The Long, White Room
This story some may find disturbing. It deals with a controversial subject and may not reflect general views.
I saw the hand first.
Little fingers wriggling their way through the lid.
Wriggling through the shiny lid of the small coffin. It was as though the individual inside was experimenting, learning the extent of its capabilities. Finally the whole little hand was through.
It was white.
That gaunt, white, dead colour.
For a moment the fingers fluttered in the air as though the entombed body being carried hadn’t, as yet, become used to them moving, I thought. Then the hand slowly, oh so slowly, swivelled in my direction until the finger, the finger of accusation, pointed at me.
I only just managed to stifle a scream, some sort of noise from forcing its way past my trembling lips. As it was I almost released my hold on the coffin. The Vicar and the other bearers, neighbours and friends of the family, glared balefully at me before showing concern. “I’m okay,” I muttered. “Really. I’m okay.”
They hadn’t noticed anything… anything out of the ordinary that is.
I had a quick look round the crowded church. No one appeared to have seen anything. They were all acting quite normally; whatever is normal about a funeral.
But the hand was still there.
I blinked several times thinking I was hallucinating but it refused to go away. The finger still pointed at me… accusing me… threatening to expose me… And yet I experienced a sadness emanating from inside the coffin… a strange sadness for me.
That was the most weird part. Although the hand was threatening, accusing, it was also thrusting forth a feeling of sadness. I tried to look away but the hand, with its accusing finger, was always before me.
If I had been blessed with a warped sense of humour I could have found it funny. At one time the hand appeared to sprout out of the Vicar’s head; another time out of a vase of flowers. I even saw it on top of the shovel held by the gravedigger. But I was in no mood for laughing.
As the little coffin was lowered into the ground things became even worse… worse for me, that is. The dead, young girl sat up. Her face, shoulders, arms and body above her waist completely materialised through the coffin lid. Then she turned her head in my direction… and she stared at me. I shuddered. I couldn’t help myself. Her eyes were open but they were no longer alive. They reminded me of the eyes of fish on a fishmonger’s slab. And yet they pierced my mind as an arrow through paper. I almost stumbled into that narrow opening in the earth, that slice of horror, that opening to the tunnel of everlasting terror. But the hand of her father grasped my arm and I was able to regain my footing, albeit a shaky footing.
When I looked again into that slit of hell she slowly raised her arm until her finger, that finger of accusation, pointed at the centre of my chest. I felt a cold band encircle my heart. “I shall be with you for always,” she whispered to me and her voice was loud and clear in my head.
But I was the only one who heard her.
Once the service was over and we were back at the house I thought that would be the end of my hallucinations. For that is how I had begun to think of them, to rationalise them, to exorcise them. That’s what they are I told myself. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me. But I couldn’t completely convince myself of this. I couldn’t see how toast, cereals and coffee could be responsible for such vivid and realistic images.
“Are you all right?” Richard, the young girl’s daddy, asked when we were standing in the kitchen. We were drinking coffee and the usual refreshments were spread out on the table. Richard was a workmate. I had grown quite fond of him and his wife Tamara. But I had become attracted; an attraction I had taken pains not to show, to their thirteen-year-old daughter Kelsie.
Kelsie had dark, sunburnt skin, the type that had an inner glow. Her jet-black hair framed a face belonging to a Celtic Goddess. Her eyes were black holes surrounded by velvet brown. Many of my fantasies at night featured Kelsie.
Whenever this attraction towards Kelsie became an urgent desire I forced myself to seek solace elsewhere. For a while this provided a small measure of peacefulness inside me. But all too soon this peacefulness would be replaced by a need, a need so great it found me fighting my inner soul from touching her, touching Kelsie for that moment too long… a moment that would expose my naked desire.
When the need became an aching urge, when the fingers tried to slide up her leg as though they had a will of their own, I knew the time had come again… the time to seek out another substitute.
There was only one problem. The intervals of peacefulness were becoming shorter.
And that’s how it was the day I took Kelsie.
I hadn’t planned it. The ache had become a gnawing pain in my head. I had fought against this urge until I could think of nothing else, nothing that is except the immature body of a young girl. I had been watching a friend of Kelsie’s for some time. I couldn’t wait any longer. Any longer and I knew I couldn’t trust myself being close to Kelsie. It was becoming dangerous for her, dangerous for her to be near me and dangerous for me to be near her.
For these occasions I used a battered old van. I had parked it in a lane which Kelsie’s friend passed every morning as a short-cut to school. The lane passed through a wood on its way to the mountains. High in the mountains there was an old shack that I had used before. No one knew of its existence or even suspected anything would be up there. Taking a girl on her way to school had always given me several hours before she was missed.
On this occasion I could not sit still. I had been fighting this urge too long. I think I even groaned out loud as I waited for her to arrive.
And then she was there.
Not Kelsie’s friend.
Kelsie.
Looking through the window of the van.
She opened the door and smiled. Her smile almost drove me mad. I began to shake. Kelsie’s smile changed to concern. “Are you okay Uncle Steve?” she asked. She always called me Uncle Steve even though I was not a relative.
I staggered out of the van unable to speak. Before I knew what I was doing the chloroform pad was over her face and I was bundling her limp body into the van’s interior. Trembling with anticipation and anger I drove up the lane.
None of my previous victims had been found. I couldn’t do that to Tamara and Richard. A week later when my needs had been satiated I washed her. I laid her in a mountain stream and thoroughly cleansed her. Afterwards I left her lifeless form where a jogger or dog walker would find her.
