The Journal

A haunted castle, strange flashbacks, and a ghost that wants something.... but what?

The castle was by far the largest structure I had ever seen. Its towers, wider than a house, stretched up into the clouds. The walls were gray and rubbed smooth by weather and time.

A faint, melancholy piano tune reached my ears, then faded away. I wasn’t even sure if I had heard it at all.

I walked towards the wooden double-doors. They swung open with one push. My feet made prints on the dust-covered rug as I walked inside.

I could tell it had once been a place of grandeur and beauty, but time had taken its toll. What had probably once been a beautiful painting was now a dirty canvas of faded yellows and browns. The thrones at the head of the room had chunks missing, and the windows were covered in grime. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.

Bang!

I jumped and spun around. The doors had slammed shut behind me.

I grabbed the door handles and pulled with all my might, but they stayed firmly shut. My fists beat on the splintered wood. They didn’t budge.

I looked around for any other exit. There were no doors, but there were windows! I grabbed a piece of rubble and threw it at the glass.

It bounced off harmlessly.

I threw it at the glass again and again, each time with more force, but the window refused to break.

This was not normal.

My belly growled. How long would I be stuck in here? Long enough for me to starve to death?

I walked around, looking for any other exits. My feet carried me over to the next room- a dining hall.

A waterstained and moldy dining table sat in the center of the room. Rusted silverware, goblets, and platters were scattered across the table. How long had they been there? 

I reached for a fork. The moment my skin touched the cold metal, my surroundings flashed and faded away.

I was still in the dining room, but it was restored to its former beauty and grandeur. The crumbling stones were replaced with solid walls, lined with torches. A family sat at the polished dining table. There was a mother, a father, a girl who looked to be about eighteen, and a boy who was probably sixteen. 

Could they see me? I waved my hands in the air. None of them reacted.

“Where were you for your sewing lesson earlier today?” the mother asked the girl.

“I was outside,” the girl said, not meeting her mother’s gaze.

“You were riding again, weren’t you?” said her father.

The girl said nothing.

“Alicia! A princess is not meant to be around filthy animals all day! We’ve discussed this!” he exclaimed.

The princess groaned. “I don’t know how dining etiquette is supposed to help me become a good ruler.”

The boy nudged her. “Alice, stop,” he muttered.

“Stay out of this, Phillip,” she whispered back.

I walked over to Alice and tried to touch her, but my hand went right through, like I was a ghost.

“You need to start taking your responsibilities more seriously,” her mother said.

Alice threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t want these responsibilities!” She threw her fork in the air and stormed away.

The scene flashed, and I was once again in the castle ruins.

Had I imagined it all? Maybe my hunger was getting to my head.

I had to get out of here. I set off down a hallway in search of a way out.

Stone wall, stone wall, more stone wall, aha! Double doors! I pushed through them and walked straight into a ballroom. The floor was covered in dust and dirt. Torn curtains hung from rods that barely clung to the wall. Directly across the room from me was a grande piano.

I rushed over to it. It must have been beautiful, back in its day. But the keys were dirty and yellow, and the black wood was badly chipped in many areas. I pressed a single key.

I never got to find out if it still worked, because the moment I touched the yellowed ivory, my surroundings disappeared and I was suddenly standing next to a brand new grande piano, with two people sitting on the bench. One was a girl with black rippled hair, dressed in a fancy gown. Alice.

She said next to a boy who appeared to be her age. He must have been of a lower class, judging by his dirt-encrusted fingernails and filthy, ripped clothes.

A beautiful, somber tune emitted from the piano while the boy’s fingers slid up and down the keys. It sounded so familiar.

It wasn’t until he played the final notes that I realized where I had heard the song before. It was the same haunting piano melody I heard outside the castle.

“Finn! That was so beautiful!” Alice exclaimed. “Where did you learn to play like that?”

Finn blushed. “I took lessons.”

Alice leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. I jumped back. I felt suddenly out of place. Even though they couldn’t see me, I felt as if I was intruding on a private moment.

The doors opened and hit the walls with a bang. “Alice, guess what?” Phillip walked in, then recoiled at the sight of his sister kissing a peasant. “What are you doing?” He stared at them in horror.

Alice broke away and rushed over to him. A flash, and I was back in the abandoned ballroom.

Something strange was going on. Was I hallucinating? Not likely. My imagination wasn’t that vivid. 

Was it possible that I was seeing the lives of the past inhabitants of the castle? It would explain why no one could see me.

And the piano music… What was that about?

Too much. It was all too much. I dashed out of the ballroom and down another random hallway. I selected a door at random and shut myself inside.

