Previous Chapter ¥ Table of Content ¥ Next Chapter

Chapter 8: The Haunted Castle

---

The castle’s gate was made with pieces of long slabs pieced together to become a wooden gate. It was like a fence, roughly five to six meters tall and around ten meters wide. It was broken and worn out, a large iron chain was used to tie it up along with a simple and unadorned black iron lock fasten to it.

Wang Bo fished out his keys. The keys on the loop rang like bells within his hand, and there were around forty to fifty keys. The large key was the size of a chicken leg, naturally, it was the key that belonged to the gate.

He believed that this corroded and spotted lock would be difficult to open, but the truth was that it opened without any effort when he stuck in the key and turned it to unlock the gate. Charlie explained to him: “Actually, this ancient castle hasn’t even been closed for half a month. Before, the old sir used to always life inside of here.”

Wang Bo Pushed open the door, and smiling said: “A person just died in here, are you afraid?”

Charlie coldly laughed: “The number of dead people I have seen is more than the living people you have seen…”

Speaking to this point, Charlie went silent. It could be reckoned that even he was embarrassed at blowing his own horn.

From the outside, the castle looked very grand, although it was archaic, but it gave off an abundant amount of might. But after they entered, they discovered that this castle was already dirty, disordered and broken into an unbearable state.

Entering from the maingate, besides the outer wall, there was also a layer of a shorter inner wall with an alley forming between the two walls. After crossing that wall would it then be regarded as entering the castle, the inner door have something similar to two guard rooms, a small reception office building, with the doorway directly facing a small public square. Weeds were growing all over it and were the remains of half of a sculpture.

On both sides of the public square there were many trees and houses, the trees were tall but wilted, and the height of the houses varied with unknown usages. Charlie introduced him, saying this was the barn, that is a bakery, that is an assembly hall, and that is a church. Only then did he understand clearly, but because the houses were too ruined, he simply couldn’t make out their usage.

The only thing he could make out was a huge building in the front of the small public square, it was the castle’s main bar, it was no less than forty meters tall, grand and lofty, standing as immovable as a mountain!

Holding a reverent mood, Wang Bo pushed opened the door, and prepared to go in. Suddenly, he heard an obscure line of English echoing.

“Wha?” Wang Bo didn’t hear clearly and turned around to ask Charlie, “Charlie, what did you say?”

Charlie was still behind him dragging his bundles laboriously as he walked and asked in reply: “Say what? I didn’t say anything.”

Wang Bo pursed his brows and said: “You didn’t say anything? I thought I heard someone talk just now.”

Charlie unhappily said: “You want to scare me? Get out of the way, let me hurry up and put these things down and rest…”

He pushed Wang Bo away taking on the lead and walked directly up the stairs while Wang Bo stayed at the hall to open the door and window and let the air flow in freely. This hall was practically like a small public square. Old Wang felt that he could organize people here and hold  a dance within the plaza.

The castle’s main building was the tallest and the most expansive, one layer might be more than ten meters tall. It didn’t resemble a residence, it resembles the office building of a domestic government. Leading to the second floor were three stairs, and each side of it had a spiral stone stair. Furthermore, in the middle of the hall was a perfectly straight staircase, which was divided into four moderate layers, the grandeur of which was out of the ordinary!

Just as Charlie arrived at the second floor, his figure suddenly stopped and slowly turned back to look at Wang Bo, his expression frightened.

“What’s wrong?” Wang Bo’s heart contracted as he asked.

Charlie’s voice trembled as he said: “A moment ago, was what you heard ‘I’m coming’ this sentence? The intonation is the very strange type?”

Wang Bo swallowed his saliva as he said: “I didn’t hear clearly. Wo cao, Charlie, don’t scare me. Tell me, did you also heard some kind of voice?”

He hadn’t heard that sentence a moment ago very clearly, he felt it was a very vague and muddled short line, and thought that it was the sound of the wind made from the door opening. But now, hearing Charlie say this, he believed that he hadn’t misheard a moment ago. Because he feels that that ambiguous intonation had indeed been very strange. It was like a foreigner speaking Chinese, that kind of feeling, it felt very awkward.

As it turns out, the sun set over the western hills. The faint yellow evening light barely shone in the castle building, the atmosphere becoming somewhat lonely and eerie. The mountain wind blew by, the window that was just opened by Wang Bo emitted a ‘creak creak’ sound. Like this, the castle slowly took on a strange aura.

Charlie’s courage seemed to be smaller than Wang Bo’s, carrying his luggage, he ran down with a ‘pa pa pa’ and asked: “Do we really need to live here? My brother, someone just died here recently.”

Wang Bo said: “Didn’t you say that the number of dead people you’ve seen is more than the amount of living people I’ve seen?”

Charlie quietly said: “However, the people who died here aren’t little either! It’s already been half a century when the Roberts Family were flourishing, they had two hundred people and who all died here. Why don’t you calculate how many people that is?.”

Seeing this guy’s appearance as if he was about to see a ghost, instead, caused Wang Bo to become even more brazen. He patted Charlie’s shoulder and said: “Alright mate, we will live right here. The helicopter has already returned, and we also hadn’t bought any tents. If we don’t sleep here, where will we sleep? What’s more, you might have misheard just now, that’s all. There is nothing to be afraid of, after all there is no such thing as ghosts in this world, haha.”

