THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 2 - Charles E.J. Moulton (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📗

bodies that looked like claws.
He realized that the dead people here on the plains were the Prosperanian people. He was walking in what was the remainder of the Empire.
Alexander was walking down a path among the ruins. Suddenly there were people there, standing facing the left field as if numb and as if rejecting him, turning away. He watched them, fascinated and scared. What were they watching? Then he saw who they were. It was Belinda, Steven, Sieglinde, Rolf, Geena, Morgana, all of his children. Mustafus, Walter, Theo.
Other people were there, as well, not as bright. He looked in their eyes and realized he saw emptiness. Ignorance of spiritual reality. But they were all there. Waiting for something. Waiting for him. Then they turned to him. All of them. He stopped. He looked at them. Their eyes were wide open like Oleana's in the face of the Rumzil. They all chanted one thing. One mutual thing:
„Salvum me fac Deus quoniam intraverunt aquae usque ad animam meam.”
It meant: “Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul.”


Morning of June 22nd 1428

It was in the middle of the night when Alex woke up from his dream. Belinda had died more than a month ago now and he knew not anymore how many times he had rode out to seek something. Anything. Someone, anyone at all that would be able to tell him who was left here, if anyone.
He saw buildings empty and churches left desolate. He saw courtyards full of hay and parks without people, parliaments without senators. Everything was deserted. Everything was haunted.
He walked into St. Raphael's Cathedral where his daughter had been married in 1422, seven years ago, but no one was there. Not even a priest. He went into the senator courtyard where the five of them had been lynched, Zeddy, Walter, Patrick, Morgana and Patricia. He stood on the spot where there still was a stain with a fence around it and looked at it, almost weeping. He knocked on every single door but no one was inside the houses. He even walked into Madam Zonga's brothel and saw the feather-boas and the unmade beds. He saw the negligés and the underwear scattered on the marble love seats. He saw the brasseries lying across the table.
He metheglin in the boxes and the bottles of wine broken. He saw the instruments unplayed. He thought he heard mumbling of voices and groans from upstairs, but was wrong. It was his own wish for company. He saw death and decay and sat down in Madame Zonga’s to have a glass of the wine that stood there in the waiting room and urged him to drink.

July 1428

Alexander did not shave. He did not speak unless to his Mercutio. Often he would ride around the countryside and look for people in vain. He would fall asleep in fields and he would run around naked in the forest. He slept on wooden floors and he ate his food with his bare hands. His posture was bad, his hygiene was worse and worst of all, his soul was deteriorating. That summer ended in an autumn where Alexander was losing everything, including his sanity. He rode around Clurafar and tried to find anyone. He discovered again and again and again that he was alone in this world. He found himself going crazy and wondering what had made everyone disappear. He knew that something had happened to create this, he did not know what to do about it. He was too much of a coward to kill himself, he had no country and no subjects. He was insane, fat, old, dirty, alone and chased by ghosts, hunting him down cobbled streets, the only inhabitants left in the haunted kingdom.

August 4th 1428

He had been standing on the courtyard of Iuventus Sacrum that day screaming, having decided to just try to see anyone at all in town, knowing fully well that this was an absolute improbability. He had been here no more than an hour, sitting on the steps of his own senate when it occured to him that the cloud were not moving. There were no birds in the skies. There was a wind, there was a slight wind from the east, but there were no birds. What was this world. Mercutio shifted from hoof to hood, snorted as if agreeing slightly with the king’s words. He stood up and looked around. He had seen his daughter to her wedding here. He had held speeches. He had sung as a young boy here on this spot, obliging to his mother’s wish that he should vocalize a song by the name of “Flowers of Hweoim” for the people. He still remembered standing on this very spot sometime in the 1380’s singing it.

The flowers of hweoim it is told,
Grow in paradise’s garden.
They are the makers of the young and the old
And their fruit is that which does not harden.
We see the trees and we hear the breeze
And so we find our enjoyment,
Within the love of a single rose that blooms in the eternal garden.

But this was no garden? This was fake? No clouds, no birds, no people.
“Lucinda” Alexander opened his mouth and said. “What are you up to?”
There was naturally no answer to this question. The wind wained in response.
“Sisterheart” he cackled. “I know you are there somewhere and I do not believe that this haunted kingdom is real. It is just as fake as you are in this moment. Where are you and what do you want?” But there was no answer and so Alex was forced to ride home again on his friend the stallion and drink himself drunk on old wine and his belly swelling with dried figs and salty meat.

