“Find a bed, then,” she purred. “If it’s empty, it’s yours. If it’s not… well, let’s just say you’ll have an interesting night. If you do survive until tomorrow evening, I look forward to continuing our conversation.”
Her voice held no if.
I forced a laugh. Dry. Hollow. “Yeah, whatever.”
I turned and started walking.
Every step felt like dragging my feet through wet cement, like my body wanted to turn back, like something deep inside was screaming at me to reconsider.
I didn’t. Slow-clap for me.
Thank you. Mental bow.
Instead, I focused on the sickly taint of her presence, the heavy miasma of blood and lust that clung to the walls like old smoke. I latched onto it, held it in my mind, and walked in the opposite direction.
If the pathway outside worked by focusing on your destination, then this… this was the inverse. I didn’t have a destination. I just knew where I didn’t want to be.
The halls stretched endlessly before me, winding corridors of shadow and murmurs. The deeper I went, the more the suffocating aura of primal hunger faded, replaced with something duller, more muted.
Finally, I found it -a quiet, empty corridor. The walls were older, worn. The scent of dust clung to the air, untouched by the constant flux of bodies. No perfume. No blood. No corruption.
That’ll do, kid.
I moved carefully, trailing my fingers along the walls, casting my senses outward, searching for anything -anyone. Most of the rooms were occupied. I sensed more than I wanted to. Sometimes I wished I could turn off my perceptions. And yet there was a voyeur part of me that refused to ignore the imagery my mind conjured up.
Breathing. Faint shuffling. The occasional creak of a bed frame. Yeah, it was pretty distracting.
But finally, at the farthest edge of the hallway, one door sat untouched.
I pressed my palm against it.
Other than a minor shift of pressure, there was no resistance.
I pushed it open, stepping inside and shutting the door quietly behind me.
Silence greeted me.
Not the eerie, oppressive kind. Just... quiet. No whispering voices. No distant moans. No suffocating energy pressing in on my skin.
I exhaled, pressing my forehead against the door for just a moment, grounding myself.
I must have been really out of it, because I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
I found myself in a space that felt like it hadn’t seen a living person in ages.
The air smelled... old. The kind of old that sank into your bones, the kind of old that felt like it had been forgotten. The room was musty, damp, dust settling in the corners where it had gone undisturbed. It felt lost, like a place that had been left behind by time itself.
No undead magic lingered here, no unnatural auras slithering against my skin.
It reminded me of what I had always thought the Munsters mansion would smell like -old wood, faded grandeur, and just the right touch of gothic misery.
For the first time since stepping into this nightmare, I felt like I could breathe.
I felt something shift in the air. Faint. A breath in the dark.
The sensation crawled along my skin like static, the kind of feeling you get when you know you aren’t alone, but no one was there. It was a minor disturbance, and unmistakably not my imagination.
I straightened, my senses sharpening.
“Hello?” I asked aloud, and thankfully -no one answered.
Then, slowly, I moved away from the now closed door and began to explore.
Remember that ghostly presence I mentioned? No? I could have sworn I - you know what? Never mind.
There was a ghostly presence. There, now I said it.
Anyways, it turns out that there was someone in the room with me. They just didn’t happen to take up much real estate.
I walked around the room, my senses on high alert. Every fiber of my being was stretched taut as I cast my Sight out-
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
And then I was hit with a system message.
Congratulations, you have pierced the Veil.
Spectral entity detected.
Threat level -neutral.
Hey, call me prejudiced, but yeah, I’m not really a fan of the phantasmal sort. They were troublemakers more often than not. Poltergeists, spooky assholes, and -occasionally- cursed specters with attachment issues.
But at least this one wasn’t a problem -yet.
And that’s when the next bit of surprise hit me.
As soon as I detected it, I was hit by a tsunami of emotion. It was hard to parse at first. There was hate, misery, and despair -you know, the usge. But also profound happiness, interest and excitement. A contradictory mess of feelings, layered on top of each other like a melancholy tiramisu. And the source of it?
Standing right in front of me.
Well… standing might have been a generous word for what she was doing.
She was doing her best impression of a waterlogged dingy, barely managing to stay afloat in a sea of stone flooring. Her form flickered at the edges, as though at any moment she might just sink away into oblivion.
Her dress hovered just over the ground, frayed at the edges, curling in on itself like smoke caught in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Her hair -a tangled, knotted mess- draped down her shoulders in a way that made me think she probably had a very complicated relationship with a brush.
But it was her eyes that got me.
Far too big. Too wide, too deep. Not in the anime waifu way, but in a "Oh God, is she about to crawl out of my TV?" kind of way.
I was definitely getting some Grudge vibes, and I was already considering my odds of survival when she spoke.
"Hi," she said.
Soft. Innocent. Too innocent.
My heart -the traitor- immediately warmed. The kind of warmth you feel when you see a puppy with oversized paws tumbling down the stairs but somehow landing on all fours like a champion.
Cuteness aggression activated.
And despite knowing that this was dangerous, despite every logical, well-meaning part of me screaming ‘Dude, no! This is how horror movies start!’ I brushed aside my misgivings and chose to engage.
