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

the bed with the red baldachin and all. He was fluttery and stressed. At last this now pale, thin king had something to live for. An idea.
It wasn't much, he would grant the Gods that, but it was a start .
He fumbled in the dark and found the large lantern that he always kept by his bedside.
He reached for the lock and opened the lid.
He put on an extra pair of socks from under the night time table and put them over his socks that covered his tights. The robe that he put on over his body had a fur lining that warmed his neck. He felt his old skin tingle as he walked in the dark to the door, he walked to the door and opened it. Thank goodness. The candle was still burning. There were about a hundred left made years ago by The Sisters of Mary Magdelen who kept providing them with candles. No. Used to.
There was a puddle of wax on the stone floor.
There was a cool breeze from the door as he walked to the night time table.
He grabbed the lantern and walked out to light it with the help of the lantern.
When it was lit he saw the hall better
He put on his pointed red poulaine shoes and grabbed a hold of the key to the church.
They were calf with red silk and gold edging, with precious stones and pearls. Like the gloves that he put on, these shoes had been made for him twenty years ago.
He had never locked the bedroom door since he had been here alone. He took it out and now walked over to the fireplace. There was still some fire left there. He grabbed a torch and lit it, knowing that he could’ve lit the lantern with the fire in the fire place. Blowing on the flame and making it bigger, he warmed himself up. For the first time he bothered to look in the mirror and laughed at himself for being so silly? For whom did he have so much fear?
The dream had a reason and he knew not what the reason was. The lantern made strange reflections on his face and he shivered, looked away.
He looked back.
His mouth said, unwillingly contradicting his mind:
“The chapel. Go to Belinda’s grave in the left wing.”
Hodie aperuit cum erubuerint.
The mentor awaits.
He went out into the stone-hall-way and down the large stairs, past the sitting room and down the first landing, not bothering to look at any of the portraits of his predecessors as he walked by them. This was routine because he was afraid they would come alive. But now it seemed like they were smiling. Something had happened to him.
Chapel. What waited for him there?
”Nonsense, go back, lonely man.”
But the sound of his own voice made him realize that he had nothing to loose.
There it was suddenly. He was alone in the world and this world couldn’t be real, really. My God, everyone had died and left him. No one was alive in Clurafar or the area around it, that was a reason enough for him to suspect that something was fishy.
He saw the dust in the hallway for the first time and the bushes and all the trees and the decay in the light from the lantern.
The painting of his father and mother by the stairs looking at him was a sign to move on.
They seemed to say: “Find out what lies in the chapel.”
He knew not what awaited him now, maybe nothing, but he knew that whatever waited for him in there was certainly better than his nightmares. Something had happened to his soul. For the first time in months, no in years, he felt a spark of hope. He rushed down the larger corridors at the bottom floor and opened the doors to the cathedral entrance. He took out the big key and opened the door. It creaked and wailed, not having been opened for so long, at least in this way.
"Too long!" he said to himself. “Too long without a visit! That will be changed from now on! I will tidy you up, Iuventus Sacrum! I will not let Lucy win!"
Why did he have hope? Was it because the cries of help had an owner in his mind now?
He walked into the cathedral and a wave of Christianity and past memory came over him. This formerly broken man smiled for the first time in half-a-year. His dirty, sweaty brow turned from worse to better. He sighed. The white pillars lit by the torch surrounding the middle of the cathedral were still there and the coat-of-arms were still on the walls. He closed the door behind him with a large resonant bang that echoed in the great church .The statues of the saints and the large painting by Master John Eric Penderesci of Jesus at the time of his resurrection was still there and it was still as beautiful as ever. Why had he stopped going here? What made him forget his duties? Wasn't he a king? A king of what, he asked?
But then he thought: A King of Myself and My Past!
"I shouldn't let myself deteriorate like this!"
There is always hope, was his next thought. But where was the hope? Not in his life anyway.
Why did he fool himself? But this is hope lay. In his memories. In his own past. In the happiness here. In God.
"Remember God. Forget the misery."
The loud words he uttered were constantly contradicting the horrid satire that was wrenching his soul, saying he was a loser and a spiritual wreck grabbing for air and hoping to catch a golden robin. The misery, the other voice said, is there to build from God hope like a potter does a pot from clay. Yes, clay is unformed, just like misery.
"But of this unformed lifelessness becomes usefulness if you use it right."
What a remarkable change of pace, he thought. Why was he so happy? Hadn't he lost all hope? Apparently not. He walked on through the mid-aisle and looked around. His slippered feet echoed a gentle wosh-wosh in the cathedral. It was a reassuring sound of home. Maybe victory lay in not letting Lucinda bring him down. Victory was just another word for happiness.
A King and his Christ together on slippered feet. He smiled at the thought. What a good thing it is to have God, he said. In the lowest of the lows, he comes and picks you up and breathes new life into your heart. His eyes glanced at the great place this was. So many memories, so much time spent here. Weddings, funerals, his first communion, confirmation, bible-readings, church-services.
He walked up to the altar and turned around. The only light that shone through in this great place was the light of the upcoming dawn and the bright full-moon, but it was enough for him to see where he was going. The moon shone in his face and he started singing a Gregorian chant he used to sing as a child:

