Blood

BLOOD

Hannah moved into her new flat on the Friday. By the time the weekend was over, she was ready to move out again and never set foot in the place as long as she lived.

It was a pretty little flat. Neat, compact. It had everything she needed. Kitchenette; she rarely cooked at home, a microwave meal or a takeaway her mainstay. 

She had very little unpacking to do. Just a suitcase and a few boxes. She’d decided to leave all the boxes in the cupboard in the hall until she felt more like unpacking them. 

She emptied her suitcase onto the bed and began putting her clothes into the wardrobe, glancing at herself in the door mirror and pulling at the bags under her eyes as she did so.

There were even little racks for her shoes, something she’d always thought to buy for herself whenever she moved out of her mum’s place.

After opening the cupboard where the boxes were stacked, taking one look, sighing, and closing it again, she made herself a cup of coffee and sat on the kitchen chair in the small, recessed window. She’d done enough unpacking already.

The wind had got up outside. She watched the blackbirds and pigeons trying to land on swaying branches just outside her window and having to manoeuvrer themselves this way and that. It made her think of the many times she’d tried to land in a place of her own. The decisions she’d made and the near misses she’d had.

Being inside, watching the birds gave her a warm cosy feeling. It felt right somehow. She’d been wanting a place of her own for a long time and now, here she was.

There was a disturbance across the road that caught her eye.

A youth, aged about sixteen, was clearly in distress as he covered his eyes and sank to the pavement. A woman was standing about six feet away from him. The woman then walked off and stood on the corner of the street. The lad climbed into the house opposite, which Hannah supposed was empty, through a small window. Squatters and drug addicts she thought.

She recalls the look on her mother’s face when she said she’d found a flat to live in. It wasn’t an easy decision to make now that her mother was getting older. She was getting older herself. Time was passing her by at an alarming rate. She had to make the decision to do what she wanted to do and not what her mother wanted her to do.

Hannah was determined to keep herself occupied and not dwell on anything unsavoury. She wanted to enjoy her newfound freedom.

She took a book from the box marked bedroom, sat by the window, and began reading. 

She could sit and read without having her mother asking, “shall we have another cup of tea? Let’s go for a walk in the park.” She is sure she must have drunk a thousand cups of tea and walked just as many miles. Now she was free to do as she pleased, when she pleased, apart from visiting and phoning her mother, of course. No need to completely lose contact.

The light outside was growing dim. Hannah looked at her watch. Time had flown by for a change and not dragged like it usually did.

Friday is fish and chip day, she said to herself. Checked her handbag for her purse and her key, left the flat, and made her way to the chip shop on the corner.

The house opposite appeared quiet, no sign of the young lad. Only the lingering, pungent smell of cannabis. She was not going to let that put her off living a free life for a change. 

After she had eaten, Hannah left all the windows in the flat open to get rid of the smell of fish and chips. The smell of cannabis drifted in. She took the empty wrappers out to the bin, noticed a dim light shining from the house opposite and thought of the young lad and the mother.

Hannah opened her laptop and clicked on Netflix and watched a film but kept falling asleep and missed the ending.

She found she could not stay awake any longer and decided to go to bed despite the early hour. She was not looking forward to unpacking the boxes in the morning. Where was she going to put everything?

Once in bed, she fell asleep much more easily than when she was back home. Back there she would hear her mother coughing in the bathroom and wonder if she needed any help. Here she could be as noisy or as quiet as she liked.

Peace at last.

A ping from her mobile phone woke her. She had forgotten to place it on silent. It was a post on Facebook. A new group she had joined. There had been a murder in a street near her flat. It did not say who had been murdered or how, but it said the police were still searching for someone seen on surveillance cameras in the area. 

A cold sweat enveloped her. Suddenly she felt vulnerable. She reached out and turned on her bedside lamp. Then she got up and went around the flat, checking all the doors and windows and making sure the curtains were fully closed. She peeped out at the house opposite. A group of youths were leaning against the wall. It looked like they were buying drugs. She closed the drapes. The only sounds were a kind of drone of an engine somewhere and, in the distance, a car alarm. The rest of the building was silent. In some ways she was glad of that, but in other ways it made her feel rather alone.

