Chapter 5 4

The sixteenth edition of "Diagnostics of the Burn Patient" came out about six months after Mike entered room 1408 of the Dorphin Hotel, and there was an interesting picture of Mike Enslin in the book.The photo shows only his torso, but it is him, recognizable by the white square on his left chest.The muscles surrounding the cube turned bright red, and several blisters were identified as second-degree burns.The white square shows the location of the left breast pocket of the shirt he wore that night, the lucky shirt pocket containing the pocket recorder. All four corners of the pocket recorder were burnt, but still functional, with the tape inside intact.But the recording on the tape was not very clear.Mike's manager, Sam Farrell, listened to it three or four times and threw it in the wall safe, refusing to admit that goosebumps covered his long, dark, thin arms after listening to it.Farrell didn't want to take the tape out and play it again, he didn't want to play it to himself, and he didn't want to play it to his curious friends, some of whom were particularly eager to hear it; will spread.

He didn't like Mike's voice on the tape, didn't like what the voice said (actually, my brother was eaten by wolves on a Connecticut road one winter... who the hell knows what that means?), he preferred Don't like the background sound of liquid running on the tape, sometimes it sounds like clothes making in a washing machine with too much suds...sometimes like old electric hair clippers...sometimes like people talking, weird weird. While Mike was in the hospital, a man named Orin—the manager of the innocuous hotel, if you'll forgive me for saying this—asked Sam Farrell if he could listen to the tape, Farley Hall said no, and Olin had to leave his office immediately.On the way back to the cheap hotel where he worked, Olin said thank goodness because Mike Enslin decided not to sue the hotel or Olin for negligence.

"I advise him not to go in," Orin said softly.He spends most of his workday listening to the babble of weary tourists and ill-tempered guests: about the room, about the magazines on the magazine rack, and so on, so while Farrell was annoyed with him, he didn't Take it to heart. "I have tried everything I can think of. Mr. Farrell, if anyone was negligent that night, it was your client. He ignored my words, was very unwise, and very dangerous. I think he is here. That has changed now.” Even though Farrell wasn't interested in the tape, he wanted Mike to listen to it, check it out, and maybe use it as material for a new book.Farrell knew that Mike's story could be written in a book—not just a forty-page case report, but an entire book.The book sold more than the three books in the "Ten Nights" series combined.Mike insisted that not only would he stop writing ghost stories, but he would close his pen, and of course Farrell wouldn't believe it.Writers always say that, it doesn't matter, the most different thing between writers and ordinary people is the whim.

Despite all that had happened, Mike Enslin ultimately narrowly escaped death.He knows it.He would have been hurt worse, and if it hadn't been for Mr. Dearborn and the bucket of ice, he would have endured twenty, maybe thirty, not just four different skin grafts.Although he had a skin graft on the left side of his neck, he still has a scar, and doctors from the Boston Burn Society said the scar will fade naturally.He also knew that the weeks and months following a burn would be painful.If it hadn't been written on the matchbox that the lid should be closed before being wiped, he would have died in room 1408. He would have died unimaginably.To the coroner, that would have looked like a stroke or a heart attack, but the real cause of death was scarier.

more scary. He's also lucky enough to have written three bestsellers on ghosts and hauntings before staying in a truly haunted place - and he knows that too.Sam Farrell might not believe that Mike's writing career was over, but Sam didn't have to know, Mike knew it all too well that he was now cold and sick to his stomach even writing a postcard.Sometimes even when he saw a pen (or a tape recorder), he would think: Those paintings are crooked, and I wanted to put them straight.He didn't know what that meant, he couldn't remember a few paintings from room 1408, or anything else, and he was thankful.It's luck.His blood pressure has not been very good these days (the doctor said that burn patients often cause blood pressure problems and must be treated with drugs), and his eyes are also troubled (the ophthalmologist asked him to take Oakvit tablets ①).His back was always uncomfortable, his prostate was enlarged... but it was nothing to him.He knew that although he had narrowly escaped death in room 1408, the real trouble was still to come, and there had been precedents for such a situation—Olin had tried to tell him—but it was okay.He doesn't remember anyway, and sometimes he has nightmares, often (horrible almost every night), but forgets them all when he wakes up.He felt melting all around him—like the four corners of the pocket recorder had melted.He recently lived on Long Island and took long walks on the beach when the weather was nice.It was during the walk on the beach that he articulated the words that came closest to his memory of staying in room 1408 for more than seventy minutes (just a little more). "That's definitely not a person," he said in a choked and stammering voice to the oncoming waves. "Ghost...ghosts were people at least once. The thing in the wall, though...that..."

Time changes everything, he can only hope, and he does.Time will make him forget all this.He slept in a bedroom lit all night, so that when he awoke from a nightmare he knew immediately where he was.He removed all the telephones in the house, and he was afraid of the sudden call that he didn't expect, of hearing a hissing, inhuman voice saying, "I'm 9! 9! We killed your friend !They're all dead now!" On clear evenings, when the sun was setting, he drew all the blinds and curtains, and the house was like a dark room.He sat there until his watch told him that the sun, even the last ray on the horizon, was gone.

The afterglow of the setting sun was unbearable for him. The yellow gradually deepened, becoming orange, into the glow of the Australian desert. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ ① A tablet often recommended by ophthalmologists for patients, rich in vitamins A, C, E, zinc, copper, etc.