Mortuary Chamber
Short Story : Mortuary Chamber.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ( Horror Story)
By Prabir Rai Chaudhuri . All Copyright Reserved 2018
Studying medicine is not for everyone. The schedules
, the discipline, the human condition, among many other things, as my
grandmother used to say, you have to have the stomach to be a doctor and this
is something that reminds me in particular of a professor at the faculty. It
was in his subject that we did the most practical work in the morgue at the
university hospital.
Without a doubt, it was in those spaces where I witnessed some of the
most shocking moments when I was studying. I saw several classmates drop out or
change careers after these classes. Many times we only thought about whether it
would shock us to see blood, but the problem is the shock that seeing human
tissues and organs can cause , not to mention bodily fluids.
Once during a class, this teacher gave us an exercise in the morgue.
The space was suitable for us to enter in small groups. The idea was that in
order to overcome our disgust or shock, we had to perform a simple procedure on
one of the bodies that had been donated for research.
The difficulty was that while we were repeating the procedure we had to
take short breaks to eat right there. I remember perfectly that the menu was
rice and beans. It was a great challenge. I have never considered myself a
particularly disgusting person, but this exercise seemed like quite a challenge
to me.
I remember that there were five students performing the procedure while
the professor supervised us.
I took the first bite of my food and although it shocked me I took a
deep breath and continued, then at one point I noticed one of my classmates, I
noticed that he had turned pale, he took a spoonful to his mouth, tried to
swallow with difficulty and at that moment I saw on his face that he was about
to throw up what he had just swallowed, he jumped up, grabbed the trash can
that was at the entrance and vomited, he had to leave the room while the rest
of us continued with the procedure and at least in my group we all finished the
task, then I learned that there were other students who the same thing happened
to.
That was not the only time we did practice in the morgue, although I
must admit that it is very practical and necessary for medical students to be
able to access practice procedures there, I never really liked the place, it
seemed gloomy to me and sometimes I could perceive strange energies, sometimes
I felt sad, and once I even witnessed something inexplicable.
I was with the same teacher, doing a practice exercise with two female
and three male classmates, at one point there was a knock on the door, I don't
remember who it was but the teacher had to leave for a few minutes, he asked us
to continue with the exercise, it was already an advanced class, so we
continued when out of nowhere one of the doors of the mortuary refrigerators
opened.
We all looked at each other in silence and after a few seconds we
laughed, I went to close the door and made sure it was tight enough, but when I
had returned to my place, the door opened again, then I didn't find it so funny
anymore, one of my classmates went to close it again while making a joke that I
hadn't closed it tightly enough, we continued with what we were doing when
suddenly the door opened again.
Burial Chamber
Horror story - Burial chamber
We remained silent for a moment, then a colleague went to close it
again, this time we were all quiet and not joking, but I had not finished
securing the door when it suddenly opened.
At that moment I thought someone was trying to play a joke on us, but everyone
was serious. One of my colleagues said that it would be better if we left the
door like that and finished quickly. No more than a few minutes had passed when
the door started to move again. This time it closed and then opened suddenly.
No one dared to say anything or come closer. I could feel fear starting to take
hold of us.
So at that moment the professor came in and immediately noticed that
something was not right, trying to cover it up we told him that one of the
refrigerator doors seemed to be broken, then he approached the door that had
been left open, for a moment I thought he was going to talk to us about not
having superstitions if we wanted to dedicate ourselves to medicine, but then I
noticed that something changed in his expression.
As he looked at the container, I don't know exactly what he saw, but he
told us that we were going to have to finish practice for today, because they
had called him to tell him that they had to do some maintenance in the room.
We had just left the morgue when one of my colleagues told me that she
couldn't find her cell phone. We were friends so she asked me to accompany her
to look for it in the morgue, because after what had happened she didn't want
to go back there alone, so we had to go back.
The teacher was still at the entrance. We told him that she had left
her phone inside. We noticed that he was a little upset but he let us in and
asked us not to take long since the maintenance staff was about to arrive. We
went in and started looking. We didn't see him anywhere. Then I noticed that
the refrigerator door was still open.
