"Worthless are my prayers and sighing, Yet, good Lord, in grace complying,                                                                                                     Rescue me from fires undying."

                                                                                     Dies Irae .

The people in the hall had drawn closer forming a semi-circle around me. The air had become oppressive, and I felt my vision growing narrower the longer I looked at their hauntingly pale faces. Suddenly, a firm hand on my shoulder jolted me back, and I instinctively pulled out hairstick from my hair to attack that person. I spun around on my heels and pressed the sharp edge of the hairpin against their neck— drawing a trickle of blood from the throat. However, my eyes widened, and I was surprised to see him standing in front of me.

“You?” I took in his figure, dressed in the same Victorian suit as of the others.

“What are you doing here?”  I inquired from him.

“You’re here again.” He narrowed his eyes at me and removed the pin from his neck wincing in pain.

“I am sorry. I did not know that it was you.” I reached for a handkerchief in my pocket, but he refused it.

“It’s alright, but I would suggest not to cut yourself and bleed here.” He whispered in my ear as he eyed an old man behind me.

“What is it?” I asked and shifted back at the sudden proximity, but he placed his hand on my waist and pulled me closer.

“Stand still.” He instructed and maneuvered us to the middle of the room. I got the cue upon seeing another dancing pair and placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Why is everyone dancing suddenly?” I asked him, and he laughed in response.

“It’s a ballroom. Of course, everyone will be dancing.” He answered as led me across dance floor into the waltz, and I, too, fell into the rhythm following his lead in the dance.

“Ballroom?” I quirked my brow at him, not getting what he was playing at. He must have been stringing me along, thinking of me as a fool.

“Since when did Bran Castle become a ballroom?” I scoffed as he dipped me down but kept a straight face looking at me in all seriousness. Then, it struck me there’s no main hall in Bran Castle.

 Suddenly, I went pale and asked, “Who are these people?”

“Blood-drainers”. He answered pulling me up, and my heart skipped a beat. I turned my head to look at the man behind me but froze in fear when he bared his fangs at me.

“I fell asleep, right?” I muttered to myself in disbelief. “This must be another nightmare.”

I closed my eyes and chanted to myself that it was another dream. I might have fallen asleep after taking my medicine .

“This is not a dream.” He said, holding me up by waist as my legs failed me. “Why do you keep saying that it is a nightmare?”

“Because I—", I looked him in the eye, but failed to tell him that nightmares had been keeping me company since childhood. I heard the snarls around me again, so I inched closer to him and asked, “What is this place?”

The room had become familiar as if I had been here before too.

“If you don’t know what this place is, I can’t explain it to you either”, he said.

Refusing to be trapped in hellish nightmare, I did what I could think of the best at that time. I stabbed myself in hand with the hairpin to jolt myself awake, but in vain.

Blood dripped on the ground as pain shot through my left hand.

“What have you done?” Blood drained from his face, as he pressed onto my hand to stop the bleeding. The people around us had come much closer and started growling. We took in their blood-thirsty faces before making a run towards the door and dashed out into the hallway as they swarmed behind us.

“I told you not to do anything stupid!” He barked at me as we ran through the hallway.

“I thought I was dreaming!” I shouted back, looking over my shoulder in panic. Those blood drainers went into full blood haze and came after us, trying to get their hands on us. He pulled out his sword, and I ducked down as slashed one of the blood-drainer behind me. I  managed to get out of the castle but stopped when he didn’t come out with me and tried to hold back those creatures.

“Get to the carriage!” He barked as he struggled to get those blood drainers off him. I decided to help him, but he asked me again to get away from there. I ran to the carriage, and got inside I clutched the hairstick in my hand as it’s the only thing to defend myself with and asked the coachman to wait for him. I was about to go out of the carriage and look for him, when he got inside the carriage and sat across me.

“I managed to take few of them down, but we need to get out of here before they come after us again.” I nodded and asked the coachman to get moving.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” I examined him, and noticed that the cut on his neck was already healed.

“I’m fine.” He stated and fisted his hands on his thighs. I looked at my own injured hand and took out the handkerchief to wrap around it.

“What caused those blood-drainers to go on a sudden rampage?” I asked tying the knot with my teeth.

