by Angie Sage
It was dark now and I sat on the griffin window seat and watched a brilliant full moon slowly rise above the trees at the end of the garden. It was a perfect night for a Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Expedition, but right then the best chance the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit had of working was for me to chuck it out of the window in the hope that it would hit one of them on the head.
But, you know, sometimes things do work out in the most unexpected way. A few minutes later the Friday bedroom door began to glow with a strange green light. I was so surprised that I nearly joined Wanda under the blankets.
I was halfway up the ladder when I realized it was only Edmund. He shimmered through the door and kind of floated just above the floor. Edmund is quite a small ghost, although he is probably about ten, but I think kids were smaller in medieval times, which is when he is from. He has a bowl haircut, wears a tunic, and has a really neat dagger tucked into his belt. He talks with a funny accent and Sir Horace says that is because he lived in someplace called Normandy before he became Sir Horace’s page. Edmund was only seven when he left home and went to live in Sir Horace’s castle, which is very young to start work. I guess that might excuse him from being such a runt—but it is still irritating.
“What do you want, Edmund?” I asked.
I felt annoyed at being halfway up the ladder like I was scared or something, and even more annoyed when Wanda poked her head out from under the blankets and said, “Oh, hello, Edmund,” in an excited, really-happy-to-see-him kind of voice. She never sounds like that when she sees me.
“Sir Horace has sent me,” he said. “He seeks your help.”
Now this sounded interesting.
“What kind of help?” asked Wanda, who is nosy and always asks questions.
“I cannot say, Wanda. I am but the messenger. He asks that you meet him at his treasure chest at midnight.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet him, but Wanda won’t because she doesn’t like going out at midnight.”
“Yes I do,” said Wanda. “I love going out at midnight. You can tell Sir Horace that we’ll both come, Edmund.”
Well.
The Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Expedition was on.
10
VAMPIRE HUNT
Wanda could not stay awake. Soon she was snuffling away like a hedgehog, which is how she always sounds when she sleeps. So I had to stay awake to make sure we were down in the hall at midnight. I sat in bed and finished the Werewolf Spotter’s Handbook. Then I started reading Vampire Trapping for Beginners, which was okay but a bit boring because it seemed you had to be a German professor with a funny name before you had any hope of catching a vampire. My eyes began to feel very sleepy and kept closing, and I had to keep jumping awake again. It was very annoying, since I really didn’t want to miss midnight.
To try and stay awake I listened to all the nighttime noises. Most people would find it really spooky in Spookie House at night, as there are all kinds of weird sounds, but I do not find it spooky at all because I know what they all are.
Most of the noises are made by Uncle Drac. Uncle Drac spends a lot of the day asleep in his sleeping bag in the bat turret, which means he wanders around Spookie House in the night. But I know Uncle Drac’s grumbly cough and the sound of his footsteps, and I like to hear him padding about. Aunt Tabby does not sleep well and she often gets up and goes all the way down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I know her footsteps too; they are kind of impatient and spiky. Recently she has been watching vampire movies in the furry bathroom so I sometimes hear the whirr of the projector and the clattering sound the film makes when it comes to the end of a reel.
Brenda and Barry do not walk around Spookie House at night at all. No way. Although Brenda pretends that she is not afraid of the dark, I know she is. And I also know that she locks the door of their big bedroom at the front of the house and makes Barry stay with her. He is not allowed to go out for even one moment, just in case the monster statue outside their window comes alive and bites them. Well, that’s what Wanda said and she should know.
There are other things that make nighttime noises in Spookie House. There is Sir Horace—who rattles when he walks, which is a bit of a giveaway; there are the hot water pipes, which gurgle; the big floorboards on the landing that creak as the house cools down; the grandfather clock in the hall, which has the loudest tick you can imagine and—ever since Aunt Tabby tried to fix it—chimes thirteen times every hour; and the family of rats that chase each other all around the attic and sound like they are wearing hiking boots.
So if you stayed the night in Spookie House I guess you might spend a lot of it lying awake and listening to everything, just like Wanda did when she first came. But if you stayed for a few more nights you would soon get used to it and end up snuffling like a hedgehog just like Wanda. Except no one snuffles like Wanda.
The clock in the hall had just chimed thirteen again and I opened my eyes with a jolt. I didn’t think I had been asleep and I figured that it was now eleven o’clock. So I listened to the Spookie House sounds, and everything was surprisingly quiet, apart from the odd creak from the floorboards on the landing. And then I heard a new sound….
First I heard the sound of a door opening, but it was not Aunt Tabby’s door or the door to Uncle Drac’s turret—it was the door to our Saturday bedroom. I knew that because it has a particular sound, kind of an oooooohah-eeeeek. Then I heard a soft creak-thump-creak-thump, and I realized it was the sound that the rope ladder makes when someone climbs down it. And at once I knew who that must be—Vampire Max.
I shot up to the snuffling hedgehog and shook her awake. “Wandaaaaaaa!” I hissed right in her ear. Wanda sat up with her hair sticking out on end like she had had an electric shock.
“Wherrr?”
“Vampire Max—he’s out vampiring. I can hear him.”
