Chapter 13
XIII
The sudden fear piercing Aba?’ eyes was absolutely terrifying. The crack in his voice as he screamed at me to run and the agony contorting his face before he shoved me away were shocking. At that moment, he looked more afraid than anyone I’d ever seen in my life.
Holding my clothes to my chest, I run through the secret passage as quickly as I can. I’m grateful for the lit torch left outside his room, but I have to suppress a wince each time the rough stone floor cuts my feet.
I finally reach the cellar door, and relief lightens my limbs.
With frozen fingers, I force my body into my clothes as quickly as I can.
I don’t know what I’m running from. I don’t even know if I have time to get dressed.
But the thought of facing it naked feels worse than whatever might be coming for me.
I have to half-climb up the wall in order to trigger the mechanism that opens the door.
The moment I step into the cellar, I gag.
The once subtle stench is overwhelming now.
Pressing my arm over my face, I walk through the castle as quietly as I can, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath me.
I realise then that I have no idea what time it is. Has anyone come for me yet?
The sun rises higher through each narrow window I pass, and I hope that my room is already unlocked.
I know I should be scared, and even though there’s something stirring inside me, a feeling I can’t quite place, I only find concern for Aba?.
I witnessed his power, his strength. For someone like him to be afraid, it has to be of something seriously terrifying.
I wonder if he’s afraid of whomever killed the man in the grave.
I assumed it was Bayard, or could there be someone else killing people?
When I finally reach my room, I waver for a moment before turning the handle.
I close my eyes, and when the door clicks open, I let out a sigh.
Once it’s firmly shut behind me, I lean against the aged wood, trying to catch my breath.
Between the nerves, the held breath, and the rushing, I’m lightheaded and exhausted.
When my breathing settles, I see the window ajar.
Odd. When I look out through it, I see nothing unusual, just overgrown grounds, abandoned grass, and dense forest.
Today, there are no notes left for me, so I change into a dry uniform and decide to wait.
With nothing better to do, I lie on my bed, pulling my headphones over my ears.
The familiarity of the voices calms my scattered thoughts until—the silence of a finished tape, the familiar clicking of a key being turned.
I blink, hoping to shake off the drowsiness of sleep.
I must have slept for hours because my room is dark, and my fingers are frozen.
I’m not sure how I managed to rest for so long because suddenly every discomfort I could imagine crowds my senses.
The roughness of the livery and the chill in the room are nothing new.
But with my stiff limbs and a strange heaviness in my core, the unnatural silence feels unbearable.
I’m frustrated to have slept through the day because now there’s nothing I can do but wait until dawn comes and I can leave my room again.
Resigned, I change into my pyjamas and huddle under the blanket, trying to get warm.
Even though the danger seems to have passed, there is something weighing on me.
My thoughts return to Aba?, but they lead nowhere.
The revelation that he’s a vampire was both shocking but also eerily familiar, like something I had known all along, a piece of the puzzle clicking into place in a small crevice within me that was always waiting to be filled.
It’s not that I’ve always believed in the supernatural.
In fact, I’ve tended not to think about it at all.
The few times I was confronted with such things in the past—a belief in gods, ghosts, or all manner of other strange concepts—I tended to brush them off as nonsense and not dwell on it any further.
But Aba?, his powers, his entire being, felt strangely normal.
Almost comforting. Yet even with this familiarity, the strange unsettling feeling gripping my bones doesn’t diminish.
The entire night, I try to rest my aching limbs yet am unable to find a comfortable position. In the end, I spend the hours listening to music and suppressing all thoughts. But even this can’t soothe the dread spreading through my mind. Because one thing keeps echoing inside me.
Something is very wrong.
At the crack of dawn, I pull my uniform on, cursing its scratchy wool.
Waiting for my door to unlock, I stand at the window, watching the world wake up.
The sky goes through the usual colours, the exact same way it has since the beginning of time.
I can’t see much from here, but one thing strikes me as unusual.
