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

their way. Oversized, horns, tails and all, monster like and huge, Lucifer and Lucinda gazed at them, grinning:
”You thought I was dead, didn’t you?”
Alexander gasped “I was happy to see you taken away!” as he criss-crossed the area around the two beasts. Adnicul held up his hand. “What are you trying to do, Adnicul? Keep me from losing my temper? God damn it, I can loose my temper. Leave us alone, we have come this far. I don’t intend to loose!”
Lucifer screamed witrh laughter.
“How do you intend to save yourself little one?”
At once, Alexander remember the tale that Adnicul had told him about the failure at the beach.
What had he said back then? What had the original angel said?
Then, he thought of it:
”Hwee-Aiell-Sihl.”
Lucifer stopped laughing. “What was that?”
”Hwee-Aiell-Sihl. He who eternally excels above everyone in life lies lustily steadfast in his lifestyle. Hwee-aeill-Sihl. You can’t escape.”
At once, the cave and the pit started crumbling. From out of Lucifer trees sprang up from his horns
and his back and his torso and head and legs like mushrooms. They were all forbidden trees.
Soon enough, he was full of trees and screaming he fell into a dark pit of nothingness.
The only one left was Lucinda, who looked at them in petrified awe.
Alex was triumphant.
“I forgive you as you forgive yourself!”
The witch disappeared under the noses, turning into dusty light and falling into the darkness.
The two men, relieved to have come this far, joined the other thirty-five and one by one entered the cave above. They found Reficule, now a sweet, lovable dog, obviously transformed into what he once had been, a wolfhound.
Not short after that, they saw him disappear into the shadows.
There was an entrance of the small cave, that obviously was shortcut to the world above.
They walked into that light and found themselves at the end of january tunnel, looking into a pit that seemed to be souls being thrown into fire. Several of the visitors knew what this was and where they had just been. The looked to the right and knew that this other place was short cut to heaven.
They were visitors, they knew that, but still they decided to take a peak. Eventually, standing at the edge of the doorway to heaven they saw it all. Thirty seven men, women and children and one dog at Eden’s doorstep.

All the theories that were to be formulated in yet uncreated heads were gusts of wind flying around God's mind. All the Greek tragedies and comedies were yet unborn centaurs playing in the sunlight.
The Gregorian Chants soared around him like kites in the night. Chopin's piano-pieces were small piano flowers and Demostenes works were leaves on the oak-trees growing in the Fields of Nostalgia. Moliere's plays were yet only ash-tree roots waiting to grow into gloriously meticulous ingenuity of comic bliss. King Arthur's round table was a pasture of lilies swaying in the wind. Bach's music was a field of sunflowers growing majestically and waiting to be transformed into clear thought. And over in a corner waiting for millennia of evolution to pass were Freud, Hegel and even Darwin, not forgetting in their denial that they once lived here. As rosebuds the works of Spielberg and Lucas, Bergmann and Allen giggled yet as lights of their own little corners of unborn fire. And a wind named Hitchcock fragranced the trees with the smell of a spectacularly richly dark red rose. Metaphors enriched the symbolic flora of thought and future education. And so here, creation danced.

There were muses with golden voices and parrots with rainbow wings painting the blue skies with colour upon colour on a canvas of cumulus clouds and blue cream. The grass so green it dazzled the eye. The mountain touching skies so blue they seemed like oceans.
The daytime sky seemed to have a deeper, richer, more intense blue in Yambalah than anywhere else.
The trees gave a home to green leaves whose colour transcended the depth and went into the luscious.
The nature hummed here.
It was absolute beauty, friendship, love.

