Redo of a Romanceless Author’s Life Devoid of Love; Another Chance at Youth

Chapter 456.

Chapter 456. An Exciting Night with Two Girls Outside the City: The Alleged Haunted Castle. (6/7) 

While thinking this, Rosa turned around and headed back to the exit on her own.

Dawn and I proceeded deeper into the stone castle’s chambers. When we found the stairs, they’d definitely seen better days. More than half of it had collapsed. From the bottom to top it had an upside-down triangular shape portion that had collapsed. Around the bend going the opposite way about half of the stairs on one side were intact.

It looked a bit dangerous, but that little bit of danger didn’t stop us from climbing up it. As we went up the stairs pieces of stone near the edges occasionally crumbled off and fell into the pile of rubble on the first floor below.

Thankfully, we made it up to the second floor without incident.

The second floor was mostly intact. There were a few open holes in the ground, but we could navigate around them safely with the flashlight on our phones.

The rooms we passed by on the second floor had their doors broken down and were either empty, or filled with rubble and holes in the ground. But we eventually came across a room with an intricate-looking wooden door still intact and closed. It looked a lot different than the other doors we’d seen up until now and the pattern carved into it was still somewhat visible.

We looked each other in the eyes and nodded silently agreeing to check it without uttering a single word. Aside from the sound of our footsteps and cautious breaths, our little expedition alone together had been conducted in complete silence.

I grabbed hold of the doorknob and carefully turned it when the sound of something dropping to the ground came from the other side of the door.

Our hearts leaped at the sound and we looked at each other nervously.

Dawn opened her mouth and whispered quietly, “Do yuh think someone… or something… is inside?”

I shook my head.

“What if it’s a ghost?”

“I’m pretty sure the doorknob just fell off on the other side.”

I continued to turn it at a steady pace while applying a downward torque. I’d dealt with old school door handles like this before and had a decent understanding of how to open doors with them even when they weren’t in the best condition and the mechanism inside was going bad. 

There was a time when I lived in a really old house with a similar door. The washroom door was terrible and had the exact same problem. People who used the washroom that didn’t know how to properly turn the knob would often get locked inside and I’d have to open the door from them from the other side. The doorknob from the other side would similarly fall off when you didn’t open it just right.

Once rotated the doorknob all the way to the right. I vibrated it a little while wiggling the door to loosen it up before I cautiously pushed it open. 

Crrrrrrrr. Something dragged along the floor as the door slowly creaked open.

A gust of wind blew into our faces as I opened the door all the way

Woooooooooooo. The loud high-pitched whistle of the wind resounded out and echoed through the halls. The wind brought with it the distinct smell of rotting wood which lingered in the air inside the room.

The sound of the gusting wind had been a bit unsettling and definitely sent chills down our backs, but... nothing further happened.

Dawn breathed out a sigh of relief when she cautiously shone her flashlight in the room and confirmed there really weren’t any scary ghosts or evil spirits lying in wait for us. When she stepped inside and checked behind the door, she bent over and picked up the doorknob.

“Yuh were right.”

“Of course I was.”

As soon as I entered the room, I shone the flashlight up at the ceiling when I noticed a rotten black rectangular table crushed under a pile of debris centered near the wall opposite the entrance we came in through. Aside from the large hole in the ceiling over the broken table, there were a few smaller holes scattered about in the ceiling ranging from finger-sized to the size of a watermelon. Shining the flashlight back at the ground from left to right, I confirmed that the floor inside the room was fully intact, unlike the other rooms we’d passed by on the way here.

There were rows of long wooden benches to our left and right facing away from the entrance. Similar to the broken table, some were damaged by the pieces of debris that had broken off from the ceiling. 

It was pretty clear this area had been used as a place of worship at some point in the past. A mini personal church of some sort. The large wooden cross hung on the wall behind the table and the podium near the far left corner of the room made that pretty clear.

There were a few wooden chairs along the sides of the table that had been crushed but there were two at the ends which survived and were still in one piece. 

I walked further into the room but momentarily paused at the center as my flashlight rose up again. There were broken multi-colored stained glass windows above the cross with a few rays of moonlight shining through.

I approached closer and noticed a dim ray of moonlight shining into the room from the hole above the broken table covered in debris. Looking through the hole, it went straight through the wall on the third floor. Standing at just the right angle, the moon could be seen directly shining through it.

When I turned around, I realized there were a few more rays of moonlight glimmering through some of the other holes in the ceiling creating small spots of light on the walls on the side we entered through.

Despite the holey ceiling, hehe… no pun intended, the walls inside this room weren’t cracked like they were in the other rooms we’d seen.

“How about we try summoning a devil here, Dawn?”

“Inside a place once used to worship god? Are yuh crazy? Yuh’re just lookin for trouble.”

“If god wants to strike me down, let him do it in the next five seconds. If he can’t even do that, he should shut his mouth and forget about it.”

I held up my hand with five fingers fully extended, and with each second that passed, bent them one by one from thumb to pinky in that order.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

0.

“...”

“Looks like he’s got no complaints,” I joked.

“Seems... so…”

“Since we’ve found somewhere good, I’ll clean up the ground a bit. You can head back down and wait for Rosa. Bring her up here as soon as she’s back.”

“Yuh sure yuh don’t want any help?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“What if something happens while we’re split up? Isn’t this the point in horror movies where things go horribly wrong? Don’t yuh think… it’d be safer to stick together and head back down together?”

“What? Are you scared we’re going to be haunted after entering this sealed room? That the ominous gust of wind that blew past us when the door opened was some sort of spooky cursed entity being unleashed upon us?”

“Stop. It sounds a lot scarier when yuh put it that way.”

Dawn hugged her arms together below her breasts and looked around uneasily.

“What? You’re scared with just this?”

“Yuh’re not scared?”

“I’m more scared of the ceiling caving in on us or the floor giving out than I am of nonsense like demons, evil spirits, or ghosts.”

“That’s true I guess… but what if one of those beings ends up being behind the ceiling or floor giving out?”

“I welcome them to try. Come at me, ghosts. Let’s see what you’ve got.” I flipped the ceiling off.

“...”

“See? Nothing happened.”

“I’m going to get out of here before lightning strikes. Good luck with all the wandering souls yuh’ve pissed off.”

Dawn turned and made a run for it.

When she was gone I grumbled to myself discontentedly, “Wandering souls? There aren’t even any around.” I’d been looking forward to finding some of those alleged wandering souls.

Hell, I’m a devil, aren’t I? Why would I even be afraid of them if they are real? Show yourself damn it!

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, little tortured wandering souls. Be good little souls and offer yourself up on a silver platter to Devthor.”

Right now I couldn't help but feel as though I were an evil man with nefarious intentions trying to abduct young unsuspecting children.

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