Spirit of Meradoon

“Are you coming?” Emma strode ahead, efficiently demolishing any soaked clumps of grass that barred her way by stamping on them with the thick, ridged soles of her galoshes. A perfect, smooth pathway now trailed behind her all the way back to where Thomas stood rooted to the spot, despite having uttered his reluctant acquiescence.
Lost deep in thought of fearful happenings within the castle’s walls, he thought his sister was acting irrationally, his over-active imagination determining that she may have succumbed to the draw of an invisible spell. When her voice reached him, distant and faint, he roused himself and felt as though he were emerging from a dream.
“Okay,” Thomas called, reluctantly. “There’s no hurry; we’ve got all day!” he added, irritated by his sister and determined to assert himself. Frustrated by her persistence and his doubts about the unknown, he irritably brushed the backs of both hands across the lenses of his glasses in an effort to remove the pinhead-sized drops of drizzle which blocked his view. I’m soaked. I didn’t realize a mist could be so wet. He ran, breathless, along the grass-matted pathway to arrive at Emma’s side.
They stepped off the pasture onto a wide driveway which, like the lifeline on a giant’s palm, forged its way to the base of his forefinger. Gravel crunched beneath their feet and in no time at all, thanks to Emma’s heightened speed and increasing excitement, they found themselves at the first step of a majestic entrance.
“Wow! It’s enormous, isn’t it?” she said, her voice filled with awe as she stared at the castle’s moss-covered façade, impressed by the height and vast dimensions of the ruin.
“Yes as well as dark and mysterious. Are you really sure you want to go on?” Subdued, his voice hushed, Thomas stood motionless while his sister ran ahead with unwavering enthusiasm.
Her reply rebounded off the walls, returning to him before the echo of his own had completely faded away. “Of course, it’s so much fun.”
This part of the castle was intact. In fact the main body was in very good condition since it was just one of the four turrets, each placed on a corner of the square formation, which had fallen into disrepair, and was the reason it was now considered to be a ruin.
“Let’s go upstairs.” Not a second had been wasted as Emma quickly scoured the ground floor. Without awaiting a reply she raced ahead, scarcely able to contain herself.
Thomas was abruptly left standing with his mouth open as he feebly attempted to utter some restraint. He felt ignored and insignificant; nothing seemed to matter except what Emma wanted. His shoulders drooped and he sighed deeply, frustrated because today was evolving much like many others.
The staircase was wide and the steps steep. Even Emma’s legs were barely long enough to climb, so she turned and held Thomas’s hand to pull him up after her.
“This is so much better than I thought it would be!”
At the top of the stairs they stood still to regain their breath, studying a vast corridor which stretched before them.
“I’d like to go into one of the towers.” Thomas was most surprised to discover that the voice he heard was, in fact, his own. It seemed the eerie castle had finally triggered his intrigue, and thoughts of those who had walked these hallways before them suddenly pried his deeply-buried curiosity to the surface.
At the end of the hallway, which seemed twice as long as any at the children’s school, enormous rooms flanked either side. Each room had a huge fireplace that could easily hold a quantity of choirboys captive.
A curved archway stood before them creating the entry to the roofless turret. Now it was Thomas who ran ahead unheeded. He gazed upward through its roofless top, amazed by dark, rain-filled clouds scudding right above them. “I think I can touch the sky!” he said, jumping up to try.  When he saw a slit-window opening in the wall, he ran to it, hopeful of grabbing a handful of sugar candy mist drifting past. “Here, you try! It’s fun.”
Even a mist-catching challenge was insufficient to hold Emma captive very long. “I’m going to the next hallway. I want to see if I can find a complete turret.”
“Hey, wait for me. You’re always in such a rush.”
Luck was on their side, for the end of the next hallway brought them to one of three undamaged turrets. However, it was one in which they got a much different experience from their first adventure.
“Ugh, get away from me! Get away!” Emma ran out, screaming at the top of her lungs when a great flurry of surprised bats burst forth from the safety of the fireplace and flew screeching around them as they sought an early escape. Not only were the terrified creatures’ cries deafening, but the overall effect was increased by the noise of their frantically beating wings. They whirled around Thomas who was fascinated by their ability to fly without bumping into him, one another or the stone walls.
Emma’s screams faded as she ran back along the corridor, frantically waving her arms like the blades of an uncoordinated windmill. She was convinced the bats were trying to dive-bomb her, whereas in reality they were only trying to fly over or around her. “I hate you, you horrible things! Leave me alone!”
From experience Thomas knew that anything he said to console his sister would be futile because she knew they were going to become tangled in her hair.
Gradually the quantity of terrified bats began to thin as one after another found sanctuary, either once again in the fireplace, escaping through the hallway to another area of the castle or, for the most acrobatic, flying like performing jet fighters with one of their wings dipped towards the ground as they hurtled toward the narrow, slit windows to exit without injury.
Somewhat disheveled and breathless, Emma returned to the turret.  “I hope that doesn’t happen again, or anything else like it! I hate bats. I could feel their claws when they hit my head.”
“Oh, you were frightened? Just imagine how they felt. They’ve probably been here for years and years and have never been disturbed. Think how terrified they must have been when they heard our voices. After all, you know their sense of hearing is far greater than ours. We probably sounded like a radio turned to full volume.”
“Really, are you sure?” On this occasion at least it appeared that Emma may be able to see something from another’s point of view.
Thomas knew he had to distract his distressed sister. He loved the fact that he could now imagine the whole castle intact. His thoughts strayed to centuries past and he could almost hear the clanking of armor, or horses’ hooves making their distinctive clumping sound when they thundered on the damp meadow while knights jousted to the roars of the on-looking crowd.
 “Didn’t people stand on the top of the castle and shoot arrows at the enemy? I wonder how we can get up outside for a really good view of the loch?”
“You mean to the battlements.” Although now calm, Emma was still smoothing her hair.