I was in a bedroom. Well, what used to be a bedroom. The bedframe was sagging and splintered, and the mattress had long since been eaten by rodents and bugs. 

Dead end. I grabbed the door handle to leave, but was transported to yet another scene.

“This is a horrible idea! What are you thinking? You have to marry a prince!” Phillip screamed at Alice, who was clutching the door handle behind her back, as if she was about to leave any second.

She glared up at him. “I love Finn, and he loves me. Did you know he wrote that song for me? He said it’s ‘our song’.” Alice sighed and smiled.

“No! He’s using you. He thinks he’ll get to be king!”

“That’s not true!” Her voice cracked. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes.

“You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep sneaking out to see him. They’ll catch on,” Phillip said in a softer tone.

Alice hesitated. “You won’t tell them, right?”

Phillip sighed. “Fine. I’ll keep your secret.”

Alice exhaled in relief. “Thank you,” she said before opening the door and leaving.

Conflicting thoughts swirled through my brain as my surroundings reverted back to the dusty, abandoned bedroom. Based on the interaction I just saw, everything was going to turn out alright. But it couldn’t have, because if it had all turned out alright, then why was this happening? Why was the castle in ruins? Why was I trapped? Why was I continuously being shown snippets of the inhabitants’ lives?

I fled from the bedroom and sprinted down the hallway, looking for something, anything, that might trigger another flashback. I had to know what happened.

My foot stepped on something, and I slipped and landed on my face. When I looked back to see what had tripped me up, I saw a book lying in the middle of the corridor.

I scrambled to my feet and picked it up. The leather cover was cracked and peeling. When I flipped it open, the edges of the pages disintegrated. 

The first page had “September 7th, 1702” written across the top, followed by a diary entry.

This journal was over 300 years old? How had it not fallen apart in my hands?

I ran my hand across the first page, my mind spinning with wonder and curiosity.

I knew that I had triggered another flashback as soon as my surroundings flashed.

I was in the throne room. I marveled at its beauty, with its colorful tapestries and stained glass windows.

“How could you?” Alice screeched at her parents. Her voice was thick with hurt and shock. The journal, brand new, was clutched in her hand.

“The boy was a source of distraction for you. Now that he’s been disposed of, you can focus on your responsibilities as future queen,” her mother said coldly.

“Disposed of?” Alice roared. “You killed him! Don’t you speak of him like he’s rubbish that has to be taken out!”

“He was a peasant. He was worthless,” her father said.

Alice’s jaw dropped. I could see her chin trembling from across the room. “I despise you!” she shrieked. With that, she ran.

I followed her up the stairs and to her bedroom, where she began packing things into a bag. “I can’t stay here any longer,” she muttered.

She opened her window and used the uneven bricks and stones to climb down. From there, she climbed onto her horse and rode away into the darkness of the woods.

Her hair streamed behind her and should have been in my face, but I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel the wind or the night air from my spot behind her.

She rode until she reached a lake just beyond the edge of the forest, where she allowed her horse to drink as she stood on the dock and scribbled in her journal. Her flowy white dress was illuminated in the moonlight.

I read over her shoulder. She wrote of her heartbreak, and her anger at her parents. She planned to escape into the next kingdom and seek shelter there.

Something near the forest caught my eye. A movement amongst the trees. I peered closer, and saw a face staring at Alice.

“What are you doing here?” a deep voice said.

Alice jumped up and turned around. Phillip stepped out from the shadows of the trees.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” she said curtly.

“Are you running away?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Alice sighed. “Fine. Yes, I am. Now how about you leave and forget you ever saw me? This is actually really good for you. You could be king.”

Phillip shook his head and sighed. “I wish it were that easy.” He stepped closer to her.

Alice became visibly uneasy. “What do you mean?”

“Our parents would find you, eventually. You would be queen. And I don’t want you to be queen.”

I could tell that something bad was about to happen, and so could Alice, judging by her fidgeting. “Then I’ll be on my way, so they won’t find me and I won’t be queen.”

Phillip moved even closer. “No. I have to make sure that they will never find you.”

He pulled a knife out of his waistband. Alice only had time to widen her eyes in shock and fear before he plunged it into her neck. Just as the light left her eyes, I saw something white and wispy escape from her mouth. It grew into a white, transparent version of Alice. A ghost. Her brow was furrowed in anger. She whispered something and flicked her hands at her journal, which suddenly began to glow. After a few seconds, it dimmed and went back to normal.

Phillip must not have noticed. He stuffed her body into a woven sack and pocketed the journal as if nothing had happened.

I got on his horse behind him. We rode back to the castle.

“What do you have there, Prince Phillip?” a guard asked as Phillip made his way through the throne room, the sack over his shoulders.

