Dear diary,

The stench in my apartment is unbearable today, it seems to get worse with each passing day. I can hardly grasp a thought, so forgive me if I only give an abbreviated account of things in this entry. I find it increasingly difficult to organize my thoughts. Yesterday much more happened than I could write or I forgot to report things . Where should I start?  With the transcript that reached me. 

Unfortunately, my former fellow student did not bring the handwritten notes of the wanderer completely in fair copy, but only sent me a summary. I am really grateful to him for even taking the time, yet I am somewhat disappointed. 

From the lines he wrote, it appears that the castle legend is somewhat different than Jochen presented it on his website. 

So here what happened according to the wanderer: 

A noble lord of a castle and former knight is in battle while his dearly beloved wife gives birth to his only heir. She dies during childbirth without seeing her husband again. The husband, returned home, though successful in battle, shatters at her death. He goes crazy , claiming to see his beloved dead wife in almost every woman he meets. His madness causes him to court each of the women.  If the women say yes to the marriage, he wakes up shortly after, as if from a fever dream, and realizes that the wife in front of him is not the one he is looking for and chases her out of the castle in disgrace. According to the wanderer, who must have seen the portrait of the original lady of the castle and her successors, the nobleman always seems to fall in love with a detail of the women that resembles his deceased wife. In the case of one, it is the hair color, in the case of the other, the smile. The game continues until he reaches the proud number of 99 brides.

In the case of the last bride, however, something changes, even her marriage is of very short duration, but she does not want to resign herself to it. On a stormy night, the spurned bride sneaks back into the castle from which she was driven. She wants revenge and her plan is to take from the lord of the castle the only thing he still honestly loves, his son.  

By force, but on silent soles, she grabs the heir, forcing him to come with her. Lightning illuminates her path, while thunder rumbles the stone walls. She drags the innocent child through a secret passage of the torture cellar, which should lead her outside. But somewhere in the corridors that were once meant to allow escape when threatened, her torch goes out.  In a hurry, she drags the boy in that direction through the darkness until she spies a glimmer of light behind a door.  The child's crying mingles with the roar of the storm, she pushes open the door. But she is not in freedom, she is in hell. Breath-taking stench hits her from rotting flesh, deafening buzzing of flies makes her deaf, there are so many that everything seems like a black swarm that threatens to swallow her.  The child's sobbing stops, she begins to tremble, and she also realizes that this place is colder than winter itself. She lets go of the child's hand. She has to get out. Out. She waves her arms to scare away the flies, when the black mass rises, she sees the true horror of the castle. A body lies laid out in the middle of the room. The flesh falls from the bones, the eyes hollow , the dress soaked with dried blood .  In the lap lies something withered. The spurned bride in shock stares at this lump until she knows it.   It is a mummified baby corpse, the umbilical cord still connected to the mother's womb.

She hears shrill cries, deafening, glaring with madness. They are her own. Confused, she turns to the boy.  He smiles a sad smile. His body fades and sinks into that of the dead infant. 

It is too much for the woman's nerves, she runs and screams as if out of her mind, plunges out of the room into the blade of the lord of the castle, who had hurried his sword ahead to the last burial place of his beloved. 

The last lines of the Wanderer describe how the nobleman was standing in the gate of the castle with the dead bride in his arms when the lightning struck. Directly to that place where the unfortunates were standing. 

No one dared to extinguish the lightning or rush to the aid of the screaming people. God had passed his judgment on those who did not respect the peace of the dead. 

In the margin of the document was a scribble, according to legend, some artifacts survived the margin and were stolen and traded afterwards. 

I looked up from the document and considered the ghost beside me that had sprung from the canvas. Was he the lord of the castle?