The Room

The Room

January 14, 1982
My doctor, Sarah, encouraged me to write a diary, so here it is. I’ve been here for 8 months after finding a lump over a year ago. Its amazing that something so small could be so harmful and devastating. A lot of drugs, 3 operations and a divorce later I lie here a year on from that day I found the small mound on my breast, my only companion the drip hooked up to my veins and the monotonous beeps of my heart monitor, the only things that bring any sort of life to the bare walls of my room, but I have got hope, Sarah did say something about me moving me into a different room soon.

I was right, tomorrow I’ll be moving out into a different room, Sarah told me as she brought in my aluminium packed meal, I can’t really say that it is the most nutritious of things, I often doubt whether the meat in there is actually meat as it tastes very similar to what I assume flavoured rubber does.
I like Sarah; she’s one of the few people here who actually treats me like a human being. Maybe the other nurses feel that as well as flushing out the cancer the chemo takes away the soul ,that’s how they treat me as if I have no soul, although I must admit, I wouldn’t be shocked I found it to be true, the way I feel at the moment. My head is always heavy, but with nothingness. Everything that was there has been replaced with a dull weight which won’t budge no matter the force exerted on it, and I’m always tired no matter how long I have slept, or what time of day it is.
I think I herd one of the nurses talking about some new drugs that I may be put on. Maybe that will happen when I move, perhaps they will provide me with that energy no caffeine marathon can.

January, 15, 1982
I moved into my room earlier today, Sarah did make a quick apology beforehand and I can see why.
The room is fairly average in size, there’s a lived in feeling, but not a homey one, this one struck me when I entered, cold, uninviting. For such a plain room it feels so full. I can see glimpses of children’s wallpaper through the thin paint on the walls. Sarah told me this used to be the hospital nursery. The walls are maybe the worst thing about the room. It looks as though someone had gone to great lengths to cover the previous pattern, but the room had rebelled, and in turn covered the white in a new pattern, one of damp and grey dirt The previous occupants have managed to break through as well, I can see the occasional cartoon clown, his head squeezed through any of the cracks in the paint, of which there are no shortage.

Its evening now, I just went over to the windows to shut them, and noticed that bars are at the window from this rooms days as a nursery still, giving this room an even more hostile feeling, so now I am in a prison, great. But anyway on shutting the window, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye a figure peering out at me from the wall, but when I turned to examine it, there was nothing, although I felt a stir within the room, within the walls.



January 16, 1982
I had a dream last night, it was in this room. A girl, well I am assuming it was a girl, was in this room, her long dank hair covered her face, and she was thin, as though starved so it was hard to tell her gender. I watched her as she crept about the room, she didn’t seem to notice me though, all her attention was on the walls, tracing the paint with her fingers, following the pattern left by the damp, the maze of mouldy stains.

Looking at them now, the stains, it is almost hard to tell where they are, I was sure that they were over by the radiator, the light from the barred windows casts a guarding veil over them. But I did find them, over and around the cracked, broken radiator, I traced them with my fingers, like the girl from my dream had done, following the paths of dust, encrusted like barnacles upon the walls. For a moment I could’ve swore I saw something move within the walls, moving behind the stains, like the way the moon weaves in and out of the clouds, but when I looked all I saw was the faint smiling clowns leering back at me.

January 19, 1982
I’ve been having that dream every night since I first did. By the light of the moon the girl climbs out from the crack behind the radiator and creeps around the room, looking at the walls.
Her hair is far thinner than before, I see how, clumps of it fall out when she sneaks around the room.
I can make out her face now, now I can, I wish she had hair again. In many ways her face is like the walls, for that is where she comes from. Her skin pallid, face gaunt but covered with dirt and grime of centuries. Although it isn’t her face that is the worse, it’s the expression which is held upon it, a look of hatred mixed with confusion and anger, an expression so terrifying that upon seeing it I wake in a cold sweat to find the steady beeping from the monitor has risen to that of an up tempo pop song.

