The Meeting Room

It was a usual day in summer. The stifling heat formed beads of sweat on Becky’s forehead and white T-shirt. She sighed heavily. The scorching heat was too much for her to bear. Her nine-year-old brother Benny stuck his head into Becky’s room and whined, “I’m so hot, sis. Can’t we go down to play?”
“The dance room is occupied, the gym room is being repaired, there are trucks on the platform, the playroom is out of service… the meeting room! And there’s air-con too!” replied Becky, counting on her fingers. She darted out of the room and into her papa’s room. “Papa, can we go to the meeting room to play?”
“The meeting room, no! NO! Don’t ever go there!” Papa stuttered without thinking in a bizarre high-pitched voice. Becky furrowed up her brow, rushed out of the bedroom and up into the attic.
Becky had just sat down when a shabby notebook caught her attention. She didn’t like the look of it and was just turning away when an invisible hand wrenched her head brutally towards the notebook. She gasped and looked around cautiously. There was nobody around. She opened the dusty reddish-brown notebook cover. Mysteriously, Becky felt a gust of wind sweeping around her. She closed the notebook quickly and everything died down. She shivered as the window banged shut and locked itself.
“Benny, what are you doing here?” Becky hollered fiercely. Benny looked at her questioningly. His sister seldom yelled at him. Becky gaped. She couldn’t believe her eyes! A long cut appeared on his face as if the devil was marking him, ready to send him to another world…
“Owww…” screamed Benny as he retreated out of the room, clutching his face. Becky wanted to chase after him, to ask if he was okay, to ask for forgiveness. But her feet stayed planted firmly on the ground. The words, “DIARY” seemed like little black eyes, staring at her, forcing her to stay...
Becky, without thinking, opened the cover again. In the tiny writing between the lines, the word “curse” leapt out, returned, and leapt out again. “Cursed?” The word slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. She wanted to cough, but Becky couldn’t draw enough air into her lungs. Her throat tightened, she couldn’t breathe, she felt as if she was going to die... Flashes of her childhood memories flashed before her. “This must be the end, Mama and Papa must be very sad...” thoughts raced about in her brain. She used her final breath to close the note book... and she could breathe smoothly again!
That very night, she had a nightmare about a witch. The witch hissed devishly, “I am the great Witch Bellatrix! Go to the meeting room! Go to the meeting room! You will find horrors not within your imagination... Go to the meeting room! Go to the meeting room!” And with that, she disappeared into a faint mist in the darkness. Becky told Benny her dream and Benny said that he had the same dream too as a wizard said he was named Lord Voldemort and he urged Benny too to go to the meeting room.
The next day, Becky and Benny felt that their curiosity was overcoming them and set off secretly for the meeting room when they told their parents they were going to the gym room to exercise. It was a nice, sunny day and they trekked across the platform on which the trucks were unloading stuff like furniture and tools like ladders and hammers to the meeting room...
It was all quiet there. Nobody was there. They could suddenly hear some sort of bumping noise. And then a shrill shriek. It was coming from inside the walls. Becky was sure of that. Benny’s face had gone all white. His knuckles, ankles and knees had all gone ghostly white. Becky had no time to worry about him now. Quickly she rushed out of the room and onto the platform, grabbed a huge hammer and darted back into the room and started hammering away at the wall. Huge clouds of dust surrounded them. And then the tiles started falling down.
Becky gasped. If she hadn’t been a fourteen-year-old sensible schoolgirl, she would have fainted. In front of her was a dead corpse. The neck, which hung tightly to a noose, was twisted at a horrific angle.
She spun around to look at her brother. Benny was evolved in a pale, ghostly mist. Benny whispered weakly, “Sis, I’m going. Look after Mama and Papa…” A white figure, just like the “Witch Bellatrix” in Becky’s dream, stepped out of the corpse. She touched Benny on the shoulder. “Little one, we’re going to meet the Lord now... It’s a long way down...” she whispered. Benny looked at his sister with a faraway look in his eyes. Benny and the white figure were sinking deeper and deeper into the white tiles of the floor of the meeting room. “Benny, don’t leave me! Benny! Benny!” Becky leapt towards her beloved brother, her only true friend. But Benny had gone.
Becky’s weak voice echoed round the silent room. It bounced off the walls and all was still.
After six more years, she no longer had nightmares of that terrible, terrible day. It seemed that everything had returned to normal and that Benny had never been born. But one thing was different. Becky hated the colour white.