This was not how the travel writing course she’d taken two years ago had described castles.

This was a tumble into the abode of darkness she had tried so desperately to avoid. Beach excursions and hiking adventures could only do so much, though. She swore one of the windows winked at her. She was going mad. That was the only possible explanation. Unless…

This was “pursuing the dawn,” at its finest. Her professor had been adamant that this was the only “real” time of day to meet historic places in person. Trying to breathe deeply, she paused to choke on air at the base of the sea of gravel. She thought she had chased the sunrise, but maybe the sunrise had chased her.

This was the struggle of her existence, toeing the line between sickness and health. Or, she mentally corrected herself, between writing and not writing. But if she were being completely honest, she couldn’t really say which was the truer madness. Nothing felt more like insanity than keeping everything bottled inside. Wearily she looked up and stared.

There was a peculiar draft emanating from the castle, as if it were exhaling softly.

She tilted her head back farther.

This was not the face she had expected to see.

The eleventh-century Norman castle loomed over her with a menacing façade. Her heart skipped a beat, beating bum-bum, shhh, bum-bum in a choked rhythm as it tried to pound its regular bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum but failed. She gazed up, all the way to the tops of the towers this time, and her eyes widened.

This was what inspired writers to become authors, to express their sufferings in a relatable way that made publishing their work for the masses worthwhile. The massive structure refused to extend an invitation for greatness, however, unless it detected a willing recipient ready to embark on that perilous journey into imagination. And that it did.

This was what made poets, novelists, artists, painters—all creative humans—rush for their paper and pencils and pastels and charcoal and chalk and paint and watercolors and oils and canvas—and take to their respective mediums to create.

This was what showed souls that Hell was not something they ought to seek. The foreboding nature of this architectural masterpiece gave her chills. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere near the rugged stonework of a medieval edifice once constructed for protection. Or maybe for war. She wasn’t quite sure which. But, as sure as walls could keep things out, she also knew they often kept secrets in.

Oh, she thought. This was what Edgar Allan Poe must have felt like—albeit three sheets to the wind and probably high—looking up at a haunted palace and imagining it to be a castle of blood. She shuddered. She could have sworn she saw a shadow at the highest rampart of the structure but convinced herself she was merely seeing things. After all, it was the architecture that hit her in the heart and rendered her soul untouchable. Not the people. Or the ghosts.

Well…maybe the ghosts struck a chord with her soul, too. It was phantasmagoric, as Poe might say.

Her mind was inclined to run rampant on drizzly days like today, and if serendipity threw in a castle? Forget it—she was as good as intoxicated.

Her poetic sensibilities tingled. This was what her soul longed for. She whispered into the crisp morning air, “Brightly does the sunshine on those the darkness favors. Deafly does the rain fall on the ears of she who desires only to hear her secret wish of death granted.” The smile that curved her freckled cheeks into half-moon domes also wrinkled unused laugh lines. Breaking the silence was her favorite pastime.

The fate that befell her would be of her own choosing, she thought, unless this castle had something to do with it. Here she’d probably accept it, anyway. This place was incredible. Slowly she wandered toward the enormous entrance. The drawbridge that had once been lowered to span the murky depths of the moat offered a safe means of making one’s way across without swimming for the far bank, although swimming across on her own would have given her quite the thrill.

The soles of her tennis shoes padded softly across the ancient flagstones. She wondered, not for the first time, whether these had once been grave markers. Flush with the ground, they were embedded in the history of this place. It was sort of a sacred space. Hers were the only footfalls. It was too early for any others. She paid careful attention to the tiny hairs rising on her forearms and the prickles of what felt like electricity at the nape of her neck, and then purposefully ignored them. No stopping now, she thought. This world needs to be explored.

Perhaps she would discover a new chamber in the castle. Or maybe one within herself.

No matter. Either would do. She crossed the threshold and gasped.

It was remarkable.

This antechamber surpassed any images she’d seen on Google. In the dimness she could make out different facets of the room, each more astonishing than the last. Ornate vases clung to marble pedestals. Several clocks were chiming the ungodly hour in unseen halls as if hailing the dayspring. One antique still ticked patiently in the entryway, chickt, chickt, chickt, teasing a different era than the other timepieces, but in reality only itself behind time. Draped curtains belied floor-to-ceiling windows that did not quite allow sunlight to punctuate the romantic ambience. A suit of armor stood guard near the far corner of the room, a few feet from the wall closest to it. Its metal was polished to a sickly bronze sheen, not a fancy silver. She appreciated that minor inadequacy. It made the suit of armor more like a knight in plate armor, metallic properties notwithstanding.

