Page 55 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Part Four
Thing of Evil….
“Jamison!”
Havilland’s piercing cry rang out in the dark room, startling the host and naturally causing him to turn in her direction. Havilland would never forget the look on the man’s face, something between rage and pure evil. But in that fraction of a second when the host looked at her, Jamison heard her cry and, roused from his heavy sleep, rolled off of the pallet as fast as he could. In doing so, he knocked the host’s legs and the man tumbled sideways, towards Havilland, and lost his dagger. But Havilland still had hers; as the host stumbled towards her, she brought the dagger up.
The host saw the flash of a blade in her hand and roared, lashing out a big hand and knocking it away. Havilland, who had grown up around warriors and had learned to fight as one, struggled to keep from panicking. She dropped to her knees, under the strike of the host, who was now trying to swipe at her with his hands and his feet. Havilland took a kick to the thigh but it wasn’t enough to hurt– she was more concerned with regaining her dagger and it was all she could focus on. On her hands and knees, she propelled herself across the floor, straining to grab the hilt of the dagger that proved to be just far enough out of her reach.
While Havilland scrambled around on the floor, Jamison claimed his broadsword where it lay atop his saddlebags. By this time, the host had crashed into the wall near the door but he was still trying to kick at Havilland, who was on the ground trying to reclaim the blade that the host had knocked away from her. All Jamison had to see was his wife fighting for her life. After that, the man they called The Red Lion within him roared to life. The warrior in him came out, the husband so intent to protect his wife, and he leveled the broadsword in his hands offensively.
Death was in the air.
In truth, there was little fight because the host was fed with madness. He wanted to kill so badly that he was slapping and kicking at everything, in every direction, and it was clear that he had no battle plan in mind. His only plan was to strike. As he charged towards Jamison, Havilland managed to reclaim her dirk and in a swift and cunning movement, brought the blade up, beneath the host’s line of sight, and plunged it into the man’s chest. As the host screamed and gurgled, a horrifying sound, Jamison brought his broadsword around, carving into the host’s neck, killing him instantly.
Nearly decapitated, the host collapsed on the floor, the blood from his wounds spreading across the dusty wood, pooling in thick red rivers.
It was over as fast as it had begun.
Gasping with fright, Havilland launched herself at her husband, throwing her arms around his neck. Jamison was groggy but alert, and he held his wife tightly as she wrapped herself around him, her arms around his neck so fiercely that she was in danger of strangling him. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he had no idea what was going on, but he surely intended to find out.
They’d just killed a man and he wanted to know why.
“What happened?” he demanded.
Havilland was near tears at the thought of coming so close to losing her husband. “He was going to kill us both,” she said. “He has an entire room down below where he throws the bodies of the travelers he has killed. Jamison, there are dozens of dead men down there. And… and I found his wife. He killed her, too!”
Jamison wasn’t much clearer on the goings-on in that halting explanation. “Ye found his wife?” he repeated. “I dunna understand any of this, Havi.Howdid ye find her? What is going on?”
Havilland wouldn’t let him go. He kept trying to peel her off of him, but she held fast. He finally stopped trying. “You were sleeping and I heard tapping on the door,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I opened the door and found the big black bird there. I thought it had been tapping on our chamber door.”
Jamison was struggling to understand her. “The bird was rapping on our door?”
She nodded, her face in the crook of his neck. “I thought so,” she said. “But then, it seemed, that the tapping was coming from somewhere else and the bird… oh, I know you’ll think me mad, but the bird wanted me to follow it. I swear to you that it did, Jamison. I think… I think it was trying to show me Lenore’s bones as a warning!”
Jamison digested what she was telling him. A prophetic bird, the bones of Lenore… it had his head spinning and he struggled to make sense of it all. She had finally loosened her grip enough that he could set her to her feet, and he did, putting his big hands on her face and forcing her to look at him.
“Tell me from the beginning,” he said calmly, hoping his manner would calm her down as well. “The bird tapped on our chamber door and ye followed it. The bird took ye tae see some bones?”
Havilland nodded, taking a deep breath to ease her racing heart. “Aye,” she said. “The bird led me to the level below us and there was this wall of stone… and the stench… and the bird was knocking at the wall of stone so it seemed that the bird wanted me to look at the stone as well, so I did. When the stones came away, there was a skeleton chained to the wall, buried back beneath the stones.”
Jamison was listening grimly. “What made ye think it was Lenore?”
Havilland tried to shake off the horror of her memory. “Because she was wearing a gold chain with a charm in the shape of a harp,” she said quietly. “Do you remember what our host told us? He bought his wife a necklace with a harp charm. It was the same necklace!”
A sense of horror was starting to creep over Jamison with the realization of what she was telling him. “And she was behind a stone wall?” he said, baffled and appalled. “But why?”
Havilland dared to look down at the bloodied corpse. “He was mad,” she said. “The servant told me that it started when he found his wife with a lover and killed them both. Oh, Jamison, it is terrible… he stabbed the lover and forced his wife to watch him bleed to death. Then, he chained her up and built a wall around her, sealing her off from the world. But he went mad after he killed her and would blame unsuspecting travelers for the crime. There is an entire room of bodies down below, of men he has killed. Thank God the raven awoke me when it did. We might have become the next victims.”
So their quest to seek shelter from the raging storm had put them right into the heart of a murderer’s lair. Shocked at the realization of the danger they had been in, Jamison tore his gaze off of his wife, turning to look at the dead man but catching sight of something in the doorway. He grabbed her, quick as lightning, and pulled her away from the door. Havilland gasped in fear but when she turned to see what had Jamison in defensive mode, she noticed the old servant with the bird on his shoulder, standing in the chamber door.
“Ye!” Jamison boomed at the old man. “What madness is this? Why was yer master trying to kill us?”
The old servant remained in the doorway, his gaze on his master. It seemed as if he were unable to look at anything else, shocked by the vision before him.
“The lady told ye the truth, m’lord,” he said. “My master has been mad since he killed his wife. He kills everyone who comes to Whitecliff Castle, imagining them to be guilty of killing Lenore. He has been quite mad these many years.”
Jamison was incredulous. “And no one ever found out what he has done?” he asked. “No one came looking for missing travelers?”
