All existent phenomena of the universe and I are of one reality. That is me, and I am that.

Śūnyatā

In the absurd drama of life, Death is the only suitor who awaits you patiently at every passing station, cold yet gentle; a shy but daring handsome man true to you when all else fails you. You see him in simple glimpses of life, among the crowd of people; gray and gloomy, in the rush hours of underground metro, or in some random red telephone booth amid the NY city’s skyscrapers.

I, Rhea Cordon, a 28 years woman took a break from the mundane life of a manuscript editor at a publishing company. I had booked myself a flight to Romania, quitting my job, deleting all the e-mails, ignoring the calls from my doctor, and left a single note behind to my family that I’m off to find myself in the wilderness of this world. The mind had become chaotic, and there’s no order in today’s capitalist society. A far distant place to get lost is a good place to start with. Buddha had also gone to wilderness to find his true self, and I was no different.

‘What a boring life to live!’ I thought. Had I met with some tragedy, it would have been much better. If you were given another life to live, wouldn’t you do it?

I was on a train, reading a book that I had got from an old book shop in Paris, when an incident changed my life. It had led me to another dimension and morbid reality; a surreal world of mystery, lies and truth, reality and deception till I could discern none in the end.

Then, I met him who was the answer to all the questions, and the biggest question himself.

In this world, there’s another world apart from humans, and only souls with deep regrets enter that world from ours.

I boarded on Mocăniță on the afternoon of October nineteenth to travel around in Romania, and looked for my compartment to sit. Mocăniță is a steam- locomotive in Maramures, Transylvania and Bukovina, originally used to transport goods, but now serves the purpose of tourism. I took the one from Vișeul de Sus to Maramures County to Paltin, and it’s a two hour afternoon ride through the serene and peaceful valley of Vaserului. Surprisingly, there weren’t many people on board. I put my luggage in place, and settled down on my seat. There was an old lady to my right, staring at me which made me uncomfortable. There’s a middle aged man reading a newspaper in the back seat, and a young woman with her eight years old son at front. She tried giving him homemade sandwiches for lunch, but the boy stubbornly refused, and asked his mother for a bag of potato chips instead.

I smiled at the scene, and recalled how stubborn of a child I had been myself.

The train finally started moving through the beautiful forestry line of the valley. I pulled out my half-finished book from the bag and turned to page number two hundred and ninety one.

‘Samsara’, I read. ‘Those with unfulfilled desire, return to a place—'

The steamer whistled as the it passed through a narrow tunnel engulfing everything in pitch darkness. I closed my eyes as the train moved through the tunnel for an eternity, and sighed to myself in those stolen seconds of life.

‘Unfulfilled desire’. I mused. An unfulfilled desire of what? I had a family, a stable job and a career then what it was that had made me travel to a far off place?

I opened my eyes as the tunnel came to an end, but something didn’t seem right. I looked up from the book in my lap, and didn’t see the child with his mother in the front seat. Things became much bizarre when I didn’t see that old lady and the man in the compartment either.

‘Did they get off at the station?’ I thought to myself.

The train was moving through the tunnel, it was impossible to miss the station, unless I had fallen asleep. I got up from my seat in panic, and looked around the compartment. Their luggage was also gone, except for the newspaper on the man’s seat. The train was running on its track through the open fields on both sides, and having missed the station made my heart unsettled.

Should I have not arrived at the station as well?

I decided to look for other people on the train, but then noticed the growing darkness outside the window. The skies had suddenly turned dark grey, and I could see a brewing storm on the horizon. The remaining light of the sun was devoured by the thick dark clouds, and lightning flashed across the sky splitting the world into two halves. I looked through the window again, and in the flash of lightning, I saw black apparitions standing in the fields.

Struck with sudden fear, I rushed to the compartment’s door, but then stopped midway when I sensed those grotesque figures drawing near to the train. The sound of the thunder rolled in, and the glass door started rattling. I slowly back-treaded from the door before the thunder cackled and the door burst open. I started running in the opposite direction, not daring to look back and see what was chasing behind me. In momentarily flash of lightening followed by the cackling thunder, I saw those apparitions at the windows looking straight at me.

I pushed from one door to the other, running through empty compartments and almost fell off the train as I had reached the end of the boogie and looked down to see the coupling that held the two carriages together. My body froze in morbid fear when I heard a low-inhumane growl right behind me. Something wet like a saliva dripped on my neck, and I took a step forward to jump, but a strong hand gripped my arm and pulled me upwards towards him. The raindrops dusted his chiseled face and hair, forming a mist of halo around his head. His dark eyes peered through me as he slashed the creature behind me with a dagger and grabbed my hand running inside the carriage.

“Keep running!” He instructed, and I was too stunned to process anything.

‘Are we under some sort of attack?’ I managed to ask but he didn’t answer except for telling me not to look back.

We had reached the end of the boogies, and he asked me to hold onto him before jumping down the train into the open fields. I let out a shout as I had scrapped my arm upon the fall, but he urged me to get up and held on my hand as we ran through the green fields towards the thickest of trees.