“Eer?”
“Come on, Wanda. Hurry up.”
The trouble with hedgehogs is they do not like waking up. I had to drag Wanda out of bed and make her feet walk down the ladder, which was not easy, but I did it. Soon she was standing by the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit in her yucky sweet-dreams-pink-fairy pajamas, rubbing her eyes. “Is it morning?’ she mumbled.
“No,” I said. “Put your slippers on and follow me.”
I don’t think Wanda had figured out what we were doing, but she put on her fluffy rabbit slippers with the silly ears while I heaved the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit over my shoulder. I think it was only when we got outside our bedroom that Wanda really woke up. Her eyes popped wide open and she stared around as if she was really surprised at where she was. I am sure she would have squeaked out loud if I hadn’t shoved my hand over her mouth.
“Wrrrrer!” she gasped.
I put my finger to my lips and beckoned her to follow me, which she did. We hid in the shadows and crept along the wide passageway that runs along the back of the attic, where all the doors to the days-of-the-week bedrooms are. Wanda is quite good at creeping and so am I, since I have had lots of practice creeping up on Aunt Tabby when she is not looking, so it was easy for us to get really close to our Saturday bedroom rope ladder. And sure enough, there he was: Vampire Max was climbing down the ladder like a little black spider.
A bright shaft of moonlight was shining onto the ladder and as Vampire Max stepped off, it shone onto his pasty white face and glinted on his slicked-back hair. He was wearing black pajamas and a weird black velvet jacket tied with a silk cord. He looked just like a minivampire from one of Aunt Tabby’s movies.
Wanda was wide awake now. Her fingers were digging into my arm and they really hurt, but I had to keep quiet because this was a real-life Combined Vampire and Werewolf Trapping Expedition. And the vampire part was already up and running.
Vampire Max walked off along the attic corridor and then started down the stairs, with the intrepid Professor Von Spookie and her gullible but well-meaning sidekick following close
behind. He didn’t notice a thing. There was a tricky moment when Wanda walked through a big spiderweb and I thought she was going to yell, but she didn’t. We followed Vampire Max down the attic stairs and then we set off along the landing, keeping to the shadows and away from the really creaky floorboards. It was weird, but fun in a spooky kind of way.
In Spookie House there are lots of doors and winding passageways that go to bedrooms and bathrooms and turrets and all kinds of places. We walked along the passage that went past the furry bathroom and I could see the flickering light of the movie streaking out of the half-open door. As we crept by I glanced in and saw Aunt Tabby’s head silhouetted against the light from the projector. Her head had a very strange shape because she wears great big headphones so that the noise does not bother anyone. This was good because there was no chance that she could hear us creeping by—even when Wanda trod on a creaky floorboard and we had to dive into the shadows in case Vampire Max turned around. But he didn’t. He just kept moving, his little legs walking in that creepy vampiry way of his, as if he knew exactly where he was going.
It is quite easy to get lost in Spookie House, especially at night. There are dead-end passages, stairs that go nowhere, and all kinds of zigzag corridors that go around in circles and make you confused. There are also tons of moldy curtains that hang around the place and jump out on you when you are least expecting it, and that was how we lost Vampire Max. One minute we were tailing him along the twisty passageway in the west wing that goes to the locked turret, and the next moment a horrible dusty curtain had flopped in front of us, and Wanda was covered in a flock of moths.
“Ugh!” yelped Wanda.
“Shhh!” I hissed, and pulled her back behind the curtain. Everybody knows that the most important thing about a vampire hunt is that they must not know you are hunting them, otherwise they can get very nasty indeed, and I was afraid that Vampire Max would hear us. We hid behind the smelly old curtain listening for his footsteps coming back toward us, but we heard nothing. Very carefully, I pulled the curtain back, half expecting to see Max staring at us with his little beady eyes and blood dripping from his mouth—but there was no sign of him. We had lost him.
But Wanda did not care. She yawned and said, “Let’s catch him tomorrow then. I’m really sleepy, I want to go back to bed.”
“You can’t,” I told her. “It will be midnight soon, which is when we promised Edmund that we would meet Sir Horace at his treasure chest. Remember?”
“Oh,” said Wanda.
There was no sign of Sir Horace in the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom. After what felt like a few centuries I asked Wanda what time it was, since I do not have a watch.
Wanda always wears her pink fairy watch. She says that Pusskins gave it to her for her birthday, which is obviously not true because cats cannot give birthday presents, and even if they could I do not think that cats would bother to give birthday presents—especially a grumpy cat like Pusskins. But on the card it had said Happy Birthday, Wanda. Love from Pusskins xxx, and that is what Wanda believes. On the watch is a prancing fairy, and instead of regular watch hands the fairy’s wings go around. Wanda was squinting at the wings for ages trying to figure out what the time was, so I took a look. It was hard to tell, but it looked like one wing was straight up, and the other one nearly was too. I figured it must have been almost midnight.
Wanda started up again about going back to bed.
“No,” I told Wanda very firmly, “you are not going back to bed. We are on a Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Expedition and we haven’t even finished the first half of it since we have not found a single werewolf, let alone trapped the vampire.”
