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

coal or plucked apart by my demons for lunch?”
There was a long pause.
Alex dared to speak first.
“We don’t intend to die, we intend to live in order to retrieve my family.”
Lucifer looked at them, very amused and then burst out laughing.
He shrugged, as the laughter died down.
“We-hell, my friends, how do you know they are here?”
Adnicul cocked his head.
“What?”
“I must say“ Lucifer continued calmly “that you have been incredible. You, Alexander have shown remarkable endurance the past year. Every feasible enticement have you warded off. I could’ve made you emperor, but you said no to all of that. Why?”
“I believe there are more important things. Besides, I already am a king.”
Lucifer smiled: “We’ll see about that.”
He looked at Adnicul.
“You. I never thought you would escape.”
”I never though” Adnicul countered “that you would betray me.”
“Well, betrayal is my best quality. Look at where Lucinda is now, huh? She is back to square one, receiving her good old lecture from the man with the long beard.” Lucifer smiled. “I’m sorry, I just love these clichés. Don’t love how humans describe God. A man with a long beard. Why a beard? Because I have horns? That is all how you choose to see me. Actually, I am nothing but a spirit. If you choose to give me horns than fine. I like horns.”
Alexander lost his temper. “Damn it, Lucifer. This is urgent. We have come all this way to get our family. Where are they? Your weapon is dead. You have no chances.”
Lucifer sneered. “Who says that I ever told you the truth about where they were, huh? Do you think that I would sacrifice a weapon I’d planned so meticulously and send you down here if they actually were here?”
Lucifer stood up, now enormous.
“You have come all the way here to meet me. If they are here, you must kill this image first. The spirit will always be alive.” He began walking down the hallway, making the entire place shake with every footstep. “I am eternal and I have played this game long before your first incarnation. You can kill me, even get your family back, Alex, but one day your grandchildren will meet me and they will pay.”
Alex picked up his sword.
“Don’t count on it, Lucy!”
Lucifer hollered at him: “Don’t ever call me Lucy!”
With that, the two men flew up and attacked Lucifer who just met them with his hands up, grabbed them and threw them against the wall. He screamed so loud that one of torches fell down upon the floor and set fire to one of the carpets.
A little shaken, the men stood up again. Adnicul went in back and Alex in front.
Lucifer turned around, picked up Adnicul and breathed in his face. Adnicul winced.
“Your name is the reverse of someone already dead, so why should you stay alive.”
Adnicul grinned and buried his sword in his arm.
Lucifer screamed.
Alex spoke and when he did, Adnicul dropped to the ground.
“Tell me, Lucifer, why you love to abuse free will.”
Lucifer took a long look at Alex, searched for a meaning in that phrase.
The he smiled. “Future philosophers shall call it cycles of deprivation. What Dad does, the son keeps on doing.”
”Meaning?”
”God betrayed me, so I betray God. He even wrote it the Bible didn’t he? Eye for an eye. Well, he gets a taste of his own medicine.”
Adnicul stood up, rubbing his back.
“This is no fun” Lucifer mused. “You puss willows are not giving me any fight here!”
”The fight is over, Lucifer and you know that. You lost when Lucinda died.”
Lucifer began to scream with laughter.
“Do you think that I would lead you here to the bowels of hell and give you the key to the most secret of spots of hell without a PLAN?”
“Lucifer, I …”
Alexander didn’t have time to finish his sentence.
The whole room started to shake and quail. It felt like a herd of angry bulls were attacking the room from the outside. It felt like this was a one room house standing free in a field and attacked by a tornado from all sides except below.
Lucifer continued to laugh, raising his arms in the air, casting his face toward the shaking ceiling, clenching his fists, broad legged, triumphant.
The entire room was blurry now and a wind swept through the room that made the paintings themselves shake and the carpets fly around the room.
Alex looked across his shoulder and saw the mahogany doors lightly bang back and forth.
Beyond it he saw nothing but darkness.
“Do you think that I would be taking you all the way here” Lucifer screamed in joy “without a plan?”
Now the wind was so strong that the entire room including the walls were going blurry. Adnicul and Alex leapt to each one side of the room and held on to whatever they could find. With Alex it was the wall.
He saw Lucifer bend backward and a wind take him and sweep him away bit by bit.
The storm was entering the room, the mahogany doors were banging back and forth now and showing that absolutely nothing was behind them.
With one swift slow stroke the walls and the ceiling were swept away.
With a bang the whole area, except the floor was gone, including Lucifer, whose laughter still echoed in whatever pit was under them.
They looked up, sweaty and tired, and found …
Alex felt his hands, they were clenched around bars.
The space between them were minimal, barely place for a racoon to creep between.