“Oh, just some game.”

I knew very well that it was not game.

Phillip disappeared around the corner. I rushed after him.

He stopped at a blank patch of stone wall and pushed in a specific brick. Part of the wall slid up, revealing a tunnel that led down into the darkness. A secret passage!

I followed Phillip down the stairs until he reached a dark room with a coffin in the middle of it. He must have been planning this.

The only light came from the hallway at the top of the stairs, but I was able to see Phillip dump the contents of the bag into the coffin. The lid shut with a bang that echoed throughout the room. 

Everything flashed, and I was once again standing in the deserted hallway. I gasped for breath and collapsed to the floor. Alice was here? Hidden somewhere in the castle?

And that her ghost, what had happened to it? Was it at the dock? Or…

“Make it right,” a voice whispered in my ear. I felt cold breaths on my cheek. Every hair on my body stood up on end. I heard Finn’s sad melody echoing throughout the hallway.

I blinked several times and looked around. I thought I saw a hint of a wispy white dress disappear around the corner of the hallway. Alice. She was here. She was the one who locked me in. She was the one who had shown me all of the flashbacks. And now she wanted me to make things right? How was I supposed to do that?

“Ok, think,” I told myself. “What do ghosts always want in movies?”

They want to be at peace. And how does one make them at peace? You bury their bodies. Alice must want to be buried. She had been hidden underground for over 300 years.

I found the same hallway that Phillip walked all those years ago and kept going until I reached the stone wall. Which stone was it? I racked my brain, trying to remember.

After several wrong attempts, my hand found the right stone. The wall slid up.

“Are you going to bury her?”

I turned around and saw a wispy figure with a strong build and dark wavy hair. Phillip. He looked exactly the same as he did that day at the dock. He must have died soon after.

“Why do you ask?” I backed up, worried that he was going to try and stop me.

“I just think she’s been down there long enough.” Instead of the vengeance I expected of him, he seemed remorseful.

“Then why did you put her down there in the first place? Why did you kill her?”

Phillip sighed. “I was young and hot-headed. Alice had no interest in being queen. But I wanted to rule. I felt that I was destined for it. So to see everything I ever wanted being handed to Alice on a silver platter, and to see her disinterest, it was insulting to me. All she cared about was that peasant boy. What was his name? Fred?”

“Finn.”

“Right. Finn. Anyway, all she cared about was Finn. It just made me so, so angry to see her care so little. I thought that if I could kill him, then she would soon follow, and the throne would be mine.”

“Wait, so you were the one who told your parents about Finn? You thought she would kill herself?”

Phillip nodded. “And it just made things worse. After she ran away, I followed her. I knew that my parents would never stop looking for her. They would find her eventually. But if they never found her, then the throne would be mine. I put her there temporarily until I could bury her properly.”

“So what happened?

“That night, an assassin came to the castle and killed everyone. Me, the servants, and my parents. You know what they say; what goes around, comes around.”

The piano music drifted through the halls. Alice was coming.

She appeared right in front of Phillip. “You didn’t die because of karma. You died because I cursed my journal after you killed me. The curse brings bad luck upon the carrier.”

So that was what she was doing with the whispering and hand movements right after she died.

Phillip’s jaw dropped. “You killed me?”

“You killed me first! Why do you think Mother and Father aren’t here as ghosts? Or any of the servants? It’s because you’re the curse carrier!”

Phillip’s face twisted in anger. “How could you?”

“How could you?”

As their voices grew louder, the castle began to shake. Stones fell from the ceiling.

“Stop it!” I said.

They ignored me and continued shouting at each other. I had to stop this. But how? How could I make everything right?

That was it. I had to ‘make it right’. If I buried Alice, then I could make it right, and she would be at peace.

I rushed down the stairs. With the light from the hallway up above, I could see a woven sack on the ground, right next to the wooden coffin.

I pried open the lid of the coffin, revealing a skeleton in a white dress that must have once been beautiful, but was now reduced to blood-stained rags.

There was no time to be wimpy. I scooped up Alice’s remains with my bare hands, stuffed it in the bag, and dashed up the stairs.

The castle was in an even worse state than I had left it. The ceiling was nearly nonexistent, and cracks ran across the floor. I looked around for an exit, but I had forgotten where I had come from. Finally, I found a gap in the wall large enough for me to squeeze through.

Whatever curse or spell Alice had cast to keep me trapped must have been broken along with the castle. The entire structure was riddled with holes. It could fall apart any minute, and I didn’t want to be there when it did.

I was free. I could have left right then and there. But I felt a sense of duty to Alice and Phillip. I wanted them to be at rest.

