Halloween Story 2009 - the story

**Moderator** · October 26th, 2009

#20-nu nu chis

August, Friday 13th, 1954. (From the newspaper ‘The Sharp Pen’)

Prestigious nurse is murdered under mysterious circumstances at the Marysville Institution for the Criminally Insane.

Yesterday morning, Kristina Clapman´s body was found in the room 318 of the Marysville Institution for the Criminally Insane, lying in the bed “so quiet as if she were sleeping”, with a scalpel jutting out of her chest and several injures, apparently made with the same object, in different parts of her body. The patient that occupied that room, Michael Loore, 6 years old, has disappeared.
The nurse was 24 years old and had been working there for only four years. Her boyfriend, Ker, committed suicide, hanging himself, the same night he heard about his girlfriend’s death.
Miss Patty Duncan, head nurse of the institution, will answer some questions for us, to explain more details of what happened.
TSP: Miss Duncan, how could a kid have escaped from the institution?
PD: That is something I ask myself every night when I go to bed and the reason why I can’t sleep. I don’t know…. I really don’t. I mean, the doors are always locked, there is no window and even if he went through that door, which I assume he did, because it was unlocked yesterday morning, I don’t understand how he made his way to the entrance door without being noticed by anyone!
TSP: Besides Miss Clapman, did anyone else enter the room that day?
PD: No, she was the first person who always went to see him and give him his injections for the panic attacks
TSP: How serious was the patient’s condition?
PD: He claimed he saw his dead mother everywhere, and he lived in constant fear of that. His father left him in the hospital last month and never came to visit him again…
TSP: Do you think the kid was in the room when Miss Clapman went to see him?
PD: what? Of course he was… how could he…
TSP: I think you didn’t understand, Miss Duncan, what I meant is, that maybe someone let the kid out and stayed in the room waiting for Miss Clapman
PD: No, that’s impossible! You see, I am the only one who have the keys of that room, every nurse has to talk to me before they go there.
TSP: But someone could have made a copy of it, right?
PD: I guess so….
TSP: Miss Duncan, the alarm system of the hospital was off when the kid escaped during late hours of the night, and we know the kid couldn’t have entered the place from which the alarms were controlled, because Nurse Littlewoods was there all night. Do you understand what it means?
PD: I’d rather not to answer that question before I speak to my lawyer.
TSP: Thank you, Miss Duncan.

“What happened to this place? It looks like I had imagined it looked 50 years ago” Karen asked, after she had wakened up in a clean, white and illuminated room lying in a bed next to Angela, who was sitting on a stool and looking tired and sad.
“You have a very good imagination, then” she answered with a cynical smile on her face, and suddenly, Karen began to understand… or at least, to suspect the truth underneath all the mysteries.
They were in room 318.

**Moderator** · October 27th, 2009

#21-Girl87

Had this boy, she has seen in here drem really escaped. Karen begun to be afraid, how had she ended up here and what was happening here. Suddenly Karen remembered Kyle. She wondered if he was okay.

Karen said “I just want to get away from here.” Angela who had been sitting in her own thoughts, look at Karen, she didn't say anything and Karen started to feel that this women knew what really been happening in this room 318. Angela began to talk again “Miss Clapman died in this room. At first the police suspected that Michael could be behind Miss Clapmans death, but when they started to investigate closer, they weren't so sure anymore. How could a little 6-year-old do something like that? So had here been someone else, who could he be and how he get in!”

Angela kept a break. Karen started to think and she asked “Did they ever find the boy or did he just disappear. Angela shook slowly here head and said: No he was never found. To think that a 6-year-old could vanish like that in the thin air, it was impossible.

Karen asked Angela if there really hadn't been any other person in the hospital during Michael's disappearing and if anyone could have seen something. Angela shrugged and said “Maybe we will never know what really happened then.” But Karen knew that Angela hide something from here.

Angela continued “Michael had been in the hospital to a while. He got sometimes very strong panic attacks and during them he was dangerous for himself and others. The night when Miss Clapman died, Michael had got one of those attacks. No one knew if there had been someone else in the building, or if Michael and Miss Clapman were the only people in the hospital. I've heard this from a person I knew and he told me suspect that Michael was behind Miss Clapman's death, but I believe there was someone else who murdered Miss Clapman and let Michael escape.”

“What if his father had returned and it was him who did all this?” Karen asked. “I don't think so” Angela said. Karen didn't know what to say anymore. She was afraid and confused.

