Page 54 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Her gaze lingered on him. “But you are still risking your master’s wrath,” she said. Then, she turned her head in the direction of that terrible room with its littering of bodies. “Did you warn any of the others?”
The old man seemed to sag a little, the weight of his existence, of his life, bearing down on him. Some of the light went out of his one good eye. “I tried,” he said quietly. “It is difficult when the master is ever-lurking. He is lurking nearby even now. But when I stand before God, I should like to tell him that I did at least once good thing in me lifetime. I’ve watched the master kill many a good man in his quest to punish Lenore’s killer. I canna stand by and watch it happen again, so ye must go. Get yer husband and leave before it is too late!”
Havilland didn’t need to be told twice.He is lurking even now. Those words terrified her. On shaking legs, she raced back to the spiral stairs, running up them as fast as she was able, scurrying through the darkness until she came to the small chamber where she had left her husband. Only the chamber door was ajar now; she knew for a fact she had shut it.
Curious, she pushed the door open only to find the host standing over her heavily sleeping husband, a very large and wicked looking dagger in his hand.
Havilland screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonianshore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hathspoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above mydoor!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off mydoor!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
