by Ben Stevens
Refusing to consider the dreadful fates of all the previous occupants of this room he closed his eyes, willing that he awake tomorrow morning pure in mind to see the winter sun coming cheerfully in through the curtain-less window.
Mills opened his eyes and everything was still absolutely black: had he turned off his torch? He could not remember having done so. Surely, he thought, there should be a little moonlight coming through the window and so infiltrating the blanketing darkness?
And the silence – dead, dead silence. No; it wasn’t dead; he heard something… A whispering – in the room or just in his mind?
Goose-pimples broke out on his skin, and he felt for what he’d placed beside him. The bible: yes, he could feel the bible. Touching the steel and wood of the two rifles failed to provide him with any reassurance, and he wondered if (as he suspected) loading one with silver sixpenny pieces to ward off evil spirits was just an old wife’s tail. And how, in this absolute darkness, could he tell which was which should he need to? And just where had he put his damned torch? He couldn’t remember.
It was becoming almost unbearably hot beneath the sheets; sticky, almost. His body must be dripping with sweat. Putting a hand under the covers he grimaced – he was pouring. But it was too wet and too sticky, and pulling his hand back out he sniffed it and smelt the unmistakable tang of blood.
Mills bit his lip to stop himself from crying out. It was his imagination, he told himself, just his imagination: there was no blood. But there was – he was now practically swimming in it. The bed must be saturated. And the whispering; that was growing louder, in his mind or in this room he knew not. He was suddenly able to make out what was being repeated over and over in German-accented English: Why you, why you, why you, why you…
‘Why me what?’ he demanded aloud. The sound of his own voice comforted him, dispelling the growing fear that he was fast becoming insane.
Three figures suddenly appeared at the foot of the bed, and with more effort than he’d ever displayed in his life Mills managed to choke the wild yell in his throat, refusing to voice his terror for he was certain that this would have given it fatal permanence.
They were men in various stages of decomposition, all dressed in German pilots’ uniform. One lacked his eyes, and it was he who raised a skeletal finger to point at Mills, saying in bad English: ‘I had vife, children. You grieve zem, shooting me out of sky. I vas but twenty-two.’
The second man, who had half of his green and swollen head encased in a field-dressing, spat in markedly better English, ‘They called you the ‘Ace’, didn’t they? Yes: you were an ace, alright – an ace at murdering young men in their prime, your arrogance never making you question your foul actions. You see three of us, but there are many more.’
And suddenly there was: a room full of horrifically injured and decomposing men. One had no face, just a mass of burned flesh, and from this horrific specimen came the growl, ‘I took sixty long seconds to die, the flames full in my face. Did you think of this, you, as you did your victory roll to show-off to your friends, laughing and saying to yourself, ‘Another Hun bites the dust.’?’
His eyes wide with terror, Mills vividly recalled that particular moment: the Tripehound plunging earthwards in flames, himself saying just that, his roll of celebration, only the cockpit harness keeping him inside his Camel. He understood that the pilot with the burnt face was Donitz, who’d given his name to a type of lightening-quick turn that had cost so many British airmen their lives.
Forcing his tongue to detach itself from the roof of his mouth, Mills carefully replied, ‘It might just as well have been me as it was you. I never extracted pleasure in taking a life, only in the... heat of the moment, one tends to divorce sentiment from one’s actions, and celebrate that which would normally be repellent.’
‘But not all your murders were during wartime, were they?’ said Donitz, and Mills’ assembled victims vanished back into the absolute dark and he bit his lower lip to stop himself from screaming at who he saw now.
The boy’s face was pasty white but the lips were blue, the eyes wide and fixed. It was the face of someone who had drowned.
‘You left me,’ the boy sighed, in a voice as cold as the North Sea. ‘You swam away as I went under for the third time.’
‘Tommy,’ Mills mumbled, his eyes becoming as wide as his dead brother’s, his face as white. ‘The current pulled me away; I had no choice. But for the boat reaching me I would have died myself; we searched – God did we search! – for you, but you’d gone forever.’
Forcing the terror away for a moment, he said firmly, ‘It wasn’t my fault. I was twelve years old and hardly a strong swimmer. What could I have done?’
‘Someone always takes your place in death, don’t they, Freddy?’ said his brother, and Mills bit his bottom lip and his mouth filled with blood as Tommy extended a chalk-white hand which shone in the darkness towards his face.
‘But not anymore. Let me show you – let me show you just what it feels like to drown…’
‘No… No…’
The touch was like ice on his cheek. Mills was unable to be rid of it no matter how he twisted and turned, unable to breathe and with a colossal pressure building up inside his lungs and his head. The bed remained wet and was now freezing cold.
Mills felt the covers close over him and he was sinking, sinking, his eyes all but popping from their sockets and his lips drawing back from his teeth in a death grimace.
Then, with the last bit of air remaining in his tortured lungs, he cried out in desperation, ‘You’re not real!’
