The Respicer

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Harlette had been brought to a chamber with no windows and no doors; she was to wait there till the late evening. And when the sun went down, guards came to fetch her.

The king and queen expected Harlette at the castle's entrance. They wished her good luck, and as soon as those words were uttered, Harlette was scooped into Burgette's palm and brought to the abandoned church. Burgette was not in a chatty mood, her expression being that of fear, disgruntlement and concern.

The path to the church lead them out of the village, through a bit of forest till a great hill. Atop the hill was the gloomy, gothic church, though not much of it could be discerned for drowning in increasing darkness. Crows croaked around its fissured towers and the wind's moans grew louder with every minute.

At last, Burgette placed Harlette on the ground, a few feet away from the great and ruined door.

'I'm really sorry you must go through all this, little fairy,' Burgette spoke sadly and smiled feebly; an almost toothless smile.

'It's alright. I got work to do. It'll take my mind off things and make the night go by quicker,' Harlette reassured.

Burgette's chin quavered in confusion. 'I will wait here till dawn. I really hope you will make it out alive. But just in case you don't, don't feel too bad, as I'm sure you'll go straight to heaven.'

Harlette's brow rose skeptically at Burgette's encouraging speech which was far from encouraging.

The young woman turned towards the murky objective. 'What have I done? How did all this come to happen?' she moaned helplessly to herself. She was valiant and would not retire cowardly. Anyway, she had no choice but to go in, and so, with one last look at the sniveling giant behind her, she went towards the large door. She slipped in through a crack.

In this ruined lair of dark blue and black, there was only silence. Harlette walked cautiously into the coal-black, her pupils dilating, her breath clouded and her body quavering from cold and fear. Her steps resounded behind her, against the walls of this tumbled ruin. Furniture strayed along her path, but she caught no details for all were but shadows in the night.

Harlette came to sit cross-legged on the icy grey floor. She waited. She shivered violently. It was freezing, and it was damp.

An hour passed, and Harlette still waited, her notebook closed on her lap, and in their sockets her eyes moved from left to right. Silence whispered monstrous things in this wrecked ruin, and this whisper was like the rustling of a polluted river.

Outside, there was no more brightness.

Harlette waited, but no ghost came.

Two hours passed, and the birds called high in the night. The wind moaned, and there was still no ghost.

Another hour passed, and Harlette was still on her own.

It was midnight.

Harlette straightened in alarm when her vigilant ears caught something. Silence. Harlette listened closely, and all she heard was the sound of her own quavering breathing.

Silence.

Click, Clack. There was a noise, a strange noise of something shifting.

A groan came from the very ground beneath her, and it reverberated all around this somber place.

Harlette's heart beat fast, yet she dismissed her alarm as being nothing but a silly superstition. Ghosts did not exist; all this was most probably a joke.

The groan came again, and this time it was louder, and it was the groan of the awakening monster. Slithering or crawling? Harlette knew not, but she felt it approaching. It had seen her. It had smelled her. It was hungry. Harlette was terrified, and her palms began to sweat.

Harlette breathed deep and popped the notebook open, and looking neither left nor right, began to write, in total darkness, ideas for her new romance novel.

A mighty voice rang. It was brassy and grave, and it was terrifying. The Respicer.

Harlette was jittery and could not concentrate. She wanted to run away, yet she knew she would undoubtedly run into the monster and look at it; the spell would make her. She could not move and she had to write.

There was the sound of something rattling. Then there was the sound of something slithering, and it slithered behind her. Then there was a stench, a powerful stench of decaying flesh lodged in a rotten maw. Harlette's heart was in a frenzy, and her stomach flipped with the need to heave. Her hand-holding pen trembled on the paper.

'Is there anyone here?' Harlette could not help but utter.

Silence.

'A trespasser,' a deep, disembodied hiss answered.

Outside, the wind screamed.

'A trespasser?' Harlette echoed, trembling with uncertainty. 'Thank heavens for that. I sure am glad to hear I am not the only one intruding,' Harlette finished dumbly.

'I wasn't answering your question, I was stating a fact. You are the trespasser,' the ghoul told what Harlette knew all too well.

Harlette felt a heavy presence right next to her, and heat came from it. This heat was stinky and awful. Harlette tried not to tremble.

'Oh. Well. Hello then, Mr Respicer,' Harlette greeted, her heart beating so fast it threatened to fail with unbridled panic.

'I am not Mr Respicer, I am the Respicer! In Far-Flunga they fear me, and they have done so for many, many centuries. None that came here ever came out. Do you want to look at me before I destroy you?'

