It was in her later years, lying in the hospital bed, that Anna began to recall these memories. She lay there without respite, her head braced firm, waiting to hear something, anything more than the agonizingly noncommittal, “We’re looking into it, but nothing is definite right now. Try to get some rest.”

Her recurring vision.

In her dreams she gently awoke in the familiar surroundings of her room. She was home, and she clung to youth in her small hands. Her myopic eyes limited by the time of night that seemed to claim darkness as permanent rather than a passing phase. Out of habit she would turn her head towards the outside facing window, hoping to let the clouded moonlight bring outline and shape to her room.

First, definition was given to the larger objects in her room. Lamp by her bedside, dresser across the room, and her toy chest where her stuffed penguin Puffy sat. Next was the definition of the trees outside, layered conspiratorially, jutting out their dying rotting branches which hung low in a disfigured pattern.

Through those trees and branches one is able to make out a number of figures. In her dreams she would prepare herself to see the worst. Her body would begin to shiver, frantic thoughts would search for a hidden escape, and her breaths, scattered and strained, became a luxury. She would create such a panic for herself, peering out into the woods and waiting, waiting for a figure that would never come. Often her mind and body would break down into an even greater darkness.

Was it so much better to prepare oneself for anything only to be petrified by nothing at all?  She would wonder why should couldn't simply let go and recede into ignorance.

But then there were those times, when peering out into the twisted shapes framed by withered bark, that a figure did become clear. First distant, as if an illusion from a double mirrored image. Defined and at the same time cloaked in a darkness that seemed to collapse the shadows and blackness around it. She would close her eyes and wait. Open. Search the layers of trees again. Wait, that endless waiting she knew too well. Pull the covers ever tighter around her face, try to conceal her own figure. Search again, fixating on a single point in space, a howling shiver running down her spine as she saw the figure again, without any movement unto itself the figure able to cross layers of great distance.

In her dreams she would wait. She would wait, open her eyes once more, and once more see the figure ever closer, threatening to engulf her story in its gloom. An unfair game, conducted by a master of patience, that seemed to be able to repeat itself until the end of time. All she could do was wait.