The Vampire Knife

by Jack Henseleit

  Anna was still staring at the door. ‘We could make a run for it,’ she said. ‘How far away do you think the library is?’

  As if in reply, a huge flash of lightning surged across the sky. It ran along the treetops like a ribbon, illuminating the countless drops of rain suspended in mid-air. The thunder followed immediately with a great explosion, bursting so loudly above them that the walls of the inn seemed to tremble.

  ‘I don’t think we should make a run for it,’ said Max.

  Mrs Dalca had put down her knitting and was muttering furiously to herself. She was holding one of her wrinkled hands in front of her face, twisting her fingers around like she was trying to weave the air itself.

  ‘Fantomă furtună,’ she said. ‘Strigoi furtună. Dispari!’

  Anna looked up, confused. One of the old woman’s words had stuck in her head, half-remembered, almost forgotten. She tried to recall where she had heard it before, but the memory drifted away before she could catch it. She decided to throw caution to the wind.

  ‘Mrs Dalca? What does strigoi mean?’ she asked.

  The old woman’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘You must not use that word,’ she rasped. ‘I forbid it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Anna was starting to feel frustrated with the woman’s rules. ‘What will happen if I say strigoi? If I accidentally said strigoi, would that annoy you?’

  Mrs Dalca rose swiftly to her feet. Her face had become as dark as the raging storm.

  ‘Stop it now, or I will lock you in the cupboard!’ she spluttered.

  Anna decided they’d better run for it. As one, the siblings fled down the hallway; they skidded into their bedroom together, slamming the door closed. Anna saw with dismay that it could not be locked.

  ‘What now?’ asked Max, panting.

  They could hear Mrs Dalca cursing from the main room. Anna pushed all of her weight against the door, afraid that the woman would try to open it, but nobody came. Eventually she slid down to the floorboards, sitting cross-legged with her head in her hands.

  ‘She doesn’t have to come and get us,’ she said miserably. ‘We’re still trapped inside the inn. She can do whatever she wants to us.’

  She looked up at Max, waiting for him to cry. Max was the youngest, and therefore was always the first one to get upset. As soon as she saw him shed a tear, she would be allowed to cry as well.

  But Max surprised her. He sat next to her and held her hand, squeezing it tightly with his small fingers.

  ‘Something mysterious is happening,’ he said. ‘And we’re the only ones who can solve it. We need to put all the pieces together and work out what’s going on. You’re good at this stuff, Anna. It’s like one of your fairy tales. We need to outsmart the bad guys.’

  It’s like one of your fairy tales.

  Anna gasped. Max was right – and two of the pieces were already coming together in her mind.

  ‘I know where I’ve seen that word before!’ she said.

  She jumped to her feet and walked across the room. Her books were waiting patiently for her on the bedside table. She picked up the smallest one, an old, thin book with a faded red cover. The gold lettering on the front had almost flaked away entirely, but the title could still be read: FAIRY TALES FOR DARING CHILDREN. It was the oldest book she owned, as well as the book she had owned for the longest time. The Professor said that she must have taken it from his study when she was a baby, although Anna wasn’t sure how this could be true; for all his absentmindedness, the Professor was always sure to keep his study locked up tight. However, despite mentioning the story often, the Professor had never taken the book back – and so it had become one of Anna’s greatest treasures.

  She flicked quickly through the pages. The stories in the first half of the book were wonderfully scary, but the second half was even better. It listed all the rules a child would need to follow if they ever entered an enchanted forest, including all the ways to overcome the various fairies and their spells. Anna knew most of the major rules off by heart. Do not accept food from a fairy. Do not tell a fairy your real name. If you are on a quest, do not tell a fairy where you are going or what you hope to do. Anna skimmed past passages about trolls and genies, mermaids and dragons, until she finally found what she was looking for. She began to read aloud from a dog-eared page.