The ghoul was in front of her, she could feel it. Harlette did not look up. 'Yeah sure. But first, can you answer a question? Is the Respicer both your first and last name, or is it a pseudonym? If it is the latter, would you be so kind as to provide me with your true name? You know, in case I want to call you sometime and try and look you up in the white pages,' Harlette invented, all the while beginning to scribble away on her notebook, hoping for time to go by quickly.

'You, mortal, have no right to summon me!' the ghost roared and then let out an evil chuckle that was so horrible, it made the shattered walls quaver and the wind cry with despair. 'However, you are allowed to guess why it is my teeth are so great and pointy.'

Harlette puckered her lips and feigned naivety once again: 'Umm. Perhaps you are a little bit out of touch with modern society?'

Silence. The only sound was that of pen scrapping against paper.

'What did you just say?' the Respicer's voice boomed in question.

Harlette did not look up. 'Umm, perhaps you are a prehistoric creature of some kind that needed large teeth in order to survive the Stone Age…but when time and situation changed you did not manage to adapt and keep up with evolution.'

'Did not manage to adapt? Are you saying that I suffer from mental retardation?' the Respicer let out, its voice growling.

Harlette jerked slightly when hearing metal being scraped against the stone around her. Despite her not seeing it, she sensed the Respicer contorting its veiny and bony carcass as it crept along the walls with the long nails of its dead and grey fingers. It could see her clearly; how many eyes it had? Harlette did not know, but she imagined it had many, and they were big and yellow.

'Mental retardation? No! I would never say that; it wouldn't be politically correct. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to live in the past. After all, my grandmother still lives in the swinging 60ies.'

'But does she have eyes like mine? Eyes that are ghastly, eyes that can reduce a herd of stampeding rhinos to ashes. Look at them and you will see for yourself,' the Respicer invited.

Something urged Harlette to look, but she kept on writing. 'In a minute,' Harlette replied. She felt its presence right by her. She wanted to look. Oh dear, how she wanted to look. Silence fell over her, and this silence was heavy, almost tangible. Harlette forced her mind to think of Thranduil, naked and in a bed of roses. Then she thought of Bon Jovi and started to write the lyrics of the song Bed of Roses down−anything to stop herself from looking at the Respicer.

The Respicer grew irritated, and it bellowed. 'Look at my awful teeth! They can grind a giant to powder in a single bite!' It clashed them loudly.

Harlette did not move an inch; she could not look at him. She said: 'I will, but I have to get some work done first, if you don't mind.'

She forced herself to begin the introductory chapter of her new novel which she entitled: The Glistening Elf.

The Respicer was outraged. 'Of course I mind, you are in my domain!'

'And I thank you very much for letting me trespass. But please, I must finish my writing,' she retorted cheekily, writing away, her heart slamming in her chest. Curiosity ate at her, beckoning her to turn around and look, but she had to be stronger and so, she kept her eyes fixed on her work and her mind set on Thranduil and the bed of roses.

Tension. Rage. The ghoul howled. 'Writing? Writing what?'

'Ideas for my new book. I'm a romantic novelist.'

'I do not care what you are, mortal! Now look at me!'

Birds outside called. Dawn was near. 'Just wait a little till I finish my work,' she told the creature. 'I'll look at you as soon as I'm done, I promise.' She began the prologue of her new story with a flash-forward scene in which the main character of her novel, Bernadette, was making love to a mysterious elf-king who had imprisoned her in Mirkland castle.

The Respicer screamed, and this scream was vile.

Birds sang loud. The sun outside thrust its yellow head over the horizon's brim. Daylight spilled over Far-Flunga and slipped through the cracks of the ruined church.

Harlette bolted on her feet and ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Howling madly, the Respicer followed her, till it could no longer for she had bolted outside.

Harlette tripped on a stray pebble and fell scattered limbed on the floor, her note book still in hand. She scrambled onto her feet and she began to scream frantically whilst bouncing up and down. Harlette whirled around to find Burgette watching her incredulously. 'Yo-you...y-y-you...!' the giant stuttered pathetically. Harlette placed her hands on her hips and puffed her chest, a smug expression drawn on her face. 'Yeah, I did! I'm hungry now. I think I deserve to eat and celebrate!'

Burgette's expression went from bewildered to happy to concerned to terrified. 'The other fairy!' she let out. 'You must go to him, otherwise he will die!'

Harlette remembered what the Shadow had said, and before she had time to utter anything, Burgette threw a sort of powder in the air. Nothing happened.

Harlette tilted her head to the side.

'Wait for it,' Burgette grumbled.

Abruptly, a mirror appeared before her, and it glowed. It was a portal. Harlette knew what to do, and quickly she stepped into it, ready to be teleported to wherever Thranduil was being held captive and save him from whatever fate was to befall him. After surviving the Respicer, surely, she could do anything.