The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I was in an indoor market, which I knew somehow.

There were stalls to my left and right, which had appeared indistinct when viewed with peripheral vision. Yet when I turned my head to face them, they had gained form and substance.

This was an unreality to my very real world, which I’d found hard to accept, so facing front again, I had walked on down the aisle trying to dismiss the anomaly as I did so.



It was not to be however. For as I neared the end of the aisle, a form appeared behind the stall to my immediate left:

“Hello young man,” said a voice in that pseudo-science voice some people use.

I’d been sure that there had been no-one there when I had first passed the stall: but, as I had turned back to look at the owner of the voice, there he was; short and rotund, wearing loose fitting slacks and top, over which he wore a leather apron.



“I said, ‘hello young man.’ Do you normally ignore a greeting?” There was a smile on the man’s face, but not in the inflection of the man’s voice: it seemed as if I were being given a command.

So, expecting that this was what I was supposed to say, I said, “Hello.”



As if a halo had just appeared over my head the old stallholder had smiled benignly, radiating the warmth of his emotion.

“Do you know why you are here?” the store-holder asked.

“Pardon?” I asked, unprepared for someone asking the ultimate question of life, death and everything.

“Do you know what you are here?” The questioner repeated.



“No,” I had replied: for both in a literal and metaphysical sense this was true.

“Then follow me and perhaps you will understand?” Huh? The stall-holder had opened a hatch in the counter as he spoke, then becoming for me to follow, he had turned and walked a few paces, to a section of the stall that was curtained off.



Drawing aside the curtain, the stall-holder turned his head, ensured that I was following, then continued walking: and, I found myself led into a narrow, brilliantly lit corridor that had no visible means of illumination.



Onwards I had been led, until we had reached a cavernous chamber, bright white, and filled with light; and the centre of the room stood a fountain.

“Do you understand why you are here?” I was asked again, as the stallholder swept his arm around himself.

“I think, therefore I am.”

“Yes and no…” I was told, “that would be a truism only if one had a certain point of reference when defining reality.”

“Pardon?”

“See the fountain?” he asked.

I saw it. The fountain had at its centre a large stylised dolphin, water cascading from its mouth into a walled circular pool.

“That is you reality… the Now into the what will be.”

“Pardon?”

Listen well…” said the stall-holder fading into nothingness; “Reality,” his disembodied voice announced, “is only for those who lack an imagination.”