I grinned. Dangerously.
"Hey," I said, easy, smooth, and totally not at all trying to charm a ghost. "What is a nice shade like you, doing in a creepy place like this?" I gestured vaguely at the Den of Sin that I had been coerced into.
She blinked at me. Slow. Thoughtful. Like she was genuinely trying to answer that.
"Umm," she tilted her head, smile awkward, the way people smile when they have bad news but don’t know how to break it to you. "Mister, I don’t think you are where you think you are."
Cue record scratch.
I frowned, processing.
Her words were casual, but there was something beneath them. Something that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I took a proper stock of my surroundings.
And... well, shit.
She was right.
This ‘room’ was far larger than I had originally thought. My Sight picked up underlying patterns of energy that were subtle, but complex, and totally not in line with the rest of the vampiric cesspool I had been forced into.
I had definitely been more affected by the Queen B’s influences than I wanted to admit.
She had messed with me. Hard.
And if she could do that…
Just how much trouble would I be in -if I ran into a true Elder?
Or some other old monster of the vampiric variety?
I wonder if necromancers have any control over vampires? My mind wandered before I forcibly reeled it back in.
Nope. Nope, not the time for existential dread.
"Well, shit."
There goes my attempt at chivalry. Pretty sure knights in shining armor didn’t swear at young maidens.
Even if the knight was more of a creature of the night, and the maiden probably hadn’t been young in several centuries.
I exhaled sharply -shook off the unease- and leaned against the wall, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible instead of how completely nonplussed I actually felt.
"Okay then." I pushed off the wall and faced her directly. "My name is Declan. What’s yours?"
She beamed, and for a second -just a second- I forgot she was a ghost.
"Nice to meet you, Declan," she said, dimples popping into existence like tiny assassins sent to murder my guard with adorableness. "My name is Lily."
I grinned. "Now that is a great name. Good to meet you, Lily."
Feeling bold, I reached out to shake her hand.
She hesitated for half a heartbeat, then smiled and took it.
And the moment we touched, I felt it.
Something clicked.
An instant connection, sharp as a current of electricity, but not painful. It was tempting, laced with something I couldn’t quite place.
My Hunger stirred.
Not the kind that made my stomach rumble.
The kind that threatened to consume.
I felt it twist inside me, slithering up like an animal waking from hibernation, teeth sharp, senses ravenous. My Essence Drain surged forward, clawing at the edges of my control, demanding, taking.
I shoved it down -hard.
Down, boy!
Lily cocked her head, watching me with far too much interest.
She had felt that.
I knew she had.
I needed a distraction. Fast.
Mental note:
My Hunger knows no bounds.
It is indiscriminate.
Inclusive, even.
Ghouls, ghosts, gargoyles? Who knows? Maybe I’d get some crazy rock-type abilities if I drained a gargoyle.
I ran the thought over in my mind, letting it spiral away for just a moment -long enough to get a grip on the thing inside me that wanted to devour.
I had questions.
Lily had answers.
And whether I liked it or not, this was about to get interesting.
“So,” I gestured around the room, forcing a casual tone despite the gnawing uncertainty. “Where exactly are we? And how did I get here?”
Did I mention how strange it was to look at her? Or rather, how -not- unusual it was to see her?
She was different than anyone else I’d seen since my turning. Hell, let’s be honest. She was unique when compared to everyone I’d ever laid eyes on.
Most living beings had a sort of skinned mesh, or textured model -for those who spoke CGI lingo- inside an aura of light and colors that flickered and pulsed, a constant visual heartbeat of life.
Their Pattern, as I started calling it.
Lily was different.
It wasn’t just the lack of flesh and blood. It wasn’t even that she was a ghost. I’d seen spirits before, and they were usually more like afterimages -fuzzy at the edges, barely holding themselves together, existing in a way that seemed… temporary.
Not Lily.
She had the same general aura, but the rendering -if that’s what you wanted to call it- was crisper, sharper, more solid. It was like the world around us was holding her together, making her more real, like she was supposed to be here in a way other spirits never were.
I didn’t know what that meant. Yet.
And I could feel her.
Her hand in mine, the strange coolness of her touch. Not cold like ice, not warm like flesh -just different. Like the sensation of dipping your fingers into cloud vapor, something tangible, but barely there.
Despite how long we had been standing like this, our hands clasped together, neither of us seemed inclined to let go.
Was it her? Was it me? Was it… whatever this place was?
It felt like the plane of existence itself was augmenting her reality, like she was drawing from this place, and in turn, so was I.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted, and for the first time, her voice held a note of regret.
Loss, and loneliness.
“One moment I was alone-” she hesitated, as if searching for a time before that moment and coming up empty. “As I have been since as far back as I can remember. And the next, you were here.”
- Followers go up? Boom, bonus chapter.
- Favorites go up? Ka-ching, bonus chapter.
- Reviews? Cue the confetti -bonus chapter and a shoutout, because I care.
- Ratings go up? You guessed it -bonus chapter. (And I might even crack a smile. Maybe.)