THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 2 by Charles E.J. Moulton (best ereader for pc .txt) 📕

could remember. He ended up often having fights with himself running down the hallways with wine bottles in hand, sometimes naked and sometimes bloody. He had eaten himself silly on the salty fish and conserved sweets and now had a beard the length of his legs. But his mind was confused. This world could not be real, could it? That day he decided never to try killing himself again. There was a reason for him to be here alone after all.


December 24th 1428

On Christmas Eve he had another dream.
This time he was in a long, rectangular hall without windows, with rows of chairs facing each other. They were wooden chairs and no one sat in them. Yet he felt the presence of everyone in the country right then and there, sitting in the chairs. It was obvious that they were haunting his mind.
The rows seemed endless. It seemed the long hallway never ended.
He walked among the chairs slowly, in between the rows, and felt these invisible spectators watch him closely. He heard whispers and quiet groans. It was like a man who stood three rooms away from where a wild party is going on. He hears the echoes of the voices. He knows something else is happening somewhere. But not exactly where. Or why. Or how. Or when...
The ghost of his past sitting on the chairs appeared as smoke. He recognized them. They were the same ones as in the previous dream. Now they looked at him for help. In the same sort of smoky eeriness words appeared in the air:
"FIND THE PATH! CARPE DIEM! AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT!”
Then Nomed was there, elegantly dressed. He walked up to Alex and bowed. When he stood up once more there were words on his forehead, as if carved by a knife primitively in something that appeared as straight red lines of volcanic acid: Tool of Darkness .

December 25th 1428

Alexander was on the hill now. It was Christmas Day. Another winter. Going crazy. No one in the country. From here everything looked normal. He saw the eight guesthouses from here that Queen Lucia had built in the 12th century: The Lily and The Tulip, The Rose and The Forget-Me-Not, The Anemone and The Orchid, The Rosemary, The Orange Blossom and The Lily.
Everyone wallpapered and gardened with its particular flower. Just a few years ago they had been full of people. Now they were empty.
He saw the poppy fields down where the oak tree used to be leading to the sunflowers. He saw the waterfall where the horrid occurrence had taken place seven years ago. The accident that started it all. He saw the palace with the small forest around it, the pond in the middle and the path through it.
He saw the garden and the gravel and the stables and even the gates. Beyond it he saw the road to the city that he had seen so many times before, travelled more times than he knew to count. He had seen it all, every inch. But now it had a new meaning to him entirely.
He almost expected someone to come up, maybe Geena or Rolf, perhaps Belinda or Patricia and tell him that Zeddy had arrived for the conference. He knew that would not happen. He knew everyone was dead or were they? Lucinda had definitely shown him his power. He had tried to counter her with her own methods. But it had not worked. He had desperately tried to save his land. But no matter what he did, Prosperania had died.
What struck him up there right then was that all of the people around him, his children as well as friends and everyone, had perished on their weaknesses. Patrick, Morgana, Patricia, Walter and even Zedrick had debauched themselves to death. Sieglinde and Geena had died because of their innocence. Belinda had died of a broken heart. Marcus and Martin because of their dry nature. Erica because of sensitivity. Everyone he knew had died on the graves of their own problem.
Now he was all alone. How was he going to perish? Alone.
From up here everything looked all right. But he knew that he was completely alone. Why did he not despair more? He should've despaired. Was he really all alone? He could not very likely be all alone in the world, now could he? He had travelled way beyond Iuventus and Clurafar and even the capital district of Kyrilliland way into Gargetania ... and found nothing. Found absolutely no one at all.
The other kings always sent him messengers. He knew all of their messengers so well now that he called them by first names. Yet, since April no messengers had arrived at all.
What did it matter? His near and dear ones were all gone so he might as well die as well. What was the point of living now. He looked around him. Yet, he wanted to stay alive, something was about to happen. How many picnics had he not experienced here. The voices of the past were ghosts in his mind. Those ghosts were here and he felt them calling out to him. Zeddy sitting next to his throne and Belinda shaking her head that her father was telling the same stories over and over. Steven talking about undercover military work and Sieglinde walking up to him and saying: "Alex, you must stop Steve from encouraging Theo like that.” But Theo had been impressed and wanted to become a lieutenant. Theo had joined the Hapa-valley battle and been awarded. Theo had married a girl named Julietta and lived in Alliland only to return last year, not to die in battle, but of the plague. Yes , what was the phrase again? Not 'The Lord works in mysterious ways' , but 'The Devil aims to surprise'.
Sieglinde had been afraid for his health when he went into undercover work. But he contracted the plague at home because he was not out there working.
He remembered that Erica and Patrick had wanted a girl, a little baby sister for their son, but they had gotten their death instead.
He remembered Belinda's laugh, the hiccupping goat as Steven used to call it , and how she had made him come down to earth after becoming a little to cocky. He remembered Sieglinde's soft body and the way she leaned against him. He remembered how she could fill a room with her silence when she disapproved. When Walter walked out with the ladies-in-waiting after his arrival when the accident occurred, Sieglinde said not much but every person knew just how much she disapproved of his behaviour. Oh, how he missed all of them. They were here or was that a mistake to think that?
There was that feeling again he had felt before. It was like someone was calling for his help.
He could not place it. Lucinda and this world were in the way. What was that feeling?
That night he ran through the palace, screaming at the top of lungs, asking Lucinda to appear.
In vain. He was determined to find out what this feeling was. Why he felt that there was hope.