Walking around my room today I had another look around the radiator, what I found horrified me. Behind the radiator amongst the piles of dirt, was a pile of thick, black hair, hair I had only seen once before.
Does this mean that the girl is not a person of my dreams but a real, living being, who shares this room with me? Why does she come out of those walls only to examine them before going back into them?
She could be watching me now from one of those cracks in the walls, or through the eyes of those sneering clowns.

Sarah checked in on me this afternoon, she says I looked more tired than usual, she blames it on the morphine, I blame it on that girl. Although I did not mention her to Sarah, partly through fear that she would think of me like the other nurses here do, and treat me like a nutcase, and partly because, when I came close to telling I felt a strange feeling inside me, constricting me, one glance over at the radiator and all I see is the girl creeping around this room again.




20 January, 1982
She came out last night again, now she knows that I know about her she makes no effort to remain quite. She continued around the room in her normal fashion, tracing the walls with her fingers, but then I saw her face again, the hatred, her eyes full of things they should have not seen. As her gaze caught mine I felt her glare burning into me, and she suddenly looked away. However instead of just following the walls she started to scratch at them. Soon plaster and paint was falling down onto her ever balding head, she was scratching with such a passion, as though she wanted to rip through the walls and escape from whatever was haunting her so much.

I can see the powdered plaster now on the floor, and the scratch marks in the corner. Her lines were anything but smooth; they did not flow like the patterns which now lay, destroyed in a powdered mess on the brown carpet. The wall underneath was very different to those above. I can see writings, graffiti on the walls, but in a language that makes no sense to me, an alphabet that I can not decipher. Maybe they are the scrawls of the people who inhabited this room before it was a nursery, perhaps Sarah knows, I’ll ask her later.

A cleaner came in earlier whilst I was resting, spraying disinfectant on the surfaces, straightening the papers on the desk, but what shocked me was she did not move the white powder in the corner, she must have looked over there when she was spraying the windows, but she made no effort to clean it, in fact she showed no sign of being able to see it, walking out leaving it there.

I asked Sarah about the room’s history, she said it was built purposely as a nursery and had never been anything else before now. So what could the writings be? I have just checked, to make sure my eyes were not playing me, there are indeed writings there, below the clown level, some of the letters look familiar as if I knew them once, but they are a distant memory, I still can’t make out what they are saying.

I just had a sleep and woke up to find the powder is gone. Perhaps the girl came out and took them back with her. But the thing is it’s too early for her, she only ventures out when the sun has gone. Why does she come from the walls? I can see them, the walls, moving; whatever is beneath that layer is getting ready to come out. I can almost hear them rustling beneath the flaps of paint. The walls are moving, it’s almost like how I imagine a beehive would be; thousands of insects weaving, squeezing between one another in a confined space.
I can see her now, she is coming out the wall, her grey feet first, she does not seem to notice the time of day. It doesn’t seem to worry her. I can’t see her face as I sit here observing her, a great shadow seems to have masked her face. She is just creeping around the room looking at the walls. The way she moves is in such a strange way, she creeps not in a way to hide herself but just as a form of movement. Nobody would walk like that out of will, perhaps she knows no other way, or simply can not manage to walk in a normal fashion, but she still has strength to scratch. She is at it again, next to her scratches she made before, the noise it makes is not so loud but it stops me from sleeping, not so much the noise, but the way I know its happening, I can feel it.



24 January, 1982
She is here all the time now, only disappearing when Sarah checks up to bring me food.
She has only strands of hair left now so her face is exposed, her hollowed eye sockets, two big shadows engulfing her face; she must be pretty clever because she places them just so the sun’s rays will hide them, that’s why Sarah never notices they’re there. But I can see them, and when she is not in the room I can see her in the walls, she is there just creeping around, waiting. So now I creep around to take her place, when she is not here. It’s much easier than walking, something I’m finding increasingly hard to do

26 January, 1982
I was just creeping over by the walls scratching at them, when Sarah came in. Why did she scream? She must have fainted, but I left her there, she was in my way so I had to creep over her. When I finished scratching I had a look at her, not much I could do really so I put her under my bed along making sure she didn’t move my piles of black hair and the powdered plaster.