I woke to my eyes closed. The distant sound of a crackling fire and the creaking of a rocking chair had caught me from my death sleep. I tried to open my heavy lids, but was too weak. The fire gave me an overcoming feeling of warmth and I realized how hot it really was. Patched blankets surrounded my body and the grip the cold had upon me had loosened. I lay on a coarse sheet stretched out upon a comfortable mattress. The only thing that wasn't immersed in heat was my left arm, which was something, along with a couple of my fingers, that I couldn't feel.
Finally, I could lift my right lid and light sprung the eye. It ran away soon enough and I saw a large fan above me, slowly moving continually in a circle. The ceiling behind it was a bright hue of pink and the walls were wallpapered with pictures I still couldn't make out, but didn't really want to. My eyes panned both ways, but everything was too blurry to make anything out. Definitely not where that squeaking rocking chair was. It was an annoying little sound that pierced the room's silence, a pin to a balloon. But then the noise grew, louder and longer in length, until it suddenly stopped in mid-squeak. A blurred vision of a blob stood in front of my eyes soon after, and I could only guess it was a person. Or that wolf.
My mouth was dry and my throat felt as though it would bleed at any second, but I managed to get out one word. "Who..." I then started coughing harshly, the word having tickled my neck and inflamed my lungs. The room was spinning. Everything was moving: left, right, straight at me, and circling around the bed, as bats or flesh-hungry demons. Only one thing was clear in my line of sight. A man's winkled hand coming to chapped lips. One index finger rose and pressed on the purple dry skin.
Shhhhhhhhhh....
When I woke again, it was to a woman humming. My eyes could finally open easily when commanded and it wasn't long before everything was in perfect clarity. The fire was still there, but no longer crackled so loud as when I woke before. The wind whistled a tune that matched that of the woman humming a soft melody. She wasn't in the rocking chair, thank God, but sat in a small simple chair next to the bed. That was when I started thinking this was a dream. I was in a coma in the hospital and none of this was real. But then I reminded myself that this had to be real, because they would have never sent out a search party. So this was reality or I was dead.
The woman was wearing a dress that one would see at an historical society. It was long, a pale blue, and an apron tied around its waist. She was small, but her face told how old she was, in her late twenties at least. So many bags weighted her eyelids down and her skin was ruddy, but that somehow added to a strange, youthful beauty she seemed to possess. She was as skinny as a twig, so her dress was a little too big for her.
My throat still hurt, but was on its way to a quick recovery. So I said to the woman, "Excuse me miss, but can you tell me where I am?" She kept to her knitting, her fingers moving quicker than her weak exterior portrayed her to-especially since she looked straight at the fire, not her work- and the humming played on. Maybe I hadn't really said anything. So, this time louder I asked, "Please, miss, if you could tell me where I am I would be most appreciative." The humming stopped and her head slowly turned towards me. I then saw a gruesome sight. All along her right cheek-up to the forehead and down to the chin-there flowed a scarred burn, glowing red in the fire's light, as if the flames where growing on her skin right now, and damning it to no repair.
She was still knitting. Not a word from her was spoken and she left the room, needles and autumn yarn still at hand. "Wait!" I yelled and my throat started to burn again. I immediately stopped all my movements in fear of the nightmarish visions to come again. She was gone, and I was again, or maybe not again, alone. I took this to my advantage to search my surroundings. There was black, white ferns and trees embroidered on the blankets. There where two wooden bedside tables, two simple chairs, and the hearth, whose mantle bore small pictures that would only be able to be seen if you picked it up and looked on. The walls were brown and the wallpaper shown pictures of... owls. Three different kinds. Cartoons, but very realistic.
By the fireplace, in shadowed warm, was the creaking, squeaking rocking chair. It was polished pine, craved with many symbols and patterns, but the only one that caught my attention was the one on the backboard. Burned black, and the biggest design of them all, was the wolf. Or, a wolf, at least. I starred straight to the bed where I lay, its wooden eyes full of anger and his fangs sticking out of his large mouth. Wolves are harmless.
The door opened slowly and refined, but it still almost gave me another heart attack. I expected the dark wolf, his demon eyes stalking me, his breath filling the room like water, drowning me alone in fear, that is until his howl bellowed and the scream came and choked me. But it was only an old man.
He wore a dark suit that was designed with golden buttons and had a large, dark hat that covered his face, and a pair of stockings and polished shoes, all of which was of the same time period as the silent woman's attire.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, like he wanted me to observe him of great stature, and then slowly walked into the shadowed room in a genteelly manner.
Right when he sat in the rocking chair, I decided not to trust him.