“It’s your blood that attracted them.” He spoke as his dark eyes bore through me. “You have quite a unique scent, Rhea.”

“Look—” I paused midway and looked at him in suspicion. “I have never told you my name.” Panic settled in my gut as his mouth turned upward in a sinister grin. It was not him.

A blood-drainer!

The next moment he attacked me, strangling me and tried to bite my neck. I struggled against him, trying to push him off me and searched for the hairpin that I had dropped somewhere in the carriage during the fight. I saw it lying on the footboard and reached for it while struggling against his chokehold. I picked up my hairpin and stabbed him twice in the neck, puncturing his throat. His grip on me loosened as blood gushed out of his throat, and I managed to push him off, but then, the carriage tumbled and fell sideway on the road. The impact knocked the breath out me hurting my sides badly, but I had no time to waste. I immediately got out of the carriage. However, that thing grabbed my foot and dragged me back to himself. I kicked him in the head and managed to get away from his grasp. I got up on my feet and started running away from the carriage towards the woods.

 I bumped into someone in the woods and looked up to see him standing there with a solemn face. I stumbled back in surprise and turned around to see another one standing behind me. There were two of them.

“Get away from him!” The second one said, and I looked back and forth between them. I got away from the first and slowly walked towards the other gripping the hairstick in my hand.

“Come here!” He urged me, and I took a look at his neck before stabbing him right in his heart.

He screamed as I pulled out the hairstick and bent over in excruciating pain. I looked back at the other one who’s standing there surprised.

“You have a faint scar on your neck from earlier.” I told him. The other one, even though I had stabbed him twice in the neck, there was no sign any wound on his neck. He wasn’t a human and had healed himself to appear before me in a perfect form.

“Besides, I have never told you my name, so that’s what gave him away.”

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried but much thank you for not stabbing me.” He answered rubbing back of his head.

“It’s Rhea.” I told him. “Rhea Cordon.”

“Dylan.” His smiled disappeared when the blood-drainer struggled to get up again. However, Dylan was fast on his feet and drew out his sword to decapitate that thing cutting off his head. His headless corpse dropped on the ground gushing out blood, and I stepped aside to throw up in the bushes after seeing its head.

“It’s a shape shifter.” Dylan told me. “He changed into me to get back at you.”

We then hurried back to the carriage and found the coachman dead, completely drained off his blood. That thing fed on him to heal himself and regained his strength. The horse had also broken free, and already ran off during the chaos.

“How do we get out of here?” I questioned him hearing the growls around us. “How fast can you run?” He asked me, and I thought of giving up on the idea of living. Sighing, I looked down at my feet and took off my pumps before running off with him.

“Don’t you have any magical beast or something to get away?” I asked. If there were ghouls or vampires, there could be magical ride too.

“I’m not an Aladdin!” He remarked, gasping for air. “Could have fooled me”, I retorted back.

“Ever since I met you, I have been running all around.” I scoffed at him. “If it were a marathon, I’d have won it already.” I panted as my lungs started burning due to lack of oxygen.

“You can even joke in this state?” Even though my legs were aching from running, the amused look on his face made me laugh aloud. I stopped to catch my breath and asked him to leave me there on the road since I had no stamina left to walk anymore. My feet were bruised and aching, and the stockings got torn too.

“There is a cottage house nearby. Let’s take shelter there.”

Cottage in the woods

 Dylan urged me to get up and helped me walk all the way to the cottage house. We got inside the house and locked the door before checking the windows. I dropped down on the carpeted floor and rubbed my sore feet.

“What exactly is this place?” It’s about time that he gave me an explanation. “I told you if you don’t know…”

“No, I don’t know!” I shouted in frustration. “I was on the train back then when I first met you, later in the forest. Both times it wasn’t a dream. A dream doesn’t leave a scratch on your arm from the fall.” I showed him my arm that had a faint scar on it.

“It’s not a dream.” He said, sitting opposite to me. “Then, what is it?” Nothing made sense. If not a dream, then I was going nuts for sure and regretted cancelling my appointment with my therapist.

“It’s another world. You have entered into another world through a door.”

“A door?” I felt I might have fallen into a manhole, not a rabbit hole.

