N87

Lambeth Bridge. N87, to Kingston.

1.30 am, Friday night.

I look at my reflection on the windscreen.

Then I see that girl. She’s playing with her phone.

And that couple seems to be having an argument.

Oh, well.

The tide is quite high.

And this fog is quite unusual for this time of year.

That group of people is speaking in a language that sounds familiar.

I think it might be her native language…

“Anyway, I can try anything, it’s the same circle leading to nowhere”.

And it reminds me of that time when I was on this bus with her.

She said something like ‘I’m pretty bad at keeping in touch with people.’

But, as usual, you thought it had nothing to do with you…

Until it did.

believing in magic

‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. You know what people from the village said,’ Jackie warned her friend.

‘What do you care what a bunch of uneducated villagers say? I thought you were intelligent enough not to believe in ghost stories. Besides, it’s daytime. Your ghosts will be sleeping now, so nothing to worry about,’ replied Diana.

The two girls had decided to rent a car and make a weekend road trip around the Highlands. It was starting to be a bit shameful to have grown up in Scotland and never have visited Loch Ness.

They stopped at a small village for the night, after having driven for several hours. The only place to stay in the village was a two storey house run by a family, with no more than four bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and the local pub on the ground floor. Since there was not much to do, the girls decided to hang out with the locals. They had seen a castle on their way there and had thought it might be a good idea to visit it in the morning.

‘They say it belonged to some Prince from the XVIII century… After his second wife died in strange circumstances, he went out of his mind and started to get rid of all his servants until he was left alone. He let himself go until he passed away as well, but rumour has it that his ghost still inhabits the castle,’ finished the villager in a sombre voice. Then he had the remaining half of his drink in one drop, and burped loudly. The girls looked at one another in disgust.

‘You win, Diana. But promise me we’ll head back immediately if things start getting creepy.’

But, as usual, Diana wasn’t listening to her friend. As Jackie finished her last sentence, Diana was already going through the arch that led to the main courtyard of the castle. They crossed the courtyard and Diana pushed the door that would take them inside the castle. They found it quite surprising that it wasn’t even locked. As the door opened, a cold wind blew from the inside.

‘Oh my goodness,’ said Jackie in astonishment.

The villager had told them that no one had lived in that castle for more than two hundred years. Nonetheless, the main hall that opened up before them was preserved in a perfect state, as if someone had held a party there the night before: half burnt candles at the chandelier that hung from the high wooden ceiling with mouldings, thick dark blue curtains before the windows, tapestries at the walls and even a very long red carpet that started at the door and went up the steps of the magnificent staircase that rose in front of them. The same happened in every room that they went through.

‘Do you know what I think?’ Jackie said ‘Probably that drunkard was just teasing us and someone is actually living here.’

‘You may be right. Still, I have an awkward feeling. There’s something that doesn’t quite fit here. It’s just as if time had been frozen inside the castle.’

Eventually, they got to a room that they thought could have been the wife’s, since there was a very big wardrobe with lots of woman dresses like the ones depicted on the portraits from the late XVIII century. There was also a bed with a silk canopy with embroideries in gold, and a boudoir. The decoration of this chamber was notably more luxurious than the one in the rest of the rooms in the castle, so it could have perfectly belonged to a princess or a queen.

But what attracted Diana’s attention was a full-length mirror that stood on one corner of the room. It was quite plain, the only remarkable thing about it being some butterfly and flower motifs on its top. And you couldn’t even see your reflection, as a layer of dirt covered the glass. Even so, she was drawn to it by some strange force, and she immediately knew that she had to take that mirror home with her…

Just a start...

Hello everyone. I'm back, after exactly one year! So much has happened since... I wanted to let you know that from now on, this blog will be updated in English. And also that hopefully I will have more stuff to share with you, since I'm retaking my hobby of creative writing, mostly in English. Here I leave you one of my first excerpts, I know it's not the best, but I'm still finding my style in a language that is not my native one...


Alex had been postponing introducing me to his parents for almost one year.

‘They are a bit too… unconventional,’ he would say to justify himself.

