(HHWC) The Shimmer in the Hallway

Brita awoke to find herself nude, lying on a metal table and partly covered by an opaque plastic sheet. The air around her was cold, and contained the sharp odor of antiseptic cleaner. Along with that, Brita detected another smell: the sickening, unmistakable odor of semi-congealed blood. Brita didn’t like it one bit, because she knew it was coming from her.

Directly above was a lamp like one would expect to see in an operating room, but it wasn’t turned on. In fact the only light came from the hallway to her right. Where was she? In a hospital? If so, where were her parents? Lying there in the darkness, Brita listened but didn’t hear anyone speaking. If this was a hospital, she should try and summon a nurse. Or maybe not - maybe she should just lie there and wait, because if she was injured she might her herself even more. That’s right, she thought. You shouldn’t move someone if they’ve been injured, because that could make things worse. You should immobilize the patient and get help as fast as you...

All at once, it happened; the memories unfolded in her mind with stark clarity. Brita remembered the sensation of falling, of seeing the ground rush up at her before impact and then blackness. She remembered opening her eyes and not feeling anything, and then the screeching of tires and the blaring of horns and the image of the truck as it rushed toward her broken body...

Brita gasped, and her muscles tensed. She’d actually done it! She’d jumped from the overpass and onto the freeway, and all because THE VOICE had told her to.

And wasn’t she supposed to do that? Of course she was. She had to do whatever THE VOICE told her to do, because if she didn’t obey, bad things would happen.

But this is pretty bad too, she realized. Still, she felt no pain. It was all so strange. Brita wondered how seriously she’d been hurt. She wasn’t hooked up to an I.V. line, and there weren’t any machines around her that beeped and hummed like the ones in her grandfather’s bedroom just before he passed away. No, she was alone - alone in a dark room on a cold, metal table.

That couldn’t be a good sign.

Slowly, carefully, she brought herself to a sitting position, and as she did so she heard a gruesome, crunching noise inside her head. Touching her hand to it, she heard the sound again as pieces of her broken skull shifted around inside. Brita removed her hand to find it covered with dark blood. Shouldn’t the doctor see this? Where were her parents? Brita started to call out, and then she noticed the man standing to her left.

He wore a beige covering like the kind a surgeon would wear, and a surgical mask, but no gloves, and no hat. His hair was straight and black: a sharp contrast with the pallid color of his expressionless face. Brita pulled the plastic sheet against her body, covering herself, and asked “Where am I? Are you the doctor?”

The man said nothing.

“Is my Mom here?” she asked, again receiving no reply. Brita gazed about the room, and shivered. This place was cold. It didn’t seem like the place someone would go for for medical help. She turned to the man and said, “I want to call my Mom.”

“Your parents are not here.” he replied. “You will not see your family again.” The mask had been pulled down, revealing a set of thin, red lips.

Looking nervously about the room, Brita almost asked the man if she was in a hospital, but was afraid of what his reply might be, because if this wasn’t a hospital it had to be a morgue, and if she was in a morgue then that meant she was...

All of a sudden there was a change, a shift in perspective of sorts. Brita found herself standing up, and fully clothed. Before her, on the metal table, lay the silent body of a dead nineteen-year-old girl. The girl was her. Brita trembled at the sight, and reached out to touch her own face.

“Do not touch the body,” the man said. “Your soul is no longer part of it.”

Brita continued to reach forward, but then stopped. She sensed that it was somehow wrong, and looked up at the man. Strangely, his appearance had changed. Now his hair was completely gone, and his eyes were stone cold black. Black dead eyes above a dead mouth. Brita felt a heaviness in her chest, and her stomach felt uneasy as she began to comprehend the magnitude of the situation. “Is this heaven?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you God?”

“No,” the man said. “There is no God. There is only him.”

Tears began to well up in Brita’s eyes, and she covered her mouth to stifle a cry. This couldn’t be happening - not to her. She was supposed to finish college and go to New York and get married and a bunch of other things. It wasn’t right - wasn’t fair. Then again, she’d done this to herself, hadn’t she? Because she’d listened to THE VOICE. And where was THE VOICE now? It wasn’t saying anything. Had she been abandoned? She looked around the morgue for a way out, an escape. There was only the hallway, but Brita didn’t want to go in there. She sensed something coming from that direction: something very bad.

