THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 2 by Charles E.J. Moulton (amazing books to read .txt) 📖

/> She was living her own death.
She did not speak, did not sing, did not love and did nothing but sleep and cry.
She was a woman without a distant sky to look upon and someone whose life had no meaning.

Tuesday May 18th 1428

Four minutes worth of time is all it took to lure the little child to come with her.
Since the day when her husband had been so brutally mutilated, Belinda guarded the little boy like a mother eagle would guard her newborn. She ate and slept and drank and wept and bathed and even did her lavatory duties only in his presence. She would not let him go for an instance.
The little boy, of course, was traumatized beyond belief and completely numb with fear.
He had nothing to say and laughed only very rarely.
Often enough he would sit in his room, Belinda by his side and Alexander sitting by the window, playing with some valuable toy. It was not really playing. He touched it and stroked it and pulled it along the floor whilst mother and grandfather sat still and paralyzed looking out at their haunted kingdom.
It had been Alexander’s idea. They had been so many days inside the palace that they had turned in just as dusty artefacts as the statues in the corners. They saddled Mercutio and Timothy and rode into the capital. What met them that Tuesday morning was a sight that would’ve made the demon’s shiver.
The capital of Clurafar was completely empty. The inns were deserted, the Senatorial forum was vast in its’ solitude and St. Raphael’s Cathedral was a place of God still welcoming believers, but no believers alive to be welcomed in.
Belinda asked where they all had gone and Alexander answered that they probably were asleep in the real world just as they were.
It was early afternoon when they returned to the palace grounds. It was clear now to all of them that this was Lucinda’s illusion. This was not the reality. The question was how to escape from it. They had no plan. Belinda suggested they go up to the hill and overlook the view of the land. There was the place where the best ideas came to their heads.
Alfred, for once, found himself playing and running in grass just like a normal boy of five years of age would. He found no birds in the sky and no bees to chase, but he did find grass and he did find the sun. Belinda watched him closely and new that one of them was next. Either she or Alfred would go next.
“Be prepared, Father” Belinda told her father that day. “You will not leave this illusion. You will have to go on. Somehow, when I am dead, search us. Find us and fight Lucinda. You will be the only left alive in the haunted kingdom.”
It was shortly before dusk when the three family members rode to the waterfall.
They had decided that if they stay only a half hour they would be home before dark.
Alfred had been playing in the grass and reading a parchment about flowers when the woman in a black dress came up to him. She came from behind and whispered into his ear that she had a surprise for him behind that tree. She had fresh cream tart and honey toast with wine nuts there. There were roasted almonds and honey dunked pears in sherry with stained glass candy sprinkled kinderbitz. There were waffles and gooseberry fool cakes and a very large bowl of apple roasted peanuts.
Belinda and Alexander noticed nothing of this. For two minutes the woman in the black and glittery dress talked to Alfred, who willingly followed her behind the tree. In the last minutes of his life, Alfred remembered the bread crumbs and tried to scream.
It was too late. The hand that held him down and crushed his skull in two separate pieces was too strong and soon enough his mutilated body floated up stream toward the mother.
Belinda could not stop screaming and kept on yelling all the way home.
Belinda’s face buried inside the pillow, her eyes felt burning hot and bulging, she spent the night crying in bed. Swollen with pain, Alexander wandered about the palace holding the boy and hoping that the stories that Belinda told him about this being the haunted kingdom was true.
Belinda literally felt how hot the salt water was that protruded from her eyes. She blamed herself for not holding him all the time by the hand.
Alfred was dead and now there were only two left, she and Alexander. She had no will to live. There was no hope at all left for anything.
“My dear son, why did you have to leave me?”
In her hand she held the note that she had found pinned to her son forehead.
It had been written by Lucinda.

Curisosity killed Alfred

A poem by Lucinda Winsletenna
(Belinda, I told you I’d keep my promise)

There is almost no one here,
So that’s why I am coming to you, dear,
Don’t worry, this is not the end,
But your father will have to do more than transcend.


I told you that I would give you war,
And some scandals that the cleavage made soar,
No there is nothing more,
But for Prosperania to be what it is … a bore.

