I tried to type this so it would sound like a monologue of someone being interviewed, and then edited for the show.
This fic was a little more experimental than my others, and I'm still not sure how much I actually like it...
Søren – Denmark
Eirik – Norway
Jónas – Iceland
The band name is a reference to Metalocolypse.
Tino Väinämöinen is the lead singer and bassist for the Finnish metal band Musta Krakish…
"…I've always had a fascination with, you know, spirits and that kind of stuff. I mean, it was reading about ghost stories that inspired me to start writing song lyrics and form the band… but, no, I never thought I'd ever have any personal experience…"
Just as Musta Krakish began to take off, something happened to Tino that would change his life…
"It happened about two years back... We'd just gotten a deal with a good-sized record label and we finally had the funds to record our first full album, and we found a great studio in a small town just over the border on Sweden… and the four of us had been stuck in Finland for a while, so it seemed like a great chance to travel…
So, anyways, we wound up arriving at the studio a lot later in the day than we'd planned, because of traffic … it was about midnight when we finally got to the studio, and our manager-slash-tech guy Eduard was already there. We were all tired and thought it would be best if we just crashed for the night and started recording tomorrow.
There was a little hotel across the street… It was tiny place, but pretty well kept, and that was where we'd decided we were going to sleep while we recorded the album. I wound up in a room on my own, which I didn't mind… at first, anyway…
I was completely wiped out so I was pretty much asleep as soon as I lay down. I'm not sure what time I woke up… it must have been early, 'cuz it was still dark out…
I wasn't sure what had woke me up at first, but the second I saw it… I was wide awake.
There was this big, tall man standing just inside of the door way. He was dressed like some kind of old knight or something, in armor and a cloak with this giant sword in his hands… He was facing out of the room, not moving at all.
Well, I thought I must have been dreaming at first, or this was some kind of prank by Søren, but… I don't know, I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right in the room.
I decided I was going to try and get his attention, you know, ask who he was, so sat up in the bed, and he turned and looked right at me and…
…I swear, those eyes were looking right into my soul. They were the most piercing, chilling shade of blue, I'd ever seen. He was glaring at me like he wanted to kill me…
I couldn't even move, I was so scared.
But he didn't move from the door way… and eventually he looked away from me again and faced forward… I just dove back under the covers and tried to convince myself it was all a dream…
I must have gotten back to sleep in the end, because the next thing I knew, Eduard was shaking me awake and telling me we had to start recording.
We got a lot of work done on the first day, but otherwise it was pretty uneventful. I was kind of on edge, but I wasn't sure if the man in my room last night had been a dream or not... I just focused on the recording, though, and didn't let myself think of anything else.
There was a small dining room in the hotel… We had dinner there after we'd finished for the day. And that was when Eirik brought it up…
'You guys know this place is haunted, right?' he said.
I actually dropped my fork and stared at him. Søren laughed, but Jónas and Eduard were kind of interested in what he had to say… so he told us the story…
It turned out this had once been the sight of a mansion where a Swedish noble family once lived… The oldest son of the family was a knight and betrothed to a girl from another family… even though it was a political marriage, the two of them actually fell very deeply in love, and the girl was moved to mansion long before the marriage just so they could live together…
But, something went wrong… there was another girl, a jealous girl, who'd been in love with the noble boy her whole life, but he'd never reciprocated… When she learned about the betrothal, she summoned a curse on the house and the girl…
The day after she arrived at the mansion, the noble boy found his betrothed dead in her bedroom… Her death, or maybe the curse, drove him mad. He refused to let anyone in to remove her body… he went so far as to stand guard at the door in full armor… until he passed away himself, of a broken heart, they said…
The family moved out of the mansion after that. Over the years, it fell into disrepair, and eventually burned down of mysterious causes… But, through all that, the ghost of the knight still stands at the spot where his betrothed's door used to be...
Søren was laughing again, Eduard was going on about how unlikely the story was, and Jónas was more interested in getting another bowl of soup, but I was captivated… The man in my room last night… he had to be real, and this had to be him!
A part of me felt sorry for him… but I was still scared. I mean, if the story was true, this ghost was insane and I was sleeping in his dead fiancé's room!
I sort of wanted to ask the others if I could room with them tonight, but I was sure they would think I nuts… so I went back to my room and tried to sleep…
I don't know if I did or not, but the next time I opened my eyes, there he was… standing as still as a statue in the doorway… He looked at me again, just like before, as angry-looking as ever… but this time I somehow found it in me to respond…
'You're scaring me!' I yelled. 'Just go away!'
…His face changed, then… He looked hurt… and for a second, I wanted to apologize… but then he just left. He walked out the door, but he kind of faded as he passed the door frame…
And then I was alone… but I didn't feel any better.
I didn't get back to sleep… I was feeling kind of guilty for yelling at the knight. I kept glancing up to see if he'd come back, but he never did…
Then something changed in the room… It got very cold, and I felt something there besides me… I thought maybe the knight had come back, so I looked up…
And this huge, black, heavy cloud descended on me out of nowhere. It was like a thick blanket had been dropped on me and was being forcefully held down… It was smothering me… I couldn't move, I couldn't see, I could barely breathe… Whatever this thing was, it was evil, and it was going to kill me.
I must have been lying there for hours, just trying to scream for help… This thing was growing heavier and heavier on top of me, dragging the life force out of me bit by bit… I was so sure I was dead…
But then I saw something silver stabbed through the black shape, again and again, and it leapt off of me… I sat up trying to catch my breath, and there was the knight, sword raised, standing between me and this cloud…
He just said one word… 'Leave'… and the cloud was gone… just vanished into thin air…
He stood there for a while… I think he was making sure it was gone… and then he turned and looked at me… And I just knew I was safe now. He didn't look any less angry or threatening, but it's like I was seeing past his face… I knew he'd been worried and he'd returned to protect me…
And then he turned and stood in the door, just like he was when I first saw him… I fell back asleep knowing he would protect me if that thing came back…
I have no idea if the knight in my room really was the one from Eirik's story or not… But, I have this feeling, and I don't know how I can explain why I know this, but… I think that thing that attacked me was the curse set on his fiancé… and he knew it was still there… so he stayed, just to make sure it never killed anyone else…
I never got to see him again, since we finished the album the day after I was attacked and left Eduard to work on the mixing… I've always wanted to go back and spend another night there… I think I'll do that once this tour's over…
A month after filming, Tino returned to the hotel and spent a night…
He has neither confirmed nor denied encountering the knight again…
…but he has made it a regular stop when touring in Scandinavia…