by DC Wilson
White Room – would have been infinitely preferable to this. I don't know how long I lay there, my mind whirling like a maelstrom while my body remained as immobile as stone. I was a prisoner in my own skin, as helpless and vulnerable as my own newborn baby. Eventually, slowly and deliberately, a shape loomed out of the darkness into my vision, creeping inexorably into my line of sight, a familiar shape: a shock of jet black hair framing a deathly white face, eyes wide and lurid mouth grinning…
The next thing I knew I woke up screaming, lashing out with my arms and legs and yelling at the top of my lungs. It took me a few moments to come back to myself and realize that I could move freely again, but by that time the damage had been done. My wife was standing by the side of the bed, clutching the bedclothes around her with a look of utter terror on her face. An ugly red welt was spreading across her cheek, and her eye was already swelling and closing up. She looked desperately scared and vulnerable. All I wanted to do to was hold her in my arms and protect her, but she flinched and backed away as I moved towards her.
I hadn't meant to do it, but I'd caught her hard across the side of the face with my hand as I'd woken up. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt her, but within an hour or so a black, brooding bruise had formed across her face and her eye was swollen shut. I felt more scared and guilty than ever.
We both took the day off work and talked about what had happened. She'd noticed that I’d been growing more distant over the last few months, but she'd put it down to the stress of the new baby. I wanted to tell her the truth, but how could I? Mentioning the White Room and the gangly man would just make me sound like a lunatic, and I couldn't repeat to her any of the things that were whispered to me in my dreams.
I persuaded her that I'd just had a bad reaction to the sleeping pills, that I'd been having a hard time at work recently and hadn't been getting enough rest. We spent the rest of the day just watching movies and playing with the kid – it was good to take a bit of a break and just do nothing for a change – but that night she insisted that I sleep in the spare room. I assured her I wasn't going to take the sleeping meds again, but she was obviously still wary of me, and, given the angry-looking bruise on her cheek, I couldn't say I blamed her.
That night as I lay there, alone in that empty, darkened room waiting for sleep to come, I thought through the events of the previous night. It must have been just a dream. Had to be. The alternative was just too outlandish to contemplate. I put it down to the sleeping pills. The gangly man had been on my mind, so when the sleep paralysis caused by the pills kicked in, it's natural that if I was going to hallucinate, it would be him that I'd see. There was nothing more to it than that.
At least that's what I told myself.
I don't know when I finally drifted off to sleep. Part of me was dreading it, but I was mentally and physically exhausted, so it was inevitable that I'd eventually succumb.
My eyes flicked open again what felt like only seconds later, but I knew I must have been asleep for some time. I was almost expecting to see the stark, empty walls of the White Room around me, but instead the spare room was filled with the bleary half-light of an early morning, in the hours before dawn, before the day has properly begun.
Once again I was completely wide awake, as if a switch had suddenly been flipped in my brain. But this time my eyes roamed round the room seemingly at random, taking in every detail. To my huge relief, there was no sign of the gangly man anywhere.
I tried to get up, but to my dismay I found that I couldn't. I willed myself to move, but nothing happened. The fear rose inside me again, the fear of being rooted to the spot for hours and hours once more.
Then my hand moved.
I felt it slide up from under the covers, then slowly push them back. Only it wasn't me that was moving it. I tried to stop it, tried with every fibre of my being to put my hand back down, or force it out to the side – anything but let it continue what it was doing against my will.
But there was nothing I could do to influence it. Despite the fact I had directed the full force of my will against it, my muscles were not even tense – the hand moved easily, smoothly, and completely out of my control.
I sat up. Again, I played no part in the movement. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. My legs swung over the side of the bed onto the floor. If I had been a prisoner in my body before, now I was simply a passenger. I stood up. I felt my mouth twist into a grin, a wide, demonic grin that felt like it would split my face in two. I felt my tongue touch my teeth, the roof of my mouth, my lips – I could hear myself whispering, whispering in a low, hushed monotone. I recognized the voice immediately.
Despite the blind panic within me, I could do nothing as I walked calmly and quietly out of the room and down the hall, towards where my wife and daughter lay innocently sleeping.
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FURTHER READING
The Complete Claverhouse Emails
