DO NOT OPEN (standard:horror, 3406 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: May 21 2008	Views/Reads: 3519/2338	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
What is so dangerous that it has to be walled up in the attic?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

downstairs into the garage and retrieve a hammer and chisel. He was 
soon back up inside the loft, chiselling away at the bricks. He found 
them to be quite tough, chipping away small fragments of cement upon 
each strike of the hammer, but eventually, he managed to remove them 
all, but couldn't see inside because the light did not filter within, 
so he found himself having to retrieve the torch, a task he found quite 
difficult as it was almost concealed under the weight of the furniture. 
Eventually, he grasped it, and was soon pointing it into the hole in 
the wall. 

Perhaps the last thing he would expect to see, was what Derek was
looking at. Who put that there? and why? he thought, as he stared at 
the compact disc cemented into the adjoining wall. The case was 
unremovable, but its Perspex front could be opened and the CD removed. 
On the CD itself, the words: ‘DO NOT OPEN' were written in black felt 
tip pen. He looked closer and discovered that it was a CD ROM. He 
opened the cover and removed it. It looked usable, and free from dust. 
In the small, spare room, Derek had a computer which he used as a form 
of escapism when he wanted to stay out of his wife's way. He would, as 
the phrase says: ‘surf the web'. That was all it was used for. He never 
bothered to buy any software for it, not seeing any need. The internet 
was sufficient enough for his requirements. Not that he had any 
requirements. It was a novelty at first. He had been seduced by TV and 
press adverts, proclaiming all its good points. When he had had it 
installed, he searched for virtually everything, playing with it like a 
child with a new toy, but eventually he settled into familiar sites 
that he always came back to. Sites about cars, and holiday 
destinations. All places he would like to visit, preferably without her 
downstairs. 

Eager to find out what was on the disc, it took him almost two minutes
to climb down through the hatch, one foot trying to find the top of the 
step ladder. Eventually, he climbed down, disc in hand, and went 
straight into the small room to turn on the machine. As it took its 
time coming on, Derek looked out of the window, at the eyesore across 
the road. Even when it was occupied it was an eyesore, but now it 
seemed even more so, as it was being allowed to be run down and 
neglected. Bramwell high security prison held no convicts. All its 
occupants had been dispersed to various other holdings around the 
country, its last prisoner leaving four years ago. Derek didn't know 
why it had closed. There had been conflicting views as to the exact 
reason, but the gist of it came down to money. There had seemed to be a 
distinct lack of it, or somebody wasn't putting it where it should be. 
It didn't matter why exactly it had closed. The fact remained that 
across the road there was an empty structure that once housed some of 
the country's most dangerous criminals. Now it was a shell, home to any 
rats that had the freedom to run along the corridors, and spiders that 
had spun their webs in the corners, waiting patiently for any flies. No 
longer did those corridors echo the voices of those whose liberty had 
been taken from them, the walls absorbing the hatred at being locked 
away, at not being able to roam the countryside, at not being able to 
take their children to the fun fair. Freedom for them was something to 
be dreamed about. The despair they must have felt at the thought of 
remaining like that for the rest of their sentence must have made the 
emotional impact intolerable. To spend five minutes alone must have 
been a reward, but not in solitary confinement, where too much time 
alone could cause further psychological damage. The prison system had 
probably got it all wrong, causing unknown anguish so that the 
prisoners suffered worse than that which had been intended by the court 
that put them there. Yet they were in there for a reason, to be shut 
away from the society that rejected them because they were a danger, a 
threat. It did not matter how much they suffered inside, because nobody 
cared. They chose the criminal way of life, so they must face the 
consequences should they be caught, and any further suffering caused by 
isolation or over-crowding was a bonus to the victims of the crimes. 
They were prisoners, simple as that, law-breakers, people who had opted 
out of normal society, having chosen instead to step over the threshold 
of what is accepted by the majority of the public. Once they were 
behind the prison walls, out of sight, nobody cared who they were, 
except friends and family. Society only cared that they were paying for 
their crimes. Once justice had been meted out to those to whom it is 
deserved, then people were happy. It wasn't Derek's idea to move here. 
He had had to be persuaded by his wife, but the answer was always going 
to be yes. She had wanted to be closer to her sister who was in an out 
of hospital like a person who worked there, complaining about this, 
complaining about that. They had been moving house anyway, and this 
house had seemed quite adequate, its price considerably lower than what 
they had expected, perhaps due to irrational fear of escaped prisoners. 


The computer came on, and Derek became hesitant in putting the disc
inside the machine. What if it contained a virus? It could wipe 
everything from the hard drive. He realised that there wasn't much 
saved in it anyway, and that curiosity would get the better of him. 
Despite his reservations, and indeed the warning on the disc, he knew 
he was going to put the disc in the machine, and he did. It took a few 
seconds for the autoplay feature to activate, and when it did, the 
screen went black, then white, and icons began to appear in the form of 
prison cell bars. Beneath each was a number. It stopped after ten icons 
appeared. Beneath them, the warning was repeated, but his time in 
flashing red: ‘DO NOT OPEN'. Derek knew he was going to open one of 
them. Again, his curiosity wouldn't let him obey the message. He chose 
an icon, and double-clicked on it. Suddenly there was surge of 
electricity that came through the mouse, and he found he could not let 
go. It was as though he was receiving an electric shock. 

