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

the walls were lined with monsters and ghouls torturing sinners along the walls. Vlad the impalor was juggling heads in a corner and Caligula was playing with his bells and singing.
ADNICUL turned around and now he was completely transformed: He was bloody and beaten and wounded. Another creature arrived. He was the devil, his horns sharp and his forked tail swinging to the rhythm of the whiplash music. His fur was black and glowing. He grew five times in size, his red skin thumping with radiant fire from a black heart. He lifted his hands and put them around LUCINDA.
He was huge now. Enormous. And phallic. Yes oh yes, he was breathing heavily. So heavy that the dead people under him blew away. LUCINDA started shaking and screaming and rolling about on the floor, kicking and drooling. Then she was lifted up, looking more attractive than ever and wearing a new black dress with a cut up to her waist showing her right leg and its long stiletto heels. Her mouth was bright orange and her eyes pitch black. She had been transformed to become that ultimate demon.
CALIGULA came in with a three-headed dog, each head drooling and barking and displaying its fifty fangs. It was a huge dog named Reficule and Lucinda liked it right away. It would become her loyal friend and helper in her journey through hell on earth.

LUCIFER finally spoke to her in an ultra-deep contra-bass-voice that seemed to rumble like the calm, victoryconfident hurricane on its steady move:

"LUCINDA: YOU ARE NOW MY FEMALE COUNTERPART, MY DISCIPLE OF HELL. THIS HOWEVER MEANS RESPONSIBILITY. YOUR DEMONIC ASSIGNMENT WILL BE THE COMPLETE AND UTTER DESTRUCTION OF THE PROSPERANIAN EMPIRE AS WELL AS ALEXANDER AND HIS FAMILY'S DEATH.
I TRUST IN YOU TO CRUSH THE MAGIC KINGDOM.
REMEMBER THAT I WAS ONCE GOD'S FIRSTBORN!"

And as she was lead back through the throat of the beast, saying goodbye to her old friend Nero by the gate, holding Reficule in her hand, she at last found herself happy that vengeance was here to stay. After all, she was glad to be LUCIFER'S Virus in Eden.

And he put down the book, not really knowing what was real and what was not.


Night time, February 25th 1429

The floor seemed to be alive. He was running down the hallways and the tiles on the floor were all black and white holes that gaped and closed like mouths, hungry mouths wanting him. He ran from side to side, bumping into old paintings of Roddy and of Gertrude and of Bertrand and Simon. He knocked down vases and they crashed down on the floor. He slipped and fell on Persian rugs and broke his fingers but did not care. He had stopped shaving, eating, living... so why should he care about a broken finger?
He ran down the east wing second landing hallway. There were fifteen coats of arms on each side here. He knew this was the only entrance out into the stables and the thermal baths and nothing else, but he just ran, for no reason at all. As he did , the coats of arms all came alive , their spears turning into arms and reaching for him, his white nightshirt fluttering in the breeze of itself. They seemed to scream at him with open, shouting holes of hell.
Then the whole castle shook. Somebody was pounding on the door at the end of the hallway. Here to the left Maria's and Martin's apartment had been located when they chose to live here at Iuventus. Help me, my children. Anyone: Help me.
He stopped. The doors to his left as well as the end hall hallway door crashed open and a transparent giant moved in. It was Lucinda and she was dressed in black, her long hair flying in the breeze. Her eyebrows were pressed together in the middle and made a little V toward her forehead. Alex looked at her with open eyes, petrified. Now he really felt like a rat in a maze. Completely powerless. He began running backwards, falling down and running nowhere with his legs, slipping while trying to get to get up while Lucinda came closer and closer. She stopped and the black giant, who now filled the entire hallway closed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, bent back and then forward, opening her mouth sending out bats, hundred of bats out of her mouth. Alexander's breath turned short and fast and loud. He whimpered like a dog as he ran and ran, seeing no possibility in escaping. The entire palace seemed to be alive now and he was running down hallways with hundreds of bats behind him, crashing into the walls. Help me, Belinda.
He ran down the steps of the staircase and to the main entrance. There happened to be a full moon tonight. How strange... There always seemed to be one. It was always there. Why hadn't he noticed that? That could not be real... He ran to the left toward the church and into it, closing the door. He stood there leaning against the entrance for a while, with closed eyes panting. Just trying to relax. Thinking about nothing but Lucinda and the bats. Then he turned around, back to the entrance and when he opened his eyes again there saw Lucinda's head, grinning, V on her forehead , eyes clamped together and death on her face. He opened the door again and ran out from the church, thinking he should've stayed in it. He ran up, bats now all around him, eating at his legs and head and screaming, screaming, squealing and flying. He finally came to the second landing again , ran down the hallway down to his bedroom , closed the door , locked it , went to bed with a crucifix and prayed to Mother Mary for those creatures to disappear. Belinda, Sieglinde, even Morgana or Patrick: Help...