"In splendoribus sanctorum, ex utero ante luciferum genui te. Dixit Dominus Domino meo: Sede a dextris meis."

He stopped singing and smiled at the sound of his own voice echoing in the church.
He hadn’t sung these chants in thirty years. Not since 1392 had he sung in Latin.
Why was he singing? He was alone in a kingdom without a future.
He was crazy and dirty and drunk and …
Suddenly he heard a voice.
It said: "You always had a good voice, Father! But you couldn’t play the lute to save your life…" He jumped almost three feet up in the air when he heard the voice. It had been a woman. The first voice from reality in over four months. A girl this time. Father? Belinda? Who? "Who's there?" He was shaking with fear. He didn't know what to say. "Belinda? Who is there? If someone is there, now, don't scare me ... I am the king!" There was a laugh. He shook even more. "Come out! You are scaring the hell out of me!" He waved the torch about, giving the church strange shadows. But this was eager anticipation, nervous fear, not screaming fear.
The road to the door seemed endless and he had to admit he was scared.
He walked onward a bit and stopped when he heard a noise coming from the side of the church, from the chapel. He looked in that direction and found nothing. His footsteps echoed in the large, abundant cathedral.
Then he heard it again. That noise.
Someone moving in the chapel of Belinda and Steven.
Who was there? He walked toward the light he saw in there. He saw a figure in white.
It was faint in this light, but he had seen it clearly. Dear God, who is this?
The word "Father!" puzzled him. It was Belinda's voice, but it could have been his imagination. She was dead and gone, God rest her soul. But he could see that woman clearly as he saw the light of the candle. Next to the coffin stood a blonde figure in white, standing right beside Belinda's sarcophagus. A coffin that had been reserved for him, but that he had used for her, since no one had been there to bury her except him. But who was standing there? He hadn't seen a person for so long that seeing someone made his heart jump. He ran faster and faster until he fell, flat face down on the stone-floor, right by the chapel-stairs. The golden candle-holder made a cling-clanged-clang on the marble floor and Alexander moaned. "Rubbish!" he muttered to himself.
He moaned and looked up. The face that met his was framed by golden sander hair and reindeer eyes. The light of the moon fell on her face and she was smiling.
Three words were uttered: “Hello there, Father!”


CHAPTER FIVE:
UNCOVERING THE ILLUSION

It felt as if angelic creatures were spinning his cranium on a helm of destiny.
It felt as if fireflies were doing a ballet around his mount under splendid moonlight and playing juggling playoffs with his intelligence.
It was the buzzing of the breeze of those flapping wings that made him almost drunk with love. Alexander had spent years now mourning his country and his soul. Realizing that what Belinda and he had talked of actually had a truth to it was chaotic frenzy in an emotional sense.
It was euphoric beyond description.
Belinda had found her grave steps from where he was leaning and yet she was alive.
That meant that all of them were alive. His wife, his children, his servants.
Somewhere in time they all were alive.
That smile. Oh, how he had missed that smile. Those dancing eyes, those dimples.
Why, that dress. That was the dress she wore when she died.
The dress she was buried in and she was wearing it.
“Belinda” Alexander said with a desperate sigh. “Why are you here? Are you a ghost?”
Belinda stretched forth her hand.
His trembling fingers touched her right assembly of digits and he saw how the large lead glass lantern was shedding some light upon them. The fingers touched in a way that he never thought possible again. There was a shot of light that went through him. He looked up.
The daughter smiled.
“I am as alive as you are, Father! This world is naught what it appears. Come!”
Alexander