My eyes scanned the area. There were no tools lying around. I would have to use my hands.

My fingers dug into the ground and scooped the soft dirt until I had a hole big enough to fit the bag. Meanwhile, Alice’s and Phillip’s shrieks threatened to collapse the castle.

I shoved the bag into the hole and piled the dirt on top. The moment the last handful of dirt was patted into the ground, everything stopped and was silent. 

I wasn’t outside anymore. The castle’s stone walls surrounded all sides of me, but it was once again restored to its former glory. I was in another flashback. But how? Why?

A maid walked by. Her eyes fixated on me, particularly my clothing.

No. She must have been looking at something behind me. No one could see me during a flashback.

“Hello,” she said.

I looked around. The hall was empty. “Hello,” I managed to say.

She could see me. I wasn’t in a flashback, but rather the actual time period. Why? Why could I now interact with people? Why was I there? Was there something Alice wanted me to see?

That couldn’t be true. This seemed far beyond Alice’s abilities. Also, if she wanted me to see something, why could people see me?

Something else was pulling the strings, something bigger than Alice, something bigger than me. They must want me to do something. To change something.

I made my way down the hallway with no destination in mind whatsoever. My eyes darted around, looking for anything that might possibly clue me in on my purpose there.

I turned the corner and crashed into someone who was coming from the other direction. I fell on my back.

“Watch where you’re going,” they growled as they stood up. Royal clothes. Dark wavy hair. A youthful appearance. It was Phillip.

I scrambled to my feet. “Wait!” I jumped in front of him and blocked his path. His glare was hard and cold. 

“Move aside, peasant. I have important information to relay.” He shoved past me

The word ‘peasant’ struck a memory, which triggered a thought, which brought upon a realization. He was going to tell his parents about Finn. That was why I was here. I had to stop him.

“No! Please! Stop!” I grabbed his arm. 

He swiveled his head around and gave me that awful glare again. “Release me!”

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” I changed to a softer tone. “Please. I’ve seen the consequences. You can’t tell them. You have no idea what the effect will be.”

His face relaxed. He still seemed angry, but his voice had a hint of curiosity when he asked “What do you mean?”

“If you tell your parents about Finn, then you and Alice and your parents, and everyone in this castle, will die.”

Phillip jerked his arm away from me. “How did you know what I was going to do?” He looked me up and down. “Who are you?”

“Someone who’s seen the aftereffects of your rash decision. Don’t do it.”

My vision went dark. I felt the sensation of being lifted off the ground, and then I was moving very very fast and I knew no more. My last thought was that I knew I had convinced him.

***

I opened my eyes. I was sitting in a classroom with about twenty or so other students.

“Hello? Are you listening to me?” a teacher looked down at me.

“What? Um yes,” I stammered.

“Then answer my question.”

“Sorry, what was the question?”

“How was the country of Andenin created?”

Andenin? Was that the name of a country? “I…. I don’t know.”

The entire class laughed. The teacher pursed her lips. “Ok, then tell me how we conquered the New World?”

When I said nothing, the teacher called on someone else. “Yes, Grace, tell us.”

A girl in the front row, apparently named Grace, sat up straight. “After word got back to us about how the colonizers were treating the Natives, siblings King Phillip and Queen Alice sent citizens of Andenin to reclaim the land. They overpowered the colonizers and gave the land back to the Natives. Now, Andenians and Native Americans live together peacefully in the American colonies.”

“Very good. Now, Joseph, tell me more about Queen Alice and King Phillip.”

“They were the first successful ruling sibling pair in the history of Adenin, and they helped the people of France during their revolution. After Louis XVI was executed, Queen Alice and King Phillip added France to their territory and it became part of Adenin.”

“Excellent.” The teacher turned back to me. “Do you understand now?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. I had ‘made things right’, but at what cost? 

Author's Note

The cover image does not belong to me. I found it at this link
https://weheartit.com/entry/1623404060

Reviews

[JayG]

• The castle was by far the largest structure I had ever seen.

This makes perfect sense to you, but you cheat. Before you begin reading, you know where we are, what’s going on, and whose skin we wear. But look at it as your reader must, with only the meaning your words suggest TO THEM, and no emotion in the narrator’s voice that isn’t suggested by punctuation.

1. Where are we in time and space? Not knowing that, we could be viewing the first castle ever built, one floor high, and a bit larger than a house in the local villiage. Or, we could be on planet Aldebroni, viewing the home of the entire central government.
2. Who are we? If this is a child, it has a very different feel than if our protagonist is a seasoned diplomat.
3. Why does its size matter to US?

