Alice: A Christmas Ghost Story by Shani Struthers

Author:Shani Struthers [Struthers, Shani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The dark room with no one there – no one. A place of horror, or rather a place where horror had begun, but, for Alice, that started to change. It was a place she returned to again and again, if only in her mind, because as dreadful as it was, it was better than the place she was in – a succession of places. And each one worse than the last. More brutal.

No kindness at all in some of them. And yet there had been in that first one, even if what their kindness had resulted in, a tree decorated for Christmas, had only served to drum home the cruelty of her situation, the unfairness of it. But it had still been a kindness, and she’d never found out who was responsible for it, not in all the time she’d been there – couldn’t, her mind too addled from the tablets they made her swallow, holding her jaw shut as soon as they were on her tongue and pinching at her nostrils until she had to swallow. Medication that left her lifeless almost, a passenger trapped inside a body, unable to call out, beg for help, for understanding. This is a mistake! You know it is. I shouldn’t be here. And such, such confusion as to why she was! She tried so hard to remember what was before. Because there was a before, a before that was…wonderful, and a before that wasn’t wonderful, a whole mix of memories, a muddle, those that populated them wispy shadows. She must continue to try, though, because if she could remember, and remember clearly, then she could explain. Succinctly. Without hysteria. Her eyes remaining dry. That’s what she must strive for. To appear sane. Because only if she was sane would they listen, would they stop the tablets. Surely?

She was upright but had no idea how. She’d been lying down previously on a long, thin stretch of bed, the mattress hard and lumpy, making her bones ache. But now she was upright, on her feet and shuffling forwards. Going somewhere.

“Hey! Hey, don’t wander! Get back in line. Take your lunch. Eat it.”

Were they calling to her? The voice stern. Eat your lunch. Eat it all. Don’t waste it. We’ll have no waste. There’s punishment for waste. Punishment for everything. But most of all for being alive, for breathing, for being nothing more than a burden. Surely better not to eat, then? Why press her? Better that she starve and die.

No!

She mustn’t give up! She mustn’t because…there was someone else. Someone whom she had to help, rather than the other way around. That they’d taken away too, but where? Not to the same places she’d been. She hadn’t seen them again. Someone who was…

She doubled over, the pain in her stomach as sharp as a knife, causing her to retch.

“Danes? Danes! Stop that! Get out of line. Step away.”

Get in line. Get out of line. What did these people want? Nothing she did was right or could appease them.

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