Adnicul turned to the group and smiled.
“This is my stop. I need to leave you here.”
A tear rolled down Alexander’s cheek.
They embraced and as they did, Alexander felt his heart embrace his friend as well.
“My friend, thank you for saving my life!”
Adnicul raised his hand and caressed Alexander’s cheek.
“I only did it because it gave me the chance to come back home.”
He took and step back and sighed.
“To the rest of you, I apologize for my old self in the name of my new refound one.”
The sight of the former dictator now full of life and love was touching that almost everyone had tears of joy in their hearts and eyes.
“How sweet to see you find your own heart, Adnicul!” Belinda said.
Adnicul started backing into the light and as he did, he changed shape into a soul clad in white, his eye patch dropped and both eyes were bright and shining.
“Good bye, my friends.”
Waving arms saluted an angel who was greeted by other angels on the Fields of Nostalgia.
Slowly, the group of 36 people swam to the other side where Mercutio was still waiting. Centurion, as they came to the shore, lifted and shot off down the tunnel and headed right toward heaven.
Most of them stood wet on the shore as the white angel on the rock awoke for the first time since 7000 years. It was Lucifer’s purity that God had taken away from Lucifer at the battle of the plains with his brother. Within him shone a green stone, that was the heart of his innocence.
They angel smiled, the stone glowing in his soul.
“Thank you!”
Its voice was soft, high, rounded, gentle.
“For what?” Walter asked.
The angel smiled.
”For setting me free.” The angel turned to Alexander. “You remarkable man. Take my green stone in your hand and send me to heaven with your heart. When you set me free all that you have to do is exit this cave and you will come back to Clurafar.”
Alexander waded through the water and looked at the stone. It shone in green colours.
“Don’t be afraid!”
Sieglinde held her children tight, moved by this experience.
Alex took his right hand and entered the soul with it, felt how warm it was in there and really did not have to do anything else but hold it and think “Send him to heaven to his brothers” and look up.
Alex looked into the angelic eyes above him.
The angel smiled and caressed his cheek.
“God bless you!”
It turned into a white dove carrying the stone in its feathers as colour sprinkling behind and around him and flying toward the heavenly gate.
The crowd lead the horse back to where the cave’s opening and before they came out, they saw the extraordinary light that came from that exit. It was a normal light and Alex for the first time since he did not know when could breathe normal air.


CHAPTER NINE

THE HOMECOMING


Where was he?
In a dream, wandering about lonely on an avenue somewhere in a forest?
36 souls had wandered up the slope together, unified for the first time in too long.
They had seen that light from above that seemed to shine down on them, welcome them into it.
The light was not anymore faded and foggy as it had been before. It was almost blindingly bright, real. Even long before they reached it they ensemble held up their hands before their eyes, unused to the light of reality.
Alexander had said good bye to Adnicul. His former enemy and now time friend was back in heaven.
The angel on the rock was back in Eden.
Lucinda was dead and gone, who knows where she was.
Lucifer obviously was evicted from the alternate reality.
Did that mean their own future was secure?
But what was this?
Alexander had been on the road for way over a year now and he had forgotten what reality was.
Together, the 36 spirits had experienced war, decay and destruction for almost five years.
He had felt it back then possess him and take control of him like some animal cornering a prey.
That day, Alexander Winsletenna led his family toward the opening of the cave.
He had remembered how he had entered the cave. It had been night.
Now, it was day.
The light from up there was bright and he could see it shine from beyond the curve.
As he reached the top, he realized that the only illusion that they were experiencing was the cave they were in. It was the question of a world that needed to return to its own reality.
Obviously, there was a force at work here that seemed to transcend time and place.
They walked up and saw it.
It was amazing for Alexander to see how everyone cheered, knowing he had saved them.
They looked behind them and saw the cave.
They looked forward beyond the cave’s opening and saw the marketplace in Clurafar.
Walking out, the 36 brave hell travellers held their hands in front of their eyes.
Some cried and fell to their knees. Some laughed. Some shook their heads.
Alexander looked at his daughter and saw the experience of someone who had walked down these steps back in 1422. She was holding her husband’s hand.
There were obviously forces at work here. Why they entered here was something they did not understand. Obviously, they were in a small fragment of time yet not awoken, yet waiting to commence again. Angelic forces showed the assembly Alexander’s journey from the start.
There were images being shown in front of their eyes. They saw him deteriorate, they saw him isolated, saved, determined, attacked, helped, tutored, fighting, loving and winning.
They were in Clurafar walking out down the steps from the senate toward the good old Cathedral of St. Raphael. There was no one here, not one person. The entire marketplace was empty.
Alexander had held Mercutio close to his side.
Now that horse was gone.
There was a stab of pain inside Alexander, when he realized that Mercutio had been given to him as a gift back during the war of 1427. He realized that Mercutio was no more a part of this reality and it hurt. Belinda knew what her father was thinking and put her hand on his shoulder.
The entourage looked ahead and saw, in this mirage of last illusions obviously displayed by an angel, how Alexander had fought the Nocturanians and lost. How everyone had died and left him alone.
They saw how he had buried his daughter Belinda and how he gone crazy.
They saw how Belinda returned and how they had spent a night speaking about the conspiracy by the light of torches.
They saw Alexander leaving the castle and meeting mentors.
They saw him entering the first forest and hunted by werewolves.
They saw him in a crisis, sharing his time with Belinda.
They saw him on the beach, sharing his time with the angels.
They saw him in the avenue, tested and torn apart on the wasteland.
The entire company saw their king talking to himself in the green land, heading toward Yambollah and being trained by the