**Moderator** · October 28th, 2009

#22 redrum617

Karen looked up from her now sedentary position on an old, rust-inflicted, chair into the eyes of Angela. She could feel her eyes piercing her own, the glance sharp and painful. In that instant, she knew that Angela had every intent of harming her. Maybe not physical harm, but harm nonetheless. If she made another wrong move or said the wrong thing, she was out of chances; they both knew that.
The leather straps on the chair rubbed against Karen’s smooth skin, which had begun to turn from a light olive to more of a red.
Karen was thinking. She had been thinking ever since she got to this hell-hole. Though the overanalyzing had nothing to do with the bizarre string of events that she was caught up in, rather, she was always one to observe her surroundings. In all her years of habitual observations, she never thought that she’d be in a situation—to this caliber—where her life would rely on it.
Angela still held Karen in her maddening gaze, and Karen had no other choice but to look at her, into that face and those eyes. Eyes that expressed such strong emotion (or craziness?)
“Please…just tell me why I’m here. What you want.”
Angela laughed.
“You can’t be serious, can you?” she said in an almost frustrated tone. Her long hair, now matted and oily, flew down in front of her eyes.
“I don’t know what you are looking to gain from keeping me here, but I don’t have any information to off—”
Angela cut her off.
“Offer? Is that what you were going to say?” Angela’s face begun to take on a new look that brought her previous expression to a whole different level of craziness. The oddity that was before her gave the impression that her face was contorting, twisting an unnatural way. For all Karen knew, it was. Just maybe it was. Out of all the things that she’d come across today, that wouldn’t be a surprise.
“You really don’t get it do you? You do have something to offer, Karen” Angela cackled, “…not just to me, not just to the employees at this facility, but to everyone. Everyone has a right to know what you know—what you have in your head.”
Karen stared blankly at Angela, unsure of how to respond. Certainly she must have her mixed up with someone else; she didn’t have anything to share.
“Come on, you really can’t believe this was all a coincidence: the job, the hospital, you being down here…why do you think you got this job, Karen? Are you really that naïve?”
At Angela’s latest comment, Karen’s head began to spin. She didn’t know what to say or what to think anymore; this was just too much for her to handle.
Finally, after several moments of shared eye contact, Angela spoke. What she said next was something that would change Karen’s life forever.
“Karen,” Angela started, you’ve been here before; now it’s time to share what you know.”

**Moderator** · October 29th, 2009

#23-Lily Sawyer

Kyle stood his truck practically on its nose as he braked to a stop in front of the Marysville Institution. As he killed the engine, he felt fear roil up from his gut to settle around every nerve ending. Kyle wasn’t afraid of much, but as alien as fear was to him, he respected its insistence and responded to it accordingly the rare times it invaded his life. He hesitated at the front door, his heart knocking ominously close to his ribcage…and chose fight over flight. He strode through the Marysville front doors.

There, on the reception desk, was a computer turned around to face the lobby, with a screen that flashed and danced with the same line displayed down the length of the monitor:

Duncan 318 Duncan 318 Duncan 318 Duncan 318 Duncan 318

Puzzled, he scrutinized the monitor and pulled the keyboard over to him. The name “Duncan” pinged a distant bell in his memory banks, so surely the Marysville patient database might cough up something else. If anything, Kyle suspected 318 was a room number…because hadn’t there been some kind of scandal involving a mur-

Then the muffled scream. Karen’s scream. He’d know it anywhere; he’d heard it enough times as she’d discovered some vagrant insect in the apartment before she’d attacked it with a rolled-up magazine, but this time, there was a different quality to it. Surprised revulsion had been replaced by pure terror.

It had come from the direction of the door that indicated stairs, and he shouldered his way through it just as Karen screamed a second time, and he stopped in astonishment. She was below him, not on the third floor above him. He hopped over the railing and descended the steps two at a time, marking each floor’s number until he reached the subterranean third floor door. Once in the hallway, he half-ran, his heart in his throat, until his hunch paid off and the numbers 318 stood out from the veneer of the recessed door. He heard Karen from behind the door, her distress plainly audible in some form of plea, and willed himself to open it.

There, under the bright of examining room lighting, was Karen, strapped to a chair with institutional restraints that had seen its better days at least 40 years prior. Standing over her was a wiry woman in a nurse’s uniform, her features contorted into a hideous mix of determination, lunacy and glee. The nurse held a surgical instrument Kyle couldn’t readily identify. She appeared more than willing to use it.

Karen’s eyes grew large as she recognized Kyle and his unnoticed stealth behind Angela. He pressed a finger to his lips to cue her with silence, and then launched himself at Angela with a full-on tackle. An indignant shriek erupted from her as the instrument fell from her hand. She writhed under Kyle on the floor, struggling for the device and clawing at him. Kyle knocked it away from Angela’s reach; it came to a stop at Karen’s foot. As Angela’s protest continued, Kyle pulled back and punched her squarely on the jaw. Her howls ceased as her head bounced back on the floor.

Kyle’s hands shook as he undid the restraints on Karen’s wrists, but neither of them noticed the small group of people gathered outside the door to Room 318.

