THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (best books to read now txt) 📖

and forth behind the trees inside the trees. What they were he did not know.
All he knew was that he felt remarkably alone and as if he was walking around in a crowded place at the same time. He felt very good and very bad about the same sensation simultaneously. He felt good because he was coming closer to whatever reason had brought him out here in the first place. He felt bad because that very reason could destroy him entirely if he wasn’t careful.
As he then rode out into the open again, an old man was standing there in the dark.
Something had changed. It was now night.
He must’ve been one of those people who rarely spoke in real life, because as Alex saw him he seemed to be at a level which forbade him to enter another way of being which forced him to talk with other living beings. He was a twilight creature and exclusively destined to show travellers the right path to glory. The creature himself could not find salvation unless he was lead into Zion by someone that was pure and clean and did not need attention for selfish rule. Alexander felt himself float somewhere in time between his own conscious self and the odder twilight zone. There was a sort realization that his life was now changing. His soul now spoke to him in a language he heard before when he been younger and more open. Alexander was a man with a changed nature, but changed back to what he once had been. Dreams returned to him. Playing on the beach. Dropping coins in wells and singing about the future in melodious voices that sang of love.
Real life? So who was this old man? A ghost from Alexander’s past?
The man was standing in high grass, closed eyes, arms to his side. One raven sat on his left and one raven sat on his right shoulder. Two were at his feet. There had been four robins by the wayside. There four ravens here.
The old man had four teeth. Through his open mouth Alex saw only four of them and the man was smiling. These four teeth were rotting and brown, but there were four teeth there that he could see.
He was dressed in brown rags and his dirty feet were shoeless.
And yet, the man had a glow about him.
There was a truth to this strange old hermit that transcended time.
Alex stopped and sat there on Mercutio for two minutes just looking at the hermit, wondering where he had seen him before. He had met some people at the beginning of his trip.
The old man in the inn?
No.
This man was older. The man outside the forest?
The Cassandra that had told him to stay away?
Was that him? Yes, it was. He recognized him. His long grey hair was even more unwashed now that he seemed to have more mileage behind him. But there was a serenity to the man now that had not been there before.
Behind the man was the village. The inn was lit. Four other houses, as well.
The hermit opened his eyes and Alex at once remembered the old man’s blue eyes.
The smile remained.
Then the old man spoke, very slowly. He sounded like a priest. A toothless priest.
A toothless, meditating priest.
“You have done well” he said. Alexander said nothing to this. What could he say? “Last time I saw you, you had no goal. You were a ship without a compass. Now you are man with a mission. How did this happen?”
Alexander shrugged. Then he looked up, too shy to speak.
There was a smile on the man’s lips.
“I don’t know, old man” Alex finally said. “Maybe the truth of circumstance reached my soul of souls.”
“It happened within you” the man smiled and said. His toothless smile seemed to transcend the power of speech and tell him not to worry if things went wrong because they had a reason.
“I was lead by invisible forces” Alex responded. “Maybe that was it.”
“Yes, Sir” the hermit nodded, “but don’t forget that the invisible forces work for you and they work for God.” The man cocked his head, his face growing serious. “You know what I mean?”
Alex shrugged.
He was looking down at the village.
“What is down there?”
The hermit looked at Alexander’s finger and followed his pointing down to the valley.
The man looked at him again and there was a very clear look of calm and collected power in his face when he with such light and happiness said:
”Your future.”
Alexander shivered.
“Where am I heading?”
“Home” he responded. “You are heading home. But there are very strict lessons you have to learn.”
A slight breeze tousled his hair. “I have already suffered so. Why more pain?”
”You will receive everything back you have lost, but you have to face the inner demons.”
”In what way?”
”Join the enemy or have the enemy join you” the hermit said. “Transform them into beings of Light.” The hermit saw his confused gaze and laughed. “You have only begun this journey, your majesty. Remember that the real pain is up ahead.” The old codger looked down into the valley. “Down there you will find what life would be like if you had not been born, boy.”
The moon was a silver disc in the sky and the feathers of the four ravens glowed in the moon light. They were all walking in circles now around the old man’s feet. It looked like a rain dance.
“Why should the enemy join me? I hate the enemy.”
”Who is the enemy?”
”Lucinda. Adnicul. I have no idea where he is.”
