THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

I? Who am I, Rolf?”
His blue eyes sang him a song.
“My God, I know you.”
Michael smiled again. “I am not God. You know what the scriptures say about using the Lord’s name in vain.”
Rolf nodded. “Sorry.” He tried to find the answer. It came to him in a vision. “You are who I think you are.”
Michael nodded. “I am, yes.”
Rolf looked down, up, around, everywhere, trying to figure this out.
“We have had this conversation before. After this you will show me the pits and I will be afraid. You will protect me and I will be held in the palm of Good’s hand until …” Rolf shook his head and closed his eyes. “Where is it?”
”What?”
”The answer in my head, where is it?”
”In your heart, the answer lies not in your head.”
Rolf looked at Michael with wide open eyes. “You are my saviour?”
Michael smiled. “I might be exactly that if you let me be.”
”But will I forget. I want to remember.”
”One day you will recall more. You might forget this meeting tomorrow. But there is more hope now that you know the difference. There was less hope of such a recollection yesterday.”
“I will be held in the palm of Good’s hand until the moment when Alexander defeats Lucinda.”
Michael raised his hand and caressed Rolf’s face. “You have crossed the barrier.”
”I have?”
Michael closed his eyes in an agreeing gesture. “Come, let me show you something.”
So, the angel took Rolf to the edge of the ravine to show him what was happening to the inhabitants of the royal palace. Twenty three castles hanging from twenty three chains above twenty three mouths leading to one big pit without end.
“If Lucinda wins, these cages are dropped” Michael said.
“Then it is goodbye to the powers of the Winsletennas.”
”Then, it is vital that Alex wins.”
“For all of us.”
“Humanity?”
“Exactly.”