He looked up. Cage all over, except for the middle where there was a small hole. That could serve as a small exit.
He looked at Adnicul, who dumbfounded looked at the pit below the cage.
That was when he heard the noise below them both.
Instantly, they knew that the far off purgatory screams and fire torture were the troubled souls of level seven, past the steep downward tunnel in the pit. The tunnel was leading straight to the flickering flames of hell. The screams from below haunting his ears, he felt the floor in front of him.
The pattern? He recognized it. The table next to him. That seemed familiar, too.
He stood up.
Oh, my dear. This was …
The Grand Hall. A replica of the Grand Hall of his palace.
Then Adnicul gasped at the north-eastern-corner of the cage and for the first time, Alex looked up from ground to his friend.
“Alex!” he screamed. “Come here! Quick! “ Adnicul looked at him and said again, even more sternly now. “Quick, man, quick!”
Alexander did as he was told. As he did, he saw what Adnicul had seen.
They were in a ring of cages hanging over this bottomless pit, one of many cages with no walls or roof but with a ceiling. There must’ve been at least two dozen of these cages like theirs, if he was not mistaken. No, more.
“My God, these cages are all …”
They looked at each other.
Alex nodded.
“They are all replicas of your Grand Hall, Alex!”
He looked at the ring of cages. They all hung by chains. These chains seemed all to hang from a large metal structure, which coned into a larger chain, disappearing into another hole. Whatever was guarding the whole structure was to be found there.
Alex looked back toward the cage to their right.
Someone was moving inside there. It was … It … was …
Oh, sweet saviour. He saw who it was now.
He began rattling the bars.
“Belinda! Belinda, can you hear me?”
Adnicul put his hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t believe that she can hear you …”
”Of course she can hear me …”
In that moment, Belinda, her long hair falling gently across her chest and back, turned around as if woken by a dream.
She turned around and realized first where she was and started to scream. When she was finished, she looked down into the pit and obviously understood first now that she was where she was.
She looked toward her own left and saw a man there.
“Daddy?”
The man smiled.
She laughed, the laugh echoed in the pit.
“Daddy?”
She ran to the bars and rattled them.
“Daddy, oh my God, you made it this far. You are here …”
Alexander smiled.
“It is so good to see you, my sweet.”
She suddenly saw who was standing next to her father.
“Who is … what is he doing here?”
”Calm down, he is transformed.”
“Daddy, he is a monster.”
“Belinda. He is a victim of Lucifer’s greed, as well. I would not be here if it weren’t for him.”
Belinda took a long look at him.
”All he wants is to save his own soul. He was the first angel that Lucifer created on his own. He wants only one thing: to get back to heaven. This is the way.”
Belinda nodded. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Hello, Adnicul!”
”Hello, Belinda!” Adnicul answered, softly. “Pleased to save your life!”
Alex raised his hand and shook it. “Don’t speak too soon, sweet lips. We haven’t done it yet.”
Belinda shrugged. “How are we going to do this? We have to save all of us. First we have wake them all up from their illusions.”
That was when he saw the cages around him.
There, to his own left was Rolf alone. In the cage next to Belinda’s was … dear Lord … Sieglinde … Morgana in the forth one… There was a fifth cage with Steven. There was a cage with, no it was too hard to see. He could not see how many people were here only that there were thirty-six cages. Thirty six? Yes. That many. Thirty six. Three dozen cages.
“We have to save all of these people, wake them up.”
Adnicul nodded. “Yes, but how?”
”I was taught that everything is possible by spiritual strength in an illusion.”
”But this is no illusion, this is hell.”
“I was trained for this. This is the reason the trained me to fly. I was taught to lift objects with my mind. We did it on level six with the demons. Why can’t we do it here?”
Adnicul looked worried.
“What is your plan?”
”I believe that Lucinda is still alive, as is Lucifer …”
”You can’t kill him off …”
“So, we will have to be quick. We can fly, so let’s fly from cage to cage. By cage thirty-six we will have to get all of these people up to that hole in the cave ceiling somehow.”
Adnicul looked up. “Whatever is there is going to give us problems.”
“Are you ready?”
Adnicul looked at Alex. “You want to carry all those people with the power of your own might from cage to cage? That is going to take more spiritual strength than I have known anyone to have.”
Alexander nodded. “You are right. So, what do we do?”
Adnicul looked up. “See that ledge next to the hole there? It seems to hold quite a lot of people.”
”It circles the hole.”
”We position the people there and then go step by step after we wake them up. The cages all seem to have these holes in the middle.”
”It all seems too easy.”
Adnicul shook his head. “None of them can fly, we can. Most of them are