Suddenly he could breath, as the covers flopped back and released his head. He lay gasping, his bed now completely dry. His brother had vanished and the whispering slowly diminished in volume until it was no longer audible.
Minutes or hours passed – Mills no longer had any concept of time in this imprisoning and absolute darkness. Sitting up he forced himself to consider what had just occurred, knowing that similar terrors – whatever was relevant to the individual – had either driven previous occupants incurably mad or completely destroyed them.
But he was still alive and (he was sure) absolutely sane. Courage, he thought, courage: he’d stared death and madness in the face for four long years during the war, with men continually coming apart at the seams both in body and in mind around him.
The others are just below me! he suddenly realised. I’m not alone! Considering that he’d braved quite enough for one night, he cried, ‘Edwards! Mannersworth! Chapman! Get up here now, damn you!’
But his voice sounded no more than a whisper in the infinite void of space; he was utterly alone and imprisoned in this room of complete darkness, as he waited as helpless as a baby for the next terror.
This came gradually; a scraping, crawling noise that gradually increased in volume, a shape blacker than black beginning to define itself at the foot of the bed.
And as Mills stared at it he was suddenly given the knowledge of the foulest acts committed by mankind in the past, present and future. He saw into a million corrupt minds and he uttered a hideous, inhuman whine, all reason fast deserting him...
‘Gun,’ he croaked, ‘gun.’
He was alive, alive and still sane: and he had to remain so. His hand stretched out towards the two weapons as he saw millions of people gassed and burnt, a race decimated; he sobbed as he saw a mountain of skulls stretching towards the sky; but his hand closed on a wooden butt and he pulled that particular rifle towards him, something deep inside his tortured mind praying that this was the weapon loaded with silver sixpenny pieces.
Mere lead would have no benefit against this enemy, and there would be no second chance: there were only seconds left.
His trembling index finger found the trigger, and pointing the weapon in the general direction of the black shape he fired. The blast momentarily lit up the area above his bed, and as the sixpenny pieces passed through the shapeless figure it retracted into itself and disappeared.
The horrifically vivid visions inside Mills’ mind immediately became hazy and dim. His head collapsed on the pillow and his breath came in shallow gasps as he gratefully slid into unconsciousness.
Placing a jar of smelling salts beneath Mills’ nose, Edwards said, ‘This ought to do the trick.’
His long face was grim as the grey light of a winter’s dawn began to creep through the wide bedroom window.
The former pilot regained consciousness with a start; momentarily he looked at his three friends stood around the bed without a flicker of recognition. Then licking his cracked lips, he whispered, ‘It’s quite alright – I’m not… I’m not mad, you know.’
‘My dear fellow...’ said Mannersworth. ‘What the devil happened?’
There were things… Mills couldn’t quite remember… His brother?
But his brother was long since dead. He shook his head against vague nightmares and slowly sat up…
He didn’t want to remember.
Edwards pointed to one of the rifles that lay nearer to Mills on the bed than the other.
‘Exactly when did you fire that rifle, hey?’ asked Edwards. ‘We never heard a thing. And just why was it loaded with silver sixpences? They’re imbedded in the wall opposite.’
Try as he might Mills could not recall firing the weapon, or the significance of it having been loaded with coins. ‘I don’t know… But you surely must have heard the report.’
‘Not a damn thing,’ Edwards reiterated, ‘even though none of us got a wink of sleep all night. We decided to come up here when it began getting light.’
‘I feel,’ began Chapman carefully – ‘I feel that we should leave this place immediately.’
Looking at Mills’ ashen and slightly bloody face (it was obvious that he’d badly bitten his bottom lip during the night), Mannersworth said softly, ‘You did it, Freddy, you did it.’
Sudden pride markedly improved the former pilot’s pallid appearance. Stretching out his hand to get his shirt, he replied, ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? All the same, I’m not sure that it’s an experience I’d wish to repeat in a hurry.’
‘But what happened?’ questioned Mannersworth.
‘I feel certain,’ stated Mills brusquely, as he pulled his shirt over his head, ‘that were I to remember then I would go hopelessly mad and possibly die like those other poor types. Subsequently I have no strong desire to remember. All I know is that the fired rifle went some way towards saving me, even though I cannot remember actually pulling the trigger.’
‘And have you reached any conclusion concerning this foolhardy experiment of yours?’ asked Edwards, thoroughly relieved to see his friend’s fast recovery but disguising this relief by his curt question.
Mills nodded. ‘Yes: that this room is supernaturally fatal to both body and mind. The terrors it contains undoubtedly caused the madness or death of every previous occupant, as I am now certain that they were entirely compos mentis upon entering.
‘In any case, an exorcism conducted in the proper fashion by a priest would doubtless increase the agents’ chances of finally letting or even selling this place. Now, I wonder if one of you good chaps would oblige me in obtaining a taxicab, so to take me home to a much-needed bath?After that I rather feel a spot of breakfast would be in order, possibly at the club which, incidentally, I shall never again criticise for being tiresome.’
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