"Indeed!" A determined female voice spoke in my mind. I turned my head, moved my blurry view to where its source stood. "What are you doing here?" the voice composedly continued in spite of my awe.
Next to me stood a tall, poised girl. Only it was no girl at all, it seemed at first glance. Upon a second one, perhaps it was, but even then I wanted no associations with the sort to play such pranks on bewildered strangers: she wore the feathery hide of a crow, and a tattered plague mask covered her face completely. Her eyes were deep hollows of impenetrable darkness duly protected under the shadow of a hat.
Together now we stood against the crooked railings of a dark building in the heart of a vast city. As I glanced down and ahead of myself with fear, I felt the unwelcome hand rest supportively on my shoulder.
"Enough trembling in your boots!" she said when I grabbed her hand in a feeble attempt to pull it away "A Hunter must hunt."
"A what? No... I'm no hunter!" I made haste to correct the suddenly ominous mistake. But the fearful passion the idea inspired in me was halted before I could phrase my innocence any further, for I could see her eyes now: they peered from the shadows with the derision of one who had heard similar follies times and times before. I frowned.
"Oh... but you are." She mocked.
Her hand on my shoulder squeezed the leather of my attire rather heartfully, like a good friend would, before hurling me forward. The rail I leaned on spread open beneath my hands, or ceased to exist entirely. As I fell down, her voice echoed, not from afar, where it ought to be as I sunk into a dark death, but from everywhere:
"Dream!" it commanded.
I woke up to a fit of violent coughing. Mari, the hotel's maid, nurse and caterer – for lack of a wider crew – sat at my bedside in less than a minute, ready to smother me in her prying, general cares:
"Mr. Ashford, Sir!" She called in her high-pitched, consternated Scottish voice "Tis gotten worse, hasn't it? Your flu..."
"Nonsense!" I weakly argued, hoping mostly to be rid of the girl than to quell her alarm. "I had a strange dream, that is all... Must have bitten my tongue while I fell." I checked my pale, sweaty palm for tiny beads of blood drops.
But my excuse only made the worst of it: I happened to have automatically recoiled deeper on my bed to escape the girl's eager touch. Now twice as determined to examine me, she thought it proper to crawl over the bed and lean her upper part closer, only to carelessly place her palm over my forehead while mindless of her bosom pressed inches to my face.
"Your fever, sir..." she spoke, though shouting seemed to be her standard pitch "It has spiked up again. You must've burned all night, poor thing. Mama used to say a fever brings about the queerest dreams and..."
While Mari babbled hurriedly on, desperate to persuade me of the graveness of my state, I tried to remove myself from the awkward position she put me in without granting the injury in it, for if one thing Mari's numerous attempts at medicine with me as her patient had served for was to prove her a terribly innocent, dreadfully friendly character.
As my eyes managed to escape the mess of puffed dress, cleavage and flesh, I saw it was too late to care for appearances, and I needed not endeavor so hard from then on: Mr. Campbell, the hotel's owner and Mari's father, a man much too aware of the male gender's wretchedness, and too little of his own daughter's want of tact, stood at the threshold peering hatefully my way from under his gnawed eyebrows. The misunderstanding shouldn't have troubled me so much, if it weren't for the many times I had heard the man plead his feverous intent of marrying off pretty young Mari as quickly as he could, before any scandal should reach her.
"Send for the doctor, father!" Mari begged with urgency, oblivious of the former's indisposition.
"It seems the gentleman has all the care he needs right here!" The old fool retorted, taking a jab at me.
"More so than I need, if you'll allow my being honest!" I pleaded my innocence, at last succeeding to push the hysterical girl away.
"But there is blood..."
"Plus, if I my memory don't fail me, Mr. Ashford here said he was quite penniless, and that we should only call the physician if we found him half-dying. He seems pretty much alive to me!" The man gestured insultingly my way, his eyes tracing down to hint at the source of his sourness in silence, so that his pure young girl wouldn't notice it. I hastily pulled the covers over myself and prayed it had gone unnoticed, convinced sour old Campbell just expressed his distaste for the print on my pajamas.
"And you are right, good sir. Doctors everywhere can do nothing for me, I'm afraid. The little money I have left is to be spent in Yharnam."
"...and to pay for your stay!" he supplemented.
"But you'll never make it there this way..."
It wasn't the time to argue with the girl that I wasn't half as bad as she took me for, for her father would clearly not suffer another interaction between us that didn't promptly involve a ring.
With this growing conflict, and my indisputable turn for the worse, it was high time I set foot on the road again, resuming my journey to distant Yharnam.
To be true, I had been to the place before, many years ago in the company of my mother. She had a sister there – one no one bothered contacting when at last she... but never mind the misfortunes of the past: I had long since decided not to linger on them. The memory I held of the big old place was vividly etched on my soul for the impression it caused upon the small countryside lad I was: Looming, gothic, abysmal even, like something taken from a nightmare. Nonetheless the architecture was coordinated enough to inspire some admiration in the tourist eye, if he was brave enough to wander the narrow alleyways winding behind the main roads where horses traversed, friendlier than the masters behind the whips. Suddenly I couldn't resent my pastoral upbringing in the barn-like poorhouse of my hometown: Glancing out the coach's stained window onto a vast, uninterrupted moorland, I was sure I'd have smothered to death if I had been condemned to grow among Yharnam's closing, oppressive walls.
The reason I was going there was one I often managed to safely hide in the remotest corner of my mind... but it wouldn't do now when I felt so much pain, and perhaps it was because I had been so successful in not worrying about it that my health had declined to such extent before I could make it there. Looking languidly out the window, I was struck with shock whenever the coach would pass under a bridge and, in the darkness, I'd behold my own reflection against the glass: a pale specter already, seeming half dead, with big blue bags under my red-stained eyes. I sighed – the pain was more acute when I did so. The coach shook mercilessly for five more hours before I began to think my spirit had really had it this time, it threatened to part. The air was awfully dense – too dense to replenish my lungs, it seemed. I struggled with the window, attempting to open it at first. Once failed, overtaken by dreadful, irrational despair, I began to punch the glass in an attempt to bring the whole thing down, only to breathe a mouthful of that fresh night air again. The strain was too much on me – too little on the actual window, the whole struggle failing to even draw the attention of my fellow passengers to my apparent demise. I called for help when my lids closed involuntarily upon my eyes, but my cry went unheard: it was uttered only in my head as I passed out.