Page 11 of Castle of the Cursed
I push those thoughts away and try to focus on something else.
The bathroom has a raven-claw tub and no shower. I twist the brass tap to fill it with hot water. A collection of shampoos, conditioners, body gels, moisturizers, and bath bombs line the porcelain, all of them unopened.
I haven’t bathed unsupervised in months, haven’t had any privacy at all. It feels surreal to be completely alone like this, to know I could do anything I want without anyone stopping me. I could hold my breath underwater until the last bubble pops.
I dunk my head and wait in muffled silence to be proven wrong.
As the seconds pass, the world gets too quiet. When the absence of sound becomes overwhelming, I wonder if that’s what death is, just an earsplitting silence for all eternity. I break the surface, gasping for breath.
When I finish bathing, I towel off and change into black leggings and a hoodie.
Then I break Beatríz’s first rule.
I wear socks but no shoes.
Padding across the icy hall, I stay close to furniture and other heavy items, where the floor is more settled and less likely to creak. Once I return to the landing of the Y-shaped stairs, I climb the twelve steps of the left branch.
The darkness feels deeper here, and my steps are muffled by giant mothballs. I use my key chain flashlight—an investigative necessity, according to Dad—to examine the hall’s peeling paint and cobwebbed corners. A tingle creeps up the back of my neck that isn’t a spiderweb.
I feel like I’m being watched.
I swing my light in a circle around me, but I don’t catch the whites of anyone’s eyes. Yet as I keep going, peeking into dilapidated bedrooms and bathrooms, the sensation of being followed only grows.
But I hear no footsteps.
Something brushes my cheek—
Sucking in a sharp breath, I spin and flash my light in every direction. The beam flickers, cutting in and out, before shutting off for good.
I toggle the switch, but the device is dead. I can see why the locals believe something is off about this castle.
I should head back to my room, but the bands of fear tightening around my chest excite me. The siren call of my heartbeat is too tempting to ignore.
A monstrous shadow grows sharper as I approach the end of the hall, and once my eyes adjust, I see another gargoyle carved of black stone. Like the ones from the staircase, its expression is grotesque and its eyes follow me closely. Once I manage to look past it, I notice a nondescript door.
I swing it open to a swirl of silver, and I enter a starlit space with a wall of stained glass windows. And I’m reminded of a different silver blaze.
In the early weeks after the subway, before medication drowned my dreams, I used to get the same vision, night after night. It wasn’t the twenty-five dead bodies, or the black smoke, or even my parents. It was the blast of silver right before the train came back into focus.
That was how the dream would begin. Then the light would retreat into twin orbs—a pair of eyes.
He had dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, and a starry gaze. I must have made him up to watch over me at night.
I never remembered the details of our time together once I awoke, just the imprint of his face and the way shadows danced around him, reflecting back not a man’s shape but a monster’s. I thought of him as my nighttime guardian, a gargoyle with an angel’s face protecting me from nightmares. I called him my shadow beast.
Yet the silver light in this room comes from the night sky, filtered through stained glass. The windows are cloudy with dust, but I can still make out their original designs: the eight phases of the moon.
This room has a hallowed feel to it, as if it was once a sacred chamber. Like a lunar temple for summoning gods. Or demons.
The walls look scratched, and as I approach for a closer inspection, I see that they’re covered with words. Even before reading them, I know what they say.
The same line has been etched into the stone, over and over and over again, in different handwritings and to varying degrees of legibility: No hay luz en Oscuro.
There’s no light in Oscuro.
The words are an incantation, and I’m thrust back in time to the purple room, as a memory overtakes my senses:
A black fire blazes through the room, singeing the wallpaper and producing clouds of smoke.
