy brown hair and freckles. Because I wasn’t pretty, like some of the other girls. I cried in front of the whole class then, and I never forgot it.

Neither did they.

“I know. It’s serious,” Trevor says. “You know why she doesn’t have a face?”

“Why?” I ask cautiously.

“Because a bunch of dogs ate it off,” Trevor says.

“This is so stupid,” I say, and I mean it. I’m already thinking of an appropriate punishment for such a stupid story and for almost making me cry. Payback, I’ve found, is far more useful than tears.

“I told you she wouldn’t believe you,” Brenna says. I want to slap the smirk right off her face, like I did to Ava Clare back in Ohio, or Jackie Blank in Missouri. They never laughed at me again. I glance over my shoulder to see if Mom is watching. This I don’t want her to see.

“Dogs ate it off? How? Why?” I demand.

“Because the town set the dogs on her after that little girl disappeared,” Trevor says. “Yeah, Anna was just a lonely old lady and sometimes kids would go visit her and keep her company. Then one day, one of the little girls went in and never came back out.”

I cock my head, slightly intrigued. Kyle pulls out a cell phone—I hope Mom is watching now, so she can see that it’s perfectly normal for kids my age to have one—and hands it to me after he finds what he is looking for.

“See? Her name was Brigit, and she was ten. Read the article. It’s old but it’s all there,” Kyle says.

I study the article on his phone. It’s a story about children who went missing in Vermont. Within the article is a picture of an old newspaper clipping from the 1940’s. A homely girl wearing a flowered dress stares up at me. On the twentieth of July, 1940, Brigit Mason, aged ten, was last seen entering the white Victorian that still looms tall and imposing over the rest of the neighborhood. Perhaps more disturbing than the mystery behind her disappearance is the paragraph that confirms Trevor’s story. The townspeople, angry and afraid of the old woman who lived in the towering Victorian, sought their own brand of justice. Though they claimed they only intended to interrogate her, she was attacked by a pair of dogs belonging to Brigit’s father. Anna Farrington, the old woman in the old Victorian, was left to die on the attic floor.

Without a face.

My head shoots up. I give Kyle back his phone.

“See? Told you!”

“Anna’s dead,” I deadpan.

“Yeah, but she’s still up there, in the attic,” Trevor says. “Didn’t you read it? They left her there to die.”

“That was eighty years ago,” I say.

“And she’s still there. Isn’t she, Kyle?” Trevor asks.

Kyle nods fiercely. “It’s true. My older brother swears. He went up to the attic, and she was sitting in a chair. He swears!”

“So, what…did your brother see her face?” I ask.

“No, duuuuuh. Because it wasn’t there.”

“Ugh, let’s just go. She’s lame,” Brenna says. Yes, I definitely want to smack her. She won’t even know what hit her. I smacked Ava Clare so hard her freckles flew right off her face. No one believed me when I told them, but I saw it. I even picked one up off the floor.

“Don’t call my sister lame!” It’s Kenny’s first contribution to our conversation. He isn’t coming to my defense. He’s coming to theirs.

“You’ve never gone up to the attic either, Brenna,” Katie says. “You only think Anna’s up there because you believe Kyle’s stupid brother. I heard he just went up there to make out with a girl. What would he know?”

“He knows more than you,” Kyle shoots back. “Why don’t you go up to the attic?”

“Wait—have any of you been to the attic?” I ask.

For the first time since traipsing up my front lawn, they are silent. Sheepish looks pass between them. It’s obvious: no one has ever seen Anna. None of them have ever even been inside that house, I bet. They are just clinging to some bizarre legend from the past, probably the only interesting thing that ever happened in their stupid little town.

“And you called me lame?” I roll my eyes. I have done so much worse for so much less. I promised Mom it would be different this time. Not at all like Ohio, or Missouri, or Nebraska. We were running out of country, and my parents were running out of excuses. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want friends. But the other kids are always so stupid and so mean. My books are better. In dystopian novels, kids die when they’re idiots. It’s not like I’ve ever killed anyone.

Though Sasha in Missouri did call me Bloody Mary when I knocked out three of Dustin Lang’s teeth when he tried to kiss me in the bathroom at a party. He came out with blood running down his chin, spitting his teeth into his hand, but I’m the one with the nickname. I’m not the real Bloody Mary anyway. But I am honored by the comparison.