§

There were shadows dancing on the cave walls. One of the men by the fire wore an eye patch, looked haggard and old. The other one was young in body and worried in mind.
“I hope I make it through this …”
Adnicul nodded. “We will. I am in this, too. Perhaps more is at stake for me.”
Alex nodded. “We have gone through eternities to get here.”
Adnicul scratched his head, sighed and leaned back. He looked into the fire and saw himself burning in there. “What worries you the most, Alex?”
“I have let myself be ruled by an alien force that had nothing to do with my soul …”
“How so?”
Alex took a long look at Adnicul and smiled.
“Lucinda made me wander the wrong path for thirty five years.” He thought for a moment. “Thirty eight now. Oh, dear. Such a long time.”
Adnicul was rubbing his sprained ankle with a soothing mixture of herbs, moss and water when he heard Alexander speak of this for the first time. He saw the king’s face with his one healthy eye and realized at once that this one sentence was the result of years of contemplating pain.
“I’m glad that I discover this now. It is too late, but better late than never.”
“It is never too late. Hope is the last thing that leaves a man, don’t you know?”
Alex nodded. “Yes. But, you know, the threat of that experience back then made me fix my entire capacity on her, although I was running the opposite direction.”
“Opposite of what?”
”Opposite of me.”
“Oh.” Adnicul cocked his head and chuckled, bitterly. “That is hard for someone who needs to be himself.”
Alexander had just rediscovered himself and that was no lie.
The crackling flames cast their dancing reflections on his features. Adnicul at once felt incredible sympathy for this man, who had managed to come all this way without losing faith.
“What made you follow that her in the first place, Alex? Why do it when you never wanted it?” Adnicul laughed. “I should talk. Fine critic I am.” He looked up and waited for an answer. Alex was still gone and had not really heard Adnicul criticizing himself. He had gotten used to Adnicul. Trusted him now. That was a good sign.
Alex sighed. “I don’t know, Adnicul. I suppose I was forced to follow her because I was afraid. Nothing is as attractive as fear. Walter was my best friend and I threw him out of my kingdom.” Adnicul picked up a stick and started to poke in the fire with it. Alex was reminded of Raphael, who also used to do this. “In his own way, all he told me was that I shouldn’t make Lucinda responsible for my own misery. In many ways he was right.” Alex looked up at Mercutio, standing by the wall. The beautiful stallion snorted and shook his head. “But I threw him out. I threw my best friend out. I threw Lucinda out as well. But in many ways, I invited her into my heart that day.”
Adnicul looked up and threw away the stick.
“You spent years trying to figure out why she haunted you, didn’t you?” He began rubbing his ankle again with the green-brown mixture. He smiled. “This is really soothing. Where did you find the recipe?”
Alex, half in thought, remarked: “It is an old remedy from my housekeeper and royal cook, Eugenia. Where ever she is right now.” He reached into the small pocket leather bag he had and fished out the silver flask of vodka. He smiled.
Adnicul smiled and raised his finger again.
“Only for emergencies.”
Alex nodded and put the flask back.
“For emergencies only, yes.”
Alex looked into the flames, a lock of his hair falling into his eyes, his melancholy expression making him look slightly worn out.
“You know what bothers me the most?”
”What?”
“It took me so long to get here.”
His companion sighed and kept rubbing his foot with the green remedy-salve.
”Be happy you are here at all. Not everyone is so fortunate to be where you are.”
Alex agreed by nodding. “Yes.” He chuckled, softly. “Funny that I started seeing the Grand Duchess after Lucinda was gone. If I only had known what was happening to me.”
”You couldn’t have known.” Adnicul threw a pebble into the flames and leaned back. “Lucinda was an alien force, you said it yourself. You didn’t understand her. She was everything you were not. I fell into her trap just as you did.”
Alex half-smiled. “I suppose. I just know that I for over thirty five years have spent my life running away from invisible ghouls. I refused dealing with the old demons of seeing her tear up my family. I refused taking her to court. I just kicked her out. I sent her away, yes. But she said it herself: ‘I will come back to haunt you one day, old man’. She might’ve just said: I will come back to haunt you today, old man. I sent her away from my grounds but I invited her into my own soul.” Alex looked at his guide and smiled. “Why I should I feel lucky to be here?”
”You have the chance of fixing your past.”
”That is maybe lucky, yes. But I also have a chance of perishing in the flames while doing it.”
”See it this way: I am going to perish anyway. I just want to be there when it happens, in order to get back to my tree in heaven. You have the chance of saving everything you know.”
Alex nodded. “You are right.” He looked into the flames and shook his head. He thought he saw Lucinda in the campfire.
“What was the greatest shock?”
“How do you mean?”
”I am just testing you, sorry.”
“No, it is fine. Just tell me what you mean?”
“What made that experience so hard to forget?”
“What experience? The incident back in 1392 before … you know …”
Adnicul nodded.
”I think it was her appearance and how she looked when she haunted me. Her crazy eyes, the curled upper lip that she always displayed when she was angry and that slightly bent figure of hers. Those weird grimaces she made when she was furious.” He looked at Adnicul with eyes that were scared. “Her entire personality. She was a recluse hermit living in her halls and spending her life digging in the dirt, pushing cutlery against my throat and calling me a little wispy wuss if I refused to encounter her, digging in graves and laughing. She invited me to eat her dirt and then buried my head in the sand. All I could do was swallow. Her awful persona invited, sickened and fascinated me at the same time and I never knew why. Maybe only as a challenge to actually face up to her evil, to any odd evil. She was everything I was not. Atheistic, provincial, pale, boring, evil, dark, unhygienic. An insane woman with bad food habits.”
Adnicul laughed. “I know.”
“It was almost as if she had planned that day in 1392 all along. I was on the right track back then. But she made me think about her for years and forget the road I was on. Sure, I did everything a king should do. But I spent years dwelling in areas I should’ve rejected: adultery and spiritual oblivion. I became a man on the run. She had killed my man servant, my parents and my sisters. I should’ve brought her to trial for that. She burnt down my summer mansion and made me exile my best friend. She should’ve been publicly humiliated. But I fled into adultery and consequently blamed the children that were born during this time for everything that had happened. A vicious circle had started, but I could not break it until now.” Alex gazed into the fire. “Just now. Strange, isn’t it?”
“And 1411?”
“What about it?” Alex snapped. “You were there yourself. You need not ask.”
“I was in a trance, Alex. I was not myself. Not until now have really been me.”
“Then we have both found ourselves, haven’t we?” Alex shook his head and looked down. “You killed my innocence, Adni.”
”I just brought you closer to the real you.”
”How so?” Alex mused. “You credit yourself with my spiritual recovery?”
“You say yourself you had fled from the truth. Now Lucinda was attacking you a second time. Did you start a war? Did you put her to trial?”
“So, you want me to thank you, Judas?”
Adnicul laughed. “No. Listen. You fled again. You fled until, eleven years later, Lucinda came to your country and stole it from you.” Adnicul shook his head. “I am not defending the maniac I was back then, but …” He paused. “I did involve myself in a scam that tried to shake you awake.” He chuckled, nervously. “Unintentionally, of course, but never the less …” Adnicul leaned forward. “You were brought to a point where you could not flee anymore. When fleeing was not possible.” He sat back, the fire glowing in the light of his one eye. “You had sent Lucinda away, but by not putting her to trial you made it possible for others to do the same with you.”
”Who?”
”You tell me, Alex! I am not your father. Your children? Walter? Your people, Alex? The people who in public lynched Morgana and Patrick? You fled even then. You put them to trial that were innocent, not the criminals.”
”I could not find the criminals. Someone had to be punished for what they did. I did not know you knew about that.”
”Regardless if I knew about it, Alex. You punished anyone, just to make a point. That is wrong. You cannot fight fire with