"Once Upon A Midnight Dreary, Chapter 2: In The Lion's Den"

The carriage ride to the castle which loomed overhead of Grimstead — perched on its hill like the horns of the drakehounds pulling the bulbous vessel which carried its visitors to its gaping maw, was rough — but gave Grace Morgan plenty of time to ponder what had begun to happen in her life since arriving in this weird little hidden city which may or may not have even been located in Blackwood Forest whatsoever.

Upon entering the carriage from its stance outside the Crying Wolf, down in Grimstead proper below, Grace had received a letter with a wax seal, given to her by the carriage's very, very old driver, whose name she had since learned was, appropriately, Aldous Withers. She would later recall wondering if his parents had been fortune-tellers like her own ex-partner back in the Kingdom of Inglenook, Beatrice Prescott, but for now, found herself rather more occupied by the text of the letter she had been handed, which read:

To whom it may concern,

I trust this letter has reached you with safety and quickness. If you are the one for whom this letter was meant, then our groundskeeper Master Withers has done his duties and located you enough to goad you into accepting this missive. Furthermore, I entrust you're reading it within the safety of our carriage, on the way to our home at Castle Gaunt. I look forward to your arrival!

I must bid you welcome to the Grim Grove. Those from beyond the Veil rarely see the light of day here, but I was informed by trustworthy sources that it would be you, the witch-detective Grace Morgan of Inglenook, who might change that crucial fact about our world's existence.

"How does he know my name?" she uttered while reading it.

Aldous was outside, and not present to respond, but it was an odd quirk of this growing mystery, to be certain.

I must also impress using you the anxiousness with which I await your visit, for the matters to which I must bring your attention are dire and I'm afraid it's you alone who might be able to resolve them. I, Count Dorian Belgrave of Grimstead and the Grim Grove region, am not one who often reaches out to others for this sort of assistance. My own partner in this life, Baron Jasper Rathbone of Grimstead and the Grim Grove region, surely would not approve, but he is scheduled to be away from the castle on this, the night of your arrival in our world, area, and town, and I fear this might be our only chance to meet in regards to this urgent issue.

By now, you must surely be on your way, so I shall let you go and enjoy your carriage ride to Castle Gaunt in peace. Look down upon the town in which you now reside, for to see it from above is a view few far down below are able to truly appreciate.

In trust of seeing you soon,

Dorian Belgrave
Count of Grimstead and the Grim Grove Region

All these words, and thoughts, and more rolled over in Grace's head as the carriage pulled her way toward the Castle at the top of the hill. The road itself was bumpy in some places, but well-paved in others, and the only sights for her to see throughout most of the journey were the twisted trunks of the dark-barked trees that seemed typical of this area, at least when she parted the lace curtains and gazed out the window of the carriage's cabin in which she was sitting.

At times, the road — one-lane for much of it, where the path was rougher, and two-lane in others, where the path was more smooth — veered off and shot down alternate paths toward destinations unknown. There were signs on but a few of those forks, most of which denoted the name of some family-owned vineyard or other.

"Vineyards," Grace muttered for only herself to hear, at least once or twice. "That must be where the wine comes from. But why would the Crying Wolf not have a cellar for it?"

Of course, it was only the shadows to hear her this time, but her thoughts turned to the kinds of vineyards that might split off the road and stretch across mountainous acres in the cloud-ridden swamps of a place like this.

Once the carriage reached a certain height, the surroundings split off and the path twisted closer to the hilltop, and Grace was afforded a view onto the town itself, down below. Lamplight and electrical wiring afforded an amber and off-white glow throughout the streets, which seemed naturally denser near the town center — a largeish park, relative to the size of everything else, where only a few lights deigned to reach — the whole view rendering its vicinity to a large, ink-black lake all the more clear to her.

There was a lighthouse, somewhere distant on the shores, its reflected beam occasionally demonstrating a pillar of light upon the fog in a stumbling revolution of motion, as well as an island on the shores and perhaps a small mansion or collection of houses there as well.

Opposite the lake, mountains and hills, perhaps for miles depending on the geography of this place-which-wasn't-Inglenook-anymore, as it was becoming obvious to Grace was the case. Meanwhile, the town itself seemed haphazard, assembled in districts as if only parts of it had been developed or designed or even thought of at a time; the central area, closer to the water's edge seemed older, cobbled from bricks and only a few levels high from the ground, most of which separated by alleyways and streets barely wide enough for a carriage or two let alone modern automobile traffic — but there were other portions of the town, stretching away in various designs which seemed residential or overtly commercial, houses with yards and business-like areas with parking lots and car-storage areas and the like, all of them in strange angles which often looked as though they had been pulled in different directions by some otherworldly being entirely of its own accord.

A little away from the town, a single lonely road stretched off and ended at a cemetery, while one fork nearby had led to the road Grace and the carriage were taking at that moment and another one split off, perhaps toward the plantation house she could barely see in the mist of the swampy trees, or even further toward the distant glows of untold other areas, buried in the woods beyond Grimstead itself.

Grace gripped the singular strand of a friendship bracelet which had stayed wrapped around her left wrist for some years now, as the carriage pulled itself and its drakehound haulers up to the gates of the castle itself, and Grace's view turned from the town to the overbearing stone mansion which rested overhead.

Castle Gaunt had been built so that its silhouette resembled the horns of a gargoyle, grasping against the hill. Below, in the courtyard, the iron gates and associated fence wrapped around a dilapidated garden area, its perhaps-once-lustrous sections filled with wilting roses and crumbling, dry weeds and leaves and various grasses which had been allowed to grow too long for too much time. Overhead, the castle's sharp towers and pointed spires formed that all-important silhouette against the luminous clouds of the moonlit sky, with several ports in the stone-brick walls set aside for windows, some of which betrayed the amber-glow of flickering lights, revealing that even a place which seemed already-forgotten could bear the signs of life ongoing still so.

The door of the carriage opened, and Aldous's withered face poked through, gesturing for Grace to step out already so she could take in the sights in person, rather than through the window of the carriage which had brought her there.

The stone walls of the castle collided at a central point before her once she did so, all centering around the thick wooden door which might grant her entrance to this ancient place. She glanced at Aldous, who gestured toward it, and she approached, hesitant to grab the rope beside it before the door swung open on its own, so that she wouldn't even have needed to if she had wanted to.

Behind the door, a vampire; for such was the only term which could apply. He was handsome, and youthful, the man behind the door who now stood before Grace herself at once seeming her own age of mid-adult youth at only 30 or so and somehow terribly older; his eyes wrought by the burdens of a man three times their own ages combined, sunken with focus, driven by yearn and lustful knowledge of that which no man should ever deign to uncover about the world, or any other which should exist.

He wore a suit, dark blue in three pieces, although the interior vest was black velvet and he seemed to wear a loose cravat of dark red instead of any sort of necktie, bow or otherwise. The blue was somewhat darker than that of his eyes, which were cold, a blue more like the depths of space than anything else, and somehow almost matched the raven-black sheen of his hair that twirled and tumbled down from his head to the shoulders of the suit below, like a waterfall of slick black oil spilled from its sullen source.

"Grace," he said — a first name, already so familiar, though they had just barely officially met. "Welcome to the castle, and to Grimstead itself. Come in, and I shall share our town's wine and we'll drink to the shadows of our doom."

"Okay," she said, unsure if there could be any other words when one speaks in the manner so spoken to her at that doorway.