One Friday afternoon he came to pick me up after work with his car.

‘How very nice of you,’ I said, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘What are we celebrating?’ But he wouldn’t reply. So many times his ways drove me crazy.

So we left the city, heading for the countryside. At first we would see a cottage every now and then, but after an hour or so it started getting dark (or maybe it was just the clouds that were getting thicker) and the only thing I could see were bare trees at both sides of the pebble road.

‘Are you taking me to a witchcraft session in the woods or something like that?’ I said, in an attempt of breaking the awkward silence that accompanied this mystery journey. As a reply, I just got more silence. I promised myself that my next boyfriend would be a bit more normal.

Finally I got a glimpse of lights behind the trees. They were definitely coming from a house, but there was something odd about them. They were reddish and it looked as if they were trembling, probably coming from candlelight.

He kept driving through the trees towards the lights and, at some point the trees cleared and a masonry building appeared in front of us. It was already dark so I couldn’t get a very precise impression of it, and the mist that had just started floating around us, as if we were on the stage of a cheesy horror play, wouldn’t help either. It looked more like a fortress, with a tower on top of each end of the main façade. I reckoned it would be some centuries old; however, someone must have been taking care of it all this time since, in spite of being covered in ivy, all the walls, roofs and windows were in their place.

‘It dates back from the XVII century,’ said Alex, as if he could read my mind, opening his mouth for the first time that evening, ‘and it has belonged to my family since 1792.’

As he said this, we stopped in front of the main door. He pushed it gently and it yielded open. Behind it turned up an old man with white, longish, thin hair, and hairy ears, covered by a ragged dark cloak. I was startled by this unexpected apparition. He was carrying a candlestick.

‘Welcome, young master. Good to see you again. I shall go and tell the Earls that you have arrived. And I shall as well get two bedrooms ready for you and the young lady. May I assume you’ll be staying with us for the weekend?’ said the old man, closing the door behind us, apparently effortless. I would have expected such a big old door to be heavier and harder to move. ‘Oh well’ I thought, ‘maybe they just greased the hinges really well’.

‘Thanks, Ivan’ said Alex, ‘but you may take the lady to the sitting room. I’ll go and have a talk with parents myself’.

So he grabbed another candlestick from a table nearby the door, lit its candles with one of the old man’s ones and climbed up the stairs that rose in front of us. The old man turned to the right and made his way towards a door with not a single word. Apparently everyone in Alex’s family was a huge fan of silence.

I followed him, supposing that was what I was to do. It was a bit unsettling to see how, despite his quirky appearance, he walked so smoothly, as if he was floating. Nevertheless, with every step I took along that dark, wooden floor, the whole house seemed to creak.

‘The Earls and the young master shall be with you in a minute’ said the old man, before shutting the door after him. He had mentioned that before, but until that moment I hadn’t realised: so my boyfriend’s parents were aristocrats, and they lived in a castle! This could explain many things, such as why he would disappear for days without a reason, or why he disclosed so little information about his background, if he was trying to have a life as normal as possible.

The room I was left in had been set before we came in. It was well lit by candles (if that makes sense for someone that has grown up with artificial lighting) and there was a fire in the fireplace. The windows were concealed by thick, velvet, blood-red curtains. A row of pictures hung from the walls. They depicted portraits of men, and I could tell from their clothes and hairstyles that they were arranged in chronological order, starting from roughly the XVIII century until the beginning of the XX century. All of them looked quite alike and also I could see a hint of a resemblance with Alex. They were unusually pale –same as Alex-, their lips being quite red, though. A shiver went down my spine and my breath became heavier.

I went to take a seat by the fire, sinking in a worn, dark brown, leather armchair. The fire was nice and warm and still I could feel how my hair was standing on end. I stood up to check whether there was a draught coming from an open window. As I was drawing one of the heavy curtains, something made me jump on my feet and made my heart beat so fast I thought I could hear it pumping.

‘At last we meet, young madam’ a soft, deep manly voice whispered in my ear, while a cold breath caressed my neck…