When Hell Sings

I' Beuren

~Chapter 2~

“I, Beuren”

I snapped open my eyes with the blurred flames of candles flickering above me and the smell of fresh stew lingering in my nose. My body felt weak, as if it were a new born baby’s, though I managed to sit up as if waking from a bad dream. I found myself in a bedroom fit for a king as my vision began to clear and I noticed the silver plated bed posts and the fine velvet silk sheets that I lay in, along with the fresh fruits in a bronze bowl on the bedside table which my shocked eyes could not waver from. I threw the sheets off and cautiously reached for a green apple sitting on the top of the bowl, all the while looking around in disbelief of where I was, a lavish suite fit for a lord of the highest order and far different from the life I had known. As I reached for the apple I noticed the bandages wrapped around my left hand with a sharp pain making its way up my arm. The bandages having a blood stain on the palm side of my hand, running in a straight line as if I had cut myself on something. I stared at the blood stain in shock and fear not knowing how I had been cut, and continued to snatch the apple from the bronze bowl all the while looking around in all directions, wondering where I was and how I had gotten to this wonderfully strange place.

With the apple in my mouth already half eaten, I ran across the room towards the door and passed an ancient looking painting of a strange man wielding a sword in front of him pointed to the ground and standing in a straight sturdy posture like a soldier in a line up. The painting managed to stop me in my tracks, as the gold of its frame shined like I had only seen in my dreams. As I gazed at the man in the painting dressed in silver armor and black leathers, a symbol on his chest caught my eye and as if putting me in a trance my eyes stopped blinking. I suddenly found myself in a crippling darkness lying on the freezing floor with the full moon above me and the searing heat from a blazing fire kissing my cheek.

I looked down at my chest and found my bloodied hands holding onto a wound which ran deep from my gut to my chest, like a knife wound that wouldn’t stop flowing red with blood. With my bare hands I desperately tried to stop the blood which was flowing onto the ground, reddening the soil and dying my clothes in a crimson mass. I rubbed at the wound with my hands to no avail, all the while crying out for help as growls and screeches echoed from the darkness around me. As I lay there on the ground as helpless as a hatchling, a shadow emerged from the flames and hastily made its way towards me, “Is it you? Is it my time already?” I whispered to myself as what I thought was Death himself came towards my motionless body. The shadow dropped to its knees as I finished my prayer, as I spoke my last words. I looked up and saw the face of a man, a priest dressed in silver armor and collar, cupping my head with his hands and resting it on his lap. His eyes glowing like the moon filled me with peace, I would not die alone. The light of the flames complimented a strange symbol on the breast of his leather jacket, a symbol that caught my eye and filled my bleeding heart with tranquility and peace as a smile formed on my battered face with everything around me fading away into the cold darkness like sunlight at dusk. The sand in my palm blew away into the wind, as the last grain fell from my skin and hit the ground, a burst of light broke through the darkness almost blinding me like a solar flare.

My eyes turned from a deep black, back to their usual brown as I found myself standing in front of the old painting in the suite. My body almost collapses as I try to keep my bearings with my legs feeling like lead and my eyes now filled with terror not knowing what had just happened, not knowing what I had just seen. “What in the hell!?” I shouted out loud, as I looked around once more. “How did I!?...” I said to myself as I ran over to the mirror on the wall, rubbing and feeling my chest trying to lift up my white shirt so I may gaze at my bare skin for what I hoped was only in the strange but extremely vivid vision I had just had after gazing at the old painting. My blood chilled in my veins, sending a shiver up my spine as I looked at myself in the mirror with eyes as wide as the bronze shields decorating the room’s walls. From my gut all the up to my chest was what seemed to be a scar, the scar tissue being made of pure glistening silver with strange symbols and characters tattooed along both sides of the scar, symbols and characters of a language I did not speak or even knew existed as if it had been forgotten by time. “This can’t be,” I whispered to myself as I run my hand upwards along the scar, the silver scar tissue feeling as cold as ice to the touch and looking like it was keeping the large gashing wound I had in the vision from opening and spilling my guts onto the floor. Across the surface of my chest there was more silver scar tissue going horizontally across to form a silver crucifix on my body surrounded by the strange tattoos. With a distraught expression on my face I slowly backed away from the mirror and continued for the door, my heart racing as cold sweat flowed down my face and the back of my neck, dripping onto my chest and down the length of my spine with the light from the candles in the room being reflected off the silver scar and making the sweat glisten on my skin. As I approached the wooden door embedded with silver work and a silver wolf’s head in the middle of it, I hastily stretched out my arm and reached for the door knob almost hitting my head against the hard wood door as I swung it open. My heart skipped a beat as the door creaked as it opened wide revealing a man standing in a hallway, a hallway with smooth black marble floors so clean I could see my horrified face staring right back at me. With my eyes not blinking and my muscles like cement as my body froze like a statue unable to move, unable to run, I stared into the eyes of the man I had just seen in the ancient painting hanging on the room’s wall, a painting dated over three hundred years and yet here he stood before me looking as if he was barely in his thirties. Just as he did in the painting, he wore a black leather jacket with silver buttons running down the middle of it, silver shoulder armor in the shape of wolf jaws along with silver gauntlets engraved with crucifixes and strange symbols similar to the one’s on my chest. “Ah good, I see you’ve awoken,” He said to me, while he looked right back at me with his hands crossed behind his back and a welcoming smile on his face as I remained standing there, motionless and speechless; my eyes fixed on what I thought was a ghost standing in front of me. He cleared his throat, “How are you feeling? Hungry?” He asked me in a cheerful manner as I swallowed air and fell backwards into the room hitting the floor with a loud thud, once again being knocked out unconscious. He shrugs, “I probably should have expected that.” He says to himself as he looks down at my motionless body, laid out on the tiled bedroom floor. “Probably should have caught him as well.” He says to himself as he once again clears his throat. “Van Hellsing, you are just a fountain of hindsight aren’t you.” He continued to say to himself, while scratching the back of his head, the half-eaten apple falling from my hand and rolling to his feet as he bent over to pick me up and carry me back into the lavishly decorated room. The stranger lay me on the bed and said a prayer for me while dabbing my sweaty forehead with a damp cloth, his words lightly echoing in the darkness of my dreams, “You were meant for great things young one. You will save this dying world.” Though I was in a deep sleep his word’s soothed the storm of terror in my mind and calmed the thundering of my heart, I was safe and he had saved me, he need not say it but I knew he was the one who I had seen in my vision, stepping out of the flames like a phoenix from the ash and battling the monsters that lurked within the darkness that I laid in. For the rest of the night I slept like a new born baby in its mothers warm arms for I was safe, I was home.

