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

                                                                                     Dies Irae 

It was a Blood-drainer 

The next moment he attacked me, strangling me and tried to bite my neck. I struggled against him, trying to get him off me and searched for the hairpin that I had dropped somewhere in the carriage during the fight. I saw it on the footboard, and reached for it whilst I struggled against his hold. I picked up the 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 ground. The impact knocked the breath out me hurting my sides, but I had no time to waste. I immediately got out of the carriage. However, that thing grabbed my foot and dragged me back towards him. I kicked him in his head and managed to get away from him. I got up on my feet and started running away from the carriage towards the woods.

 I bumped into someone and looked up to see him standing there. I stumbled back in shock, and turned to see another one standing behind me. There were two of them.

“Get away from him!” The latter one told me, and I looked back and forth between them. I got away from the first one, 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 hairpin, and he bent over in excruciating pain. I looked back at the other one who’s standing there in surprise.

“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’s no 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 back there.”

“I don’t know whether to be worried or relieved, but 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 again when the blood-drainer struggled to get up on his feet. Dylan was quick on his feet and pulled out his sword to decapitate him. The 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 turmoil.

“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. I looked down at my pumps, and took them off before running off with him.

“Don’t you have any magical beast or something to get away?” I asked him. 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 out aloud. I stopped to catch my breath, and asked him to leave me there on the road since I could walk no more. My feet were bruised, and the stockings were torn too.

“There’s a cottage nearby. Let’s take a shelter there.” He urged me to get up and supported me to walk up to the house. We got inside the place, and he locked the door checking on the windows as well. 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 out in frustration. “I was on train back then when I met you, and it wasn’t a dream. A dream doesn’t leave a scratch on your arm from the fall.” I showed him my arm, and there’s a faint scar on it.

“It’s not a dream.” He said, sitting opposite to me. “Then, what is it?” Nothing made sense. If it wasn’t 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? There’s no tunnel.” I argued.

“A door can be any passage, be it in time or space.” I sighed and rested 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.” He confessed

“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.

“Where are you from?”

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?”

Those were Buddha's words.

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

“Fear”, he said. “Fear forbids us from moving forward.”

“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 didn’t come to this place by a mere 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 those 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, Barzakh.”

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

“No, this is real. This 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 death.” He paused before continuing further. “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. He wasn’t completely wrong about it.

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

“You and I aren’t separate from anything in this world. I am no different than you, neither are you.” He then scooted closer and explained, “Those things outside….”, he motioned towards the door, “…are vengeful because they think they are separated from life, when in reality death isn’t a separation. The Living and the Dead are connected. This is the hell that both you and they have created.”

“It’s pitiful.” I commented.

“You should pity yourself.” He offered, then got up to check on the situation outside through the window.

“We’ll wait till dawn before leaving. You should also rest.” I nodded, and decided to clean myself.

I looked for the bathroom, and I opened the tap 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 fate was what made me miserable. I looked at myself in the mirror, and saw those sunken black eyes staring back at me tiredly.

Of all those things outside, I was 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 mirrors are the link to another world. It could be a looking- glass. I immediately wiped the mirror, and started knocking at it to check if there’s a hidden passage behind it. 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 at me. “I’m something far more interesting.”

“Must be an alien then”. I said it sarcastically although the chances of him being a alien weren’t entirely odd.

“Nein!”

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

Compared to his sharp features, there’s a subtle innocence to his expressions. He looked peaceful while sleeping; like a child who is oblivious, yet vulnerable to the world. I kept looking at him, before dozing off in the chair myself. It must be past midnight, when I woke up to the sounds outside the house. It was dark, and I saw Dylan standing beside the door. I opened my mouth to ask him but he raised finger this mouth, telling me that something was outside.

‘Blood-drainer?’ I mouthed the words and he nodded in reply. I silently got up from the chair and went to stand next to him. Through the curtain, I saw a man standing outside at the door whilst two women circled around the place. One of them snapped her head in my direction, and I pulled back quickly from the window. She had seen me.

There was a loud thud on the roof, and the silence was shattered by the sudden, urgent knocking at the door. The sound echoed through the room, growing louder and louder with each passing second. It wasn’t a simple knocking, but a forceful aggressive pounding as whoever on the other side was desperate to get inside. Dylan and I both pushed ourselves against the door to keep it shut with all our might. The door creaked under the pressure, its wooden frame straining against the relentless assault. The banging on the door started giving me headache, and I covered my ears to shut off all the noise. Dylan was torn between checking on me, and keeping the door closed. I pressed my back against the door as I nursed the throbbing pain in my head.

“Make it stop!” I screamed in pain as loud banging sound pierced through my ears, and I could hold no longer.

The door continued rattling, and my shoulder was all bruised up for pushing against it. There came another loud thud from the rooftop. A crack on the ceiling appeared, and my heart sank in fear.

“It’s here…” I whispered.

Next moment, the ceiling collapsed, and a female blood-drainer dropped down on the floor from above. Dylan had had hard time holding onto the door, and couldn’t deal with that blood-drainer. So, I mustered up courage, fighting the throbbing pain in head and picked up his sword. When that female charged at us snarling, I pushed the blade forward, piercing it straight through her stomach and pulled it out with a shaking hand.

I waited for a moment to see if the she was actually dead and sighed in relief. I turned to look back at Dylan, but the next few minutes became a blurry memory.

 A hand shot out from the door, slashing through Dylan’s stomach and tore open his flesh. I froze in horror as he vomited out blood and fell forward on the floor. I ran to catch him, and pressed on his abdomen to stop the bleeding.

“Don’t you die on me!” I cried as blood flowed through my fingers. ”G-Go back!” He spoke between the coughs, and I shook my head. I couldn’t leave him behind in that condition.

The door broke open, and I looked up to see another blood-drainer in blood haze. I grimaced in anger and gripped the sword in my hand. The creature growled and charged at me, but I thrust the sword forward, and pierced the sharp blade through his growling throat. He screamed, grabbing his throat as blood gushed out and dropped on the floor. There’s another one behind him. I swung out the sword in rage and cut off her head as well.

I let go of the sword and turned back to Dylan. I brought my face near to his, and was relieved to find that he was still breathing. His lips moved, and he muttered something incoherently.

“Don’t speak!” I pulled him up in my lap, and looked at the horizon as dawn finally broke. The radiating golden light of sun made the darkness around us disappear. The bodies of the blood-drainers started burning and turned into dissipating ashes.

 I shielded my eyes against the blinding light with my hand as a static noise deafened my ear.

When I woke up, I found myself in hospital. Mikhail told me that I had passed out in the garden and had accidentally injured my hand on a nail.

It took me a while to adjust to my surroundings. I looked at the IV in my arm, then raised my hand to see it bandaged up properly by the nurse.

‘It wasn’t a dream after all’, I thought to myself.

“When can I go back?” I asked the nurse who told me that I could go after I was done with the IV. I lie down again and thought of Dylan again.

‘Would he be okay?’ I wondered.