Gravensteen

by Songül Arslan

When Lily heard where they wanted to go, a strange, undefined chill crept up her spine. For a moment it felt like all the breath was cut off from her body. Out of all cities within driving distance, Gent alone had a strange familiar sound to it, although she knew she had never visited there. She looked at the map that was spread out on the table and wanted to convince her husband and their friends, Elise and Marlon, to go somewhere else, but their faces were so full of expectation that she could not refuse them the experience.

They were lucky with the weather that day--a clear blue sky dotted with white oversaw their plans to explore the Belgian city. Lily was not fully a part of the conversation; she listened more intently to something that seemed to come from deep within her, faraway whispers that were calling out to her with some kind of warning. Since she was a child, she had learned to ignore the voices and the whispers that were as tangible to her as her body and over time she had grown to forget them. But today the remembrance was active again and there was no way to shut the voices out.

Why was it, she wondered, that the excitement of visiting a new place should be overridden by something inexplicable, something dark and terrifying? She would have liked to talk about her feelings with the others but she was sure they would blame her wild imagination. She put all her effort toward following the conversation and ignoring her inner turmoil.

When they walked into the city centre of Gent, they discovered one surprise after another. Every few feet there were the characteristic churches and Elise said she didn't know where to look. The same was true for Lily. The walls of most of the buildings were made from a grey-coloured stone that looked as if it had been already been old in the Middle Ages. As Lily walked past these buildings, the stones in particular caught her attention. She knew they were part of a bigger whole but could not identify what that bigger whole might be or mean.

The area was crowded with tourists--a Japanese group was delightedly taking pictures of a fountain in the middle of the square and young people sat on terraces in the shade. Even before the summer season had officially started people knew how to find places like this. Somehow the crowds scared Lily. Never in her life she had felt agoraphobic yet she now wondered what all these people were doing here and if they had nothing better to do. It did not occur to her that she was the same as any of them that day.

They came to a bridge over a small canal. "Just like Venice!" Elise exclaimed. She ran over the bridge and clicked innumerable times with her camera.

"There is not an angle she'll miss," Marlon said, trying to sound cynical, but his wife's excitement was contagious and soon he and Lily's husband followed Elise's lead.

Lily walked at a slow pace behind them and imprinted the images in her soul. There was no better way to stimulate imagination than to wander in an ornamented city. On top of the bridge the four of them met again and together they looked out over the boats full of people that were floating down the canal. "People must have transported themselves over this water for centuries," Elise said. Lily nodded; she could imagine it clearly. If she would close her eyes, she felt that she would be transported back to the time the first people used this canal but she kept her eyes wide open.

"Look," Elise cried, breaking into her reverie, "that looks like a castle!" They looked in the direction Elise pointed out and Lily gasped for breath. A few hundred metres in front of them a monumental building appeared, its silent towers like sentries. Its silhouette dominated the rest of the view and the stone it was made from looked like the same stone that Lily had seen earlier. Earlier this day, but also earlier another time, and suddenly she was certain she had been here before. And she had not liked it. From over the rails of the bridge she looked at her reflection in the water, a young woman with light brown hair was staring back at her, her eyes full of deception. What is happening to me, Lily wondered.

"Are you all right?" her husband asked. She did not dare meet his eyes, afraid she might collapse and break down, something she always thought was so girlie soft. "I'm all right," she lied. He put his arm around her shoulder and they followed their friends to the castle. There was no escape now, she knew. Once Elise had put her mind to something, nobody could talk her out of it.

The castle looked well-kept and it breathed the atmosphere of past times, times where there was abundance for only a lucky few. The information sign near the entrance said it was "Gravensteen." The closer Lily got to the castle, the more resistance she felt to entering, yet her curiosity was also growing. She felt sure that a force was warning her not to enter, but there were forces attracting her as well. Her husband paid for her entrance ticket and she was the first of the group to walk inside.

Inside she stood on the square and looked up at the perfect sky. It had been a sunny day then as well, she knew. The grey stones around her were cleaned and restored, but they were authentic. She looked more closely at the details. Her husband directed her toward the inside of the castle and together they looked at the exhibit. Armour, swords, knives, and powder-horns were displayed everywhere. In another room the most horrible torture instruments were on display, a collection of different sorts of thumb screws highlighted. Lily looked at them, fascinated and terrified at the same time. At the end of the room, near an exit, a large wooden construction caught her attention.

As she neared, she read the sign before she looked at the construction itself. "... the wood of the guillotine is not the original but the blade of the knife is the original one," she read. She looked up and the rusty triangular blade took her breath away. This was the guillotine. She shrieked. She could pick its shape from a thousand others and it was more than she could bear. Before she could grab hold of anything to support her, she collapsed to the floor.

As her husband and her friends ran up to her, Lily was in the parallel world of history. Again she looked up and saw the clear blue sky. She felt the warmth of the sun on her face but it could not warm the chill in her heart. It was almost time for her. She lowered her eyes and tried to look into the distance instead of into the crowd that stood in front of her. Grey stones as far as the eyes could see. She had never thought about the colour grey before, she realized. In fact there were many things that she had not thought about before. And now it was too late. Her death sentence was already being carried out and there was no escape for her. Somebody in the crowd screamed something to her but she paid no attention. She could not understand why people would rather see a cruel execution than enjoy a sunny day. She herself never wanted to see public trials but today she had to witness her own.

The executioner came up to the stage and the crowd yelled. The sunny atmosphere was now loaded with tension and the excitement was palpable. She was filled with fear. This is it, was all she could think. Somebody grasped her neck brutally and she was forced to bend over, her head shoved into a hole. Now she faced the crowd, a sea of faces, and she tried to focus on the grey. Somehow the grey seemed to look back at her like the faces did. Slowly she turned her head a little bit and saw the blade of the instrument that would literally cut into her life. It seemed to be full of light and it was warm. Lily blinked her eyes a couple of times. She was looking straight into the sunlight.

"Lily," she heard a familiar voice say and she turned to see her husband looking at her with big eyes. She could not help but smile when she saw his face. Then she looked at the faces of her friends and she laughed. "I am so glad to be alive," she whispered, her voice still a bit frail from her fainting. The others laughed with her and she looked past them to the grey stones of the castle wall. Somehow it did not seem so grey to her anymore.