She began pacing up and down, pulling her dressing gown tightly around her. The message on the Facebook page had unsettled her. Something she could have done without. Why hadn’t she switched off her phone or not read the message at all? But then she would have seen it the following morning. But in daylight things might have seemed different. The darkness outside brought it home to her how exposed she was. 

She warmed a cup of milk in the microwave and then climbed back into bed and began a fretful sleep full of weird dreams.

Something woke her up. Her mobile phone said 3 am. She snuggled back into the covers, then turned over and opened her eyes.

There was a woman. 

Floating. 

Floating about three feet off the carpet in the middle of the room. 

Hannah gasped and ducked beneath the covers. 

Then she peered out again. 

The woman was still there.

Hannah closed her eyes, hoping the woman would disappear.

She didn’t.

She was still there.

Floating.

Hannah held her breath. Was she dreaming?

Suddenly, the room became ice cold, and she began to shiver. 

The floating woman did not move. 

Hannah peered around the room, trying to think of what to do. Even when she closed her eyes and opened them again, the woman was still there.

Had her mother suddenly died and come to visit her while she slept?

Could it be the ghost of the person who had been murdered? She did not know if it was a man or a woman who had been murdered.

Hannah closed her eyes and then opened them again. She couldn’t understand why the vision was still there. Why hadn’t it disappeared if it wasn’t real?

The woman was lying on her back as if on a table. But the table was not there. She was just floating.

The woman had her head slightly elevated as if it was resting on a small pillow, but again there was no pillow. The woman was dressed completely in white - like a thin veil of chiffon. 

Was this a corpse?

Hannah had never seen a corpse and didn’t know what they wore other than their own clothes.

Hannah put her hands to her head, bewildered; she didn’t know what to do. How could she sleep with this thing in front of her? Was the woman going to wake up and begin walking around the room? Or would the ghostly figure just start moving about on its own? Who was she, and why was she here? 

Hannah sat on the side of her bed, staring at the apparition, shaking and wondering what to do and when would it go away, and why was it here.

She felt paranoid.

Suddenly, there was a rushing sound and a cold wind swept through the room. Then deep red splats like blood began dripping off the ceiling onto the woman and the carpet and down the walls. 

Hannah stood up and hung onto her headboard. Where could she run to? The blood was dripping down the doorway, blocking her exit.

Suddenly, red blobs came flying at her.

She ducked.

But the blood did not hit her or the wall behind her; instead, it hit what appeared to be a glass wall in front of her. The blood dripped down the glass. Was this glass in front of her, or was she in a glass box? 

The woman, who was still floating in front of her, looked as if she could have been an exhibit in a museum or some house of horrors exhibition. Was she, herself, in a museum in her sleep state? Was she an exhibit looking out through a glass case? Was she dead? She touched herself all over. She felt solid enough. 

Her bed felt solid enough. 

The woman was not real, or was she?

The blood was not real, or was it?

If it was real, then it would have hit her and not splatted up some imaginary glass. But was she imagining the glass, or was the glass real? 

Was she in a glass box?

Hannah wanted to scream - to cry out for help, but she didn’t know anyone else in the building. In fact, the building was so quiet she wondered if there was anyone else living here at all. And the drug addicts across the road - how could she ask them for help? They probably saw ghosts every day of the week; in fact, maybe they had caused this in the first place. 

Had she breathed in too much cannabis smoke? Had someone slipped some cannabis or some kind of drug into her tea? Had she touched some kind of hallucinatory drug when she went to the dustbin?

She was getting more paranoid by the minute.

The blood continued to splatter and drip over the bedroom walls and down the panel of glass in front of her. Each splat made her jump more. There was no means of escape as she had to go past the woman and the glass and the blood to get out of the bedroom.

Suddenly all the thick blood gathered in the far corner of the room. It all came together in one huge shape, like a blob. The huge lump then slid across the floor beneath the woman on the non-existent table, and it began sliding beneath the door as if it was trying to go away or escape.

Then, just as suddenly, the woman disappeared. 

Hannah collapsed onto her bed and covered her face. She was sweating profusely, shaking, unable to cry.

Was she going to phone her mother and tell her - no way.

She rushed over to the light, switched it on, and once again ran around the flat and checked all the doors and windows and pulled the blinds and curtains. She looked behind every door and in every crevice to see if there was any blood left behind.

