Chapter 3

Wherever it is we're going must be out of town, Laura deduced as she stared out the car window to the trees that passed as they went.

Frederick had been driving around for hours; so long in fact that Laura had been tempted more than a few times to ask him if he knew exactly where they were headed.

But he only smiled, tucking his wild black hair behind his ear as he replied with one simple word, "Patience."

On the plus side though, the crazy feeling which had previously been plaguing Laura from the fire escape had now receded courtesy of a red vial Frederick gave her to drink. He had actually insisted they went after the vial immediately they left the hospital; taking the whole of half an hour to get to the site where he crashed, rummage through the wreckage which Laura couldn't still believe that anyone, undead or not, had been able to survive, and finally finding his leather jacket in which pocket the vial was contained and handed it to her.

"It's to help you, Laura," he said when he saw the reluctant expression about to be formed on her face. "It's either that or you bear the pain till we get to wherever we're going."

It took a few more seconds but she collected the vial from him and drank it one gulp; and immediately, she began to feel better.

They got into the car again and Frederick had been driving around since then.

Just then, Laura felt a tap on her shoulder, rousing herself from her thoughts to look up at Frederick who had a smug smile plastered on his face. "We're here," he announced.

"Here" actually turned to be a mansion in the woods that seemed like it had stepped right out of a nineties movie. "You live here?" she asked, really surprised.

"Well, it's the only place that can accommodate the whole family and their shenanigans," he replied. "Trust me, Laura, you're going to love it here."

Laura made a face. Thing is, she hadn't exactly pictured Frederick as a kind of family man; she didn't even know that undeads could have families. Okay, I know nothing about undeads, period. She admitted in her mind.

But even at that, the thought of Frederick with a family brought a smile to her face for some reason she couldn't fathom. Guess it must be that aura around him, she thought to herself.

Thing is, in spite of the weird, and admittedly still nuts to think about, circumstance that brought them together, whenever Laura looked at Frederick, she sensed this light from that always made her want to believe everything he said; like she just knew that she could trust him and everything was going to be fine with her as long as he was around.

Or perhaps that's how compulsions work and I've just been dead-napped. She made a face at that.

"A friend of mine actually owned this mansion many years ago," Frederick explained as they got out of the car and began to walk towards the frontage. "I used to stay with him whenever I visited New York. At his passing, he willed it over to me and I've been staying there ever since.

"And for your peace of mind-" he raised his hands up in mock surrender "-I didn't murder him. I'm not usually in the business of murdering my friends before we become close."

"That's really good to know, Frederick." Laura smiled at the macabre humour at the end of the statement.

To be honest, Laura had never thought that she could be someone who could take a bad joke in stride but there she was, talking and laughing with a strange man on the strangest night of her life; and it wasn't even the end of it yet.

"Since we're on the subject," she said, "I've been meaning to ask how old are you really?"

"Five hundred," he returned, shrugging like it was nothing. "I turned the half millennium last month."

"Wait, are you kidding me?!" She made like she'd just seen Santa Claus come to life. "I mean, I remember my friends mentioning that undeads can live for very a long time but I never thought it could be that long."

"We're immortals, my dear." He shot her a devilish grin to go with the Dracula air he just put on.

They reached the frontage just then and Frederick swung open the front doors- real-life medieval wooden double doors- of the mansion. With a flourish, he said," Welcome to the Undead Mansion."

Stepping inside the mansion, Laura found to her utmost surprise that it was everything the outside proclaimed.

The front doors opened to a foyer which looked directly into a great hall that presumably served as the dining hall; Laura deduced from the long dining table that looked to have been whisked out of a medieval castle standing proudly just a few feet away from the sliding French double doors , could be seen.

A very large and obviously very expensive oakwood grandfather clock stood in the foyer; ticking softly as it chimed 1 am.

"This mansion's a hub of peace, a home to more than thirty undeads," Frederick said to Laura as she looked around, "and it can be your home too, if you want it."

It had taken just one glance for the mansion for Laura to fall in love with the mansion. It really was everything that Frederick had said and more; and in that moment, there was nothing more that she wanted than to live in it.

But just as she was about to give voice to her thoughts, the room suddenly became filled with undead men and women of all ages who seemed to have swarmed into it from all entrances.

To Laura's unending surprise, the undeads didn't seem so... well... "undead"; not that she really knew what a typical undead should look like. Anyway, they looked just like any normal human would, causing her to wonder if perhaps she hadn't met more undeads than she'd previously she had.

The undeads looked her from up to down, whispering among themselves with curiousity as if they were at the amusement park and she was the centre of the attraction.

"Hello people." Frederick stepped to the front to presumably introduce Laura.

But whatever he was about to say got lost as the front doors suddenly swung open and a man came in with a a shout. "Where is he?!"