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

I thought you just came to chat. How sad.”
“You know very well what key I speak of. Give its to us.”
Lucifer gestured, very bored, toward Joan and yawning, said:
”Give them the key, Joanie, so we can get on with out show.”
They noticed that all the screaming had stopped and the crowd of millions simply lay there silent, waiting for everything to commence. Lucifer snapped with his finger and suddenly a huge bowl of bananas lay in in his lap. He began munching.
Joan took her long fingers and grabbed between her own large breasts. She picked out a large golden key with a simple golden plate attached on a ring. It said 6.
Lucifer smiled and said, his mouth full:
”Since you will not get out of this among the healthy and wealthy and well, shall we say” he burped “I shall let you pass through here to the door and commence the show once you are down the corridor to number 6. N’est pas?”
Adnicul sneered.
“Oh, do please behave Adnicul. After all, I gave you free meals every day. What you did to Lucinda broke her heart as well as mine. At least, you had company.”
“Thanks for the key!”
“You are so welcome!”
Adnicul started walking away and Alex followed him.
“Oh, boys!”
The two men turned around, their feet on the first steps of the staircase.
“Have fun!”
The two men walked toward the next gate in such amazing silence that neither of them knew if they should laugh or cry. The walk seemed so long because every face was completely dead and numb. No one grabbed, no one sighed, no one screamed. Just millions of bodies looking up toward the baldachin and waiting for the games to commence.
The meeting had been brief, but Alex knew that he had not needed more time to see who this person was or all he was about.
Soon enough they were unlocking the door and entering the next level.
Alex was aware now that he had seen several of these souls cry as they looked up and waited for the sign of the one without name.
He had even heard one of them say “I am sorry!”
As the entered the next level, behind them the screams commenced again.

