Haunted Halloween: Story Contest

The Mattress

Kasey never liked hospitals. They just made her feel uncomfortable. Everything smelled like hand soap or old people, and everything was so...sterile. She especially hated it at night when her room's light was turned off. The hallway would still be brightly lighted -- yes, even in the middle of the night -- but even the small sliver of light that she could see under her door wasn't comfort enough. Being in the dark scared her, and being in the dark alone was even more frightening.

She had had three concussions in the past spring from playing rugby -- three too much. She had spent week after week in hospitals attempting to recover, missing school, missing her friends, missing life. She hardly knew what sunshine felt like.


But she still had homework. Bleh, Speak of the devil.


It was one in the morning, when Kasey was still working on her Calculus homework. 1 AM was much too late to be doing homework (according to her mother, anyway), but she hadn't been able to do it earlier, because she had slept away her entire afternoon. It wasn't her fault; concussions were exhausting. Kasey's head bobbed as she struggled to keep awake. She groaned. She would finish in the morning. For now, she needed some more sleep. As she reached out to place her math notebook on the nightstand, her pencil case cluttered to the floor, rolling writing utensils and whatnot all over the ground.


She sighed and pulled herself off of the bed, shivering as her bare toes made contact with the cool, hard floor. Kasey reached under the cot to grab some pencils. Instead, she felt flesh. Human flesh.


Shrieking, she leaped back onto the bed, afraid of what was under there. A person? It possibly could not be. Kasey shuddered and switched off her nightstand lamp very quickly. The entire time, she made sure she didn't touch the floor again.


"You're losing it, Kase," she told herself. "This is what three sports injuries does to you. You're losing your mind." Kasey bit her lip.

"Forget about the pencils." How would she finish her homework with a body under her bed?

"Stop being stupid. You're just tired.." Kasey snuggled into the thin, crisp covers of her bed, and slowly fell into a deep sleep.


The next morning, the rotting corpse of Deirdre Smith, a Las Vegas prostitute, was discovered under the hospital bed. Kasey wasn't losing her marbles after all.

Note: Based on true murder cases in the US during the 20th century, of the murderers stuffing victims under hospital and hotel beds. In Virginia in 1989, Jerry Lee Dunbar disposed of the remains of two victims this way: 27-year-old Deirdre Smith, who was discovered in May under the floor of a motel room, and 29-year-old Marilyn Graham, who turned up in June under a bed in the Alexandria Econo Lodge. Both girls' bodies were eventually found after guests complained about the stink.