“Well, let’s go then,” Trevor says, puffing up his chest. The Marvel Avengers look like they’re going to fly right off his t-shirt. “Right now.”

“Pshh, yeah right,” Kyle says.

“I’ll go,” I say. “I’m not scared. It’s all a dumb joke anyway. You’ll see.”

“Don’t do it Mary. I’ll tell Mom,” Kenny says, tugging on my arm. His eyes are wide. What does he think I’m going to do to these kids anyway? They could still be contenders for friends. Maybe even the bratty Brenna, after a lesson or two. The mouthy ones are always quick to fall in line once someone puts them in their place.

“Good, you should tell Mom,” I say to him. “Let her know I’m going for a walk with my new friends. She’ll be so happy.”

“Are we really going to do this?” Katie asks. That bow is starting to annoy me. It’s long enough to choke her with, I bet. A person doesn’t die straight off from choking. They pass out first. Sometimes they shake like they’re having a seizure before they wake up. As long as you let go after five, maybe ten seconds, there’s usually no permanent damage, but I’ve been wanting to try for thirty. What color will Katie’s face become, and what kind of weird, jerky movements will her body make if I choke her for thirty whole seconds with that ridiculous white bow?

“Why come over here asking if I know about Anna if we aren’t going to go see her?”

“I can’t,” Kyle says. “My mom wants me home in, like, twenty minutes.”

“The house is right there. We can be in and out in ten,” I argue.

“Ha, I bet Kyle won’t last for five,” Trevor laughs, but there’s an undercurrent of nerves there. He doesn’t want to go see Anna either, but he’s tough. His hair is gelled and spiky like he thinks he’s cool, and cool kids are always the worst. Always the first to put you down. Back in Oregon, I showed the cool kids how cool they really were with a little help from Visine. A couple drops into their smoothies at lunch, and they were shitting their brains out in front of the entire cafeteria then down the hall, diarrhea streaming down their pant legs, streaking the floor. In all, seven kids ended up in the hospital—every single one of them cool.

Well, at least until I got through with them.

“Shut up, Trevor,” Kyle mumbles.

Kenny stays behind, while the rest of us walk past my new house, across the newly-mowed grass, to the chain link fence that separates my backyard from the overgrown weeds of Anna’s crumbling Victorian. It doesn’t look like anybody has lived there since Anna met her gory end. I don’t believe for a second that she’s still haunting the attic after all that time. Trevor and Kyle call each other names on the short jaunt, distracting from their apprehension and fear. I wonder, not for the first time, if someone can take a hammer and—if you hit just right—push a person’s tooth back up into their gums. I imagine it might work with a canine. You’d have to use a rubber hammer or mallet because a steel hammer would shatter the tooth first. Kyle has nice canines. Good and pointy. I don’t see any rubber mallets discarded in the tall grass, so I’ll have to check our own garage. Did Dad unpack his tools yet?

What is this house doing here anyway? Why hasn’t someone torn it down and built two cookie-cutters in its place? It doesn’t belong here, and as we approach I feel a sudden kinship with it. I don’t belong anywhere. We climb the crooked steps and cross the front porch. The front door opens. Still no rubber mallets, but plenty of broken glass. Could I carve out a cornea? I’ve never even tried. It sounds like delicate work, and I seldom have the finesse.

“Are we really doing this?” It’s Brenna. Not so tough now. The first one to balk.

“Guys, seriously, my mom…” Kyle stammers.

“You really are stupid, aren’t you?” I ask.

They all look at me. It’s one thing if they call each other names, but they don’t know me. I’m just a new neighbor, some unknown kid with mousy brown hair, a mousy little mouth, and mousy little eyes. Mousy Mary. Bloody Mary. They don’t know about Ohio or Missouri or Nebraska. Oregon, Idaho, Tennessee. To them, the sweet, stupid kids from the cul-de-sac, I am as faceless as Anna, a patsy they think they can torment and scare with a story about a woman who definitely isn’t in the attic of the rickety old Victorian behind my house. How dare I call them stupid? How dare I call bullshit on their own silly joke?

