The Obsidian Princess

Chapter 5

This time Eloa entered through the creaky gate at the back of the cemetery which she knew would be open at this time of the night. But then again it was open at all the times of the day, this was no place for the faint hearted. This was no spot where you could come without lights and you would not be scared. There were the screeching of the occasional owl which would make anyone’s throat dry making it devoid of any voice but not hers.

It was her birthday. Her twenty-first birthday. Just after the midnight, just like the night that she had been born. And she had heard that story countless times.

She had always asked her mother why she had been named Eloa. Her mother never had any satisfactory answer for the fact except that she was an angel.

The angel of sorrow.

Eloa walked in between the rows of the unmarked graves and she could feel that something or some one was stirring under her feet. Sifting beneath the soil. Eloa did not know who it was but she could fairly guess. She opened the door of the castle and walked inside in the darkness. There was an eerie glow cast about the entire museum which would look pale and ghostly to anyone else but for her it just was the enough light to see the one she had been searching for.

“I did not think that you would be back so soon,” said a cold voice from the end of the room. She was wearing a choker round her throat and a gown which could have been dripped in the blood of scores of women and then hung up to dry. A faint coppery scent followed her like an afterthought.

“I am guessing that you are the one who are responsible for keeping all of them trapped here for so long, haven’t you?” asked Eloa looking at the  spirit of a woman, a Countess who had been killed in exclusivity and solitary confinement in her own home.

“I see you read,” said the woman. Her voice was haughty and devoid of any kind of emotion which you would find any mother. But this was not a mother, she was nothing humane when she was alive and certainly not now, no one at all who could feel anything.

“Why are you still here?” asked Eloa as she looked at the woman who had horrifically murdered girls, and then smeared their warm essence of life as they were in their final throes of ecstasy.

“Why wouldn’t be I? It is my home…” said the woman with a strange sense of surprise that the girl could ask something this silly.

“No Elizabeth…it is not your home any longer…it has not been your home since it became the field of your killing…you liked it, didn’t you? You tried to fool me by saying that it was a mission which you were taking up to save them but it was not, wasn’t it? You saved their lives so that they would be in your gratitude and then only you could fatten them up like calves for slaughtering them. How many? How many did you kill before they actually came to know? In the bed? Plunging the knives in their heart while there was this strange expression of surprise at why you were doing it to them?” asked Eloa, and she had no idea what she was speaking about and what on earth had come over her. She was having doubts over her own sanity now but she could not undermine the fact that she was standing inside the ball room of the Cachtice castle and talking to the ghost of the Bloody Lady.

“You don’t know anything about me,” said the woman in a cold voice as she came closer to Eloa.

And Eloa could do nothing but laugh out loud at the expression of the dead woman.

“I am the first one in centuries who has been able to talk to you and you are saying that I am the one who is not going to understand you!!! You surely jest with me Elizabeth…but since I am not interested in further discussing this entire thing I suppose I am going to cut the chase and come straight to the point,” said Eloa, and her voice sounded strange even to her. It had gained a particular lilt to it which she had never noticed earlier.

This musical quality although made her voice seemed beautiful it also made it eerily hypnotic.

“What different are you going to say that I have not heard in my entire life and even in my death, in my lonely experience?” asked Elizabeth as her lips curled up in a sneer.

“I am definitely of the opinion that I am going to have to say otherwise Elizabeth. You see…what is the problem here, don’t you now? Don’t tell me you don’t see it…you are talking about your life and your sorrows and your lonely experience after your death but you have not been lonely exactly, have you?” asked Elizabeth as she still continued speaking looking at the expression which was one of fear in the eyes of the most prolific serial killers in the history off all murders in the world.

She was scared. The Bloody Lady was scared, and that was supposed to be news.

“You are afraid of being alone Elizabeth…you have always been afraid of being alone,…that is exactly why you have let no one leave the castle grounds. This is the only place where you could do anything you wanted and where you still have control over all those whom you killed without any compunction. Well it is high time that they start their journey once more Elizabeth,” said Eloa as she walked towards the Bloody countess.

“But I cannot allow that,” said the Countess as she was now standing at the top of the stairs. A pale blue light came from somewhere making the effect horrific. In the blue light the red gown which was donning on looked black and the dead eyes and the lips curled in a permanent line of sneer and disdain mixed up together.

Eloa looked at her and for once she felt her heart thudded and would come to a stop. Truly, it was so scary that the movies could not have ever captured the real thing and if they ever did then several people would lose their lives in the very first show. But Eloa summoned up the courage from somewhere and said,” You don’t understand Elizabeth. You are not the one calling the shots this time. I am.”

“And how is that going to be possible? That you a no one from no where will barge in my home and then tell me to leave?” she asked as the figure of the countess hurtled down the stairs at a dizzying speed and then came towards Eloa who stood there calmly without looking at any place else. And before she could understand what was happening Elizabeth’s ghost went through her body making her sick with the feeling of the cold and nausea that accompanied the going through her body. Eloa could feel the violence still that lingered in the spirit of the Countess. She might have died but she yet had this thirst, this sick thirst of being drenched in the blood, that still remained.

She knew what she needed to do.

Eloa walked out of the castle as the door creaked and shut behind her with a thud. She knew that the countess had thought that she had been able to scare the girl away and then she was going to do whatever she wanted in peace. She had not done enough in her life which is why she had still kept all of them prisoners still inside the castle grounds. And every single night she chose one of them, the lambs as she called them in her diary and then she would take them back to her bedroom only to replay back the scene of the murders of these girls day after day night after night and none of them had any respite from this madness of the Bloody Countess.

Eloa bent down ad picked up a handful of black soil from the ground and she could hear the cries of the girls whose lives had been ended before they were destined. It was the sorrow which had seeped in the sol of this entire castle ground which had cursed this place and it hung around the whole castle like a shadow looming over it.

She placed the soil in between both her palms as the sorrow and the pain seeped from the soil in her hands and she warmed up the soil.

Then she whispered,” It is time dear…it is time for you to let go….”

The moment she did that the soil in her hand rushed out like it had been swept away by a gust of wind and blew over the entire cemetery and she could her the screams of the Bloody Lady from inside the castle and Eloa went back to her room.