March 3rd, 1429

Everything waits for you Alex alex alex alex alex .

The castle was alive. It was a breathing giant.
Breathing out. Echoes of a summer night in the garden. Breathing in. Pain of hell dancing the jig on his brain. Breathing out. Lucinda there clutching his throat. The main entrance was now filled with dry autumn leaves. A few rats cruised the hallway, the garden was dead.
He had tried to kill himself so many times now that he had stopped counting, he believed at seven tries. Jumping from the roof, cutting his wrists, self strangulation, God knows what else, but it wouldn't work. Even starving himself to death didn't work. For here he was. Alive. He was thin and pale but he was still here.
He slept everywhere. Sometimes in the hallways. Or the church. Or the sitting room. He went into the forest or the garden to do his business of latrine. The actual latrines were now so full of leaves and dead bugs that it was unbearable. Constantly the wind blew. He made himself a fire now and then, but he did not see the point. He wanted to die, so why make a fire. He might be able to freeze to death. That was a possibility. And, yes, damn it was cold.
His routine had become completely distorted. He slept whenever he felt like it and sometimes he just wandered around, wondering what the hell was going on with him during the night. The breaths of three thousand demons were upon him.
Often he wondered about the curse. One for the weapon. That was the war. One for health. That had been the plague. But the third? One for the road? The empty road. Was that the third curse? Didn't that seem strange somehow. He thought of all the people that had ran through this place before. Theo with his exuberant professionalism, Marcus always out of breath . Rolf with his dry sense of humour. How Marcus laughed when he first had met him. "Sorry , I am out of breath..." - "And I am Rolf, the butler...". Geena with her bouncy jellylike eagerness. Walter jovial, Ellie calm, Maria spontaneous, Belinda self confidant, Steven dashing, Zeddy full of temperament. All of them gone into oblivion. All of them. He even longed for Morgana's company and was ashamed that he had treated her so badly the last years of her life.

March 7th 1429

That final night of his ongoing isolation there had been horrid thunderstorms that made the shutters bang like mad in most of the castle and the wind rattle the doorways. Alexander sat awake, sheets clutched in hand under the pillows, screaming with fear. The rain, it sounded like hail, poured down against the window-panes and it seemed the house was alive.
He felt like someone was crying for help again. It was scary. Strange. When he finally could fall asleep, he dreamt strange, strange things.

That night, Alexander had a dream. He dreamt that he was in a castle in Nocturania. He recognized it. It was Lucinda's castle and it was thirty years ago. He was a young man then and a newly-appointed King of Prosperania. Lucinda sat on her throne and Alexander stood in front of her, head bowed down and he was kneeling. She hit him repeatedly with a stick until he was on the ground, bruised and bleeding. She chained him to the wall and sucked his blood, little by little. Then her thirteen demonic dwarves came and started nibbling off little bits of his feet and the vulture landed on his head and plucked his skull open, picking on his brain. Finally, the raven landed on his shoulder and started to eat his eyes. Out of nowhere, in this hellish situation, Belinda appeared. She was more radiant than ever before and she wore her wedding dress. She looked at him and smiled: "We are not dead! Find the answer!" He started hitting around him with his fists to free himself of the birds and the demons to be able to touch his daughter...

He woke up in cold sweat in his royal bedroom. His brow was dripping wet and his night-clothes were soaking. The sheets and pillows were drenched. His old and haggard face stared into the darkness and the only thing that stared back was his own image in the large, decorative mirror by the door Belinda had given him oh-so-many years ago. He looked to his left and saw the place where Sieglinde had slept before she died. The red satin draperies rocked gently in the wind. One of the large led-glass windows had opened and rain was poring in. Alexander went up to close it. He did so and then turned around. "What was that?" He looked around him. "Belinda ... Alive?" He shook his head. "It was only a dream!" he sighed to himself. "But what if it's a sign ..." But had that been the cries of help he had heard inside his mind. The cries that Lucinda had tried to muffle by chasing him down the hallways and showing him future killers?
The wind shrieked outside and the slow click-ticking of the rain against the windows outside made the situation even more ominous. "That's impossible! I buried them myself! They are down in the castle-chapel in our cathedral along with the other family-members! They can't be alive!" He shook his head again and paced the room between the large mahogany-dresser and