“What did you just say?” Trevor asks, his green eyes narrowing. His cornea would fit perfectly in the round locket I stole from Jill in Missouri, after I shaved off both of her eyebrows at a sleepover. Jill had been the closest thing to a true friend I ever had, which is why I spent the night at her house. But she should’ve known better than to tease me about Timmy Stratton, a boy I didn’t even like anyway.

“I said you were stupid. All of you.” I say it proudly, without shame. Screw these cul-de-sac sacks. “Get out of my way.”

I storm past them, thumping up the giant wooden staircase inside the front door. I don’t look back, but I hear them whispering. Plotting. Good, let them plot. They have no idea what is coming to them. Silly, silly cul-de-sacks.

I am at the second story landing when their footsteps follow mine. Cautious, they are. Not like my sure steps, pressing toward the attic to prove the little idiots wrong. On the second floor, I step around the holes in the floorboards, stirring ancient dust, while I throw open warped and weathered doors to bedrooms long-since lost to age. On the other side of the third door is a set of narrow wooden stairs.

I look back at my new, would-be friends. They stand huddled in a tight ball of nerves at the top of the main staircase. Katie, in that hopeful white bow, is pale. Brenna keeps her features tight, but I can practically smell her fear and boy does it stink. Kyle looks like he might pee himself but is too proud to admit it. Trevor, clever devil, is intent on my face, his lips almost curling in a smile that I match as I turn and climb the final set of steps.

It gets hotter and harder to breathe as I ascend. At the top of the stairs is another door, slightly ajar. I’m a little surprised to see light again after the dark, enclosed staircase. A beam of late afternoon sun shines through a slatted window to the right of the door. And here it is—just a dusty old attic. I step farther into the room, taking in the pitches and angles of the ceiling, the darkened eaves filled with cobwebs, spiders clinging between the beams, an old rocking chair in front of an old brick fireplace, a woman with long, gray hair.

“Wait—”

I start to scream. When I turn, I see Trevor smile—an evil gleam to rival my own—as he yanks the door at the top of the stairs shut. I hear a click, even as I scream and lunge for it. The old metal knob clangs in my hand, but the door doesn’t budge. I pound—god, how I pound—and beg and plead for the stupid cul-de-sacks to let me out. They laugh and snigger from the safety of the stairwell, on the other side of the door from…

Anna.

I stop pounding. I’m crying now. Just like I always do. I am such a baby. I always cry over silly things. And this is silly, right? There are no such things as ghosts—not even of faceless women who died some horribly gruesome death. Maybe I didn’t see what I think I saw. The form sitting in the chair is probably just a doll. Yeah. Part of the prank. Kyle’s brother and his friends probably set this all up, and Kyle, Trevor, Brenna, and Katie, the stupid cul-de-sacks, cashed in on the prank. And I walked with all my gumption and gusto right into the trap, believing that they were the stupid ones. But I am the one who fell for it.

I am still falling for it if I am still crying.

I tune out the sniggering—I’ll deal with the cul-de-sacks later—and force myself to calm down. Deep breaths. They will pay. I take comfort in visions of sweet revenge. Or maybe I’ll let it slide and keep this in my back pocket. Let them think they bested me until they least expect it. Only I’ll need something better than Visine this time. I will be fine.

“Get a grip, Mary,” I challenge myself.

When I finally have the nerve to look again, I expect the chair to be empty—or for her to be standing right behind me for a good jump-scare. Anna and her faceless mug, ready to claim me. But, no. She is there but she hasn’t moved. She isn’t even rocking. From where I stand by the locked door, I can only see her gray hair, her left shoulder and arm in a faded pink flower-print dress, and a knobby hand. The hand is good work if it is a fake. It isn’t a skeleton, but I can see the bones protruding unnaturally through the skin. She is so still, so impossibly still.

A doll. Has to be. A clever fake. Some mannequin or art school project. A paper mache masterpiece from some senior class prank put to good use. I am sure of it.

So, I gather the gumption that sent me into the room in the first place, and take a step toward her. Then another. And another. It isn’t far. Her flowered dress looks familiar, but I can’t figure out why. No one I know dresses like that—like someone from the 1940’s. The long, stringy hair is real enough. Gray. Then, just as I come up on her side, her head turns.

Anna looks at me.