You know the answers to all that, as does your protagonist and everyone else in the story. But who did you write this for? If your protagonist is to be our avatar, and knows all that, shouldn’t we?

Will reading on clarify things? Who cares? There is no second, first-impression. And if the reader’s first impression is, “Huh?” will they read on? An acquiring editor or agent won’t.

• Its towers, wider than a house, stretched up into the clouds

This tells us nothing useful. If the castle is on a plain, the low lying clouds are 6,000 feet above. But if the castle is on a level spot, 5,800 feet up the mountain….

And how wide a house? One in Roman times or today? You have a vision of the scene, so for you, the words act as a pointer to the image you hold in your mind. For the reader? The words act as a pointer to the image you hold in *YOUR* mind. See the problem? Without you there to explain...

What you’re doing is transcribing yourself telling this story to an audience. But can the reader hear the emotion in your voice, with its changes in intensity and cadence? No. Can they see the gestures you visually punctuate with, your changing expression, and your body language? Nope. Not a trace. You can, of course, so this works perfectly when you read.

Yes, you’re using first person pronouns, but so what? We’re not on the scene, we’re hearing ABOUT it, second hand. And who's talking about the events that once happened matters little.

Is there the slightest difference between:
- - - -
I jumped and spun around. The doors had slammed shut behind me.
And
He jumped and spun around. The doors had slammed shut behind him.
- - - -
Nope. We’re told that the same person jumped and spun by someone who is not on the scene, so it's a report.

In this, you tell the reader what happened, then what the protagonist did in response. But suppose that happened to you. You're out in the wilderness, and supposedly, alone. Would your first reaction be to grab the door handle and try to open the door? Or would you, first, wonder who'd done it, why, and if it meant danger? And...believing that whoever had just done it was still outside the door, would you simply open the door without taking the possibilities into account?

Of course you would. So if he simply follow the script you hand them, how read can s/he seem to a reader?

Here’s the thing that pretty much every hopeful writer misses: Professional knowledge and skills are acquired IN ADDITION to the set of general skills we’re given in school. And since Fiction-Writing is a profession for which they offer four-year majors at the university, you have to figure that at least some of those skills are mandatory. Right?

So it’s not a matter of how talented you may be, how well you write, or even the story. It’s that because you’re presenting this story from the outside-in, in overview and synopsis, it reads far too much like a report. But given that you’re using the essay and report-writing skills you were trained in, that’s to be expected. And, the fix is simple: Add the skills of fiction writing to your present set of writing skills.

Those we’re given in school, and which we practice by writing endless reports and essays, are meant to inform. They’re presented, dispassionately, in an author-centric and fact-based way, as is all nonfiction. But fiction’s goal, as E. L. Doctorow so well put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

That’s an emotional, not factional goal, which requires an approach that’s emotion-based and character-centric, a methodology our teachers never mention as existing. Why? Because unless they studied the profession of Fiction-Writing, who tells them it's necessary? In fact, my sister, an excellent teacher, said, with certainty, that the writing skills she was teaching her kids were he ones used for fiction. But if she was right, there’d be a lot more teachers writing best-sellers. Right?

So what do you do? The answer is simplicity, itself: Add the skills of fiction to those you already own.

Will that easy, a matter of memorizing a list of, “Do this instead of that?” Of course not. They offer four-year majors in Commercial Fiction-Writing in the universities (not the same thing as a degree in Creative Writing, though). But on the other hand, learning something you want to know isn’t work. And in this case, will feel a lot like going backstage at a professional theater for the first time. And, you’ll often find yourself saying, “But that’s so…so…. How could I have missed something so obvious?” And the homework is writing stories. So what’s not to love?

Lots of ways to get the knowledge you need. Obviously, a degree in commercial fiction writing would help, but there are also things like, seminars and workshops, retreats, genre conferences, writing clubs, critique groups (too often the blind-leading-the-blind, though), and the good old public library’s Fiction-Writing section, which is filled with the views of pros in publishing, writing, and teaching.

I’d begin with the basics of how to create scenes that sing to the reader, at the library. And you can’t beat the price. To help with that, The best book I’ve found to date on the nuts-and-bolts issues, is available for free download at the link below, so grab a copy before they change their mind.*
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/2640776/e749ea

To see the magnitude of changes in approach, between fiction and nonfiction, if you need more data, the articles in my WordPress writing blog are mostly based on the teachings in that book.

So… after all the work you’ve done, was this what you were hoping to hear? Of course not. But since you can’t fix the problem you don’t see as being one, or use the tool you don’t know exists, I thought you’d want to know.

So dig in. And while you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

• This site doesn’t seem to support HTML links, so you have to copy the address and paste it into the URL window at the top of the page.