In the early morning, this close to the forest, there’s always birds faintly chirping their tedious song.
But now, all I can hear is the howling of wind through the ancient castle walls.
As I’m standing here, I feel more disconnected from the world than usual.
It’s as if I’ve accidentally fallen through a portal into another dimension, a place devoid of anything but me inside this dead old building.
When the door finally unlocks, I try to look at who’s on the other side. Peeking into the hallway, I see Bayard walking silently off into the distance.
I find myself surprised that it was just the old man. It seems that a part of me expected someone else, or maybe no one at all, the door simply locking and unlocking itself, as if by magic.
I grab my Walkman, a pile of soiled clothes, then make my way to the kitchen. When I enter, I find Bayard putting a stale piece of bread on a plate next to a bowl of gruel. He looks at me just as annoyed as usual.
“What is that?” he sniffs in the direction of my laundry.
“Dirty clothes,” I explain.
“Ah. You can wash those after your task,” he says, beady eyes glaring at me through a piece of gunk sticking to his lashes. Just as I’m about to put my pile down to eat, he adds, “Never mind. Laundry will be your task for the day.”
Brilliant! Laundry, my least favourite chore.
Before my annoyance grows, I let the clothes drop to the floor and sit down to eat my breakfast. I notice a nasty smell as I try to chew the dense bread, making the whole ordeal even more unpleasant.
It seems vaguely familiar, and I wonder if the stench from the cellar is now bad enough to reach all the way up here.
Despite this, I finish the bread quickly, realising that I can’t remember when I last ate.
I look up when I hear a sound of disgust coming from Bayard. Had he been watching me the entire time?
“What?” I scowl at him. I’m really getting sick of this guy.
“You’ll rot here like the rest.”
I put my spoon down and glare back. Without a word, he leaves the kitchen.
Not five minutes later, he’s back. At this point, I’m too tired to question his weird behaviour, but I’m fed up with the judgmental look on his face every time he lays eyes on me.
He kicks the dirty clothes with his foot. “Remove this and follow me.”
I know I often look at people and see nothing worth liking. But this man? He doesn’t have a single redeeming quality.
As slowly as humanly possible, I comply and follow him into the room next door like a particularly tired sloth.
To no one’s surprise, it looks exactly like what you would imagine an old washroom to look like.
There are several large basins, buckets, and something that resembles a giant cauldron.
It’s big enough to stew a full-sized adult in.
But, how could a room this large be here?
I was pretty sure to the left of the kitchen was a larder, and to the right was the door to the grounds.
“You wash everything there, then hang it here,” Bayard’s words pull me back. He points to a large crate already filled to the brim with dirty cloth. Then, as usual, he leaves without saying a word. He really is a particularly unpleasant person.
I look at the ridiculous pile of laundry, acutely aware that there’s no washing machine in sight.
A small grin quirks my lips because I already know I’ll half-ass this task as much as I can.
I’ve always hated doing my own laundry, and I have no particular interest in getting soaked and freezing again.
I haven’t gotten thoroughly warm since arriving here, and I wonder if my body will one day just up and quit on me for letting it freeze for too long.
Of course, I start with my own clothes. I have no desire to continue walking around in this filthy uniform. By now, they’re so mud-stained and stiff, they could almost give Bayard a run for his money. Also, this way I hope they’ll have a chance to dry before nightfall.
When I’m done washing my livery, I fill the basins with the castle’s laundry, pour soap over it, and swish it around a bit with a stick.
I might not know how to wash clothes the old-fashioned way, but I’m pretty sure that some soaking is involved.
Then, instead of sitting here doing nothing, I decide to check on Aba?.
If I run into Bayard, I’ll just tell him the wash has to soak. That sounds reasonable enough, right? After all, didn’t he say I could have short strolls?
Even though I’ve walked these endless corridors frequently since my arrival, this time, something feels off. The eerie silence that was so disconcerting before is strangely loud.