They have it wrong: Trevor, Kyle, Brenna, and Katie. Kyle’s brother. The newspaper article. Anna has a face. At least, part of one. The left side, the one closest to me, is normal—well, normal for pallor, colorless flesh clinging loosely to a skull. But the right…the right has literally gone to the dogs. Shreds, like dangling crystals on a chandelier, hang from her forehead to her chin, and they tremble in the motion of turning her head to look at me.

Only she isn’t looking. Not with eyes anyway. Empty, black sockets stare not at me, but through me. I feel them wrap around my spine and drag me closer. Closer to where Anna sits in that faded flowered dress that I suddenly remember from the photo of little Brigit Mason who went into the old Victorian to visit an old woman and never came back out. The dress is Brigit’s, but the shredded remains are a face that belonged to Anna, the lonely old woman mauled and left for dead. I don’t understand how this is possible, but it is. It’s right in front of me.

I don’t scream. I can’t. I am frozen. There is cold death wrapped around me. I feel sad. So terribly, terribly sad. I cry a lot, but I never feel sad like this. It overwhelms me as the cold seeps into my pores from the woman with half a face. I cannot tear my gaze from the black pits where Anna’s eyes used to be. Then, a darkness, an empty void descends. I don’t see it, but it I sense it coming, closing in from all sides. It presses around my body like the tightest, most unwelcome hug until I can’t breathe. I am collapsing inside of myself, bones creaking, chest sinking, lungs crushing within the void’s inescapable embrace. My vision of the room, of Anna, closes in slowly. I know now I should’ve run when I had the chance. When my body still belonged to me. I am being swallowed. Consumed. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Anna is the last thing I see before the tunnel of blackness, the all-encompassing void, finally collapses, and I feel myself tripping, falling headfirst into nothingness.

I land in the room, but I’m not on my feet anymore and I’m closer to the fireplace. I don’t know how I got here. I can move again, but my body feels…different. The sadness is still with me, heavy like a weighted blanket. It’s the only thing that feels the same as it did before the void. It is…it is how Mom always says I should feel. I should feel sad for the kids that I hurt. She never understands how they all have it coming. Every last one. I never act without provocation. I never shove pencils into ears or rip out chunks of hair for no reason. I never added nuts to the allergen-free lunches in the cafeteria or started a fire in the sixth-grade science lab because my fellow classmates were wonderful people. Little shits all of them. If Mom hadn’t discovered the lily of the valleys I mixed into the batter of my birthday cake last year, I would’ve shown all those assholes what happens when I don’t want a goddamn birthday party!

I never feel sad for those kids. Just like I don’t feel sad for Brigit Mason, who probably came in here to torment a perfectly wonderful woman who just liked to be alone. The sadness that holds my rickety bones together is for Anna, the poor reclusive soul who liked to sit quietly in her attic in front of this fireplace, reading books, not bothering anyone, until stupid little brats—like those damn cul-de-sacks—thought it was funny to break into her house and disrupt her wonderfully quiet moments, and report back to the town what a crazy old hag Anna Farrington was. She wasn’t crazy. She just wanted to be alone. She just wanted peace and quiet. She just wanted—

THE LITTLE SHITS TO DIE.

The door flings open. They are all standing there, the cul-de-sacks. They had been smiling. Laughing at my terror. They aren’t laughing now. Trevor is in front since he closed the door. But I want to save him for last, so I grab him by the collar with my bony hand and yank him into the attic. He stumbles across the room, almost falling into the now-empty rocking chair. Kyle, next in line, screams—such a high-pitched, girly sound, it surprises me. I don’t take a mallet to his teeth. That would be too easy. Instead I unhinge my jaw and clamp my mouth over his lips, sucking his teeth straight from his slimy gums. He can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I never knew I was this strong. When I let him go, there are caverns where his molars, lateral incisors, and those beautiful, pointed canines used to be. He shoves his fingers in his mouth and I laugh—a raucous, unexpected roar—since he reminds me of the abominable snowman from the Rudolph Christmas movie after he loses his teeth. Blood covers Kyle’s hands, and his eyes roll into the back of his head. He collapses at my feet before I decide if there’s anything else worth taking.