**Moderator** · October 30th, 2009

#24 - Bryan James

318--The End

All your eyes have ever seen,
All you’ve ever heard,
Is etched upon my memory,
Is spoken through my words.

All that I take with me,
Is all you’ve left behind,
We’re sharing one eternity,
Living in two minds.

Linked by an endless thread----------- impossible to break…

Our deeds have traveled far,
What we have been is what we are…

All that we learn This Time,
Is carried beyond this life…

~Dream Theater
Metropolis Pt. 2

_____________
The group outside Room 318 numbered seven, and their true names had long been lost.

Their collective name was “SALIGIA” and they were more potent than ever.

The Shadowen outside of Room 318 had a no-shape, and they smelled like ancient roses smashed into burnt, salted garlic. They crisped in a dry shuffle, swaying together like cornhusks abandoned in a Reaper’s Fall wind.

The door to 318 was now open. They had always been prevented from passing through such doors, but this world had sideslipped. The Rules had faltered when the Beam over the door started cracking.

Gurgling slurries of solid smoke, The Seven had survived on the pain of Room 318. They had come to maintain a source of their power and to deal with one that had always fought them.
____________

“Karen? Karen!” Kyle yelled as he slapped her arms and face lightly. “You ok?”

Her eyes goggled for a few seconds and then opened wide in remembrance. “I, I …I think so. What did you…why are you?…I’ve been better. She gave me a shot. Is this real?”

“Yes. Now is not the time for me to say ‘I told you so.’ Let’s get out of here right now. I’ll yell at you later, babe.” Kyle helped her up. They were about to start walking when the light dimmed and the temperature plummeted.

Then the voices started from inside the door.
____________

Their voices rasped like workmen chiseling paint from iron drainpipes.

“I want you, Hope,” said Lust.
“I’ll eat you, Hope,” said Gluttony.
“I’ll kill you, Hope,” said Wrath.
“I’m better, Hope,” said Pride.
“I’m not you, Hope,” said Envy.
“I’ll take after you, Hope,” said Greed.
“I’m with these guys, that’s what I do, Hope,” Sloth said with a hint of apology.

Karen and Kyle held each other tighter, but neither screamed as the charcoal miasma floated towards them.

SALIGIA boomed in one voice over seven octaves like a demonic pipe organ, “DO YOU NOT REMEMBER WHAT YOU ARE, GIRL? WHAT YOU MAY BECOME?”

“Ok, so now I told you so,” Kyle said as he stepped in front of Karen. “I still love you,” he added as his voice cracked.

“What? WHAT!? Tell me or leave us alone!” she thundered.

“YOU ARE WHAT WE EAT. WHAT WE UNDERMINE. ONE THAT WE HATE.”

“YOU ARE HOPE ETERNAL. WE FINALLY HAVE YOU ALONE. WITHOUT THE OTHER TWO WE CAN DEFEAT YOU.”

“What other two?” Karen asked, clinging to Kyle’s shoulders.

“FAITH AND LOVE ARE ABSENT FROM THIS PLACE. YOU ARE ALONE, HOPE.”

“I just told Karen I loved her. You can’t have her, and I fumking have FAITH in that!” Kyle shouted as he broke free of her grip and punched his way into the boiling cloud of slippery dark.

Almost as if in a blender, Kyle began to fragment as he churned in the swirling mass, but for every bit he lost he took more. For Karen, it seemed like hours, but it was only seconds before Kyle and The Seven were gone.

As the last motes of the cloud evaporated, Karen heard him say, “Love ya so,” and then she was alone. Again.
______________

WGAC News Bulletin, Dated 10/31/09:

After harsh allegations of patient abuse, the Marysville Institution outside of Derry has been shut down permanently. Anonymous sources have corroborated detailed reports of physical torture, sleep deprivation, sexual misconduct, and unsanitary conditions. More horrendous crimes may be discovered as the investigation continues. Furthermore, it has been said that extensive tunnels with strange inscriptions have been found beyond walled-off sections underneath the facility.

Angela Tak, Head Nurse of Marysville, was treated for minor lacerations and a jaw fracture before being released into the custody of Derry officials for further questioning. She has been implicated in the abuse scandal and is being held without bail.

Associate Nurse Karen Chartrand was the first to alert health organizations about the conditions at Marysville. It is reported that she was interviewed but has been unavailable for comment. No one has been able to locate her.

After this commercial break, please stay tuned for your local weather report. There seems to be quite a storm on the way.
Quite a storm, indeed.

_______________

All they leave behind them is shame and disgrace like the dirty foam left along the beach by the wild waves. They wander around looking as bright as stars, but ahead of them is the everlasting gloom and darkness that God has prepared for them.
---Jude, 1:13