The theater was located in the oldest part of the city, one building of many in a treasure trove of architectural history. Stepping inside was like walking through a time portal. The moldings and archways dated back to the early 1900's. Red plush carpeting and modern seats were the only reminder that we were still in the present day.
The usher led us to our seats and as we were sitting down a force stronger than anything I had ever encountered catapulted me back up the isle. I knew I shouldn't have come here tonight. Feelings of apprehension warned me before I even stepped inside. I should have gone with my instincts, but how do you explain my natural gift to a first date, in a world that doesn't accept the unusual. I could not just blurt out to him, "Oh I'm so sorry I can't go into this theater, because I am psychic and I have a bad feeling." Anyone passing by would have called the police, or worse my date might have, and I would have been committed.
As I hit the floor, everything around me changed. I was no longer in a theater. I was now in what appeared to be a hospital corridor filled with screaming people. I could feel all of their pain. I could hear all of their thoughts. I felt as if I too would go crazy from the madness suddenly thrust upon my mind.
I was the woman in the wheelchair, screaming for someone to help me to the restroom, but no sound could escape from my mouth, no muscle could move my staring eyes. The man sitting on the floor rocking back and forth crying for a little girl he would never again hold, and a woman he would never kiss again. The girl locked in a room slamming herself against the door in vain. My nails ripped out and bleeding from days of clawing at the walls trying to scratch my way out of my own mental hell. The boy laying in my own feces, muscles so tight and deformed I could not care for myself, dependant upon a nurse who detested her job and my existence. A woman strapped to a table, attached to wires, as the evil maniacal doctor "treated" me with his electric-shock therapy.
I could feel everything, it was all happening to me. I vomited from the smell and the horror inflicted upon my body. I had just wanted to see a show. Why did I not listen to my earlier feelings? Now I was trapped in this mental hell for God only knows how long. Please God, I beg of you to deliver me from this nightmare any way you see fit. Kill me if you must, but please, please let the torture end. I cried out in my mind begging for His mercy, praying for a miracle to no avail. I was thrown once again into another tortured soul.
I was a woman hanging from the rafters in a basement torture chamber. Leaches all over my body sucking my life force, watching as they swelled with my blood, in the name of "medical advancement". The child plunged repeatedly in ice cold water, because he spoke out of turn to a doctor and needed to be "saved from his mental illness". Wondering why my mother and father didn't care to come save me from this hellish place. The girl trying desperately to get away from a group of drunken orderlies on the night shift. Trying to scream through the hand over my mouth. Unable to move, suppressed by their hands as they each took their turn. Almost dying when they were finally finished.
How much more would I be forced to take? How many more spirits would show me their horrors before I would be free? Please, dear Lord, set me free!
The man who heard voices, laid out on a table as the doctors drilled through my skull, to scrape out the sickness in my brain. Leaving me like a child when they were through. The fourteen year old boy whose mother caught him in "sexual sin" and sent him to the hospital to "save his soul". Feeling the doctors carve my manhood bit by agonizing bit, curing me of my affliction.
STOP! I demanded in my mind. I cried for what these souls had gone through. I wept for what they were still enduring. This endless loop that they must suffer, living through their own hell over and over again for the past hundred years. Finally, they had found someone to share their pain, but would I survive to hear them all? Would they kill me before I could escape to help them? They all died at the hands of these tormentors. Would I be next? Oh, God I hope so! Anything to escape this spiritual prison.
Never have I seen anything as violent as what these spirits had endured. I have known I was psychic since I was eight years old, and I have seen my share of repulsive things. I have helped spirits move on after numerous cleanings, however, I have never experienced this much terror at one time nor in one place.
My mentor had told me once about places that existed, where the souls were trapped, and horrors so atrocious I would not want to survive the experience. She told me about how her friend had seen one such place in Germany, a result of the holocaust. I could not recall how her friend had escaped, just that it had been horrible for her, and she was so weakened by the experience she had been hospitalized. After her experience, the girl had refused to use her gift any longer.
I started to float up to the ceiling. Flying above the heads of the tortured below. The people started to fade as the light I was flying towards got brighter and brighter. I blinked, trying to focus on what was in the light. Did I die? Was this to be my end? As my senses became clearer I could hear people talking. I think it was my mother and father. But they were not dead, so how could this be? I blinked my eyes and held very still. It was my mother talking. I stared up at the ceiling tiles, white and porous above me, afraid for the first time in my life that the dead may have followed me.
I turned my head hoping, praying that I was alone. I was in the hospital. An IV attached to my arm. I looked past the IV pole, and into the sweet smiling face of my mother. There were tears in her eyes as she clung to my hand. She was telling me that she was thankful I was alive. She and my father had been so afraid for me. Afraid I would never come back to them.
The doctor entered and I started to panic. I didn't want anyone to touch me. After what I had just seen all I wanted was to be out of the hospital. I would probably never see a doctor again. I knew in my mind that the place I was just in was no longer in existence. That all of those people had died a hundred years ago, but I still could not completely suppress the apprehension I felt for the medical staff right now.
I sat up too fast, grabbing onto my mothers outstretched hand. The sudden jolt of pain throbbing in my head had me lying right back down again. "Take it easy. You have been in a coma for a couple of days now. You need to give your body time to adjust." the doctor explained.
Two days! Two days! I was in shock. I survived two days of torture from an endless number of souls.
The doctor explained that I had fell over in the theater and wouldn't wake up. Someone had called 911 and I had been rushed to the hospital. The doctors had performed every test in existence trying to figure out what had caused my lapse. They could not find any explanation. He wanted to know what I remembered.
I clutched the blanket to my chest, as panic seized my lungs. Suppressing the terror that threatened to steal my breath, eyes wide as I looked right at him and lied. I remembered nothing. He looked at me curiously, said to get some rest, then departed my room.
Looking at my mothers tear streaked face, desperately clinging to my hand, as if she would lose me if she ever let go again, I was reminded of what loving me had cost her everyday. "What aren't you telling him?" she asked worry evident in her weathered features. How many of those lines had I put there over the years?
"Mom, I can't go through it again. Please just know that it has everything to do with my gift, and nothing to do with my health."
"Darling, whatever it is you can tell me. I may be able to help you."
"Mom, that theater used to be a mental hospital, in the late 1800's early 1900's. The souls there are trapped, and I just lived through their every torture. Please don't ask me about this ever again."
"Okay, I won't, but maybe you should confide everything to Samantha. I am sure she would be able to help. It's not healthy to keep it all inside."
"No, Mom, that place isn't safe for anyone who is psychic. All we can do now is pray for God to help those souls." Thankfully she didn't press the subject. I knew that I would convey the endless nightmare to Sam later, and she would want to go help the spirits trapped. I also knew it would be the first time I would not go with her and the other cleaners to help.
