Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“Well, we certainly cannot repair the mortar now knowing the rush of wind is coming from the room. Whatever is causing it must be repaired. The years of neglect can be ignored no longer, or it may very well grow worse leaving the keep vulnerable to cold, decay, and tales of a ghost.”
Torin stared at the sealed door. “I know you are right, but endless years of being ordered never to open it leaves me troubled to do so.”
Flora placed a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. “Then take time to think on it, though not too much time, and do what you feel you must. Though, I am curious as to the footfalls we heard.”
“I cannot deny we heard them. It was clear that we did, but I cannot explain it myself.”
“Perhaps the sound echoed from someplace else,” Flora suggested.
“I suppose, though it does not seem likely since you ordered the servants to stay below.”
“We were lost in a fit of passion, perhaps we heard the decaying stone crumbling onto the floor, and we mistakenly thought it footfalls,” she said.
“Another possibility,” he conceded, though sounded doubtful.
Another frigid wind came spewing through the hole and Flora shivered.
“We are finished here,” Torin said. “And you need a hot brew to warm you.”
“There is another possibility we haven’t considered,” Flora said as her husband placed his hand at her back to guide her to the stairs.
“What is that?” he asked.
“That a ghost does exist and wants the room and its secrets revealed.”
Torin lay in bed unable to sleep, his wife snuggled against him. She had easily drifted off to sleep after they had made love. It had not been rushed like earlier in the day. They had taken their time, talking, touching, teasing, kissing until neither of them could wait any longer.
Now, however, he could not get his mind off the footfalls they had heard. His wife had offered feasible explanations and thought-provoking ones as well. Yet none seemed to appease him. He recalled his grandda’s words when he had asked once again about the tower room.
“Some things are better left alone.”
He had tried to imagine what could have happened that caused the room to be sealed. He had heard tales of men who had sealed enemies even a wife in a room to make them suffer and be rid of them. And then there was talk of the room being a place of torture. What demon’s ghosts would he release if horrible things had been done to people there?
It was not an easy decision for him to make and it troubled him greatly.
He shut his eyes hoping sleep would rescue him and felt himself drifting off, that was until the cold rushed over him, chilling his body to the bone.
His eyes sprang open, and he bolted up in bed and saw a ghostly figure shimmering at the bottom of the bed. The apparition was too distorted for him to make out a clear figure. He stared, not sure what to do.
His wife was suddenly sitting up beside him.
“What is it, Torin? What’s wrong?” she asked, hooking her arm around his, a bit disoriented from her husband’s arm’s releasing her so suddenly that it had jolted her awake.
“Do you see it?” he asked, continuing to stare.
“See what?” she asked, looking where he did.
“The image floating at the bottom of the bed.”
Flora stared for a moment expecting to see something and when she didn’t, she patted her husband’s arm. “Wake up, Torin, you are dreaming.”
Dreaming? Aye, he was dreaming. It wasn’t real.
“Wake up,” she urged again.
He turned his eyes on his wife. “I am dreaming.”
“Aye, you are. Wake up,” she urged again.
He turned his glance once again to the bottom of the bed… the apparition was gone.
CHAPTER 24
“Something weighs heavily on you,” Kinnell said the next morning as he walked through the village with Torin.
“Do you ever think of that time when we saw my grandda in the woods and returned to the keep only to find out that he had died hours before then?”
“I do think on it, for I continue to wonder how we saw what we saw. Your grandda was dead. How could he appear to us? And yet we both saw him clear as day and saw him just as clearly vanish before our eyes.”
“Seeing him as we did makes me wonder if ghosts are real,” Torin said.
“Did you see a ghost in the keep?” Kinnell asked nervously.
“Nay, it was nothing more than a dream, probably caused by a problem in the tower room.”
“What problem?” Kinnell asked when Torin didn’t explain.
“A stone in the sealed door has crumbled and left a hole. Cold wind spews through it and to repair the problem the room would need to be opened.”
“Nay! Nay!” Kinnell argued. “Your da and your grandda warned you never to open that room. It was sealed for a reason. It must remain sealed.”