Outrageous! Impertinent!
And anyway, what was he looking so smug about?
We were in this together, right? All lost, out of our minds, victims of what must have been a horrible accident. So why did he still look so self-confident? No, wait, it was even more than that – he was looking really satisfied since he had begun to treat me derisively.
He seemed to be completely at ease.
I knew I was not.
I was panicky. Terrified!
I didn't know anything, and that scared the hell out of me. It somehow didn't feel right to be so utterly at a loss.
And paired up with a black scarecrow. Oh well, more scare than crow.
While we were marching up the nearest staircase, I decided it was time for some mental inventory. What did I know?
Let's see … I had just woken up in what appeared to be a castle filled with a bunch of weird people … actually, I had woken up on top of one of them.
I didn't know anyone. Neither did they recognize me. I had no idea where I was. Or what business I had with the overgrown bat walking next to me.
How did he dare?
How did he dare ask me why I woke up on top of him when I didn't even know my own name? I wouldn't even have been able to recognize my face in a mirror.
Oh, I so hated this.
Had I just whimpered? Bat-man was giving me a strange sideways glance. Hope I hadn't just whimpered.
Leaving the hall, we had divided into pairs as the woman in the pointed hat had suggested. I whished I could have gone with her instead, she seemed to be the most trustworthy person of this strange little party. Instead she had sent me off with this shadowy figure. Brrr…
We really needed to find help. It'd been only five minutes since we had left the hall and we were encountering troubles already. As we were climbing up the stairs, I discovered it was ending in mid-air by walking straight of the edge.
The bat yanked me back at my collar. Yeah, I prefer being strangled over plunging to death any time, thanks.
Shivering, I looked down the ravine. "Who would design a staircase leading to nowhere?"
Not answering, he swept around, cloak in full swish. He was heading back down, striding heedlessly in the lead, me struggling to keep up.
"Look," I panted, "If this is a castle, it's bound to have a library. We could find answers to what has happened in a book."
He sneered again. Boy, that one had limits to his facial expressions. "And which book would you suggest we try? Blackout for Beginners or Do-It-Yourself Amnesia or just Insanity?" he replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Or what about Being Lost Somewhere Without Knowing Your Name?"
I was sick of being mocked. The whole situation was just so frustrating, and there is only so much a person without any personal memories can take. Something snapped inside me. I ran after him, yelling "Yeah, and while we're at it, we can find the Guide To Waking Up On Weirdos."
Hang on – did I just see the ghost of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth? Now please don't tell me he's got that kind of humour.
As we were heading further down, he refused to pay me any attention. I kept silent – what was I to say? Anyway, I guessed he was older than me, so he should be the one in charge.
"Dungeons," he suddenly stated.
"Beg your pardon?" Did he want to lock me away?
"This is the way to the dungeons."
"How do you know? Have you been here before?"
We stopped our descent on a landing. "Probably," he replied slowly, looking around. It was darker here, and I had trouble adjusting to the dwindling light. "I just seem to know."
That was fine with me. I just seemed to know next to nothing, and any bit of information came in handy. If we knew where the dungeons of this castle were, surely we would avoid them?
My companion had other ideas, tough. More determined than ever, he covered the next flight of stairs.
"What are you doing?" I shouted after him, trying to keep up.
"What does it look like?"
"You're not thinking of going there, are you?"
He stopped and turned around to face me. He wore the most annoyed expression. "I doubt you are in any position to even begin to comprehend my thoughts, but yes, I am heading down."
"But why?!?"
If looks could kill, I would have burned to cinders that instant. He sighed, than took a step towards me. We were inches apart now. Which made it somehow hard to concentrate on what he was saying. … Wow, he had the darkest eyes I had ever seen … ah well, not that I'd remember anyway… "Listen carefully now, as I will not repeat this," he hissed, "I do seem to have a vague recollection of this location, which implies that I have been here before. In my opinion, this fact makes the dungeons the perfect place to begin our search. If you disagree, you might want to continue floundering around aimlessly. I will not hold you."