“I don’t care,” said Wanda grumpily. “I don’t want to find a single werewolf. I don’t even want to find a double werewolf. I don’t care about vampires. I want to go back to bed.”
“All right, go back to bed then. I’m waiting for Sir Horace. I’ll see you later,” I said.
Wanda stared at me like I’d said something really dumb. “I’m not going back on my own, Araminta,” she said.
At that moment I heard the telltale clank of Sir Horace’s armor.
“Ah, Miss Spookie and Miss Wizzard. Thank you for meeting me here. It is most kind,” Sir Horace boomed as he walked into the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom.
“It’s a pleasure, Sir Horace,” Wanda piped up, conveniently forgetting that a few seconds earlier she had been about to bunk off to bed and desert Sir Horace.
“How kind of you, Miss Wizzard. It is always a pleasure to meet you, and Miss Spookie, too,” said Sir Horace.
I didn’t want to hang around too long with Sir Horace, as we still had a vampire and a werewolf to catch and time was getting on, so I asked, “Why did you want to see us, Sir Horace?”
“I would be most grateful if you would do me a favor, Miss Spookie. Would you be so kind as to open my treasure chest for me?”
I wondered why Sir Horace needed us to open the chest at midnight, seeing as he could have asked us any old time of day, but I didn’t say anything. I lifted up the lid. “There you are Sir Horace,” I said. “We’ll be off now.”
“Could I trouble you to do me one more favor before you go, Miss Spookie? Would you be so kind as to take out the small silver whistle and blow three times, just as the clock chimes the hour?”
This sounded very mysterious. I scrabbled around in the chest and found the whistle. It looked very small and scratched.
“Ah,” said Sir Horace when he saw the whistle. “There it is. Those were happy days. I remember when Fang would—” At that moment the clock in the hall began to chime thirteen and Sir Horace almost yelled, “Blow! Blow the whistle, Miss Spookie.”
So I did. Well, I think I did. I blew a big puff of air into it but no sound came out. I blew again. And then one last time, which made three. Sir Horace did not seem worried that the whistle made no noise.
“Thank you so much, Miss Spookie,” he said. “Now I must be off to await my faithful Fang.” He spun around on his foot and almost ran out of the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom.
“Who’s Fang?” whispered Wanda, sounding scared.
“I think it was his dog,” I said, trying to remember what Sir Horace had told me on the stairs. “Shh—what’s that?”
We shrank back into the bathroom just in time—and who should walk by but Vampire Max?
11
BAIT
The Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Expedition was back on track—at least the vampire part was.
I beckoned to Wanda. She sighed and mouthed, “Do we have to?” and I mouthed back, “Yes!”
We crept out of the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom and followed Max. This time I was determined not to lose him so I got as close as I dared.
I guess I was a bit jumpy by now because I caught sight of something moving along the floor beside me and I nearly yelled, but then I realized that it was only the stupid shiny ears on Wanda’s slippers waggling as she tiptoed along.
Max headed into the twisty corridor that led to the locked turret. I know it really well since before Wanda came to live here I used to spend a lot of time trying to pick the lock. I wondered if maybe Max had a key! Maybe the turret was stuffed full of vampires and he hadn’t really come to stay with us at all—he had come to stay with them.
Max wandered around another corner in the corridor, and I tried to make Wanda speed up a bit. She was dragging her rabbit slippers and was not exactly the enthusiastic assistant a vampire hunter needs. So I was not surprised that when we eventually got around the next corner, Max was gone.
I could see the steps leading to the locked turret and the big cobwebby door at the top of them—but no Max. Not a good sign. I rushed up the steps and tried the door, but it was locked as usual, and I could tell it had not been opened as it was covered in very old and dusty spiders that looked like they had not moved in years.
It was weird. Vampire Max had completely disappeared—just like in the movie where the vam
pire suddenly falls through a trapdoor into the river below and dissolves. But as much as I hoped that Max had fallen through a trapdoor and dissolved, I knew he couldn’t have. I know where all the trapdoors are in Spookie House, and there definitely was not one in the twisty corridor to the locked turret.
So where was he?
And then I remembered. The locked turret has a fire escape chute! Underneath the steps is a little red door, just like the one that goes into Uncle Drac’s bat turret—except this door leads to a big tube that runs all the way around the locked turret and takes you right down to the basement. I hadn’t gone down it since I was little because Aunt Tabby had told me not to, and despite what you may think, I do sometimes take notice of what Aunt Tabby says. She also told me that a scary monster lived inside it, so that put me off a bit too. But now I was big enough to know that Aunt Tabby was fibbing about the monster.
Wanda did not want to go down the fire escape chute—and especially not when I opened the little door and shone my flashlight into it, for it was stuffed full of spiderwebs.
“I am not going down there, Araminta,” she said. “No way.”
I could tell from the way she said it she would not change her mind, so I pushed her in and jumped in after her. It was great. Wanda screamed a bit but that was okay, as all the spiderwebs muffled the sound. We rocketed down, around and around, but I didn’t get a bit dizzy, and in no time we shot out into an old larder in the basement.