The Book of Ineffable Dreams

02.09.19

0923 hours

I was pacing the oversized hallway of a stone castle.

The castle was already crumbling in some places. The path in the hallway was no longer smooth; instead, it had small crevices in its path, filled with the dust of broken and worn down stones. The stones itself looked to be lime green in colour, although I'm not sure if it was because the stones were covered in moss or if it was just the lighting of the lamps overhead.

I could hear the distant chatter and laughter of people from where I was pacing. I knew that the sound was coming from the vast dining room that was set at the end of the hallway. I knew that the sound was the voices and laughter of the royal family and their extended family.

My royal family and my extended family. My father was the king, and I was one of his three princesses.

Despite the fact that I was already dressed in a cute white and black outfit, I still seemed pretty unenthusiastic about joining my family for dinner. After all, no quiet person would want to be stuck in a room that was full of chatterboxes.

* * * * *

I had finally paced far enough down the hallway that I had reached the end of the hallway that broke off into a four-way intersection. The stone in that part of the castle seemed to be a brownish-yellow instead of lime green. The paths were lighted in yellow instead of green.

The path forward was just more of the same crumbling stone hallway.

The path to the left led to a T-intersection. But the darkness from both sides of the T-intersection was almost creeping into the hallway.

The path to the right led to a slope that was quite steep and had a railing alongside it. It wasn't so steep that stepping on it meant that you would slide down the slope immediately, but it was steep enough that it would be difficult to get back up once you reached the bottom.

The slope had a railing all along it. Beyond the thin black railing of the slope was only the blackness of the cellar below.

I took a few steps down the path to the left but then stopped and turned back. I had thought that I saw the statue at the end of the hallway, a statue of a knight in black armour, move.

Slowly and carefully, I stepped down the slope that was to the right, gripping onto the black railing for support. Then I felt a presence; a malicious one. The presence was somewhere in the cold and dark cellar below.

I booked it and ran up the slope as fast as I could.

Once I was sure that I was out of harm's way, I looked down and saw, in the corner of the cellar that was farthest from me, the shadow of someone moving.

* * * * *

"Why didn't you come for dinner?" my father asked me. The king wasn't pleased but he wasn't angry either.

"Why should I?" I replied instead. "Doubt that anyone even noticed that I wasn't there."

My father frowned at me but didn't say anything more as he swished his cape behind him and stalked down the hallway.

* * * * *

When I entered the room, the first that I noticed was the burst pipe that was shooting out water. The shot-out water landed next to the doorway.

As I passed by the stream of water, I got covered in some kind of sticky red liquid. 'Odd,' I thought. I couldn't see any hint of red in the stream of water.

Then I heard an angry shout before my father came into the room. He was yelling at me about how I shouldn't have passed by the stream of water.

I protested and tried to assure him that nothing had happened to me anyway.

Angry, my father blamed the Witch of the Hill for my insolence. He was glaring at something through the window when he said that.

Curious, I looked outside the narrow window as well. I could see a large castle set atop a hill of deep green grass. I think that it was the witch's castle.

The castle only had most of one wall still standing; the rest of the walls had presumably crumbled away. The bright light of the full moon made the pristine white walls of the castle seem as if it were glistening.

My sisters had entered the room while I was staring at the broken castle. The two of them were talking about trying out one of the Rat King's spells.

My father turned furious and yelled at my sisters for suggesting such a thing. He yelled that my sisters were not to speak of the Rat King but, if they had really wanted to be cursed, then he would show them. Then he had grumbled quite loudly about how the Rat King's spells was probably still residing in the plants around the castle.

I watched as my father reached his hand out the window and tore off a branch from a dying tree that was growing out of a crevice in the castle wall. He looked at it briefly before breaking the branch and mumbling angrily about the spell being gone.

My dad turned to us and announced that there was probably still some magic left in the castle moat and rushed downstairs, my sisters following him. I didn't bother to follow them.

I peeked my head out the window to look down at the moat below.

The waters of the moat were a bright green colour (like the colour of cartoon acid). Actually, looking closer, the dark stones that surrounded the moat were built so close to the castle that it seemed more like a canal than a moat.

'Are they going to touch that?' I asked myself. It seemed pretty dangerous.

* * * * *

Many Years Ago

The Rat King ruled the castle that my father now claimed for himself.

A woman (who looked like a cliche witch) was dunking her children into the castle moat. The woman had a long face and a pointy chin. A few tufts of her white hair could still be seen despite the black headscarf that she had wrapped around her head.

Suddenly, the Rat King came out of the castle. He shouted at the woman, "What are you doing to our children and the moat?!"

The witch-lookalike was the wife of the Rat King!

She was very lax as she reassured her husband that the moat was fine. But she didn't say anything about her children.

But, even as the queen claimed that the moat was fine, the once deep and blue waters of the moat receded; the waters had turned into the shallow and bright green moat that I had seen earlier.

"She's coming," the Rat King said suddenly, ushering his wife inside the castle.

There was only a fast-approaching cloud of dust where the Rat King pointed. Someone was most definitely heading to the castle at rapid speed.

The Rat King quickly shut the castle gates once his worried wife had made it inside.

The queen looked at the thin black bars of the gate. 'Would that be enough to stop her?' the queen thought to herself.

I woke up, and yet... I couldn't help but wonder: if it was the witch who used to live in the castle that I lived in, then who was the witch that both kings were afraid of?

— — — — —

A/N: I had this second dream, around 1304 hours, about diaries and keeping track of people and a haunted coffee shop. The dream ended when I was about to start reading the diary of a boy who wrote about the customers who entered the shop.