Brenna, tough Brenna. She’s too scared, too stunned by what happened to Kyle to move. Not so tough staring into my empty sockets. I decide her red hair isn’t enough. What I really need is a scalp—a full skull-cap, like the ones swimmers wear in the pool. It will be a lot of work for both of us to endure, but worth it in the end, I think. Even with these fancy new canines, tearing through the supple skin around her head is messy, the jagged line regrettable. I know it looks hideous, but one works with what they have. She flails. Of course she does. Nothing hurts worse than being scalped. Nothing that a person can survive anyway. I know before I lift my prize from the bloody bone underneath, that she’s already dead. Her eyes roll back like Kyle’s when the sheer trauma becomes too much. But, unlike Kyle, she won’t open them again.

Katie. The only one smart enough to run. The only one with the time to get out. Somehow, though I’m not sure how I do it, I seal the front door before she reaches it. Part of me is busy gnawing through Brenna’s face. Another part is aware that I cannot let Katie go. Not without leaving behind her bow for all this pretty red hair. When I catch up with her, she’s trying all the windows in the living room. Some are broken. All were nailed shut ages ago, which actually works in my favor. She picks up the splintered leg of what used to be an end table and tries to clear the jagged glass from one of the narrow panes of the rounded turret, the Victorian’s most notable feature. I wrap my hand around her wrist, and as I do, a knuckle bone breaks through my skin. I’ll have to fix that. I only wanted the bow, but Katie has nice fingers too.

She fights against the thick ribbon around her neck. I knew the bow was long enough to strangle her with when it was unraveled from her hair. I count, waiting for thirty seconds. I really want to know how the body will respond after so much time, but I make a fatal mistake. Well, fatal for Katie, at least. I can be forgiven for being overzealous when this is the most fun I’ve ever had. I pull too hard, and the ribbon is too strong. Her trachea collapses. I hear the delicious crunch as I feel it give. She, like Kyle and Brenna before her, also collapses.

After tying my red wavy hair back, I decide to wear Katie’s hands like the most pristine gloves in the becoming shade of peaches n’ cream. Then I make my way back up the main stairs, to the narrow steps where my final prize awaits. Trevor. Clever Trevor. He is ready with an old board he must’ve found while he was locked in the attic. He swings and the board cracks against my chest, tearing my flowered dress. His eyes widen—his big, green eyes—when I don’t go down. I don’t feel the hit at all, actually. Silly Trevor. He trips and I descend over his body for the delicate work of removing not just his corneas, but his whole eyeballs that will fill the sockets that have been empty for so long. My new Katie gloves are deft and efficient—an excellent choice. Trevor screams the loudest of any of them. Stays awake the longest too actually. I guess he really is a tough guy. When I’m done, and Trevor is laying before me, eyeless and whimpering, I use a splintered piece of the board he cracked against my chest to stab him in the heart. It’s the least I can do.

I leave Trevor in a bloody, lifeless heap of prepubescent spare parts, and return to Kyle on the stairs. Quiet, toothless Kyle with the brother who thought he knew a thing or two about Anna. Well, now he really will. I drag the unconscious miscreant past Brenna’s corpse and down the narrow stairs. His head thuds on each step and a trail of blood seeping from his mouth follows us to the second floor, down the main staircase. He gurgles, and I think his eyes roll open for a moment, just long enough to see Katie in the living room without her pretty bow or her precious hands.

I deposit Kyle on the porch. When Kenny brings my mom—and I’m sure he will—they will find him. Kyle, lucky or unlucky, depending on who you ask, will serve as this generation’s proof of the legend. A reminder of what happens to kids who condescend to disturb my rest. I hope his brother in particular takes responsibility for his part in poor little Kyle’s misadventure.

And if anyone else dares to make their way up to the attic, they’ll find me in my rocking chair in my pretty pink flowered dress, my long red hair pulled back with a big, white bow. I’ll turn and flash my pointy new canines, stare with my big, green eyes, and beckon with a small, delicate finger. Then I’ll do terrible things that terrible children deserve. Things that make Visine in smoothies and poisoned cake batter look like child’s play.

Like sending the new kid into an attic to meet a ghost with no face.

She has a face now. If my little brother Kenny ever comes up here to confront the legend of Anna, he’ll know what happened to his sister. Even with green eyes instead of brown, red hair instead of mousy frizz, he’ll recognize me. He’s a good kid. I hope he doesn’t come.

He has toes to die for.