The Reality of Dreams and Nightmares
Chapter II: The Graveyard, the Tower, and Her.
The clouds moved in one grey mass across the sky. Alucard was certain if those clouds ever parted, it would be as if there was a tear in the universe and he would be sucked into the sky, into some infinite darkness for all his existence. That would be a very long time. The clouds that moved lower, the ones rubbing against the ground and thickening the air around him, those kept secrets, only letting you see what they wanted you to see. What lay beyond that curtain of fog, Alucard prayed that he would not soon find out.
These were the things that Alucard first noticed, he did not address the digging pain in his back until the thoughts of clouds lifted from his mind. But now that his mind was on that pain it was no longer an irritation but grimacing torture. Alucard bared his teeth as he lifted himself off the ground and set his hands down behind him to hold him in his sitting position but found that he had only swapped one pain for another. He felt his hands being dug into, could feel the blood beginning to flow.
Alucard pushed off the ground, felt the cuts in his hands become deep incisions, and was now on his feet. He had been so fixed on that sky, that sky that told nothing but meant everything that he did not notice the ground on which he lay. When he finally did look down he found white matter lying as common as dirt on the ground around him. He knew precisely what it was. How could he not? He had seen masses of this crumbled structure before. The sight horrified him though he could not know why.
Scarlet paint on several of the fragments where Alucard had put his hands down was the only color in this gray and white plain, the only color in this gray and white world. The only sound was his movement. Or, Alucard had thought. But yes, there was another sound. Drums. Some beating rhythm far off in the distance. "Death drums" Alucard named them in his head.
His legs did not move easily underneath him and his feet never made a sure step. The ache in his thighs made each step agony and the unstable ground made each a fight for balance. A fight that Alucard was winning. He moved slowly but he moved. He had to move. The still are easy prey. Alucard was certain there were predators here, and he was indeed prey, but not an easy one.
To add to the present misery that his body was in, a headache was beginning to press against the sides of his skull now. To him it felt as though there were some iron clad soldier in there swinging one hell of a hammer against his head trying to escape. He wasn't so sure there wasn't. But his headache bore down on him in a steady rhythm, pain with a pace. Each throw of the hammer corresponding with those drums, the death drums. They were louder now, closer. Alucard must be moving towards them, or they are moving towards him.
Alucard could see his breath spiraling upwards and mixing with the white dense of fog around him. Death's hand gripped his spin, frosting over his bones, and throwing his cloak around him, concealing him in darkness. But it wasn't death's hand, just the cold that came from the shroud of a shadow that now loomed over him. And Alucard was forced to stop. Not by the sight of the goliath of stone before him but the feel of it against the front of his body. He had not seen the wall, not known it was there, and only when he came toe to toe with it did the fog clear it into sight. The fog only shows you what it wishes for you to see, when it wishes for you to see it.
The stone wall seemed like an endless plain, a whole other world turned on its side. Alucard saw that the wall's horizon only after following it just below the clouds, not quite tearing through them and Alucard was relieved by this, but his relief only soon turned to complete mortification. He saw only one thing taller than this colossal wall and that was the tower that stood erect behind it. It peeked over the top of the wall and punctured the ceiling of existence. He knew the room at the top of the tower stood beyond, stood in that darkness he had first feared when he saw that sky, and he knew who dwelled there.
He felt the cold trickle of sweat across his brow and let it freeze on his cheek. The sky, the fog, the bones, the hooves, and the wall were all a wielded hammer inside his head. What hooves? What about the drums? There were no drums. Only the sound of horses racing, racing towards him. And now the sound of his own feet pounding across the ground. The rhythm of horses was now accompanied by the sound of snorting breath in Alucard's ears. His own frantic breath seemed more distant to him then the sounds of those sure death bringers behind him.
Finally after many battles Alucard lost the war with balance. His leg came down and his feet betrayed him. Fog turned into clouds and the pain in his back returned but with a certain spiteful vengeance against him for ever getting up at all.
Alucard thought that he finally knew what it was like to be in the middle of a cloud during a lightning storm. The thunder of hooves sounded around him and he knew that a man who fought a storm was foolish. The ground rumbled beneath him, twisting the jagged fragments farther into his back, and the huge steps of horses threatened to add his broken bones to this surface graveyard. His bones remained intact however and the sound of horses no longer resided behind him but only in front of him. He thought perhaps that the riders had missed him, had not seen him, or did not care he was there. A second thought brought the conclusion that even a man who would fight a storm would not have thoughts as foolish as those.