Although Charlie was cowardly, he was also reluctant to admit his mistake. Listening to Wang Bo talk, he coldly laughed and said: “Who’s afraid. I’m just afraid that you might be afraid! OK, since you’re so fearless, then we’ll live here——You go up first, we’ll live on the second floor. The second floor has a guest room.”

Wang Bo looked at him funnily as he asked: “Then what about the first floor?”

“The first floor is the official business hall, a recreation room, kitchen, living room, lavatory and dining hall. Why don’t you go try to find someone who’s castle home has their bedroom and guestroom arranged on the first floor?” Charlie snappily responded.

The whole composition of the ancient castle was stone, giving the impression that it was crude and firm. The stairs were also made of the same material, but it was polished and quite smooth. You could tell that the Roberts Family went to great expense to construct this castle.

After taking a turn from the stairs you came to the rooms. Wang Bo tried his key to open the closest of the two rooms. The electricity and water inside it could all be used, but there were only a carpet, bed, table and chair. There were nothing else, the style was simple and unadorned, close to being primitive.

However, the sanitation of these two rooms were kept quite well. Charlie said that this was because when Sir Roberts died, the United Kingdom’s government and New Zealand’s government had lived here before to prepare for his funeral.  The time since then hasn’t even been a week, of course, the sanitation would remain in order.

Wang Bo let Charlie choose a room first, then took the remaining room for himself. He used dirty clothes to pat down the bed board and tidy up. And then spread out the bedding, and placed down the fruit, food and other daily necessities he had brought with him. A fledgling stage of a bedroom appeared.

Although this bedroom was still very simple and crude, but because it was his, Wang Bo felt that it was quite good. Even better than those luxurious apartment buildings he had rented in Beijing.

The dinner was prepared by the two of them. Since Charlie was once one of the New Zealand people who were preparing for a funeral, he was more familiar with the castle. He found the kitchen on the first floor and threw away all the old kitchen-ware in exchange for the ones bought today with Wang Bo to prepare for the meal.

There were no natural gas in the castle, so cooking had to be done with an electric frying-pan. Wang Bo first boiled a package of macaroni and cooled it down with cold water. And then he put in bibimbap sauce, carrots, onions, and ham to stir fry together into a macaroni.

He had left his hometown when he was in junior high to go out and learn, he had already worked in the kitchen for over ten years now. Although he couldn’t make any banquets, he was very good at home cooking. The spiced meat-sauce of the stir fried macaroni fragrances assailed his nostrils and he covered the tops with a poached egg and a few cucûmber strips in the end. This dish would now smell, look and taste great.

In addition, he had used tomatoes, cucûmbers, and eggs to make a thick soup. This was quite simple. The tomato was chopped up as much as possible, the cucûmber diced with some chopped onions on the egg, turning it into a soup.

After taking a bite of the macaroni, Charlie’s eyes suddenly lit up. With a ‘slurp’ he ate and ate gave a thumbs up and said: “Beautiful! Your cooking skills is much more beautiful than your appearance!”

Wang Bo smiled: “Thanks for the praise, but the way you praise is quite new and original. I really want to smack my bowl of soup onto your face to praise you as well!”

A simple dinner between the two ended in talking and laughter, Wang Bo sincerely said in the end: “Charlie, I am extremely grateful for your help these past few days. Because today’s condition isn’t favorable, I will make a feast for you to thank you later.”

Charlie waved his hand, not minding as he said: “You are being too polite Wang. First of all, this is my job, it should be a matter of course. And also, didn’t I say this before, we shared a familiarity at first sight.”

Although he said this, Wang Bo still felt that he owed the other a favor, after all, Charlie was really good to him. For example, seeing that Wang Bo’s phone could not go online, he even gave his own iPad for Wang Bo to use.

After watching a movie, Wang Bo looked out the window at the shining clean moonlight as he laid there on his stomach. Afterward, he was laying on the bed on his back preparing to sleep.

He had a small fault, that was mental illness. This was also something many menial programmers had as an occupational disease. Their sleeping was very shallow, a little noise could easily wake them up. In addition, what he was sleeping on was a new bed, so it was even harder for him to sleep deeply.

He didn’t know how long he had slept, but Wang Bo suddenly heard a vague voice: “Hungry, hungry, hungry… Who’s here, who’s here, who’s here…”

This voice was very awkward, it was like what Charlie had said, the intonation was strange. If he had to make an analogy, that accent was like a foreigner speaking Chinese, sounding very stiff.

After hearing this voice clearly, Wang Bo immediately became clear-headed. Adrenaline quickly secreted from him as a layer of cold sweat appeared from his back.

Laying on the bed, he didn’t dare to directly get up, but rather, after carefully listened, perhaps what he heard was just his fantasy.

Concentrating his attention and holding his breath, Wang Bo had just pricked up his ears when the door of the room suddenly issued a loud ‘peng peng peng’ noise.

---

Previous Chapter ¥ Table of Content ¥ Next Chapter