"Sam! Come on, we are nearly there!" The girls called me from the top of the hill, but I decided to ignore them.
They were too noisy, my two friends, disturbing me from my pleasant reverie. Right now, I wanted to stay alone for a while, to admire the beauty spreading around me.
This was the trip of my dreams. I always wished to visit the Bran Castle in Transylvania, and now that I was finally here, the place was making me feel... strange. As if I had been here before, as if I knew it well, just couldn't remember it entirely. The feeling I had was like a distant memory, or like one of those dreams that fade away with the sunrise, and all that is left of them is a faint hint.
"You go on, I'll reach you inside!" I called to the impatient girls.
"Fine, but hurry up. The tour starts in ten minutes."
I nodded, and finally, they jogged up the road to join the group of people gathering outside the castle, leaving me on my own.
The sudden silence washed over me like a flood and enveloped me like a thick blanket, muffling all the sounds. I took a few more steps up the centuries old road, and reaching the top of the hill, I noticed that all the people had already disappeared inside the medieval fortress.
This way, the place was perfect-- I was there alone, surrounded by its timeless beauty. It was a Halloween evening when the gates between the worlds stood open and anything was possible...
Pleasant shivers ran up my spine as I contemplated the haunting silhouette of the castle, set against the backdrop of the tree covered hills of the Carpathian Mountains. The motionless trees were incredibly colourful, as if painted by an eccentric artist, with thin stripes of fog coiling through them like a rugged veil. A stray ray of the sun, already beginning its descent towards the far horizon, illuminated a narrow, silvery ribbon of water rushing along the bottom of the deep gorge on the right side of the road.
This view reminded me of the setting of Bram Stoker's book. I wanted to believe that this really was the castle that had inspired his story, and something more-- a special place where time stood still, and anything was possible. Especially on a Halloween night. Absorbed in my fantasies, it was easy to imagine hearing a distant, ominous howling of wolves, clatter of wheels of an invisible carriage rushing past me, and a silent, chilling laughter carried towards me on a swift gust of wind.
Shaking my head to clear it from the too vivid images, I took my copy of Stoker's Dracula from my bag and hurried to join my friends in the courtyard of the castle.
The small group was gathered and waiting there. The ten of us, all in our twenties, were staying in the same hotel, located some thirty minutes' walk from the fortress. I had met them all over the last few days.
Letting my eyes stroll from one person to the next, I searched the group for my two friends, Anne and Lia. The girls were at the far end of the courtyard, absorbed in conversation with two boys, Mark and Lucas, two young Londoners, just like us. I walked over to them, but seeing that they were all quite busy with one another, and hardly looked at me when I joined them, I stayed a little on the side.
When we were invited to enter, I strolled a few steps behind them as the last member of the group, letting the gap between me and the rest of them stretch as we walked. That was exactly what I wanted, to soak in the atmosphere of the place alone, undisturbed.
"Sam, come closer," Lia urged when we walked into the first room, a large, dark hall redolent of times long past, with an impressive staircase leading to the upper floors at its end.
"I'm fine here," I whispered back even as we were joined by a guide who welcomed us in the castle.
Lia shook her head disapprovingly but didn't insist. She knew me well enough not to argue.
I let my eyes wander around but could not see much. The only source of light in the vast hall were the last rays of the setting sun, finding their way in through the massive, wooden door through which we had just entered. Wishing to re-read quickly the parts of Stoker's Dracula describing this castle, I opened my book, but it was too dark to see its small, printed words.
Most of the guide's short speech was swallowed by the vastness of the hall, but I saw him pointing to the stone staircase; we were to move on. The people at the head of the group began climbing up, and Lia looked at me again.
"I'm fine," I mouthed at her, "go!"
"You're crazy," she mouthed back, shaking her head.
One of the boys noticed our silent exchange and followed Lia's look, smiling at me even as they moved on. Then I saw the girls disappear up the stairs, followed by Mark and Lucas.
I let the group go ahead and only moved from my place when urged by the guide, who came to close the front door.
"Make sure to stay with the group, young lady," he said, as if he himself was a hundred years old.
Glancing at him quickly, I noticed that he wasn't much older than me. He was tall and slim, with shoulder-length, raven-black hair. When my eyes met his, my breath hitched, and I could neither move from the spot nor talk. I forgot everything, where, or who I was... All I could perceive were his eyes, those two bottomless, mesmerising pools of green light.
I was spellbound.
After a while, which could have been a minute or an hour, he broke the spell by letting his gaze drop at the book that I was clutching to my chest. He shook his head, smiling, and walked past me towards the door. When his arm brushed against mine, I felt my knees tremble, and I had to lean against the wall, lest I would fall. The man must have felt something unusual, too, because he looked at me again, but this time, even though I craved the sight of those strange, mysterious eyes, I avoided meeting them.