Honestly, he was getting a bit tough. I mean, being annoyed and unnerved is understandable in a situation such as ours, but he was becoming really mean. If this was his true personality beginning to shine through, I was in more trouble than I had anticipated.
"There is absolutely no need to be so condescending," I reprimanded him. "Who do you think you are, anyway?"
This earned me another near-fatal glance, but no reply. Okay, it was (hopefully) not the cleverest remark I had ever made. I tried to keep my mouth shut as he waltzed off again, and concentrated on keeping up once more. (He might be unpleasant company, but scary as he was, the thought of exploring this realm on my own frightened me more.)
We reached the end of the stairs. A dark and quiet hallway stretched to either side of us. There were more knights' armours, several doors and a lot of portraits. I looked at the nearest one, it showed an old man in shiny robes sitting at a desk. He was asleep.
My companion had examined some of the pictures, too. Now he shook his head in confusion. "They're all asleep."
"Who?" I asked.
"The people in these portraits. They are all asleep."
He was right. All of the portraits depicted sleeping men and women dressed in robes and pointed hats (seemed to be a common fashion here). It was gloomy. I didn't like this.
"I don't like this." My voice sounded less confident by the minute. Maybe I should consider shutting up for good an option.
I was suffering a tremendous case of nerves by now. Involuntarily, I edged closer to him. He was the closest thing to a human being around, right? Still, trying to draw comfort from his presence was like trying to draw warmth from an ice-cube. Ignoring my nervous self completely, he leaned in on one of the pictures to examine it more closely. "It almost looks alive," he said, marvelling at the details. "It is … incredible."
"But they're all asleep."
"Not quite, thanks to you two. Would you mind keeping the noise down? You have been yelling all over the stairs. I have heard you." The voice had come from behind us, and we jumped around frantically. There was no one there.
"Did you hear that?" I whispered.
"Oh, NOW you're whispering, thank you very much."
It was … OHMYGOD, it was the sleeping old man in the portrait?¿? Only he wasn't sleeping anymore, he was wide awake and MOVING and TALKING.
The picture was talking to us.
Okay. Take a deep breath. Count to ten.
The picture was still talking to us.
Several things then happened at once.
Terrified to the core of my being, I did what everyone in my place would have chosen to do. I launched myself at my dark and imposing companion and attempted to hide behind his back. Due to a complete miscalculation of force, I managed to knock him over and land right on top of him (hmm, this was becoming a habit … I wondered if we had a history of this kind of interaction?). Between us, we knocked over a piece of armour, which shattered on the floor with a series of loud CLUNKs. The noise served to wake up the other subjects of the portraits, all of whom began to stumble around in bewilderment, ranting about our intrusion and telling us off.
It was a nightmare.
Somehow in the middle of it all, I had begun to scream. I had not stopped yet. I had no intention to stop.
Someone dragged me through a door and into another room. It was quiet here, except for my screaming. Someone told me to calm down. Someone shook me, urging me to "shut the hell up". So I did.
Apparently, my black knight had saved me. He must have disentangled himself from me and pulled me out of the pandemonium in the hallway. And into …
"Is this a classroom?" I asked, taking in our new surroundings. I was still hoarse from all the screaming.
"Seems so."
"So is this …" I looked him straight in the eye.
He finished my sentence, "… a school? – Seems so."
Now that was good news. I mean, a school is per definitionem a place of knowledge and discipline and order. What scary or unusual things could happen in a school?
He was pacing the floor now. "The pictures were talking to us."
Oh, right, that. Oh, but if this was a school, it was a good place, and this madness could probably be rationalized away. There had to be an explanation.
"Maybe they were no pictures after all. I mean, pictures don't talk, do they? Maybe these were … like, flat TV screens."
My saviour (he did save me, and I couldn't keep calling him a bat, right?) stared at me. "What in Heavens name is a TV screen?"
Before I could call him nuts, a ghost shot out of the blackboard and came floating towards us. Under these circumstances, I decided the wisest course of action was passing out.
So I did.