The noose fell around Alucard's neck and he enjoyed one last breath before the only thing in his lungs became an empty burning. He struggled at the loop tightened around his throat but his efforts were quickly ceased when the rope threatened to pluck his head from his shoulders.
Alucard's body whipped around and the world rolled beneath him. He was being dragged across the boney dessert and came to fear the sounds of drums moving away from him more than he would ever fear the sound of them moving towards him. Like glass,the shards of bones tore his clothes, only to do the same to the flesh beneath.
Alucard's teeth were bared and he thought he heard them crack inside his skull. He managed to bend his head backwards, later when he would find part of his scalp missing and would decide this was a poor choice, to get an idea of what sought to tear him apart. He saw two horses, and four gigantic hooves. The horses' intestines bounced around inside their open cavities and Alucard found the movement oddly hypnotizing and the only thing that took his eyes away from those sloshing insides was the spinal cord that fluttered behind the horse like a tail.
Another fog came into Alucard's vision, this one black, dark. The world around him grew dim and he found himself longing for that vile air he had found utterly disgusting when his eyes opened to this place. But he was never engulfed by that black, it drew back as a breath was drawn in. The Valhalla Knights had released the rope and steadily the drums faded away. Alucard took a long moment to breath, to do nothing else but consume the air around him.
Alucard rolled over on to his stomach and flinched back when he again came face to face with a stone wall. This one was significantly smaller and on it was engraved one word, SONIA. This only made Alucard curl back farther, his eyes as wide as that moon the night he had thought of her again. He retreated, crawling backwards from the grave. He would rather swim in a sea of bones that kneel above hers. But his retreat was stopped. He tried but he couldn't move. He thought fear immobilized, struck him into paralysis. But it wasn't the sight of the grave, it was the hand that gripped his ankle. It emerged from the ground and held fast to his leg. He gave another great tug and managed a few feet but at a cost.
The hand never left his ankle, Alucard had only succeeded in pulling the upper torso of some brittle figure from the ground. It was a sneering skeleton with a moldy mess of blonde hair pasted to the top of the skull. Alucard felt a scream ripping from his throat and the skull screamed with him. Screaming with him and pulling Alucard closer despite all his struggles. Pulling him in to her grave.
The moonlight bounced off of Alucard's wide eyes once the veil of skin was lifted, making them glow like the eyes of a frantic animal being eaten alive. Like so many frantic animals in this dying forest.
Alucard had set off from the hill days ago, he knew the influence of the castle and to him it was like north to a compass. He had come to this ghastly forest the night before and had sat for rest. One that he was just now waking from.
His mind flashed images of everything he had seen in that hell's dream and continued to replay them for his viewing pleasure. It had seemed so real to him, but don't all dreams? He still felt the grip of that hand on his ankle. He looked down at it and saw that a vine had wrapped itself around that ankle. He reached down to pull it off and found his hands being penetrated by thorns, like the shards had in his dream.
His wide eyes flickered upwards and he saw a massive blue bud opening as if his presence was the sun. The woman inside flipped her golden hair around her body, exposing her breast and predator eyes.
Alucard flung his body to the right and heard the sound of something tearing through the ground where he had been lying. Another carnivorous vine speared through the ground between in legs and rattled in the air, seeming angry that it had not tasted his blood. Alucard drew his sword and severed that vine that had held him from freedom. Now free, Alucard flung his body again, avoiding a rain of darts of blue roses. Alucard leaped into the center of the flower, he could feel the woman's fleshy mounds pressing against his chest as he drove the sword through her stomach. The Venus Weed let out a loud screech and shriveled in a second what a whole winter would take.
Alucard jumped from the center before the bulb closed disintegrated into the rest of the compost on the forest floor. But on his landing his feet buckled beneath him and he gave to his knees. It was then he saw the barbed rose stem growing from his thigh. He grabbed the flower around the thorns, blood seeping from his grip, and tore the rose from his leg. He knew very well the poison that these flower possessed. He also knew very well the poison that Dracula's castle possessed. He moved on.