  ‘“When a fairy dies, their magic does not always die with them. The trapped magic can sometimes transform their body into an entirely different creature: a monster that can only sustain itself by drinking the blood of the living. These undead fairies are known by many names, including lilitu, mandurugo, jiangshi and strigoi.”’

  She had found the word – but what did it mean? She quickly read ahead to the next sentence. A chill shivered down her spine.

  ‘What else does it say?’ said Max.

  Anna swallowed nervously.

  ‘“However, the blood-sucking creatures are most commonly known as vampires.”’

  The bedroom door crashed open. Mrs Dalca strode into the room, her eyes ablaze.

  ‘You are very bad children,’ she said in a wheezing voice. ‘You will go to bed without any supper.’

  Anna thought that seemed like a very good punishment; she didn’t want to eat any more of Mrs Dalca’s soup-stew anyway. She hid the book of fairy tales behind her back, hoping that the old woman hadn’t seen it.

  ‘What is that?’ said Mrs Dalca. ‘What is in your hand?’

  Anna was cornered. The woman bore down on her, prying the shabby red book from her fingers. She held it close to her face, mouthing the words of the title. Then she smiled.

  ‘I will take this,’ she said triumphantly. ‘There will be no more stories tonight!’

  5

  THE WITCHING HOUR

  Anna hadn’t expected the sky to get any darker, but now the true night was falling upon the forest, and the mist was growing thicker with every new shadow. Strange noises began to echo through the woods, carried by the wind: the scratching sounds of something moving beneath the trees, often followed by the faintest trace of a howl.

  The old witch had stolen their book. Anna wished she had read faster, or skipped ahead to the part about repelling the monsters – or, better yet, defeating them. She could only remember what every child her age knew: that vampires were allergic to sunlight, could sometimes turn into bats or other small animals, and could be driven away by certain plants. But how much of that was true, and how much of it had been invented by storytellers? When was the last time someone had actually encountered a real vampire? Anna hoped her old fairy book would have some answers.

  Their plan was simple. They would wait until the middle of the night, when Mrs Dalca was asleep. Then they would find the book and steal it back.

  The only problem was that the children were exhausted.

  To try to keep herself awake, Anna took the eagle banner back out of the wardrobe, carefully spreading it out on the floor. It was a piece of the puzzle she was determined to solve, although how it fitted she could not yet say. She ran her hands over the golden wings, brushing the dust from the tips of the feathers. She covered the bird’s eye, stretching her fingers out to touch the wicked curve of its beak. Nothing helped. The banner seemed to be from a different puzzle entirely.

  ‘I’m getting tired,’ she said with a yawn.

  Max was sitting on the bed. He checked the clock on the bedside table. It was only nine o’clock.

  ‘She won’t be asleep yet,’ he said. ‘We have to stay up later.’

  ‘We won’t be very good at sneaking if we’re tired,’ said Anna. ‘We should have a nap.’

  Max frowned as he considered it. Anna’s tiredness felt like a warm blanket across her shoulders. So many things had happened since they arrived in Transylvania. Didn’t they deserve a rest?

  ‘A nap is a good idea,’ said Max. ‘But we’ll have to take it in turns, so someone can stay awake and be the lookout. I’ll watch first if you want.’

  Anna smiled gratefully. She
stood up and saw that Max was chewing away on his lollies, filling his body with sugary energy. It was no wonder he didn’t feel as sleepy as she did.

  ‘Wake me up at ten-thirty,’ she said. She slipped under the heavy brown cover, snuggling deep into the bed.

  Max might have said something in reply, but the words were muddled by her drowsiness. In no time at all, Anna was fast asleep.

  And soon she was dreaming.

  The garden is beautiful. There are flowers of every shape and colour, all dancing slowly in the gentle breeze. The garden is a happy place.

  The garden has been built in the courtyard of a great castle. There are banners flying from the castle battlements. It is hard to see the banners clearly. Sometimes the banners look blue, but at other times they look red, or even yellow.

  Sometimes they look like bats.

