Page 53 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Havilland was calming somewhat, trying to make sense of the servant’s words. “What…,” she stammered, her mouth still against his hand. “Whoare all of these people? What happened to them?”
The servant let her go completely and she stumbled away from him, ending up on her knees. “Travelers, most of them, like ye,” he muttered, without emotion. “His name is Iorick Hammer Fist. ’Tis his work.”
She didn’t believe him. “Youdid this!”
The old man shook his head. “I dinna, m’lady. I swear it to ye. Iorick did it.”
She was frustrated, still quite terrified. “Whois Iorick?” she demanded.
The old servant pointed to the floor above. “Iorick is the master,” he said. “Ye spoke with him this night. He spoke of his Lenore.”
Havilland was breathing so hard, so rapidly, that she was feeling lightheaded. “Our host?”
“Aye.”
Her eyes widened as she struggled not to vomit. “Hedid this?”
The old servant nodded, turning to glance at the bones behind him, chained to the wall. “He went mad after he killed her,” he said, throwing a thumb in the direction of the bones. “His Lenore.”
Havilland couldn’t help but look at the chained bones, the golden harp necklace around the boney neck. “Sweet Jesú,” she murmured, aghast. “Then itisher.”
“It ’tis.”
“He… he killed her?”
The old servant nodded. “She found a lover on one of the many walks she would take along the cliffs,” he said. “A young Scotsman. The master discovered them together and killed the young man with his sword. But for Lenore, he had a special death planned… he chained her up to the wall and built a stone wall around her. ’Twas a long, slow death she suffered in punishment for her disloyalty.”
Havilland was shocked to the very core. A hand came up to her mouth, covering it as if to hold back the gasp of revulsion. “He told us that she left him,” she said. “He said that he waits for her to return to him!”
The old servant shook his head. “She never left,” he said. “She has always been here, right in this room. ’Tis the madness that causes him to believe that she simply left him because he canna face what he did. So he waits for her return, cursed to remain in this horrible place, waiting for a woman who will never appear to him again in this lifetime.”
Havilland was having difficulty comprehending all of it. The wind whipped down the stairwell again, blowing through the bones and causing them to shimmy and shake in their chain prison.
Tap, tap, tap….
“Dear… God,” Havilland gasped as the light of realization came to her eyes. “Does he not remember what he did to her?”
The old man shrugged faintly. “He blames others,” he said. Then, his one-eyed gaze moved to the room beyond, the chamber filled with an assortment of bodies. “He killed his garrison of Northmen, one by one, because he believed they had killed her. The men ye see there… the dead ones… he killed them because he thinks they will not confess to killing his wife. They are mostly travelers, men who have come to seek shelter, but he believes them to be guilty nonetheless. He steals their money, their possessions, punishing the dead because he believes them guilty of murder. He canna face the reality that he is the murderer, that he took the life of his fair Lenore.”
Havilland was listening with a great deal of distress, entrenched in the heartbreaking story of Lenore. “Sweet Jesú,” she whispered. “It is all so tragic. But what about the lover? Has he found his rest in that horrible room with the bodies?”
The old man shook his head. “Did ye not see the second skeleton in the room?” he asked, pointing over to a dark corner. Adjacent to the entry door, Havilland simply hadn’t noticed and the old servant picked up the oil lamp, holding it over towards the indicated corner. As the soft golden light filled the darkness, a pile of brittle, blackened bones came into view.
“The lad is right there,” the servant said quietly. “Lenore watched him bleed to death as the master built the stone wall around her. Then, when the stones were piled up and she begged for mercy, the master set the lad on fire. She was left to breath in the scent of his burnt flesh in the end.”
It was a horrifying, tragic tale as Havilland looked at the bones of the lovers. What a vile, grisly ending for the lovers and being that she loved Jamison so, she could only imagine the distress and turmoil that Lenore must have gone through, seeing the man she loved killed before her eyes. It was more than Havilland wanted to ponder.
There were more pressing things at the moment. Havilland was sorry for the dead but more concerned for the living. It was clear that horrible and dark dealings were happening in this awful castle and she was seized with panic in her desire to leave. She could not remain here and fall victim to a madman.
Pushing herself away from the wall, she moved on shaking legs to take the oil lamp from the servant, and picked up the dagger from where she had set it near Lenore’s rattling bones.
“I must collect my husband and we must leave this place,” she said, her voice trembling. But her gaze moved to the old servant, bandaged and scrawny. “It was clear that you did not want us here. You were very rude earlier. Why did you not take us aside and tell us of the danger we were facing?”
For the first time, the servant looked pained. “I couldna risk the master’s wrath,” he said. “I would tell ye after ye retired for the night but when I went to warn ye, I heard yer screams down here.”
Havilland understood a great deal now. “So you came to find me?”
He nodded. “I had to warn ye.”
