Horror Aficionados discussion

Okay hope I have done this right, the plan is simple, we write a book together, or at least add a few lines each, so I will start and anyone and everyone can hopefully join in?

It was a dark and stormy night, atop the cliff the young woman sat upon the bench watching the tide slam against the rocks below. She was on her third cigarette and her eyes kept straying to the smoke dancing crazily in the air.

She had not been able to shake the feeling that....

... she was already dead. That somewhere in the ancient castle that towered over the cliff she'd met her end and yet she was here smoking.

She lifted the cigarette and studied its faintly glowing tip. She puffed upon it, and the glow flared red and hot. She scrunched her nose in anticipation and pressed the tip against the pale skin on the back of her left hand.

Her skin blackened but she felt nothing. She cast the cigarette over the edge of the cliff and into the North sea. There was no room for doubt - she was dead alright.

She rose and turned. A light flickered in a far tower of the castle. It was time to find out what had killed her. ...

The light of the tower called her like the Syrens call to sailors in a storm-tossed Sea. For a moment, she saw a shadow pass in front of the window and then the flicker as if of a candle, then the room plunged into darkness.

Making her way up the storm slickened rock stairway hewn out of the bedrock itself toward the entrance to the Castle. Positioned haphazardly the ruins of a little village that once had sat at the base of the towering stone buttress.

She remembered the tavern well, it had been a stormy night like this she had first arrived, but then the water had not only slammed against the cliffs, it had fallen from the sky in great sheets, hitting the ground like an enraged monkey giving vent to its fury.

The bar had been called 'The Drowning Man' and then had a roof and walls and windows and people warm and friendly within, now …

.... it was dark and desolate, just like her. She felt nothing, except curiosity, as to why she was dead and why she was here. Of all the places in the world to be. Here, on this godforsaken coast. Castles, ghost towns, phantoms of what used to be.

She knew that when she came, and yet.....

...she couldn't remember how long ago that had been. The realization of that brought her up short.

"How long have I been here? How long have I been dead?"

She rested her cold fingers against her clammy temple. She had just started running her fingers through her hair, when she felt...

...a cold, creeping sensation rise all over her body. Yes, she was dead but this did not mean she could not feel what it was like to sense that horrible fear which sweeps over one when faced by sheer horror.

The Devil cackled with laughter as he approached from her rear. "You have come to the end of the line, dear Missy!" he mocked her with a satanic sneer which chilled her bones or what was left of them. "Your soul is mine now. You signed your pact with me thinking it would save your son but in the end it has proved to be a futile act. Both of you have perished, leaving you what? A sense of regret and a whole list of what-might-have-beens.

She turned to face her tormentor. "No, it is not I who is at the end of the line. It is you. For you see..."

You are no more Lucifer than I am Anne Rice; the Devil does not cackle like an insane old hag, nor does he dress like a bad actor from hammer productions. At best you are his servant. At worst you are just insane! So tell me honestly, where lies my son, and what has happened here, to me?”

The figure stepped back, his sneer faltered, and slowly his image faded, the laughter faded. And a faint sound of clapping seemed to fill the air over the sounds of the storm.

"What is this place?"

Phantoms and poltergeists attempting contact?? Anything to feel again. Anything to be filled with emotion, awareness; anything but this mind-numbing cold and just numbness.

Walking along the cobblestones....

"Wait, who am I? What is my name??"

She realized that as much as she dreaded it, she also needed to get to the castle. She needed answers now.

"Maybe, I will be able to feel something, if I know something."

She quickened her pace...

No sooner had she turned thought to action, the quickening of her pace, till she was there atop the hill in front of the massive castle gates, portcullis down and beyond that, huge spiked oak doors closed, barred, shut!

She looked around confused, she had been approaching, and now she was here, no break between, merely one point to the other, instantly! No recollection of the path between.

She turned around, and below her spread the village that clung to the castle walls, houses lit up, people on the streets, the Drowning Man, light spilling out as a shadow entered. No sounds, just the people and the streets and the bustle of life. Above in the night sky, a great silver airship heading somewhere out to sea, the lights along the hull breaking up the stars with its silhouette.

It wavered like a candle in the wind and once more a desolate ruin of blackened stumps where a village stood. She turned back to the Castle entrance. The portcullis was up, beyond the great spiked oak doors, collapsed and blackened on the ground, the way in clear.

She looked up at the castle walls and a strong sense of forbode enveloped her. What she thought was a devil was only an apparition attempting to confuse her to dissuade her from the ultimate goal of realization. They wanted to keep her here in this cycle for the rest of time.
She gazed at her surroundings in deep thought, she was halfway between the world of the living and the eternally dead, the true question. "Am I an imprint on this place reliving a single instant over and over, I do not have a concept of time any more and my interactions with the physical plain are limited. I wonder as I have the ability to interact with this plain of existence at all does that make me a poltergeist? No if that were the case I would be focused on a songular emotion, there has to be more to this. Am I truly dead, I don't believe that I actually had a son and I am certainly not Anne Rice."
A warmth rose within her energy spreading through her spectral body reaching out like tenrils of light pulling her forward beckoning her. She heard the sound of the waves crashing on the coastline below this clofftop castle a stone tumbled off the edge of the cliff and her eyes opened.
The warmth pulled her forward under the dark night enared under the raging torrent of rain. She phased through the castle walls broken free of her musings, she was trapped in that spot by her fears a revenant bound to a single place. She could feel her body calling for her, she now that her body was still alive but only faintly.
She had become lost between two plains and now she remembered that she was looking for something before entering the astral plain.
"Akala is my name but for now this is all I can remember, what happened to me."
Akala saw her body and it was surrounded by darkness, there was a seal on her chest that was radiating black energy. She felt a dark presence and it chilled her to the core something was lurking here and it wouldn't let her have her body. This place she didn't notice but the air of death was all around, the castle walls were stained with blood. Akala's fear was a tangible thing and now she was frozen and overwhelmed. A shadow slowly crept forward lurking towards her wandering soul.

The writer sheepishly edited his words.
*singular
*she said to herself
*clifftop
*ensnared
*she now knew
*?
*she spoke aloud to herself