“What happened on the train before those creatures attacked you?” I thought for a while and told him that we were moving through a tunnel. “It’s a passage to this world.” He concurred, but his answer didn’t sit well with me.

“What about this time and the forest? There’s no tunnel.” I argued.

“A door can be any passage, be it in time or space.” I sighed resting my forehead on my knees. “Why me?” I couldn’t tell if the question was for him or for myself.

“Only you can answer that.” We both fell in silence, then I remembered something. He had a cut on his neck from my hairpin, but his blood had no effect on those creatures.

“You aren’t human either, are you?” 

The accusation caught him off guard, but he calmly said, “I’m not a human.”

“W-What are you?” I got up from my sitting position becoming alarmed. He couldn’t possibly be one of those ghouls or blood drainers himself.

He smiled at me and replied, “A magically produced being neither comes nor goes, is neither born nor perishes; how can one speak of a place from which he comes?”

I could have been fooled had I not realized that those were actually Buddha’s words.

“Do you have a death wish?” I asked him if it was a good time to be philosophical.

“Fear”, he said. “Fear restraints us from moving forward and seeing the true reality.”

“Of course, I’m afraid”, I told him pacing the room in anxiousness. “Anyone would have been if they were in my shoes.”

“No, you did not come to this place by coincidence.” He spoke. “Your fears have brought you here.”

I shook my head in denial. Did I die? What if something happened on the train and this place was a purgatory. These questions made my head hurt.

‘Samsara’, I recalled the words from the book. “Those with unfulfilled desire return to a place called Hell.” I recited those lines to him.

“Is this Hell?” I dropped on the floor again. Wasn’t hell supposed to be a burning place full of eternal torment and suffering?

“It is hell, yet is not.” He stated calmly. “It’s a place inside your head.”

“I am imagining it all, aren’t I?” I closed my eyes as I rested back of my head against the wall.

“No, this is real. This place is as real as You and I. It’s not a Hell, but your fears have trapped you here.”

“What could I possibly be afraid of?” I wondered to myself. “Death doesn’t faze me either.”

“You are not afraid of dying.” He briefly paused for a moment before continuing. “You’re afraid of living: afraid of past, afraid of future, you’re afraid of something unknown which is beyond yourself.”

“I don’t know” I felt dejected at his words, but he wasn’t completely wrong about it either.

“All the existent phenomena in this universe and I are of same reality.” He recited those lines again to me.

“You and I aren’t separate from anything in this world. I am no different than you, neither are you.” Then, he scooted closer and explained, “The greatest regret of a man is his death. Those strigoi outside—", he gestured towards the door, “—are simply resentful because they think that they are separated from life when in reality death is not a separation. The Living and the Dead are connected. This is the hell that you and they have created.”

“It’s pitiful.”

“You should pity yourself first.” Dylan remarked and got up to check on the situation outside through the window. It had gone quiet with no sign of blood-drainers in sight.

“We’ll wait till dawn before leaving. You should also take some rest.” I nodded and decided to freshen up.

I looked for the bathroom and opened the tap of the washbasin to rinse my mouth. I splashed some water on my face and reflected on his words. The fear of unknown, of not having control over the fate made me look miserable. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw those sunken dark eyes staring back at me tiredly.

Of all those things outside, I was indeed the most pathetic one.

‘Am I hallucinating?’ I slapped myself to check and felt a stinging pain in the cheek. I looked at the mirror and remembered that the mirrors are said to be a link to another world. It could be a looking- glass, I thought. I wiped the mirror and started knocking on it to check if there’s a hidden passage behind it, but nothing happened.

Eventually, I gave up. I went back to the main room and plopped down on a chair. He’s leaning against the wall with an elbow propped up on his leg.

“Are you a demon?” He cracked his one eye open to look at me. From his expressions, I could tell he’s tired of my conjectures.

“I’m neither a devil, nor an angel.” He grinned. “I’m something far more interesting.”

“Must be an alien then”.

“Nein!”

“What’s with the smug look on your face? I jabbed back, and the poor boy went back to sleep while hugging his sword.

Compared to his sharp features, there was innocence to his expressions while sleeping. His face looked serene; like a child who is oblivious to the world yet vulnerable in his sleep. I kept staring at his face for a while before dozing off in the chair myself.