Whenever I succumbed to this urge that took over my body I was left in a nightmare state of mind. It was as though I had been dreaming and the dream would slowly fade from my memory. But this time the dream did not fade. It stayed with me as a haunting, half remembered memory.
And so we come to the days following the funeral. I never knew when that finger of accusation would appear. It seemed to show up everywhere. It would suddenly and unerringly point at me from out of the television screen. Or it would appear in the rear mirror of the car. I almost lost control of the car on that occasion. Or the alarm clock would become her face and its hand… the longer hand… would become that finger of accusation.
And then for a few weeks there was nothing. I couldn’t believe it at first. I kept waiting for the finger to reappear. But it didn’t and I began to put my life back together. I had almost put it out of my mind when one morning I looked out of my kitchen window and there she was.
Kelsie I mean.
She was standing on the lawn.
And she was talking to me. I knew she was talking because I could see her lips moving even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
I screamed and dropped my cup of coffee onto the tile floor. It shattered and broke the barrier to sound and I could hear her. “Uncle Steve. I want you. I need you. Do it to me one more time,” she whispered huskily.
“Go away. Go away. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have gone that way,” I shouted as I backed away from the window.
“But I want you,” Kelsie whispered. “One more time… Please.”
Suddenly her face was pressed against the window. I screamed, staggered backwards, tripped over a chair and hit my head on the tile floor. And then there was nothing but blackness.
When I came too I scrambled to my feet. Trembling I looked around. The terrible apparition had gone. But there was a strange aroma… It was a sickly, sweet sort of chilling aroma which filled the air. Still shaking I rushed to the bathroom and vomited. I had to get out of the house. I ran towards the front door, picked up my car keys and threw open the front door. Leaving the door open I ran to the car only to slither to a stop after only a couple of strides.
She was there.
Kelsie was there.
Kelsie was in the car… looking out of the rear window. She was no longer the beautiful young girl she had once been. Shards of flesh hung from her cheeks and one eye hung from its socket. I shuddered with horror as her voice whispered to me, “Uncle Steve. I want you. Do it again. Please. Do it just one more time.”
I ran back into the house, slammed the door, locked it and secured the chains before slumping to the floor. How long I stayed there I don’t know. Eventually, stiff and terrified, I made my way into the lounge. It was empty. I switched on the television, more for comfort than entertainment, and slumped into a chair.
And there she was.
Kelsie was coming out of the television screen.
And that aroma was with her. Only this time it was stronger, much stronger, and I felt myself gagging.
She was exactly as I had kept her in the old shack. She was naked. But it wasn’t Kelsie any more. Flesh hung from her body, a body I had once found impossible to resist. Maggots performed a bizarre dance on her rotting flesh. The flesh had peeled away from her fingers exposing the bones and these she held out to me as she came ever closer whispering, always whispering. And the aroma became a clogging taste in my mouth.
I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t close my eyes as those outstretched, dead, bony, white claws reached out for me. “I have come back to you,” she whispered as her grotesque fingers touched my cheeks.
I blacked out or something. When I came too it was evening. I tried to rationalise what was happening. It must be some form of hallucination I decided. But when I switched on the light I found a trail of dirt on the carpet. I switched the television off and went upstairs hoping she wouldn’t be waiting for me.
Everything was quiet. That clogging aroma had gone… or was I used to it, I wondered. I gulped down a couple of Zopiclones I had found in the bathroom cabinet and crawled into bed. “I’m here,” a whisper said in my mind. “I always knew you wanted me and now I’m here.” I must have turned over in bed because I could feel an arm on my shoulder. “Kiss me,” the whisper said and I felt the touch of lips on mine.
The lips fastened on my mouth and I couldn’t breath. I woke up fighting for breath. Beside me lay that apparition. Her rotting tongue had been thrust into my mouth and I could taste and smell the decay. The lips that pressed against mine were like squashed slugs and foul-smelling liquid dribbled down my chin. I tried to scream but the sound was only in my head. I thrashed and twisted but I could not break the loathsome embrace. I was suffocating and I felt my life oozing away until there was nothing but blackness.
She is here with me now… the one previously known as Kelsie. We are in this long, white, wide, brightly illuminated room. We are all here. No. That is not correct. Many of us are here. We have been here many times. We always return. Only when we have succeeded in fulfilling our happiness target in our allotted time will we pass to another place. How long I shall be here this time I do not know. I only know I will have to go back over my life.
The energy that once was Kelsie has no hate for me. There is just a sadness that I have again failed. It will be the last time we shall see each other… at least in this long, white room.
You see Kelsie has passed to the other place while I am waiting for a decision to be made. I have applied for one more chance. If my request is granted I will return when a suitable mother donor has been found and I have learned sufficiently from my mistakes. As I sat huddled in thought the tannoy crackled into life. “Number 6739210758… That’s me. I have to report to Gate 606006A. My request must have been granted after all. But I feel some concern because it has taken so little time. But sometimes these things happened very quickly I’ve found so I made my way, as quickly as I could without running, to my departure station.
I opened Gate 606006A and stepped through
I was in a beautiful park. Voices came to me on a slight breeze. As I walked towards them I came upon a group of children playing together. This is wonderful, I thought.
Then the children were all around me.
As I looked down at them they all looked up at me.
They all had the face of my apparition.
They all reached out to me, touching me with arms of rotting flesh and white-bone fingers. They all whispered to me, “I want you. Do it to me one more time.”
“No,” I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed into eternity.