  In the castle there is a secret panel. Beyond the panel is a staircase, which leads to a white stone passage. At the end of the passage is a dungeon. The dungeon has an iron door.

  The dungeon was built to hold the creature. The creature has been sentenced to live in the dungeon until the end of time. The only rule of the castle is that the creature must never leave.

  The iron door is open.

  The white stone passage is cold and quiet. The doorway at the end of the passage is full of darkness, like a cavity in the side of a tooth.

  It is time to run. It is time to run away from the dungeon, along the white stone passage, up the staircase, out through the secret panel. The garden will be waiting. The garden is a happy place.

  The creature is very fast.

  Max and the Professor are standing on the staircase. They call out along the white stone passage, beckoning with their hands.

  ‘Run, Anna! Don’t look back! Run as fast as you can!’

  Running in the castle feels like walking. The staircase moves further away with every step. The calls of encouragement grow fainter and fainter.

  The creature has a wide mouth. Its teeth are narrow and sharp.

  The teeth are dripping.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Anna woke with a start. She felt like her body had just fallen onto the bed from a great height; her breathing was short and ragged. She stared up at the ceiling, which was not the ceiling of a white stone passage. It took her a few moments to realise that she had been dreaming. She slowly remembered where she was sleeping, and why.

  None of this explained why she could still feel something dripping onto her forehead.

  Anna slowly turned to look across the dark room. The clock face stared back at her from the bedside table. A drop of water was running down its spindly hands, which were both pointed directly upwards. It was midnight – she should have been woken hours ago. Max had evidently fallen asleep. All she could see of him was a clump of tufty hair emerging from under the blanket.

  Worse still, the window had blown open. Rain was spattering its way into the room, dripping icily onto her nose and cheeks. Her remaining books were strewn across the floor, knocked over by the wind. Anna pulled the blanket over her head. She felt too warm and comfortable to retrieve the books immediately. Was it possible that nothing bad was going to happen to them after all? If Mrs Dalca had an evil plan then surely she would have carried it out while the children were sleeping.

  Anna reasoned that if she went to sleep again now, it would probably be morning when she woke up. By then the Professor might have returned, and he would be able to make everything right. They could drive away from the Wild Thyme Inn and never look back.

  All she had to do was close the window.

  The room was colder now. Anna wriggled out from beneath the blanket, scowling as the spray of the rain began to chill the soles of her feet. The floorboards creaked with every step. Much like Anna, they seemed unhappy about being disturbed so late at night.

  The window shutters were flapping madly. Anna grabbed onto the left shutter and tried to wrestle it shut, pushing back against the bluster. In all her life she had never encountered such a wild storm. Gusts of wind were swinging through the window like punches, crashing into her body so violently that she felt as if she might be knocked over. With a mighty shove she rammed the first shutter closed. Now the window looked like a butterfly with only one wing, fluttering frenziedly in the breeze. Anna quickly reached for the second shutter. Her fingers were almost completely numb.

  And then she stopped. There was a sound coming from the forest that had not been there before, a sound that was being snatched from somewhere on the mountainside and carried through the window by the wicked wind. Strange noises nestled in Anna’s ears. They felt like words, but they were being spoken so far away that she couldn’t tell which words they were supposed to be.

  Was there someone out there, lost in the woods?

  Anna couldn’t see anything. The moon was milky and pale, hanging in the heavens like a great blind eye. The storm clouds were devouring most of the starlight before it could reach the forest; the little light that did pierce through was instantly smothered by fog.

  But still there was a calling – and it was a calling now, becoming slightly clearer with every new rush of wind. The voice was desperate, screaming even, shrieking its message across the night. Anna glanced at Max’s tufty hair. Should she wake him? Would he be able to help?

  She turned her head, concentrating hard, hoping to hear a clear word, a clear instruction. She ignored the sting of the rain on her cheek, searching only for the sound, focusing on the strange fragments of noise.

