Page 61 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Upon a Misty Skye
Terri Brisbin
Prologue
Duntulm Castle
Trotternish, Isle of Skye
Astorm ragedthat night.
Lightning flashed and thunder crashed, illuminating the isles in the Minch. Rain fell in curtains, flooding the beach and covering the rocks beneath the castle. Neither man nor creatures could withstand the power of this storm, but she could.
Agneis MacDonald moved through the ruins, crying out her torment to the angry sky above her. With each scream came an answer from the storm for she was the one who brought the storm here.
Floating through the stone walls as she never could in her mortal life, Agneis stood there and searched the cliffs below her window... again. Not even the brightness of the lightning helped her.
The bairn was gone.
Gone.
One moment in her arms and the next... gone.
Agneis moved back through the walls and sought the lower chambers of the remains of the keep. She wrapped her arms around herself and moaned out the relentless pain. The thick stone walls held most of it in, but a few sounds echoed into the storm and thunder answered her.
At least the bairn died quickly and his spirit traveled on due to his innocence. That was the only mercy God showed that day to anyone named MacDonald.
Turning and twisting, she raced through Duntulm, through the chambers where she had lived and worked and loved that bairn as though he was her own. But always, Agneis returned to that damned window on nights like this. The storm called to her, mocking her and condemning her as her master had that night.
As her mistress collapsed at the news, her master had cursed her in life and death. To never have peace as he would never. To mourn the loss of the wee boy even as he did. Then he had her set afloat in the storm with no oars in the small boat, sentencing her to the same death as his son.
But hers took seven days.
The storm took her far out to sea where she faced the terrible sun and thirst and hunger. Then, as she lay near death, the winds of vengeance blew up waves that threw the boat into the rocks beneath Duntulm. Agneis died in almost the exact spot where the bairn had met his death.
Now, her soul would spend eternity wracked by guilt and grief. Her punishment for naught but a moment’s weakness was to never find release from this place. Or from her culpability in the bairn’s death.
Days turned into months and then into years and decades and centuries and still she was not released to find peace. Though others visited the castle even when it became ruined and fell apart, no one could see her. Och aye, they could hear her and see the storms she called.
Agneis understood the truth of it—she had never been shriven before set upon the sea. Without a chance to confess her sin and ask for absolution, her soul was damned to never leave this place. She would pay the price for eternity.
Unless....