Friday May 28th 1428 – Belinda’s last day in the haunted kingdom

Belinda never recovered from the incident. She often just sat in a corner, moving back and forth on one place, huddled up like child, chanting: "Oh, my broken heart ... Oh. Help Me. Someone please help my broken heart." Alexander could do absolutely nothing. No matter how he tried.
She walked like a ghost at night, pacing the hallways. Walking all the places she had loved. The garden. The Grand Hall. The Alexander Room. The throne room. Places filled with activity. Dead now.
Alexander fed her, but she grew pale. She refused to eat. She spoke not. Sang not, loved not.
The last days she lived up again, picked flowers and sang Bantrard’s songs, but her mind was blank and she called her father "a welcoming stranger". Her skin was deadly white like a dying angel's breath waiting for the snow on a sun rising afternoon.
The last day she was lying in her father’s lap looking up at the clouds. The garden next to the Poseidon statue was in blossoming splendour although no one had worked to keep it florally potent.
“Father, where are we?”
“We are at home, love!”
Belinda looked up at the sky through the branches of the tree. They let in a few rays of the sun and made the eyes glitter. She took a look up at the balcony that she had had so many a breakfasts upon, her and Steven dining together and planning a future that would never manifest itself.
She gasped.
A tear ran down Alexander cheek. The breeze came and dried it away.
“We’re at home!”
Belinda bit her lip and a wrinkle appeared in a flight of worry between her eyes. “Dad!”
Her voice sounded almost childlike. He looked at her face. The blisters made her face almost unrecognizable. The plague had returned and attacked the very person who deserved it the least. Her face was full of scars and her eyes were tired.
“Yes, my darling?”
”Why did Steven have to die?”
He stroked her cheek as he looked into her brown eyes.
“Why Alfred? Why anyone?”
She sobbed and dried away a tear with a trembling hand.
“Why this pain?”
Alexander tried not to cry. “Why are we chosen to suffer? Why can’t they leave us alone?”
“I don’t know, babe! I don’t know!”
She looked up at the sky again. One leaf fell down and landed in her lap. She tried to reach it, but couldn’t. Alexander saw the struggle and took it, gave it to her. She held it up against the light. The crisscrossing veins in the leaf spoke of a living being that was in full growth.
She gasped again, this time in agony.
“What’s the matter?”
”Hurts.” She shook her head and tried to move. “I can’t move.” She sat up, but fell back.
“Don’t try, love.” He kissed her forehead. “Don’t try now. Rest.”
”I’m dying, Alexander. I do not know how we can win this game and perhaps we will never be
able to. Our land is empty and perhaps it is all just best that we die.”
“No.” He pleaded with her. “You are going to live … You are strong.”
She put a finger against his mouth and smiled.
“When I am gone, Father, I want you to keep it alive. Keep the spirit of sacred youth alive when I am dead. Don’t give up. Go out and find Lucinda. Promise me that you will track her down.” She coughed. “I do not even now what I am dying of. Lucinda gave me this cough and I … Promise me that you will find an answer. Don’t give up.”
He shook his head. “Belinda, love. You will not die. I cannot live without you…”
”Do not cry, Father … Do not give up.” She looked at him, reindeer eyes a glow past the scars of
her broken face. “Promise me you will keep this alive.”
He looked at her, his eyes dead and cold. He nodded, bravely. ”I promise.”
She looked up at the sky, gasped, catching her breath.
Alexander sobbed in surprise. “What?”
“I …” She stopped. “Father, I see them.”
”Who?”
“Everyone.” She looked excited and managed to sit up, took Alex by the cheeks and turned it toward the lawn. “You see.” He could not, but he nodded all the same.
“Yes. I see them.”
”Mother and Steven and Alfred and Morgana and …” She embraced her father and sobbed. “I
don’t want to die … I don’t want to …”
He grabbed her tight and tried to give her some of his energy to keep her alive, but she was like a feather slipping out of his fingers.
“Carry me up to the picnic hill, Father! I want to see the grounds from above one last time…”
She struggled to lift her hand and her father wondered what she wanted to do.
“No, Belinda!”
She shook her head.
She reached to her chest and inside her bra.
She slid her hand inside the left breast side of her dress and took out a wooden heart, painted in the colour of red. She looked at it. “I want you to have this …”
“What is it?”
“A heart. A young girl gave it to me at St. Raphael’s when I was praying there in disguise. She was distraught over a failed relationship and I was there to help her with advice. I always hoped that I could help her to find her peace.” She handed him the heart.
He looked at it. It said “LOVE AND FAMILY”.
“It is yours. Keep it well and remember why you must fight.”
He looked at her and stroked her cheek.
“I will …”
“Don’t loose it …”
He shook his head and put it in his left trouser pocket.
“I love you, Father …”
He nodded, but before he could pick her up to respond she slumped back and died in his arms.
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the 28th of May that year of the Lord 1428 Belinda gave up the ghost, her soul