Page 59 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
The bird was flying now, but very low to the ground, soaring across the ruined chamber and through the doorway, into the area where the path led down from the cliffs above. The bird ended up on the grass again, squawking and jumping, trying to keep away from Heather, who managed to plant her foot on the trailing cord. They were down below the level of the open-ceilinged chambers now, more on the side of the cliff with the sea about thirty feet below on a steeply-slanted cliff.
“I swear to God if you make me fall down this cliff, I’ll come back up here and roast you,” she scolded the bird as she got a hold of the end of the cord and pulled. But the bird wouldn’t let go. “Give it, you mangy beast!”
The bird pulled. Heather pulled in return but then, something odd happened; the ground gave way beneath her feet and, suddenly, her legs were disappearing into the side of the cliff. More than that, her entire body was disappearing. The cord was still in her hand as she tumbled down into a hole of some kind, a windowless and dark cavern. Pebbles and dirt poured in on top of her. She shrieked and covered her head.
“Holy crap!” she exclaimed, coughing in the dust. “What the–?”
She hadn’t fallen very far, perhaps just five feet or so. Not really far at all, considering, but as she blinked her eyes and grew accustomed to the weak light, she realized that she was in something man-made.
Heather could see the stone walls, carefully stacked atop each other, and she looked overhead, seeing that she’d tumbled down through the sod roof of the chamber. She could see roots and sod all over the ceiling and walls. It was most definitely a man-made chamber, even part of the complex of underground storage vaults that the archaeologist had told her about. Somehow, someway, she’d fallen right into it.
Suddenly, she was far more fascinated than she was frightened.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped as she stood up gingerly, brushing off her dark pants. “It’s a room! A buried chamber!”
The journalist in her kicked in; that insatiable curiosity for all things mysterious and new. She wasn’t really worried about disappearing into a hole because she knew Lynn and her camera guys would come looking for her when they realized she hadn’t made it back to the car park, so she looked around in the dark room, fascinated by what she was seeing. It was a long-buried chamber beneath an old, derelict castle.
But that fascination turned to uneasy curiosity when she focused on something in the darkness. It was difficult to see clearly but she swore she saw chains. Something was glinting and moving in the weak light. Whenever the wind gusted, it moved again and she could hear a sound with the movement.
Tap, tap, tap….
The tapping noise from the EVP recording!
It took Heather a moment to calculate just where they’d been standing when they’d captured the recording and she was fairly certain they’d been standing close to this chamber. Moving towards the chains, she peered closer into the darkness and fixed upon something that could only be described as a ghoulish sight– a skeleton was chained to the wall, long picked clean of any clothing or flesh. It was a full-blown skeleton chained to the rock and Heather’s first reaction was one of fright. It looked like something out of a haunted house but she knew this was no prop.
This was real.
Tap, tap, tap….
A scream of genuine fright escaped her lips.
“Holy crap!” she cried again, backing away from the skeleton. Quickly, she looked around to see if there were any more skeletons chained up in the darkness but she didn’t see anything, at least not immediately. She did see what looked like a partially collapsed door but she couldn’t really see anything in the darkness beyond. Fact was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Right now, she just wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Hello?”
A deep male voice came from overhead and Heather looked up to see a big head peering down at her. She couldn’t make out any features because the sun was behind him, but it was definitely a man. She shielded her eyes from the sun that was streaming in around his head.
“Hi,” she said. “Hey, can you help me out of here? I seemed to have fallen into a house of horrors down here.”
The man above shifted and she could see rich, red hair, neatly combed, reflecting in the sunlight. “Youwhat?” he asked in a heavy Scots brogue. “What in the hell happened?”
Heather held up a hand, hoping he would take it and pull her out. She didn’t want to be down here anymore.
“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you,” she said. “Can you reach me?”
A big hand shot out and grasped her by the wrist, hauling her up with little effort. Soon enough, Heather found herself standing on the firm ground again, looking at the hole she had just fallen into. She brushed the dust off her hair and coat, glancing up at the man as she did. The moment she looked at him, everything came to a halt; she’d evidently been rescued by a romance cover model.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “How’d you fall down there?”
My God, what a sexy accent, she thought rather lasciviously. “I’m not sure, to be honest,” she said, seriously checking him out. “This big black bird– I think it was a raven– stole something from me and when I chased it, I fell in the hole. It looks like this was some kind of underground room or something.”
The man, at least five or six inches over six feet and built like a brick shit house, tried to peer into the hole without moving too close to it. With his weight and size, he didn’t want to collapse it further.
“Is that right?” he said, surprise in his voice. “I’ll be damned. I walk my dog along these cliffs every day and nothing like that has ever happened to me.”
A dog suddenly ran past Heather, a big black mutt, and she watched it run off happily, chasing something she couldn’t see. But mostly, her attention was on the big Scotsman with the square jaw and gorgeous red hair.
“Is that what you were doing around here?” she asked. “Walking your dog? Thank God for that.”
