To His Hell and Back
Chapter 50: World Outside The Box

Chapter 50: World Outside The Box

Arabella couldn’t sleep. She tried to sleep but found the town’s odd quietness was far too eerie and her head refused to rest. Feeling uneasy, she decided not to sleep as forcing herself to sleep only made her head ache even worse. As she stood up toward the glass jar for water, she realized how it was empty. Not only was it empty, but it held dust in it with small spiders that had started to weave their webs for their family.

She wondered how long it had been since someone had stopped by the inn, but after a closer inspection, Arabella also noticed that it wasn’t only the jar that was nesting dust but also the rest of the room. The bed was oddly coarse, clearly, the bed sheet hadn’t been clean in a long time. The corners of the ceiling were also dusty and full of spider webs, while the floor was the only thing cleaned, as if the entire inn was kept to be neat just enough so the guests wouldn’t know how long it had been since the last cleaning.

If Cassius knew about this, wouldn’t he be upset?

He despised carelessness, and if he noticed the innkeeper’s negligence, she would pay dearly for it.

Arabella exhaled sharply, shaking off the thought. She didn’t want someone innocent to be hurt in front of her so she sucked her breaths and opened the door, not to leave the inn, just the room. Maybe a walk would ease the unease curling in her chest.

As her feet stepped outside the door to enter her boots, she heard the sound of footsteps that echoed from the end of the hallway. Her neck craned forward, her green eyes turning to see the left side of the hallway that was pitch black and eerily quiet.

Odd.

There was a sound from there, right?

Was it from the guest?

She brushed away her curious thoughts despite the odd sound of footsteps that had made the thin hairs on her back rise. It was late. She was likely imagining things. Then, as she walked out of the room and made her way toward the staircase, she heard a whisper of words that were now louder than before.

If it was any normal whisper, Arabella wouldn’t have cared. The odd thing was that the voices didn’t sound like someone who was whispering from a conversation.

It sounded like... like someone chanting a prayer. A prayer to something dark and monstrous.

A gulp rang out from her throat, and before she knew it, curiosity got the better of her. When she had noticed her footsteps, she was already making her way to the dark side of the hallway, her feet creeping into the shadow, when a dark hand had lunged out, trying to hold her ankle.

The long and thin fingers were about to touch her when a voice cut through the daze that had enchanted Arabella,

"Miss, that place is not for the outsider."

Blinking her eyes, Arabella turned to find the innkeeper who was walking up the staircase. Agnes, the innkeeper, seemed to be frowning, perhaps unhappy that Bella had poked her nose around, but at the same time, she looked somewhat... scared.

Bella smiled politely. "I’m sorry, I heard someone there."

"S- Someone?" Agnes hitched on her words. She gazed at the dark end of the hallway, and her jaw seemed to clench. "There is no one there, miss. It’s empty, I mean, there is nothing at the end of the hallway."

"But," Arabella was about to protest when Agnes pulled out her left hand, which turned out to be holding a candlestick. She then walked over toward the darkness and let the round light shine on the wall at the end of their path.

"See?" Agnes said, knocking on the wall, "There couldn’t be any whispers coming from here, miss. What you have heard must have been the wind. They are quite restless these days, so it does sound like someone talking in the night."

The woman’s words were not entirely unbelievable. Indeed, the night was quiet, but the wind had been strong earlier. Maybe it was the sound of the wind brushing against the forest tree, or maybe she was just too exhausted and was starting to believe in something intangible.

She watched as Agnes then put the candle and hung it on the dark hallway so that it would shine, so perhaps no one would make the same mistake.

"I’m Arabella," she introduced, and Agnes eyed her skeptically.

Despite that, the woman answered, "Agnes."

"You’re married," Arabella pointed, her green eyes resting on the mark around the woman’s ring finger, which seemed to make Agnes uneasy as she covered her ring finger almost immediately.

"I was married," answered Agnes, and her eyes, which seemed sunken, were in a thoughtful stupor. "Marriages aren’t for anyone. At least I don’t think it is for me."

Arabella sighed as she nodded. "I understand you."

Agnes raised her eyebrows, looking at her, and then seemed twice as worried as before, "Did the vampire that came with you treat you badly?"

"Badly?" Bella asked, and she found herself unable to answer. She could think back on everything that Cassius had done. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t all terrible. "I was talking about my parents’ marriage."

"Oh," Agnes gulped. She looked fidgety, which caught Bella’s sharp green eyes, but she didn’t want to point it out and embarrass the innkeeper. Agnes cleared her throat, "Men. They are such a difficult creature, aren’t they?"

Curious, Bella continued their conversation, "I do think they are, but I also think women are a difficult creature to comprehend. I also used to think that humans are all equally difficult, but now that I learned about vampires, I think all creatures are simply too complicated for us to ever fully understand."

Agnes let out a dry chuckle, though it did little to mask the nervous tension still clinging to her posture. "That is a fair thought," she admitted. "Perhaps we are all cursed with the burden of complexity."

Arabella tilted her head, raising her eyebrows faintly. "You speak as if you’ve met many vampires before."

The question made Agnes hesitate. Her fingers twitched against her dusty brown dress, gripping the fabric tightly for a moment before she forced herself to relax. "One doesn’t need to meet many of them to understand what they are," she said carefully. "Just one is enough."

Arabella caught the shift in her voice. The way her words carried a weight of experience, of something unsaid.

"Then you’ve met one before, Cassius," she stated rather than asked.

Agnes’s expression darkened. She glanced over her shoulder toward the candlelit hallway as if afraid someone, or something, might be listening. "Miss, some truths are best left buried."

Arabella narrowed her eyes slightly, "That’s true, but there are some truths, when buried, have a way of clawing themselves back to the surface. Just like how lying has to be buried with more hundreds of lies."

Agnes exhaled as if trying to decide whether to speak. The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken words. Then, at last, she murmured, "Yes. And sometimes, when they do, it’s already too late to run."

Unable to understand what Agnes meant, Arabella furrowed her eyebrows. She was about to ask if there were any vampires around here before Agnes had walked downstairs, and she followed. Seeing her figure, Agnes continued speaking, "Do you know, miss, that there is a new law that has been made ever since the new King reigned?"

Bella wondered what it could be; her village was particularly illiterate, and they were at the corners of Versailles, which caused the news to travel slowly.

"I don’t think I know."

"The law of killing a vampire."

Bella blinked, and Agnes, who saw this, smiled. "It’s a new law, but it is to protect their kin. If one kills a vampire, especially if they are a human, they would be subjected to an immediate death sentence. If the village was found not to report of this said accident, the whole village would be met with the equal death sentence."

Somehow, this conversation felt as if it was being led somewhere.

Bella gulped as the silence between them stretched, and she could feel something eerie slithering in between their tense air. Only now as she stepped into the Castle does she realize how she had been living inside a box, not knowing anything about the real world.

"The vampire that came with you, miss, has he done anything bad to you?" Agnes continued. When she turned toward Arabella and she took a good look at the innkeeper’s face, the smile given by Agnes was dark and deadly, her eyes that looked at her were oddly bleak, and it caused goosebumps all over Bella’s body. "If he did, you can tell us. You can tell me."

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