The mist from the rain had also settled on the ground, making it difficult to see anything around us.

“Can you climb the tree?” He asked me, and I shook my head. “No, I—"

“Pardon me then!” He cut me off mid-sentence and grabbed me by the waist, hoisting me up on the tree. I blushed in embarrassment, but grabbed the tree’s branch and pushed myself up on it, holding onto the trunk as my life depended on it. He got himself up on another tree, and scanned the ground below. I swallowed and looked down to see what he was looking at. He had sharp features, I noticed, high cheekbones, pointed nose and chiseled jawline with full lips. He was fully dressed in a black leather suit with knives and daggers on his leg holster.

“What are those things?” I asked him after composing myself.

“Soul-eaters” He said, “These things come out in the rain and are attracted to the void.” I took a moment to process his answer. Were they some kind of wild animal that attacked humans? Did something happen to the other passengers on the train?

“Aren’t local authorities doing anything?” I inquired from him. “Where are the hunters?”  It’s alarming to be attacked by something ghoulish, and local authorities didn’t take care of it putting the lives in danger.

“What?” He was taken aback by my questioning. “Aren’t you from police?” I asked him again.

“Lady, what makes you think—” . He had become clearly lost at this point. “How did you get in here?”

“I was on the train and missed my station.” I explained myself to him.

“You missed the station?” He gave me an incredulous look. “That’s the first one I have heard.” He sounded bemused that finally ticked me off.

“How else could I have got in here?” I snapped at him in anger.

“No one gets in here when they miss the station.” He said to me. “This is a no man land, and you being here is no coincidence.”

“What do you mean?”

He raised a finger to his mouth asking me to be quiet. He carefully shifted his weight on the branch, and looked down on the ground. There was something down there, something lean and slender, a reptile like a black salamander with long tail slithering and moving in the mist, and there were two of them. My heart leapt up in throat in horror, and I cursed myself for falling asleep on the train and missing the station. I would have been at work, having my black coffee, going through manuscripts and sorting out those e-mails had I not decided that I didn’t want this boring life and went on a vacation.

“Can you stop being pessimistic.” He chided as if he had read my thoughts. “You’re attracting them here.”

“What did I do?” I was baffled at him. “I didn’t choose to be stuck in a God forsaken place to be eaten by something malicious.”

“They feed on negative thoughts of a person. Think of something happy?” He told me and I scoffed at the thought.  ‘When did I ever have a good memory?’ Perhaps, the only happy memory was my graduation ceremony when father baked cupcakes at home for me, but recalling it made me nostalgic.

“Please remember that I’ll not go back either unless you do.” He said, gripping the dagger in his hand ready to strike whatever it was down there in the mist.

“All existent phenomena in the universe and I are of the same reality”. He chanted looking at me intently, and a sudden realization dawned on me.

‘Śūnyatā’

The words from the book.

The Void.

A flash of blinding hot light engulfed everything around us, and I covered my eyes with my arm to shield myself against the white light. I lowered my arm to see the mist being cleared off in the forest, and warm sunlight had filtered in through the clouds.

“Let’s get out of here.” He interrupted my thoughts, and I jumped down the tree matching up his pace to get back to the fields.” What happened?” I inquired, but he had no time to explain anything to me.

“I’ll get you back on the train, and don’t think of ever coming back here.”

“Why would I even come back?” I remarked earning a scoff from him. We continued running through the fields to get back to the steamer. I found it strange that it still hadn’t left. That person once again, gained the momentum and got me up on the boogie asking me to get back inside the compartment.

“Don’t ever come back!” He shouted at me as train picked up its pace. I turned to leave before I realized that I hadn’t even asked his name, but he’s long gone by then and nowhere in sight.

I got back inside the compartment and sat down on a seat to catch my breath. I closed my eyes, sighing in relief as train ran through the valley again. It was just then a hand shook me, and I opened my eyes to see that old woman looking down at me.

“The station has arrived”, she told me and I jumped up to see that young mother and her son, and the man standing around me.

“Are you alright?” The boy asked, and I knew I wasn’t alright. The door was back in its place as if nothing had happened before. “You had fallen asleep, dear.” The old lady told me seeing me confused.

‘Oh, I had fallen asleep.’ I felt relieved. It explained why the steamer was still there in the fields, but the scratch on my arm made me question whether the entire incident was dream or not. Eventually, I got up from the seat and collected my luggage to get off the train. I took a cab to the hotel. During the ride, I kept thinking about the incident and concluded it to be a nightmare because of travelling and exhaustion. I might’ve accidentally scraped my arm somewhere when boarding on the train, so I didn’t dwell on it further. 

I arrived at the hotel in Baia Mare that I had looked up online before, and checked in at it. I left the luggage at the door after getting inside the room and flopped down on the mattress, relishing in its comfort. After ten minutes, I managed to drag myself to the shower to clean myself and ordered myself a warm meal before settling down in the bed.

The book was there upside down on the nightstand, and I picked it again to finish the reading.

‘Samsara. Those with unfulfilled desire return to a place called…’ I paused as I lingered upon the next word in dread.

‘—Hell’