I went over to see the inside of the container, the cell phone was
there, I hadn't said anything when she asked me from the other side of the room
if I was sure, I didn't understand her question because I hadn't even spoken to
her, she told me that she could swear that she heard me tell her that the phone
was inside the container that we had seen open by itself, at that moment I
hadn't told her that I had found it, I had just thought about it, this seemed
very strange to me but finally I told her yes, that her cell phone was there.
She came closer, none of us were able to put our hands in to take it
out, so I worked up my courage and put my hand in and stretched out to reach
it, as soon as I grabbed it I felt something squeeze my arm, it started to pull
me hard, my friend noticed and grabbed my other arm, for a few moments I
panicked, I could feel frozen fingers grabbing me from inside the morgue
refrigerator.
We tried not to make any noise because despite the scare we didn't want
to look bad in front of the teacher who was probably still outside.
I managed to break free, as my friend was pulling me we fell to the
ground, I quickly looked at my arm there were no marks, then before getting up
she let out a little scream and I saw as if something had dragged her no more
than a meter along the ground, she quickly got up, we looked everywhere but
there was no one in the morgue besides us, at that moment the professor
entered, the maintenance staff had already arrived.
We left that place as quickly as we could while trying to hide the
impact of what had just happened.
As soon as we got outside, my friend asked me if I had seen anything, I
told her no, but that I had clearly felt someone grab my arm, then she told me
that she had also felt like a pair of icy hands had grabbed her legs and
dragged her when we fell to the ground, but neither of us had seen anything.
That night I could hardly sleep. I closed my eyes and imagined that
skeletal hand holding my arm. When I managed to fall asleep, I had a nightmare
in which I was in the morgue in front of the work table. I was sewing a corpse
when suddenly the body shook violently, raised one of its hands and grabbed my
arm.
At that moment I felt as if I was being dragged towards the edge of an
abyss and when I began to fall I woke up startled, I was sweating, it was
almost four in the morning, I looked at my arm and realized that I had a mark,
as if someone had grabbed me very tightly.
It was the same arm that hours before I had reached into the morgue
container to take my friend's cell phone. I couldn't go back to sleep, I
decided to get up and try to distract myself. Anyway, that day I had class
starting at seven in the morning.
When I got to the university, my friend approached me. I noticed that I
had a lot of dark circles under my eyes, just like I hadn't been able to sleep
well. She asked me if anything else had happened to me the night before. Since
I didn't want to scare her, I didn't tell her about the nightmare or the marks,
but then she told me that she had to show me something.
On her right ankle she had some marks very similar to the ones I had on
my arm. She told me that she had dreamed that she was in the morgue and
suddenly someone had grabbed her by the ankle, then she felt as if she had been
thrown into an abyss and at that moment she woke up and noticed the marks.
I asked her if she knew what time she had woken up from that dream and
she told me that she thought it was four in the morning. I tried to reassure
her, telling her that what had happened to us the day before could have been a
sign to us. It was at that moment that she asked me to show her my arm and when
she realized that I also had the marks I could see the fear in her eyes. I
asked her to try to forget the incident. I thought that with time we might even
find it an interesting anecdote to tell after we graduated.
We tried to continue with our lives, but the nightmares continued, I
always dreamed that I was in the morgue and then someone or something pushed me
into an abyss, I woke up scared to death and with marks on my legs or arms,
although I didn't talk to my friend for a couple of weeks, one day during the
early morning after waking up from one of these dreams I took my cell phone and
saw that she was online, I decided to write to her thinking that she couldn't
sleep either.
I confessed to her that I continued to have nightmares and from what she told me I could see that the same thing happened to her, but with the difference that when she woke up scared she tried to pray and only then did she manage to fall asleep again. I tried to follow her example and do the same, I even bought an amulet that I put next to my bed and over time the nightmares became less and less recurrent until they stopped completely.
Copyright © 2018 Prabir Rai Chaudhuri
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