“I want to go back,” she pleaded. “Please, I want to go home.”

“That is impossible.”

“Please...,” Brita cried, and then she noticed something from the corner of her eye - something coming from the other end of the hallway. It was a shimmer, but not of light. This was more the opposite - a shimmer of darkness. Her skin tingled, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She felt sick to her stomach. Something bad was coming. “Wha...what is that?” she asked.

“He is coming. He has been waiting for you.”

“No!” she cried. “This isn’t right! I’m supposed to go to heaven. I’m supposed to go to heaven because I was a good girl! A good person!”

“No,” the man said. “You weren’t.”

Brita’s heart sank in despair, because she knew it was true. She hadn’t been a good girl, at least not always. She thought of all the times she’d lied to her Mom and the times she’d whined about going to church, and all the times she’d used filthy words, but that wasn’t all. Of course, she’d done far, far worse things - terrible things, like the time she told all the girls in her high school P.E. class that Sarah Daschle was a dirty slut because of a dumb rumor that Jason McCorvick liked her. Brita was thinking about all the times she’d been selfish and mean. Then she heard a voice:

“DAMN YOU! STOP TEASING HER!”

It wasn’t THE VOICE, but another voice, one that Brita clearly recognized. Again, she heard the voice of her roommate Heather say, “BRITA, WAKE UP! IT’S NOT REAL!”

Wiping tears from her eyes, she faced the man again. With skin white as chalk, his expressionless face was like a porcelain mask, eyes like black stones. Brita yelled at him, “Stop! This isn’t real and I’m not dead!”

“That is of no consequence,” he replied. “He will soon be here.”

“So what if I wasn’t good all the time! Maybe I did bad things, but I don’t deserve this!”

“Who are you to decide that?”

Trembling, Brita gazed at the hallway. It was closer now...she could feel the evil coming from it. “What’s going to happen?” she asked.

“When you see him, your soul will be forever damned.”

“Then I won’t look!” she cried.

“Yes, you will,” the man said without a hint of sympathy. His appearance had changed once again; his skin appeared more taught, his jawline and cheekbones more apparent - as if he’d been a victim of famine, or a prisoner in a concentration camp. The surrounding air buzzed with a kind of electricity, and Brita’s pulse quickened as terror gripped her racing heart.

“Please, please no,” she begged. “Don’t let it come any closer. I’ll do anything...anything at all. I just want to see my Mom and Dad again. Please...”

The man gazed toward the hallway, and then turned to look at Brita again. “There might be a way.”

Brita nodded frantically, “Yes! Oh God please help me!”

“There is a price. You will have to become like me: a conduit. If you do this, you will see your family again.”

Brita held her clenched fists to her mouth, and glanced toward the hallway. She hesitated, but only for a moment. “What do I have to do?”

“You must speak to THE VOICE,” he said. “You must bring them here, and make them look upon him.”

“What if they won’t listen?”

“Tell them it’s what they’ve been waiting for, that it’s the most important thing they will ever see.”

Trembling, with tears streaming from her eyes, Brita nodded.

“Repeat after me...” he said. Brita pronounced the strange words as best she could. As his voice steadily rose, the morgue around her seemed to darken even more, and then disappeared. Soon there was nothing before her but the man, a man who’s face had become something else - the black eyes had dissolved into empty sockets, and the skin had peeled away to reveal a bare, white skull. Brita continued to say the words in rythmic obedience, repeating every word as the skull’s voice rose higher and higher until it became a terrifying shriek.

(continued below)

KNNO Transcript 103110-24D

Narrator: We interrupt this broadcast for a KNNO news special report.

KNNO anchor Todd Sturgis Good evening, and thank you for joining us. We are continuing are live breaking news coverage of the events taking place in the house on Fallen Oak drive, in the town of Rio Soledad.

KNNO co-anchor Ashely Kobayashi: And let’s now go to KNNO reporter Brett Copeland who is standing by on location. Brett, it sounds like emergency vehicles are still arriving. What’s the latest?