December 31st 1428

All alone up here he realized that through all of the years there had been one weapon against Lucinda that he had forgotten: Christ and God. The most powerful weapon of all. Yes, he had gone to church every day, even said his goodnight-prayer. But whereas Sieglinde often went to church to pray, Alex seemed to be so busy governing that he seldom had time to ask God or Gabriel or Christ or any of the archangels for guidance.
The conclusion he made was: in all his work for Belinda and Sieglinde and his country he had forgotten not only God but his own family. He would change that.
Therefore, after taking one last look at his empty land, he walked down to the palace and entered the palace chapel to pray by Belinda's grave.

January 1st 1429

He had visited the graves and rode out to Clurafar in a sort of routine to find anyone at all, but returning in vain at dusk to the castle to find a haunted home waiting for him there.
Calls for help reached his way, but Lucinda tried to stop them.

He had two dreams, one about Sieglinde and one about Belinda. Both of them were real occurrences. Both of them he relived in his dreams as they really had happened. Both of them had died in his arms. But the dreams ended differently. And Alex wondered why.

Belinda had been alternately crying and laughing that whole day. She had stopped eating. She often walked around picking invisible flowers and asking him when Steven would return from the war. He had almost forced her to eat. But there was no way in making her eat. Her red brown hair was still as beautiful and her peachy complexion was only slightly gone. But the appealing curviness of her figure, her womanliness, was gone. She was thin and frail now. Thin and frail.
They had sat by the fireplace in the first landing sitting room the evening before and for a short while Belinda had lived up and become almost normal. But her dream world returned very quickly again to her mind.

He had found her at the foot of the stairs that day, in a pool of blood. She was lying at the foot of marble staircase at the East Wing entrance. Her frail hands had been carrying a boquet of dried flowers, roses and tulips mostly, when she apparently had fell down and hit her head. When she lay in her father's lap as he sat on the cold marble floor, head almost resting on his left thigh and looking up at him distantly she only said: "Father, my dear father! Help my broken heart!"
As those sweet glowing eyes silently burnt out, it was as if a clear flame had been extinguished, his heart raged and his eyes inundated like a river too high in tide. As he walked up screaming with agony that day, he cried each time he dream this reality, he shouted why God and could still remember lifting her up to the heavens and saying : "Why, God? What now?”
Then he saw that Prosperania suddenly arose from its ruins and that its people awoke.

The second dream he had that night was about how Morgana and Patricia were brutally mutilated on the open streets. He saw them being lynched and the mob walking away. He then saw himself walking up to them and touching them, making them come alive again.
Morgana told him that this, too, could become reality.

January 5th 1429

It seemed that Alexander’s life now was more present in his dreams than in reality.
The fire was kept alive and there was a fire going most of the time in the castle.
That night, however, the king dreamt that he was the captain of a large ship