Dawn was breaking on the following day, the sun kissed my cheek and my eyes slowly opened to see the robins singing their happy melodies on the window sill not too far from the bed. I sat up and swung my legs off the bed, almost leaping across the room as if I were a grown man chasing fool’s gold. I ran across the room towards the door and made my way into the hallway, following the scent of bacon that was lingering in the air making my stomach rumble so loud as to make the entire mansion shake. As I passed the many paintings in the hallway, still cautious in my exploring of this strange place, a painting stood out from the others and captured my eye. Mesmerized by the subject of the painting, I slowly walked towards it like a sailor lost in a Siren’s song. My jaw dropped and opened wide with my chin almost brushing the marble floor and my eyes not blinking once. I stared at her. A great beauty I would only hope to see in my dreams laid forth on the canvas in front of me, like an angel surrounded by a frame of glimmering gold. Though my eyes were captivated by this majestic creature, my stomach was not. The smell of bacon kept my legs moving towards the door at the end of hall, slightly opened with rays of sunlight beaming through the small gap. Sounds from within the room get louder as I get closer to the door and the variety of aromas get stronger with every step I take, teasing my senses.

Rays of light from the blinding sunrise hug my arm as I stretch it in front of me, reaching for the door knob while the voice of an angel finds its way to my ears. I slowly pushed the door open to find a girl in the mansion’s kitchen, singing a melody with the morning robins seeming to sing along to her angelic voice as she cooked a breakfast which had filled the air throughout the entire manor with mouthwatering aromas. She had ocean blue eyes as deep as chasms you’d lose yourself in, her hair the color of a crimson fire in the rays of the sunlight, with highlights of gold as it captures the suns beams. Her skin was pale, as white as the snow that fell in the coldest winters of the land. “Embraced by fire and ice,” She said out loud with me peeking through the opening of the door. “That’s what they call us. Come on in.” she says to me in a sweet and cheerful manner, wearing the most amazing smile on her face, like a perfect picture that stares back at you. Through the trance her voice had me caught in and the hypnosis her eyes had me lost in, I almost didn’t recognize her, a face I thought I had recognized only from my dreams, my great beauty. The painting that hung on the hallway did not do her beauty justice, with her lips of crimson that shamed the red rose to withering. My eyes struggled to keep themselves off her as to not make her uncomfortable, and with a soft chuckle and a deeply dimpled smile she says to me, “You can call me Mirella, Mirella Hellsing.” With a dazed and untrusting expression on my face, still not trusting where I was and not believing the beauty of what stood in front of me, I foolishly yelled with a stammer in my voice, “I’m Beuren, you can call me B, you know if you want, no big deal.” Clearing my throat afterwards and looking to my feet with a blushing smile on my face and pinching myself on the forearm with my arms crossed behind my back, to see if I would wake up from a dream I had become lost in. She let out the most harmonious laugh I had ever heard, “You must be really hungry, after all that happened. You know dying and coming back to life and all.” She says to me with a blank expression on her face as she dishes sunny side up eggs and thick slices of greasy bacon onto a ceramic plate, along with golden hash browns and a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice next to cups of milked tea. With a light hum in her silence as if it was all normal to her and judging from the mansion and what I had seen in my vision, there was probably more I did not know about this new mysterious world. We sat down on the kitchen counter and talked over breakfast, as if we had known each other our whole lives, two young misfits who saw the true beauty in each other’s souls.