Autumn of 1428

Most of his days, Alexander spent trying to gather the leaves on the ground together and pile them up. He ran down the corridors at daytime and screamed himself horse. Then he hid under the blankets during nighttime, afraid of anyone and nothing. Toward the winter, he was gaining a portion of his sanity back. But he was a recluse and the only citizen of the haunted kingdom, unexplained horrified victim of a demonic coup. How did stay alive? By drinking himself drunk most of the time, living off dried fruit and salted meat from the cellars.
What was worse was that Alexander had lost himself into a corner of isolation.
He remembered his promise of going out to find his sister in order to save his family.
There was, however, no chance of tracing where Lucinda was. So, Alexander stopped looking.
He started not to believe that this was an illusion.
He started to become lazy, spending the days emptying the wine cellars and reading old books, getting drunk and copulating with imaginary females.

December 5th 1428

It was a cold winter that year. Alexander had fires burning all day, all night. All he did was keep the fires burning. He lived on what was in the wine cellars and the dried meat in the cupboards. There was enough dried meat and dried figs and often he would sit alone in the vaults and drink himself drunk, the breadcrumbs sticking to his beard and the wine dripping on the floor. He would run around in the castle screaming and urinating on the floor, sleeping on the hall couches and ripping up the Persian rugs. Was he sane to believe that the dream he had dreamt had anything to do with reality?
Why? Why live? Something kept him alive. What? Save us? He had heard that phrase in a dream recently and he had no idea what it had meant. Save us. Save us. What did that mean? He spent most of nights screaming himself hoarse like always, running down the hallways.

December 8th 1428

He even ventured three days away from Clurafar to find out more about his theory. He went into inns. Food was there, always fresh and lovely and he ate it. He was drunk more times than one. He stopped in the most remote towns even he had not seen in thirty years. But no one was there. Everyone was dead. But there were no corpses. No sick people. No beggars. No rich people.
No whores. No priests. No tailors. No carpenters. No innkeepers. No one at all. Alexander Roderick Winsletenna was the only person alive. That was the strange thing and it seemed that everything that had been destroyed in the war was rebuilt. That was impossible. Here he was, the only person alive. There was no one to send a message for.
There was no one to kiss goodbye to. There was no one to feed or comfort. No one to hate.
No one to love and now, in the dead of winter, the king awoke in his palace at night wondering what on earth or in heaven or hell the dreams meant.
So he went for walks, lighting a large wax candle and feeling the darkness ooze decay on his wandering frame as he shivered.


December 14th 1428

Lucinda had left him alone. She had now narrowed things down so that nothing else but him was left here. What did she want? Show him what exile was like? He was obviously the only one left in this world. But was that possible? Someone somewhere had to be left someplace. That made it so unreal. This was so unreal. No one existed. No one existed at all. That day he tried to kill himself. He found out that he was too much of a coward to even try and ended up crying on the floor.


December 23rd 1428

Alex thought about that a great deal. He thought about how restless he had been. How much he had yelled at Morgana and Rolf. How he had excommunicated Walter. How he had ignored Patrick.
How he had fought with his own libido back then and right now. How restless.
How he had lived his life through others and expected others to be as perfect as he wanted to be and never could be unless he let go and relaxed.
"The irony", he told himself one day aloud walking down the hallway, "is that the exact thing we dread is the answer to our problems! The irony is that relaxing away from things we blame ourselves for will make us solve what we criticize. We think abolishing it will give us reason. We are so very wrong... in every way. Follow your fears. They will lead you home."
What did that mean? Instead of hitting Walter and Morgana, Patrick and Zedrick across the face he should have confronted them with the question: why are you doing this? What is the driving force behind your anarchy? He supposed that God would've asked the devil the very same thing in the days of the original sin. What was Alexander's place in all this? He did not know. He only knew that this place was the haunted kingdom. Though, these thoughts did not help him now one bit. He knew there was a problem and he knew confronting Lucinda was the actual solving of the task, but he did not know how, where or when. Yet...
The only reason why he stayed alive was because of the fires and the extensive quantities of dry storage of meats and smoked foods. He got drunk more than he