The Keeping Room was incredible - soft and red like plush velvet, it pulsated in a steady rhythm. I looked at the ceiling, and heard the tv on above me. How could they not hear this? It was as loud as thunder. Then I realised that until I had walked in here I hadn’t heard it either. There was something strange about this place. The room in which I was standing seemed to speak with each pulse but the words were numerous and jumbled. I moved into the centre of the room and into the focus of wind coming through the two open doors. When the breeze first hit me I was held by the worst feelings I had ever felt. Fear, doubt, aching sadness as though I had just lost everything I ever loved. I no longer had knees but I fell to the floor anyway. I was stricken silent — unable to put words to what I was feeling. I felt as though I were ice; blue ice with no centre. Not even a centre of air or ice but a vacuum. Everything that was me was sucked out in that room.
I huddled on the floor, unable to move under the weight of horror in that room. If I had’ve been able to move I have little doubt that I would have tried to stop the pain in anyway possible. I didn’t know if I could die again but I would’ve tried if it would make the horror stop.
The next thing I knew I was in the back garden of my brother’s house. Wisp hovered over me as though I were about to explode.
‘Are you okay?’ Wisp asked as I felt myself flicker to life.
‘I am now. Where was I?’
‘Somewhere called the Keeping Room.’
‘That wasn’t any normal room.’
‘It didn’t seem normal. I don’t know what it was, though.’
‘Well, I’m not going back in there. That was—‘
We were interrupted by my brother’s friend, John A, who had stumbled drunk into the backyard. He looked through us as he lumbered toward the lemon tree, only just managing to lean one hand against the trunk before the flood came. Well John, you’re going to have a big headache tomorrow, aren’t you?
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