Level six was nothing but a garbage disposal at first.
At least, that was what Alex thought.
Empty glasses and destroyed wagons shared piles with cut off heads and bloody limbs.
At one point, there was a pyramid of heads that all watched him as he walked by, their eyes simultaneously moving in his direction.
The third garbage pile was simply a pile of torso without heads.
He had no idea what to expect.
He had seen the organized souls turn for hope and then have to work.
He had seen them suffer and then leave all decency behind.
But what was this?
A waiting room? Again.
A waiting space for the hungry?
He looked up and saw a moon.
It was the fullest and most pregnant moon he had ever seen in his life.
Obviously, this moon was an illusion. No moon could be that white, that ominous.
Then he heard crickets.
He looked at Adnicul.
He shrugged.
Alex picked up his sword, held it firmly in both his hands.
There was something approaching in the distance.
It was as if …
Alex stopped and so did Adnicul.
What was that?
It was snarling.
No, wait. There were two approaching.
Two of whatever they were.
He could see them running toward them in the fog.
The snarl was much louder now. Much, much louder.
It was the growl of a hungry beast.
He heard now that they were three, no four.
He saw them.
The two men started running to the right, both by instinct wanting to make a turn around the beasts.
They saw them, what were they, wolves?
No, they stood up. They were screaming, howling.
One of them jumped on Adnicul, knocked him down. He took his sword and … It would not work. He tried to push the beast away, but it was too close.
“Alex!” he screamed. “I can’t make it.”
One of them grabbed Alexander by the leg and started to pull him away, whilst the other ripped at his hair. Alex started to stand up and realized there were more coming.
Alex fought himself to sit up. Aimed at the creature behind him and hoped to kill it.
He swung his sword back and heard a squashing sound. The beast let go of his head and fell with the hollow thud of a furry monster upon muddy ground.
That moment there was a howl behind him.
The wolf was about to devour Adnicul, was he alive?
He did not look alive.
Alex shook his head. He had magic powers. Fabian, Michael, where are you.
The beast kept pulling him further away.
That was when he decided to take control of this. He did not know where this power came from. Was it power given to him in the forest village? Had he acquired it on his own whilst travelling the avenue or in The Ides of March? Whatever the source, it all came forth now. All the odd days of feeling like a victim was over. Here was a man who had come this far to save his family and was not going to give up now.
He kicked the beast in the head, who gave him a long, startled look, so human that he could almost see the real being behind that stare. It was a man of sixty with long, dull eyes and a hawk like nose.
He gave the man another kick who fell flat on the ground.
There were more beasts approaching, but before that happened, Alex lifted and flew away at such a breakneck speed that it startled even him.
He lifted the sword and aimed for the beast and as he came closer he saw that Adnicul was unconscious, not dead. His chest was moving, heaving and falling as his the breath of hell entered and left his lungs over and over.
The sword, whose blade had been inscribed angelically, was buried into the heart of the beast.
The beast turned around, snarled, bloody mouth drooling over its own fur.
Alex saw now that Adnicul had a deep wound in his hip.
Alexander took the sword and with one swift stroke cut off the head of the beast.
The head rolled and rolled and stopped about ten feet away. It transformed. Now, Alex saw it was the head of a young woman, obviously gone down to hell so far to become a wolf.
Alexander lifted the beast and threw it away. He immediately bent down and began to feel the wound with his emotions. Could he heal it? It was worth a try. He should at least try it, his friend had saved his life so often, it was time for a life-debt’s repaying of circumstances.
All of his love and all of his warmth went into that cure.
He heard the slow approaching of the beasts and the were many.-
Did he have time?
No stress now, Alex.
You have come this far.
At once a blue glow came out of his fingertips and surrounded the wound. Magically, it healed right under his eyes. The blood disappeared, the cut itself closed and even the clothing above it repaired itself: Alexander had to laugh to himself. He had cured …
Adnicul opened his eyes and smiled.
“Am I alive?”
Alex nodded. “I just healed you. Your wound were deep, but I …”
They both looked across the plains and saw it.
The second troop was under way.
They were demons, horns, tails, hoofs, red skin, fur and all, but with large wings flapping.
What he had heard had not been a stampede, but the flapping of a hundred thousand wings.
Alex held up his hand to Adnicul, not realizing that former Nocturanian dictator had spent years using his magic powers to terrorize people.
Alexander Winsletenna lifted and met the first ten with such a swift stroke of blade that ten heads flew off.
He found himself screaming:
”The Lord will conquer you with all the power of his might!”
After that first phrase he saw Adnicul fighting a group of demons. There was a safety shield around him, transparent. He seemed to be able to protect himself with it.
Alex searched within himself and found he was not able to trust his own powers that much yet. And he fled the plains only to return and kill another forty demons, he went for another try. He found that he could feel the peace within him, an oasis that, no matter what situation prevailed, stayed the same. It was the beach where he had met the angels for the first time.
The energy field emerged.
That was when he felt himself completely immune to the throws and spitting fire of the demons. In fact, they only perished themselves when they tried to come near his own safety bubble.
Alex and Adnicul used their swords, but mostly they just flew around and came near the demons, which dropped accordingly.
Often, more often than not, Alexander hugged some of the demons and felt how they died in his arms, knowing it impossible for them to touch him through this knew weapon he had found.
The battle of deathly embraces as he would call it lasted for so long. The moon shone on the plains and gave the battlefield an eerie look of ominous mystery.
Soon enough, mother luna shone on a battlefield of fifty thousand dead demons.
Slowly, the two men landed on the ground and decided to aim for the gateway to level seven.
“Lucifer knows we made it and he never expected us to get past the wolves” Adnicul said.
“He is after us now, either here or down in level seven, so let’s go” he continued.
”Are there more beasts ahead?”
”Yes, Alex.”
”Then., Adnicul. I take charge from here.”
”You go first then, Sire!”
As newly appointed leader, he then promptly vanquished ghouls, dogs, worms, insects, cats and a gang of leather clad youngsters on some strange vehicles with wheels.
Both of the men turned back, a foot away from the hole that lead to number seven.
They saw a huge, thirty foot large monster with horns, obvious Lucifer in transformation, gallop toward them, just as the jumped down and disappeared.

At level seven, there he was.
The two men were dumped literally right in front of a couple of mahogany doors, who close behind them.
Standing up, the first thing they saw was a large throne room in heavy sandstone. There were paintings on the walls of naked women, bacchanal feasts, sacrilegious works and dark faces.
Huge torches, about twenty on each side lit the hall. There was a red carpet in front of Lucifer’s throne.
He sat there, two extremely large horns decorating a mostly furry face, clad in red garments and tapping his left foot in a steady andante. The only thing one could hear was this one hoof and now and then a bored snarl.
He sat up as the slowly approached.
“So” he said, cheerfully in a very deep, sonorous contra basso voice. “How do you want to die? Grilled on hot