5 to 1 *On Hiatus*

Ch 2: The Arrival

I'm jolted awake by the plane jerking forward suddenly. "Lou, wake up Boo. We're about to land." Harry says, shaking my shoulder.

"Its Jonny." I mumble, stirring awake. "Kay, Marcel?"

(A/N yes, I used their BSE characters as their aliases. So what? (; )

"Fine, Jonny. Leeroy, Veronica and Harvey are all awake. Its time to go." at the same exact moment he says the words the plane jerks forward and I feel the craft make contact with the tarmac. Yay, we're here.

I stand up and stretch, my leg asleep from the long flight. We make our way through the airport to a taxi out front. We pile in the back and Liam ends up sitting in the front with the rest of us squished in the back. "Hi, we need to go to Castle Varias please." he says kindly, his voice like that of a tourist.

"I no take you there. I take u no further than bottom of path. You walk rest of way. Or you find different taxi." he says in clipped English. Apparently he isn't fluent in the language.

"Why? What's wrong with that castle?" I ask.

"Haunted. You walk from bottom of path or me no drive you there."

"Fine. We can walk." Liam agrees after having a 15 minute argument with the guy.

The guy looks pleased with this and he takes off from the airport. We spend the next two hours in the back of the musty cab, trying to get comfortable and failing miserably in the tight space. "Lou, get your foot out of my arse." Harry groans and winces.

"That isn't my foot." I say, wiggling my feet that are resting on Niall's lap.

"Oops, sorry mate. That was my feet." Zayn says, shifting so his feet are on the floor. His shoulders press into mine and Niall's faces and we struggle to move, to get comfortable for the remainder of the trip.

"There!" we say in triumph after another half hour of shifting and jostling.

"You here. Castle just up path." the cabbie says within sixty seconds of us saying that. We look up and see a gravel and dirt path that leads into the forest and it looks creepy but exciting. I reach around Harry and open the door, causing him to fall out on his bum. "Oops, sorry, Haz."

He stands up and rubs his bum, wincing slightly. "Yeah, sure." Niall and Zayn pile out and we get our bags from the boot before shutting it up again. The minute we shut the trunk and step away the cab is taking off the way we came. "What's his problem?" Harry asks, shouldering his bag and grabbing his suitcase handle.

"Probably just superstitious. Most Romanians are." Zayn says, grabbing his luggage as the rest of us do the same and follow him and Haz up the path. We walk for a good hour and come to a stop at the foot of a beautiful castle that looks abandoned. I see a light in one of the second story windows but the it disappears. Maybe it was just my imagination.

Liam, being the haunted house fanatic he is, finds the courage to knock on the twenty foot high double doors. At first nothing happens and I can hear the echo from the knock. All of a sudden the door slides open with a creak and a withered old man with wrinkles in his nightclothes and a lantern pops out. He looks sort of eerie, but the again, so does everything about this whole town. Scratch that, country.

"Bine ați venit la Castelul Varias. Cum te pot ajuta? Pari un pic pierdut." he says and I can only assume he's speaking in Romanian.

"What?" Niall asks.

"Welcome to Castle Varias. How may I help you? You look a bit lost." he says, his accent with the words almost sounding English.

"We're One Direction. Simon Cowell arranged for us to stay here?" Zayn says, hoping to jog the man's memory.