Within A Darkened Room

There I lay, silently in bed that freezing cold night in February 2001. I can recall it as if it were only yesterday. The thought of memorising back to the past events that had followed that dreadful night brings a terrible strain to my mind’s eye. I can see it now, I am all alone in the house. Nineteen years of age I am, at the end of my teenage years. But I can see I am crying, tears soaking on my pillow beside me. Why you ask? Because moments earlier my mother had been murdered. Why? Why! Who would do such a thing to such a sweet and delightful woman of her stature and grace? She brought a smile all over the place wherever she went. Always smiling too. I can always think back to the good old days of my younger self and my mother, (mam as she liked to be called.) I can always think back to those warm sunny days in Leeds, enjoying a lovely tasty picnic with my old mum and having such a wonderful time. Oh, and she was never messy my old mum, not at all. Always neat and tidy in everything she did. If you ever went into the house in the early days you wouldn't find a single thing out of place. No. Everything was all neat and tidy. But what about the woman herself? Well, she was immaculate; always clean and tidy. In the most beautiful dresses you could have ever seen if I may add too. Oh, what a wonder my mum was. She was ever so nice to me growing up, washing me and changing me as an infant and then throughout my years growing up as a young adult guiding me step by step through education and finding me a job. Oh, I love my mum. It was such a shame I had to kill her.

That's right. I killed her you didn't misunderstand me at all. Yeh, I am they. I murdered my mum, killed her, committed the grave act of matricide, say what you will. I don't care. Call me all the names under the sun your poor mind can come up with. Oh, boo HOO! It's not entirely my fault. She made me. Yes she was lovely to me growing up and helped me through awful things, terrible things. Even got me through my first break-up which was dreadful. But even so, the job had to be done. Later on in her life she had become so stubborn and cringing that I could hardy bare to look at her any more. In her whole life she has been married twice

The first when she was nineteen years of age. Pregnancy was the reason for that marriage number one. That was my fault. She was married for five years. From the very beginning the two of them had been going out for only two and a half years, then one night the thing splits and there she is covered all over in the stuff dreading the possibilities. It wasn't long until I came crawling out of there. It all fell apart after all that. As soon as the news hit, both parents had decided that we must wed and make it work as a family with us and the new-born. Harry, dad hated marriage. 'He turned into a real fucking basterd he did,' mam always would say here and then. She said to me once that when she was at home looking after me, he would nip off to the pub after work, or so he says and have a couple of drinks with some of the lads there. He wouldn't return until past midnight and then my mam would always be suspicious and argue with him why he was so late. He always shout back and go upstairs to bed. After a while questions would always be asked to dad if he was committing adultery, 'fucking fucked faced fairies,' mam used to always say. They always argued. It was very rare to hear them say nice things about one another anymore. Apparently through an argument my dad had said, 'why the fuck did I carry on with you? Why in hell did we have to fuck that night, eh? I should have just asked for a fucking blowjob! Ya’ can't get pregnant through oral!' As soon as that was over, papers of divorce came in and it was all over. The grandparents had helped pay it off. Neither parties had wanted their children to have a child never mind marriage. They were pleased about the divorce. The only trouble was that who would get me? That was the biggest thing. Well, it was mam of course. Dad had decided he couldn't give a rat's arse what happened to me. He couldn't give a flying fuck about his little lad. He later would regret saying those words when trying to get in contact with me as a teenager and I remember letting him know that he was the biggest arsehole that ever walked on Earth. I never heard from him. He decided to kill himself after all of that and was found a few weeks later in a grotty flat in Stratford. He had slit both his wrists whilst taking a bath. Marriage number one, tragedy.

Number two. This was the marriage where it sees my own mam marriage for the second and final time in her life. This was to a man who went by the name of Bill Miller, a nice chap from East London. Now, I know he wasn't my dad or anything like that but I really took to him. He made my mother very happy and I began to like him more and more. She met him in the Town library one day. She was looking for a particular book and he happened to be there. The two started talking and all kicked off great from there and stayed that way. But for only a year. Bill was a scaffolder, great monkey maker, but the job had its consequences. One day he was on top of a roof one day working when all of a sudden, there was a huge wind and bits and pieces of dirt from below had been gathered in the wind and blew straight at Bill's face. He lost his focus and plummeted straight down to his death.

Mam had lost a great friend and companion that day. I had lost a potential suitable father figure too, it was dreadful. After that mam rarely showed a smile. She became agitated and lonely and suffered a great deal of depression; drank heavily. She then begin to have terrifying, horrific nightmares at night too. Some were so graphic and sickening, the others not so much. I remember once that she had one where a woman would call to her outside of her window. A tall thin look of a woman with a gaunt face, dark eyes and black tongue, tapping on the window at night. She wanted to come in. Mam would always say no and then this sickening figure of a thing would then go into such un-human states and start to crawl all over the window screaming my mother's name, "EMMA! EMMA! EMMA! EMMMA!"

