FILE 008: HELL
Motorway service stations can sometimes be described as Hell, can't they? Lost, wandering souls looking for their destination and wondering if they'll ever escape and break free. It's even worse late at night. And at least most of these people know where they're headed. I don't. I'm forever moving. From town to city and city to village. Anywhere they can't find me.
And right now this particular service station is Heaven for me. A chance for a coffee and a rest in the warmth.
And I've seen Hell. Sort of.
I'd borrowed the video from Jeff and then realised that my TV didn't have the capability to connect to it. Jeff told me I needed a SCART socket and continued to grumble about new, over-modernised technology. So I borrowed an old portable TV from him as well. He was curious as to what I was using it for and I told him it was for old family home videos. I had to laugh at that - my parents had died when I was young and all I had was my sister, Vicky. Life was tough and there were certainly no memories preserved on video tape.
After finally getting the equipment hooked up, I slotted the old cassette into the player with some trepidation. Part of me didn't believe this. How was I supposed I believe that a man had gone to Hell and filmed footage of it? But the other part of me - the one that needed answers - needed to view this. And I also needed to find my daughter.
Closing my eyes once, I pressed play.
Unfortunately I can't give you any screengrabs to what I saw, but I can describe it as best as possible. The whole video was about three and a half minutes long. It was hand-held, like the Blair Witch Project or something, and narrated by the guy that the letter named as Simon Roper.
The date showed 23/06/1993, but kept flicking between showing it, not showing it and then flicking to 00/00/0000. Not to mention the amount of static effecting the picture. The images kept scrolling off screen and the sound of the Ropers voice dropped out on more than one occasion.
Roper continued to narrate, introducing himself, informing me of the date and that he was about to enter what he called "The Interior". He sounded nervous, a little breathless maybe.
The picture began in complete darkness before opening up to a foggy landscape. To be fair there wasn't a lot to see. It was like looking at distant buildings on a foggy morning. There were pockets of red flashes and the occasional spark of blue light.
As Roper moved forward I was able to make out some of the shapes a little more clearly - pillars. But not made of stone. They looked more like trees. Dark, twisted bark snaking high up. Roper angled the camera upwards and they disappeared high up into the foggy upper reaches.
And there was a sound as well. As the camera moved through the mist I could hear his feet crunching on something. Something that cracked and broke under his weight. Like when you walk on loose gravel. And there was a strange, deep sound throughout the entire video. Like when you hold a shell to your ear to listen to the sea, except this sound was deeper. More like a rumble. A continuous, threatening rumble.
And the smell...
That's when I had realised that something was definitely off about this video. You don't get smells from watching a video. But it was right there. Stuck in my nostrils. I can still smell it now as I sit in this service station. Burning, but not like cooking on a barbeque or anything. Like...I can't describe it. The only thing I can compare it to is rotting meat. Cooked, rotting meat.
Roper continued his narration, describing the heat, the smell, the visuals in front of him. The video had flickered another time before he had spun around wildly. In the dizzying spin I - and Roper - caught a glimpse of something in the gloom. A flash of blue and silver and a terrifying, piercing scream. I'd stopped the video and wound it back in an attempt to get a freeze-frame on the image. It was blurry, but it was the shape of a woman. A woman with silver hair and a blue dress.
It was then that the picture fizzed, popped and then evaporated into nothing. The video player was on fire. Actually on fucking fire. I tried to eject the cassette but it was no good. The only thing coming out of that machine were flames. I disconnected the player, ran to the back door and hurled it out into the back garden...and spent the next few minutes apologising to Jeff about destroying his precious equipment.
I'd cursed myself for rewinding it. Now I'd never get to see the end.
It's taken a long time for me to sift through those images. I mean nothing about it pointed to it being real. It might have been fake, but the video bursting into flames when I froze the picture on that strange woman told me something else was going on there. When I went to bed that night I had nightmares. Nightmares that I couldn't remember the next day, but in all of those nightmares was the woman in the blue dress with silver hair.
It's gone midnight now. My coffee is cold and I'm hungry. I'm cold. I just want to go home. I just want my daughter back. The last fifteen months have been difficult. I wish I could say it ended there, but it didn't. No. Because not long after the incident with the tape, my daughter, Eleanor, came home.
Or at least something that bared a close approximation to her came home...
END REPORT
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