”Your enemy is you and if you think that you need to conquer an enemy out there,” he said and pointed to the moon, “then you have learned nothing what Carla or your younger self has taught you.”
“Why is the enemy me?”
“Because you sent away Lucinda. You reprimanded Morgana. You escaped thirty years from something that needed to be dealt with.”
“Don’t bother me, old man” Alex said and stated off, seemingly irritated over having been reprimanded by a strange hermit by the wayside. “I will not face what life would be like had I not been born. Such nonsense. Leave me be.”
Alexander felt betrayed and bewildered and angry.
The man began to laugh, his toothless grin mocking him.
“Why are you laughing?”
He stopped his horse and rode back, almost challenging the hermit with his steady gaze.
“Because you still think you are a king.”
Alex stepped off his horse and pointed at the man.
“I am a king of the largest empire since Rome, so you better beware what you are saying, Sir.”
He shook his head.
“Where are your subjects now, Kingy-Wingy?”
Alexander shook his head. “What?”
“You heard me, your majesty. Where are your subjects, majesty-wajesty?”
“On leave” he took Mercutio and led him to the other side of the road, where he began to eat grass.
The man sniggered. “You have a problem, Sir!” The man made a farting sound. “Your arse!”
Alex left Mercutio where he was standing and looked up.
“You too. You have no teeth.”
He nodded. “Yes. You are right. My teeth are rotting. But at least I have a sense of humour.”
Alex looked down again.
“If you disagree with me, why don’t you leave?”
“Because I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Exactly, you need me. Why are you here? Because although the truth scares you, you need me.”
Alexander looked at the old man and saw that he was glowing. He lit up the road.
“Look at me, Alex. Who do you see?”
An angel. Alexander saw the angels of God.
“I see you. I see an angel.”
The hermit nodded.
”You see an angel because that is what you need to see. I might be something you created out your deep soul. I might be someone sent to you on purpose to talk to you about your future. Who do you think I am?”
Alex knew that he had been sent from heaven, opened his mouth to speak but was reprimanded.
“Your thought serves you well. Keep it in your deep soul.”
The hermit pointed to the village, his bony finger shaking.
“Four houses lit, four robins, four ravens,” the hermit said and looked back at Alexander, “and four rotting teeth.” The old man cackled, the teeth brown, his smile happy. “Four. Remember the four evangelists. Remember their names.”
Alex looked at the village, the inn and the four houses.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”
He looked at the hermit again and led Mercutio back across the road.
The stallion followed him.
“Go to the inn. You will be led to the four houses, Sir.” The hermit stood up straight, his back now strong and erect, pride shining across his features like a glow of life. “Remember why you are here, Alex. Call upon the spirits you need to help you. Find your country.”
Alex saw how the old man lifted every one of the ravens and turned into white wings that spread across his arms with white feathers.
Soon enough the old man was clad in white and floating mid air.
The hermit gave off a glow that seemed to shine across the entire valley way over to the mountains across the village. His face changed to one of angelic bliss.
“Be a good boy, now.”
The four feathers that had entered his aura left him and made his persona shine even more once gone. They hung mid air and were joined by four small specks of light from his mouth. These things moulded into one and were joined by four giggling spirits that seemed to glow in a ruby colour.
“Have the concentrated strength of a bird and fight the ravens of hell. Sink your teeth into the problem and maintain the happiness of a giggling robin.”
The four lights left the hermit-angel and hovered over the downhill road.
“Follow the four lights. They will lead you to where you need to be.”
With that, the angel left and Alex was wondering what magic powers where waiting for him next.
He slowly gazed at the four lights.
He mounted and sat up upon the saddle and began following the glowing, dancing lights down the hill.

§

For a year now she had been awoken every night by screams in the hallways. She had looked out the window and seen only the black horizon meeting the black sky. She had climbed the attic and seen the chain. She then realized that Iuventus Sacrum, such as it was, was hanging on a chain somewhere in another dimension.
She had lost everyone. They had lost her. She did not know which.
She had a feeling that every one of them where separated by illusion in their own alternate level of reality. Sieglinde, Steven, Zedrick, Rolf, Geena, Morgana, all of them. Even the little dog Henry. All of them where lost inside their own replica of home, chased by some odd demon.
She knew that some monster was guarding the castle at the end of the upper chain. For some reason, she believed that if Alex lost the battle, then the monster would chew the chain and send all of them down to oblivion.
She had searched everywhere and she had a theory. On chains all across the black place above what she thought was deep hell itself where a thousand replicas of