Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

…Forgive me. I did not mean to roar so. No, I am calm now, sir. My state of mind will perhaps be best explained by my tale.

We gained access to the castle with an ease that should have warned us that there was something not right. I believe now that it was aware of us as soon as we entered, but allowed us to penetrate deeply within. I suspect—no, I firmly believe that this was so we would not be able to easily escape its influence.

The shape of our predicament unfolded slowly. No matter where we went, we encountered no other person, although we had, as planned, entered on the night that Bludtharst Heterodyne was throwing a Grand Fête for his field commanders. We heard music. The sound of many people. We were able to see brightly lit rooms filled with revelers through the windows, but no matter where we went, we were alone. No guards. No servants. No prisoners. No monsters. We began to think that if there were ghosts, than we were they.

More worrying was when we tried to leave. We could not. Never could we find a room with a window facing outwards. Never could we find a door that led anywhere but deeper into the castle. Doors behind us sealed themselves shut, melted into nothingness, or opened not onto the rooms whence we had come, but onto solid walls.

After two days of this, our nerve broke. We yelled. We begged for the Heterodynes’ guards to find us. We tried crawling out of the windows, only to find ourselves crawling back into the very rooms we had left. While we slept, the rooms themselves would change shape, or abut different rooms than when we had last looked. Eventually they began to do this, not while we slept, but before our very eyes as we watched.

Six of my people were crushed or impaled by hidden mechanisms and traps. Some instantly, some hung screaming for almost an hour.

In the end, the last three of my people simultaneously killed each other, and of this sin I absolved them. In the end, only I remained. We had been inside for close to five days without food or sufficient water, and I was lying near insensate upon the ground, too weak to move and resigned to death.

Suddenly, a door opened, and in strode the devil, Bludtharst Heterodyne himself. He saw me and gave a great shout of surprise. Then a terrible voice—a voice I know never came from the throat of man nor beast—arose from everywhere. “Forgive me, Master. He is but an interloper with whom I was having some sport.”

“Well he gave me a turn, you wretched thing,” Bludtharst declared. “Toss him out.”