The Hidden Room

From: Mushmouth (thelickofmyspoon@hotmail.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sun May 20 03:04:55 2007

This takes place once again in the apartment with the Blood Room about a week after the incident with the tall dark figure and the nauseating bout of Death belches. It was late saturday afternoon and I was washing the dishes. My four cats were running about the apartment. They were speeding from one end of the apartment straight through to the den, to the end of the master bedroom and then back to the door of the Blood Room. They were always running really fast, in unison and when I tried to catch them they would dodge me and keep on going. This continued for about two hours. After that time they were all sitting at the front door, scratching it and meowing frantically.

Shoving the cats aside, I scoped out the hallway, it was deserted, I made sure the outside doors were closed and then let the cats into the hallway for a while. Instead of exploring like they usually do they all slowly walked to end of the hall, sat down and stared up at the ceiling. They just sat there growling up at nothing.

My building manager came down because he could hear the noise. He asked me if anything out of the usual had happened since he had asked the landlord if there were any strange happenings in the building over the past years that we were unaware of (the manager was present at the end of the last few unexplained events I had experienced there). He mentioned that a few years ago, when he had a cat, that it would often come down to where my cats were sitting and stare at the ceiling. He theorized previously that someone had either died there or that their ghost was lingering there. I told him that I didn't know he had a cat. He told me it went missing just like all the cats in the building had at some point, he thought that it probably got outside and fell victim to the traffic, he couldn't imagine anyone stealing an old cat.

Being a little put off by his story I decided to bring my cats back inside and put them in the master bedroom, carefully shutting the door behind me. My brother came home an hour later from work and I told him the story. We didn't think anything of it and decided to go to the bar and get plastered in the old Calgarian saturday night tradition.

The next morning we were pretty hungover. My brother started off his day by putting food out for the cats but they didn't come out (usually they hear the sound of meow mix hitting the bowl and run like their lives depend on it). This was the first time this ever happened. We both started calling for the cats but got no answers. Then we looked around under the beds, tables, in the closets, inside the electric piano and cubby holes for them but they were nowhere. We checked the windows and the doors but there was no sight of them. We started to panic and then chilled out and figured they might just show up when they got hungry.

About three hours past slowly and I took a bath, about twenty minutes into it I heard one of the cats cry (It was Franklin, loveable cat #3). I instantly jumped out of the bath and into the lounge, my brother was standing up and asked me (while I was stark naked), "Did you hear that? That was Franklin, where is he?" We started wandering around the apartment calling out his name but didn't hear anything. We looked around outside but figured it definitely came from somewhere inside the apartment. There was a knock at the door, it was one of our goofball neighbours from upstairs asking for cigarettes. We told him what happened and he decided to join the search.

After about another hour of searching our neighbour asked if we had looked in the Blood Room. We said we didn't go in there anymore and always left it shut but if he wanted to look around it was fine with us. After another hour or so we all sat down for a cigarette and talked about what the building manager said the day before and being certain the sound we heard was coming from within the apartment. Just then we heard the cat cry again, it was coming from the direction of the Blood Room.

We all ran into the Blood Room and began tearing the panels from the ceiling and the carpet from the floor, there was nothing. Our neighbour was kicking the walls, we would have stopped him but seeing as our cats were missing and the building was being torn down in three or so months we didn't mind so much. He kicked a panel out in the wall adjoining the closet, it was a huge surprise to me since I'd always assumed that wall was also the bathroom wall, it seemed I was mistaken.

None of us could say a word, I quickly went into the kitchen and took the flashlight from the drawer. My neighbour, being young, dumb, and adventurous immediately volunteered to look behind the wall; we all agreed. He said there lots of pipes and what looked like a brick wall behind them. He figured someone could get over to it but they'ld have to be small enough to fit under the pipes. My neighbour and I couldn't fit through the space so my younger brother opted to go instead. There was another knock at the door, it was the building manager having heard the sound of us gutting the room. We invited him in and explained what had happened and what we were doing. Strangely, he didn't try and stop us but instead wanted to see what was there.

My brother crunched down beneath the pipes and into the space behind it next to the brick wall, he described it as a brick wall but without and the concrete or anything holding it together, just a stack of bricks. He began taking out bricks and putting them to one side. Then he said it, "They're here, they're all here....Something's wrong with them." He reached down and picked one up. He said, "I think he's dead...um bro...you gotta see this, I'm sliding him underneath the pipes, O.K.?" He slid the first cat underneath, it was Franklin. Franklin was frozen solid, I don't mean cold, I mean rigor mortis solid. His eyes were black, jet black. His jaw was wide open, dropped and stiff but you could hear this faintest hiss of breath. As long as I've lived I've never seen a cat with that expression on its face. My brother passed the other three cats under the pipes, they all felt the same and in the identical pose and then my brother scurried out himself. The cats all were totally unresponsive, they were barely alive and with a sinister expression on their faces.

My brother was crying, I tried to console him by saying the cats were going to be alright now. He said, "You don't know, you don't know what I saw." I asked him what else he saw and he turned to the building manager and said, "There was more, there were a whole bunch of cats in there, they were all dead. And there was that smell, that smell like you were belching the just last week."

We covered the panel of the wall up and brought the cats upstairs to the manager's apartment. The cats turned back to normal within a few minutes. We called someone we knew to take the cats away, a friend of their previous owner. We told our friend we didn't want the cats anymore and couldn't care for them. We did go back to the hidden room later, but that's another story.