She went in the cupboard full of boxes and pulled out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the carpet over and over again until there was a knocking on the ceiling of her bedroom and someone called out, “do you know what fucking time it is?” She switched the vacuum off and looked at her watch. It said 3 am. She looked at her mobile phone. It said the same.

How could the time be the same when she had gone through so much?

She made herself a cup of tea and tried to think about what to do next.

Should she call the landlord? Should she tell her mother that she thought the flat she had chosen, all by herself, was haunted?

How could it be haunted when it was such a pretty flat with bright colours everywhere?

It must have had something to do with the murder in the next street.

Hannah scrolled through Facebook and all the groups she belonged to but could not find a single thing about who had been murdered or whether the assailant had finally been caught.

Had she made it all up? Was she dreaming? 

Slowly Hannah became calmer. Every so often she would go around the flat checking all the doors and windows and looking out the back and the front to see what was going on and who was about.

Every tiny noise made her jump. Once more she opened the cupboard door and looked at all the boxes that needed unpacking, but she just could not bring herself to do it at this time. 

The day dragged by. She lived on cups of coffee and biscuits. Then at six o’clock she put a meal in the microwave and picked at it while she watched a film she did not understand and was in a foreign language on Netflix. 

Then it was time for bed.

Reluctantly, she cleaned her teeth and then got into bed but could not relax. She wished she’d phoned her mother and told her about the apparition, but would she have understood?

She must have nodded off because once again she awoke at exactly 3 am.

She laid still for a while, wondering what might have woken her up this time and praying that the ghostly woman did not appear once more.

Then it happened.

The blood.

It was blood, but at the same time it was not blood.

Like thick, crimson blood, but it had the consistency of paint.

She saw it first as a small speck at the edge of the doorway. 

Then it began to slither along the bottom of the door, like a living thing - a living thing made only of blood. Like a bloody snake.

It slithered along the bottom of the bedroom door and gradually increased in size. It was as if it was watching her. It slithered forward a bit and then retreated as if it had noticed it was being watched. Then it expanded and began creeping across the floor toward Hannah. She recoiled. Moved down her bed, her back against the wall. 

How could she stop it?

What could she do?

She recited The Lord’s Prayer aloud in a quivering voice. The only religious thing she could think of, and that from school days as well. If this was something evil, then maybe something godly might send it on its way.

The blob retreated and sunk back beneath the door into the hallway which led to her living room and kitchenette. A small slither of it is still showing beneath the door.

But where had it gone?

Would it be back?

Once again, the red stuff was in the doorway - her only means of escape.

She went over to the window and unlatched it. Cold air came inside. She looked out. There was no one about. No smell of cannabis. She looked around for a means of escape. No drainpipe, no ladder, no fire escape - nothing.

She was stuck, and the red blob was sitting beneath her bedroom door.

When she looked again, the blob had gone.

She knelt down and looked under the door.

Nothing.

Cautiously, she opened the door.

Nothing.

Bravely, she went into the kitchenette and the living room. No sign of blood anywhere. The atmosphere in the room and indeed in the whole flat had suddenly changed. It felt lighter somehow.

Outside the kitchen window the sun was shining. 

She felt so much better now and decided to start with unpacking the boxes.

She opened the cupboard in the hall and caught her finger on a sharp bit of the handle. 

“Ouch.” She put her finger to her mouth and tasted the metallic taste of blood. Her finger began bleeding profusely, so she wrapped it up with a tissue from her trouser pocket.

There were drops of blood on the floor which she tried to wipe up with a second tissue, but they seemed stuck to the floor, more like red paint than blood.

She thought she’d try and clean it up tomorrow when she’d finished unpacking all the boxes.

She opened the first box. It was full of blood. She screamed and fell backward, knocking the box over. The blood spilled out and splashed all over her clothes and crept up towards her throat.

She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and reached out for her mobile phone, which had fallen to the floor.

The blood crept up her arm and onto her phone so that she could not see the screen.

She pulled at it and tried to wipe it off. It was like sticky glue. The more she pulled at it, the more it got stuck on her hands.

The smell was like that of rotting meat.

Finally, she gave one last tug and pulled enough away so that she could see the phone screen.

She found her mother’s number on her contacts list and pressed the button.

“Hello, darling.”

“Mum, I hate this flat. Can I come home”

“Of course, darling. I hope nothing untoward has happened there, it being Halloween and a full moon all at the same time.”