(sound of police and ambulance sirens in the background)

Brett Copeland: Thanks, Ashley, and you’re right, local police, fire, and sheriff’s dept. officials are arriving on the scene as we speak. Now for the update: first let’s recap the events of tonight as we know so far. As we reported in the last hour, four college students from UC Rio Soledad have died in the house directly behind me. From what we understand, this was a Halloween party, and something went terribly wrong. The latest news is that a fifth student, a teenage girl, died within the last ten minutes and - this just makes it all the more dramatic-she passed away minutes after her parents arrived on the scene.

(Sound of a police helicopter overhead)

Ashley Kobayashi: That’s so very sad.

Brett Copeland: Yes, it really is. Standing next to me, from what I’ve been told, is a student who attended the party tonight. She’s agreed to go on camera for an interview. May we have your name?

Heather : Heather .

Brett Copeland: Heather, did you witness the events at the party tonight?

Heather : Yeah, the girl who just died – Brita Sherman – She was my roommate, and my best friend.

Brett Copeland: I’m sorry to hear that. Heather, one big issue that’s been on everyone’s mind tonight is drugs. Were there any illegal substances taken tonight?

Heather : What? No! Where did you hear that?

Brett Copeland: There’ve been a lot rumors going around. What about binge drinking? Did that occur?

Heather : No! There was some drinking, but it wasn’t that. It was a game.

Brett Copeland: A game?

Heather : One of the guys at the party, I think his name was Zack, he thought it would be cool if we hypnotized someone…you know, like put them into a trance?

Brett Copeland: All right, what happened next?

Heather : So Brita volunteered and he made her sit in a chair. He said “Listen to my voice,” and counted backward from twenty to zero. I didn’t know was going to have her die, though!

Brett Copeland: Wait, what do you mean by that?

Heather (crying): Zack told her to picture herself on a freeway overpass, and then to jump off. He wanted her to believe she was going to hell.

Brett Copleand: Oh Lord…

Heather : Yeah, and I tried to stop them, but no one would listen. When she got to the other side, she met someone. It was weird because she started speaking in another language, and everyone started repeating the same thing like they were hypnotized too…

Brett Copeland: Like reverse-hypnosis?

Heather : Right! Anyway, I got freaked out and went to call her parents on my cell phone because they live here in town, but a lot of the people at the party just stayed in the room and watched…

Brett Copeland: And some of those people died tonight?

Heather : Yeah, and…wait, where are we going?

Ashely Kobayashi: Brett, what’s going on now? Those emergency workers are wearing respirators.

Brett Copeland: These folks are with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. They’re taking Heather away to an ambulance…maybe they have some more questions for her. Just a precaution, I hope. Ashley, I just got word that this entire neighborhood under quarantine. We may be here for quite some time.

Ashley Kobayashi: Any official word on the cause of the deaths? Are there more?


Brett Copeland: No, like I said before, not many details at this time, but I’ve just been told by our on-site producer that we have some exclusive video! One of the students at the party was recording the event on a digital camcorder, and we’ve received a copy…

Todd Sturgis: Brett, is it graphic? I’d like to give our viewers some warning.

Brett Copeland: I don’t think it is. I haven’t seen it yet, but our producer says it’s what our viewers have been waiting for. He says it’s the most important thing they’ll ever see.

Ashley Kobayashi: Okay then!

Brett Copeland: I’ll try and get more details as the story develops. For now, let’s roll that video.



The above transcript has been provided free of charge by the National Archives. Additional copies are available upon request. Please note: Audio and video are not available, as all known copies have been confiscated by the U.S. Government. Possession and/or distribution of such material is a felony under Section 1.3A of the United States Salvation Act of 2011, and is punishable by death.

Excellent stuff.

I see I've missed a few other more recent stories than the last bunch I read.
I love this kind of stuff.
Thanks for posting, and now I'm off to catch up.

reply to post by Illegal Alien


Thanks. Though not the best story I've ever done, I did manage to get it in by the deadline. I'm glad you liked it.

Good job! I was intrigued and enjoyed it quite a bit. S&F

Glad to see your entry Flatwoods, great job!

Your opening imagery was an awesome hook, I effortlessly visualized Brita...and gotta love that name too!

JR

reply to post by JR MacBeth


Thanks for your input, JR. This was just my own little attempt to come up with something scary for my favorite holiday. I hope it spooked a few people, or at least entertained them a bit.