She suddenly looked down at the small notebook that hadn’t left her hand. She’d forgotten about it. The ballpoint pen she had crammed into the spirals was purple today. She would’ve rather had a black one. But her soul would have tried to match it too closely, per usual, so she had decided against it. She withdrew the instrument slowly, not as her weapon of choice but as a tool of necessity. A quick flip of its previous home revealed that the next empty page was three-quarters of the way through the notebook.

Spying an overstuffed armchair in the corner, she strode over with purpose. This burning inspiration wouldn’t last long, she was sure. She ignored the fact that the upholstery was terribly faded despite the faint gloom—the furniture should not have been touched by sun for centuries, if the fragility of the cracked leather straps anchoring the drapes was any indication—and plopped herself into the loveseat. A cloud of dust billowed up around her. She coughed and hacked and coughed some more until she felt as if her lung was about to collapse.

Only then did she notice that there was no natural light to even conjure that much dust.

She panned the room suspiciously but, seeing nothing of concern, quickly returned to her journal. There was too much to write to care about a few motes of death entering her body.

Wheezing quietly, she glanced again at the suit of armor in the corner. It seemed to her like there could be something unholy inside, given how closely the angle of its profile matched hers. She wondered at that. She couldn’t imagine what a ghost could have done to deserve such a fate.

Her interest was piqued.

She stole glances at the burnished metal in as many places as she could think of and described them in detail, scribbling furiously. Engrossed in the endeavor, she ignored her distorted reflection in the breastplate. She did not matter. This likeness of a champion mattered. She assigned the personal pronoun ‘he/him’ because she felt like it. That’s what the world would have called him anyway, no matter what argument he gave.

There on his head lay the strongest flimsiest protection given a knight of _^^lowacclaim such as he: the helm of darkness that kept out embraced fear of death. And upon his shoulders rested the breastplate of the warrior he had once been before his visor allowed slits of brightest sun to shine into his blackened soul. His _^^idlesword lay aquiver at his side, a testament to the struggle of a heart that failed to beat properly beneath th

She paused in her writing for a moment and listened.

All of the clocks had stopped ticking.

Slowly she lifted her gaze.

The knight was missing.

Suddenly the vases cracked and shattered before her eyes, littering shards of gilded ceramic across the foot of the knight who was now somehow directly before her, rigid. She reeled backward, forcefully swallowing the scream that threatened to burst from her throat. Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to contain him in trivial words. The armchair surrounding her was no longer a source of comfort. The curtains fell from their moorings. Or someone tore them down. She didn’t dare look in that direction, because either way, the pulsing morning sunlight was so blinding it forced her nearly to the ground in acute awareness of her vision dying.

Not her sight, but the vision she’d formed of the quintessential castle.

The imagined perfection of the inner chambers. The supposed glamor of muted glory. The charm, the appeal of a place that seemed so attractive behind the stony face.

But the allure was all a lure.

The vision she’d seen when she first laid eyes on this room was the façade. The outer structure was the true self. The castle still stood forlornly, solid in its nod to the chaotic history of this fortress. It was instead the lacquered bowels of the locale that had feigned beauty but in fact led her astray.

She frowned. It was arguably human.

Sensible on the outside, reckless on the inside. Painted face besides.

Her heartbeat quickened but wasn’t quite right. Bum-shh, bum shh-shh, bum-shh.

She realized that her heart had been speaking to her before, trying to hush the call of adventure, warning her not to trespass on sacred vaults. But the writer within had not been satisfied to simply see the balanced stonework, no. The beast inside had longed to debunk the mystery of castles and see what they were really like, and she had indulged it. She had learned too much.

What was this castle like, really?

She leaned forward and clutched her numbing heart. A thought flashed through her mind. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt. At least if it had hurt, she would have understood. She dropped to her knees.

By the time her head cleared, the beats were more like whispers, rhythmic in a weak shhh…brm. Shhh…brm.

Darkness danced lightly at the edges of her vision and then squeezed in. Her pen rolled off the top of her notebook, only to clink against the toe of the inanimate knight.

He was less real to her with each passing moment.

The beat of her heart quieted.

Its pounding ceased.

All that was left was the silence.

The knight’s gauntlet creaked as it rose in the air. Four fingers curled in. One remained pointed: the index finger was vertical in a telling gesture, welded to the visor where his mouth would have been.

Shh. Shh. Shh.