His soul or essence, was being pulled into the computer, and he felt his
life draining away as though he was bleeding to death. It wasn't long 
before he had been taken into the computer. His lifeless body was 
slumped in the chair, hand still gripped tightly to the mouse. It began 
to surge again, power, or essence, flowing back into his form. He began 
to re-animate, and when the flow stopped, he let go of the mouse and 
jolted back. It took him a few seconds to re-orientate himself, and 
when he did, he stood up and looked around. It was not Derek's mind, 
but the mind of the person who had been trapped inside the disc on the 
icon selected by him. Within each image there was a different person, 
trapped on the disc, waiting for an opportunity such as this to possess 
a person's being and once again interact with the physical world. Karl 
Melville walked to the window and looked out at the prison across the 
road. It had been his home for so long, his home because he had 
murdered two teenagers for trying to break into his car.  For most of 
his life, he had been in and out of prison, as he used to be a member 
of a gang, or syndicate, that opened up bars and clubs, funded mostly 
by drug money. The teenagers were not to know they were breaking into a 
known gangster's car, but he had no sympathy. He had been carrying a 
handgun at the time, which held sixteen bullets, all of them pumped 
into the thieves. At that time, Karl had been sixty-two, and with his 
past reputation, and with the murders, witnessed by a few people, he 
knew that he was going down for a long time. He wasn't surprised to 
receive a sentence of 25 years, and he knew that he would probably die 
in jail. Along with the others who were trapped on the disc, he was one 
of those who died in prison, and were buried in its grounds. 

One of the prison workers, who helped to try and rehabilitate those who
could not fit in with society, occasionally found himself alone in the 
place where prisoners were buried, and when there was a new arrival, he 
would perform an ancient Indian ritual where the soul would be trapped 
in a certain place until it is set free. Being technological minded, he 
had matched both interests to store their souls onto disc. It was not 
for malevolent purposes that he had done it. He had thought that if he 
had access to their consciousness, he could continue his psychoanalysis 
of them, and try to alter their personality in order to make them 
compliant members of society again, before they turned to crime. How he 
would actually achieve this without a body for them to possess, he had 
no idea. He was more interested in experimenting with them. Once he was 
satisfied that they had altered their way of thinking, and were ready 
to enter back into civilisation, he would find a suitable body for him 
to use in order to attempt it. It was a test, or trial. One that was 
never fully accomplished, because the souls, trapped on the disc were 
highly resentful that they had been used in that way. They were angry, 
malevolent spirits. They were resentful mainly of the fact that he 
would not let them rest in peace. For most of their lives they had been 
locked away in prison, ending up dying there, and then locked away on a 
disc for what could well be eternity. The man had lived across the road 
from the prison, and devoted more time to his experiments when the 
place had closed. One of the prisoners, who was remorseful about his 
crime, basically stealing a huge amount of money meant for charities, 
had possessed the man's form when he, like Derek, had clutched the 
mouse, and knowing full well what the other prisoners were like, made 
it so the disc would be difficult to find. He sealed it away and simply 
left town, heading as far away from the house as possible. He had left 
a few months before Derek moved in, heading abroad, not even knowing 
himself where he was going, his legacy unknown to anybody, except 
perhaps to the ex-prisoner who now stood in the small room of Derek's 
house. 

Karl turned and looked at the screen. The virtual prison cell which he
had once occupied, now held Derek, so he wouldn't open that one. The 
others, he could release, give them the freedom they had been denied by 
society's law. He chose one at random and clicked on it. He didn't 
realise that there was only one body to possess, and that if he wanted 
the others, he would need other people to grip the mouse. His spirit, 
or soul was taken back into the disc, and the person that had been 
trapped on the cell that he had clicked, possessed Derek's form. He 
knew not to click on any of the icons, and stood up, examining his 
surroundings. He was another remorseful prisoner, ex-gang member who 
once terrorised an estate and basically ‘owned' it with his group of 
thugs. He was aware of the dangers of the disc. Other prisoners on the 
disc, who were not repentant, would, given the chance, go back to their 
criminal ways, and he couldn't allow that. 

Derek had been a heavy smoker, as next to the keyboard, there was a box
of cigarettes and a lighter. It was the lighter he was interested in. 
Soon, he was walking down the stairs, only to find Derek's wife coming 
out of the front room. “Did you put that table in the loft like I 
asked?” she said, assuming that he hadn't. He stood there for a few 
seconds, staring at her. “Well? Are you deaf as well as daft?”. He 
smiled inanely, then crossed to the front door and opened it. “You 
might want to leave the house for a few days,” he said, gesturing out. 
“What?” she asked, suddenly confused. “You might want to leave. Quite 
soon this place will be a shell. I decided to burn it down”. He pointed 
to the top of the stairs where black smoke billowed across the ceiling. 
“It's up to you, In the meantime, I've got unfinished business to 
settle”. He walked out of the house, his wife rooted to the spot in 
confusion at the altered behaviour of the supposed man she married, and 
the growing fire upstairs. When the smoke billowed down the stairs, she 
came to her senses and quickly left, mystified at these sudden changes 
in her circumstances. She looked frantically around for Derek, for an 
explanation, but he had gone, free from his virtual prison, and  in a 
way, free from the constraints his wife had imposed, suddenly finding 
the confidence to walk away. Above her, dark clouds gathered, a warning 
that soon they would unleash a torrent of rain. Perhaps they were 
waiting for the house to burn down before extinguishing it. She 
stopped, and was suddenly aware of the huge imposing building that once 
housed convicts that towered above her. It seemed as though the very 
place itself was watching her. She shivered, a chill brought on the 
growing air current. She hurried away, and like her husband, or indeed 
his shell, did not know where she was headed. Soon she would regain her 
senses and head for her sister's, but in the mean time, the house 
slowly but surely, was burnt to a crisp. 

When the fire had burned itself out, partly extinguished by the driving
rain, a fireman, walking through the charred remains, was puzzled as to 
why a compact disc had survived the inferno. He didn't tell his 
superiors, but pocketed the disc, promising himself he would play it on 
his PC when he got home that night. He was curious as to why it said: 
‘DO NOT OPEN'.


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