"Welcome to Castelul Bran," he said in a clear, imposing voice while closing the great door. It slammed shut, frightening me and leaving us in near complete darkness. A gust of cold wind rushed through the hall, and when my eyes got used to the tenebrosity, I saw him standing on top of the great stairs.
How did he get there so fast?
"Make sure to stay with your group. Otherwise, you might get lost," he called, his voice reverberating off the damp, stone walls. "Come," he told me, and I found myself unable to disobey.
I walked up the staircase alone, then along a short, narrow corridor close at his side, but careful not to touch him again. There was a door at its end, and I entered, finding my group studying some exhibits placed in glass cases along the walls of a large chamber.
The guide started his lecture, but I did not pay much attention to his words. I knew everything about the castle's history and architecture, I had done my research. Now, I wanted to absorb the things that could not be written down, its atmosphere, the spirit of this place soaked within the very fabric of the timeworn building.
I walked around, letting my eyes pause absentmindedly on the objects protected by the glass. There were gold coins, jewels, old, hand-written letters, yellowed and rendered illegible by time. All these things brought me back to different parts of Stoker's book again, so I stopped by one of the windows and started leafing through its pages. I had no idea how long I stood there when I felt his warm breath on the back of my neck. Even without turning around, I knew it was him.
"You must remember to stay with your group, Samara," the guide whispered in my ear.
How did he know my name?!
His closeness and the way in which he pronounced my name made me shiver. I turned around fast, but he wasn't anywhere near me. The man was standing by the door at the other end of the large room, his green eyes inviting me to follow, a bemused smile tugging at the corners of his full red lips. There was something... extraordinary about him, something eerie, out of this world...
"What is your name, then?" I asked him as I approached, my voice trembling only a little.
"Vlad Dracul," he announced, smiling, offering me his hand.
"Right, what else," I mumbled, hesitating slightly before accepting it. He was making fun of me. Or was he...?
My thoughts were disturbed by another shock of pleasant shivers, which I received when our hands touched. Instead of shaking my hand, he brought it to his red lips, his mesmerising eyes boring into mine. When his warm lips touched my skin, everything around us melted away. It was just me and him, and I wanted that moment to last forever.
"Samara," he said too soon, "why did you come here?"
His voice was incredibly sensual, full of secrets and promises.
Suddenly, he let go of my hand, taking a few steps back.
"You must stay with your group," he repeated, and his voice was normal again.
The man walked away from me fast, joining the group, and as he led us throughout the castle, he never approached me again.
My mind kept wandering to the guide's strange behaviour as I observed the beautiful countryside through the many windows of the impressive halls, watched as the evening descended slowly, then morphed fast into night.
It was dark outside when we reached the Entry Hall where our tour had started again. Now, it was illuminated by many candles, their delicate, trembling light lending the castle a perfect Halloween atmosphere.
The guide said his goodbye to our group, and I saw my friends strolling across the courtyard towards a small bus that would take us back to the hotel-- we were not supposed to walk down after dark, the unilluminated path was too dangerous.
Before I followed them, I looked around one last time, wanting to commit the place to memory, and noticed 'Vlad' vanishing inside one of the rooms down a corridor that had been cordoned off.
Something made me want to follow him...
The moment I took a step towards the dark corridor, the heavy front door closed with a loud thud on its own, making me jump. The candles were blown out, their scent of melted wax and smoke filling my lungs as I inhaled deeply. I was alone, surrounded by a perfect blackness. The only faint light was coming from the room that I had seen the guide entering before.
I reached it and walked over its threshold, but my feet failed to find a solid ground. I was flying through a long, lightless tunnel, or rather, falling down a deep well. When I landed, I noticed with a shock that everything had changed.
I was in the same spot as before, I could still see the closed front door... But this was a different time, a wrong century.
My clothes were strange-- my jeans and a jacket were replaced by a floor-length, burgundy coloured velvet dress. Its sleeves were too long and incredibly wide, sweeping the floor whenever I moved. Even my long, curly, copper hair, which I usually wore loose, was tied up in a bun protected by a kind of a hair net I could feel under my exploring fingers, and topped by a short, transparent veil, brushing against my cheeks like dragonfly wings.
The light I could see before was getting stronger, and I could hear loud music coming from the room in front of me, too. Collecting all my remaining courage, I walked over that same threshold again, bracing myself for another fall.
This time, I didn't fall. I walked inside of what I was sure was a living Renaissance painting.
There were people dancing all around me, dressed in the same, fairytale-like fashion as myself. When they noticed me, they pulled me among them, and I was pushed from one laughing dancer to another. After a while, all I could see around were those red, smiling lips. I felt confused and scared, they were crowding me, I couldn't breathe...
Then I heard a familiar voice, so sweet to my ears.
"Disperse! She is mine!"
"It's you..." I whispered once we were alone.
"And you, Samara. Why did you follow me, my love? It's not safe here for you," Vlad murmured, embracing me.