  And then, after a minute of waiting patiently, a gust of wind finally carried a whole sentence into her ear.

  ‘Anna! Help me! Look out!’

  Anna gasped. She knew that voice. She had known it for eight entire years.

  The clouds parted. A perfect moonbeam fell from the sky, illuminating the hillside with a blue-white glow. It landed on the back of a distant figure who was striding away from the inn, a bundle thrown over its shoulder like a sack. The bundle was shouting and beating its fists, bawling into the storm.

  ‘Anna! Get out! It’ll eat you!’

  The figure holding the bundle turned around. It stared back at the inn with its eyes ablaze, shining out of the mist like a pair of distant stars.

  The figure holding the bundle turned around.

  It was then that Anna heard the growling.

  There was something rising from beneath the blanket on Max’s bed – something that was covered from head to toe in brown, tufty hair. Anna slowly backed away as the blanket fell loose, uncovering an animal she had hoped never to meet up close.

  The bear growled. Its mouth curled back into a snarl, revealing four long, sharp teeth.

  It stepped off the bed, claws raised, ready to attack.

  6

  UNDER THE BED

  The bear lashed out with a paw, swiping forward with a deadly punch. Anna threw herself onto the ground; the claws slashed the space where her head had been, raking viciously through the air. The bear’s claws were like fingernails gone bad, hook-shaped and blackened. Anna knew they would have no problem tearing through a child.

  The bear stood back on its hind legs and growled again. It was a horrible sound, somewhere between a dog’s bark and a lion’s roar, and it made every inch of Anna’s skin prickle in pure terror. The bedroom door was too far away to escape through: Anna crawled frantically underneath her bed and flattened herself against the far wall instead, her heart pounding so loudly that she was sure someone would hear it and come to her aid.

  ‘Help!’ she tried to call, her voice catching in her throat. ‘Somebody help me!’

  The bear lowered its head to the floor and stared at her through small black eyes. Then it lunged, reaching out into the space beneath the bed, thrashing its arms. Anna watched as the claws sliced back and forth, inches from her face. She was too frightened to scream, so scared she could barely even think. What could she possibly do? How could a child defeat a fully gro
wn bear? Anna churned furiously through all the possibilities.

  Hey, Anna! There’s something under here!

  The memory rushed into Anna’s mind. Max had thought he’d found something while she was busy examining the eagle banner – and he’d been right under her bed when he’d said it.

  The bear had retreated for a moment, seemingly rethinking its strategy. Anna quickly ran her hands over the floor. Her fingertips left snail-lines as they dragged across the dusty floorboards, looping and curving in desperate arcs, probing at the shadows.

  One of the floorboards wobbled.

  A tiny bud of hope blossomed in Anna’s chest. Everything she’d seen in Transylvania so far had been ridiculous. Was it so hard to imagine that there could be an escape tunnel built into her room, ready to use at the very time she needed it? She dug her fingers underneath the wooden board and prised it upwards. Two rusty iron nails hung from the bottom of the plank. They looked like the fangs of a monster Anna didn’t currently have time to worry about.

  There was only one loose board. Anna stared at the small hole that had opened up in the floor, choking back her disappointment. A mouse might be able to escape through the tunnel, but certainly not an eleven-year-old girl.

  The shaggy paws reappeared at the edge of the bed. The bedframe began to shake; the bear was standing again now, using its beastly strength to lift up Anna’s hiding place.

  Maybe there was a secret lever. Maybe it would activate the trapdoor, which would swing open and drop her to safety. Anna pushed her arm into the hole, blindly searching for the thing – anything – that would save her life.

  Her fingers closed around a handle.

  It felt like something had burst inside Anna’s body. Adrenaline pumped through her arm as she pulled her hand out from the hollow, holding tightly on to the object that she was sure would save her.

  The bed flipped over, crashing against the wall. The bear loomed above her, its teeth bared, arms raised in preparation for the final strike. Anna held out her hand, waving the mystery item between them.