Mam would then wake up into such a frenzy, her eyes wide open in such alarm, like that of a poor animal ready to be pounced at. It took several hours to try and calm her down and then, eventually she would succumb to me relaxing her, grab hold of my hand for safety and drift back off to sleep. She would then have some sweet and pleasant dreams, memories of the nice this that happened in the past.

Then one night I heard her scream from her bedroom. It awoke me in such an alarm. Such an angry and ferocious scream, you would have thought she were being murdered.

I ran in as fast as I could to her and when I got into the room she began to violently attack me, bite, scratch punch me, thinking I were someone else. Something else. When finally she knew it was me, she kissed and cuddled me and asked for forgiveness and that she was afraid, oh so afraid.

'Help..me,' her stuttery voice trembled. 'Please, Dale you've got to help me, please?'

'But, what is it man? What's wrong?'

I wasn't ready for what she was going to say next. Even god himself couldn't have possibly prepared me for it.

'The little girl in the room is after me. She wants to eat my tongue!'

All of a sudden she began to panic and I had to ring for help because she had suddenly had a frightening panic attack and needed to be taken in for hospital treatment. After a short while in hospital, and when she was ready and able, mam told me the whole story. Told me about her dreams.

'There is a dark house,' she says slowly. 'It is an old house and to get to it you must cross some kind of marsh. It stinks, the smell of rot and sludge surrounds the whole entire area.'

I am intrigued. 'What's in the house,' I say curiously.

She told me the thing right then and there. I was stunned out of utter belief and wasn't entirely sure where the idea of this came from. My mam never talked like that, the imagination was not hers. But it was and I myself felt my own demons inside coming after me.

She had entered the large house and was face to face with a rather large staircase. It creaked loudly as you approached to go up. There is now a long corridor to walk down, the terror is stored right inside you as you fear something may jump out of the shadows and grab you. Then, she tells me that there is a door at the very end of the corridor as she steps that much closer and closer. And, as she is nearing this door, she begins to feel the whole space around her begin to drop in temperature and start to go below freezing.

Then, all of a sudden there is a laughter of a young girl coming from the icing temperature that is behind the door.

"I'm coming for you Emma. I want your soul to eat, I want your tongue to chew, and I want you Emma, I WANT YOU! I WANT YOU!"

She suddenly stops in a panic and then explains clearly not. This thing is something else. Something evil within the darkened room of the old house through the marsh.

After that a few months went by and there was no sign of bad nightmares or little girls mentioned through any of her recent conversation. Nothing of the sort came up which I was happy about, but something was not quite right. Mam had changed somehow and began to drag her feet along with her as she thought. What's happening to her, I thought to myself one long afternoon day. Then, the trouble started. She became so violent and deranged that it became too horrific to look at. One night I awoke at night petrified with my mother's face pressed hardly against mine screaming violently again. Not only was it just that but she was also not wearing any clothes. She was completely nude from head to toe. I saw too that she had been clawing at her very flesh too, clawing out clumps of her own breast out.

'Want a taste,' she said with a wickedly and began to eat, eat and EAT!

She spat at me, threw things, I had no idea what to do. That's when I needed to do what was best. I had to kill her. My own mother. But that was just it, she was not my mother, not anymore. But it was something. Something had taken over her shell of flesh and made it their own to inhabit.

It was right then and there when she again launched herself again at me. This time, I led her towards my windowsill, which was quite large and wide to get out of. That's when out of it came flying my mother. Out of the window I forced her out of the house. I vomited to what I saw and had done. But in that case it had to be done. I then went out and took the body, out of sight. We lived near a field so no one could have seen anything at all. Not it was the time. I had to decapitate her and to then burn the piles of flesh that were left over. The smell of flesh burning made me vomit violently many times throughout that tiresome night. Then it was over. My hard labour was over and my mother's soul is now free.

It was that girl in her nightmares behind the darkened room that had done it. The eyes were still open when I removed the head and they were black. The shell was empty, it had no soul. Then again what had I done? I had done this terrible, terrible thing to my own mother. What will ever become of…of me? Is it not that it is me, I'm the mad one, not her? Am I the one insane and locked behind that door, only now to break free and cause havoc? Who knows? All I do know is this. We all have our dark sides, each side taking its turn in stages through life. It is only a matter of time until it wants all the glory and needs to come out and play. Nothing can be kept behind doors forever. Can it?