The two girls hurried forward, torchlight sweeping the forest floor. Anna’s heart sank. The path was bumpy and overgrown, which already made things difficult to see. The addition of the rain made it seem certain that any clues would have already been washed away.
‘Have you found anything?’ she called.
‘Nothing,’ Isabella called back, her voice muffled.
And then Anna saw something. The thing was caught on a fallen twig, sagging down towards a puddle, shining red in the torchlight. For one horrible second, Anna thought it might be blood. She leant down for a closer look.
It wasn’t blood at all. It was something that made her very excited.
‘Come and look at this!’ she yelled.
Isabella came running around the side of the great tree. Anna held out the thing in her hand, her eyes gleaming.
It was a red lolly snake.
‘Max had a whole bag of these,’ said Anna breathlessly. She thought about the breadcrumbs from the story she had told in the car.
If the trail was followed the other way, it would lead a person straight to Max.
‘He’s left a trail for us to follow,’ said Anna. ‘Just like Hansel.’ She grinned. ‘He’s going to lead us all the way to the vampire’s lair.’
There was another rustling in the long grass nearby. The girls spun to face the sound, but a moment later the woods were still.
‘Come on,’ said Isabella. She reached out her hand. ‘We’d better keep going.’
Anna grabbed her palm. In her other hand she squeezed the white knife and the torch tightly between her fingers.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone – or something – was following them.
The two girls hiked for another hour through the storm-soaked forest, searching for clues from Max’s lolly bag at each fork in the path. They were not disappointed. They found chocolate freckles and caramel buds, jelly beans and bananas, marshmallows and musk sticks and mint leaves and milk bottles. Anna was tempted to eat the clues, gooey as they were after lying on the wet ground, but she forced herself to resist. They might need to follow the trail back again when they wanted to return to the inn.
‘We must be getting close,’ said Isabella. ‘All we have to do is find the bridge over the creek, and then we’ll be almost at the castle.’
Anna nodded. She shone her torch onto their latest find: a red jelly baby. Red jelly babies were Max’s favourites. If he was starting to throw them away, Anna knew he mustn’t have very many lollies left.
The rushing sound of the creek began to echo out of the darkness around them. The sound grew louder and louder, hissing away like the call of a colossal serpent, surrounding the girls and drowning out all other noises.
‘Will the bridge be safe?’ asked Anna uncertainly.
‘I think so,’ said Isabella. ‘The stream isn’t very big.’
But Isabella was wrong. The stream had been gorging itself on stormwater, swallowing the rain until it was transformed from a babbling brook into a roaring river. When the girls finally arrived at the bridge it was almost completely submerged beneath the water. Only the two guide ropes stood clearly above the waves.
‘Oh,’ said Isabella. ‘Well, it’s lucky we wore our gumboots.’
She said it in the same cheerful voice that the Professor used when he had to leave the children behind. Normally the falseness annoyed Anna, but now she found herself nodding and smiling as well.
‘Yes, it is lucky,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’ll be fun to splash our way through.’
It helped to pretend that the adventure was just a game.
They decided that Isabella would cross first. Anna shone her torch ahead as her friend stepped into the river, holding tightly to the guide ropes as she shuffled across the hidden bridge. Soon she was safely across, shaking her dripping feet on the distant riverbank.
‘Your turn,’ she called, shining a light onto the river.
Anna reluctantly turned off her torch and placed it in her pocket. She went to put the knife away too, before realising that it would probably slice through the bottom of her coat. She would be forced to hold on to it as she crossed – which meant that she only had one hand free to steady herself.
Anna tensed as she took her first step into the river. Her foot sank further into the water than she had expected, which made her gasp; but then the sole of her gumboot connected with the bridge, steady beneath the torrent. It was difficult to hold on to the guide rope with only one hand. She wobbled slightly as she edged forward, moving as carefully as she possibly could. The white-tipped waves ran across her feet, seizing at her ankles, trying to pull her under.
She was halfway across the bridge when Isabella made a noise that was somewhere between a scream and a shout. Anna’s head automatically shot up, which almost caused her to lose her balance; the hand holding the white knife waved desperately in the air as she tried to steady herself.
Isabella’s face had gone very white. Her hands were trembling as they held the torch, which made the light on the bridge jump and flicker.
‘What is it?’ shouted Anna.
‘It’s nothing,’ called Isabella quickly. ‘Just keep moving.’
Anna took another step across the bridge. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘No,’ said Isabella. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Her eyes kept darting between Anna’s face and the space beside Anna’s head, as if there was something interesting sprouting from her shoulder. Anna glanced down at her arm, wondering if a spider had fallen onto her from the treetops.
‘No, don’t look,’ said Isabella. ‘Don’t look behind you. Just keep walking.’
A chill ran its fingers down Anna’s neck. She tried to keep staring at Isabella, taking one careful step after the next, slowly closing the distance between herself and the land. Isabella’s face remained stricken. Now she was openly staring at the unknown thing, a thing that had made her eyes grow wide with fear.
Anna couldn’t help herself. She looked back.
A pack of wolves was sitting on the bank behind her. They watched silently from the shadows, grey-brown fur ruffling in the wind. Their eyes were small and yellow, each one sparkling with a hungry glint.
She looked back.
And then they began to howl. They threw back their heads and wailed into the sky, filling the night with their ghastly cries.
Anna ran. She let go of the guide rope and dashed recklessly across the bridge, plunging deeper into the swirling water with every step. Her feet began to slip and skid against the planks, splashing the water up and over the sides of her gumboots, but still she ran, charging towards the bank, which was now only metres away. Then her boot caught on a hidden snag and she tripped, and then she was falling face-first towards the icy water that would knock the breath from her lungs and carry her away.
But Isabella was there to catch her. Anna fell into her open arms, gasping. Together the girls staggered along the final metre of submerged bridge. Catching Anna had forced Isabella to drop her torch; Anna saw it sail away on the current, a glowing ship on the raging sea.
‘Are they still there?’ spluttered Anna. She sank to her knees. The ground was wet and muddy, but at least it was solid.
‘Give me your torch and I’ll check,’ panted Isabella.
The wolves had vanished. There were no signs on the far bank that they had ever been there at all.
‘They might be looking for a different place to cross,’ said Isabella. ‘But now that we’re over the creek, the castle should be just up ahead. As soon as we’re inside, the wolves won’t be able to get to us.’
Sneaking into a vampire’s lair suddenly sounded as appealing as it was ever going to get. Anna climbed to her feet, and the two girls kept walking.
It wasn’t long before they came upon the ruined fort.
9
DROWNED RATS
The castle was a half-collapsed mess of blackened stone and wood. It seemed to be bent at dangerous angles, loomin
g above the forest like a gigantic gargoyle. One of the walls had fallen in completely, bringing a side of the roof down with it. A single tower remained, tall and thin, almost swaying in the wind. The castle door had been torn away from its hinges.
The people who had set fire to the fort had done their job well. It seemed impossible that anyone – or anything – could live within this shell of a building. Anna couldn’t see any lights inside. Had they come to the right place?
‘Shall we go in?’ asked Isabella.
She shone Anna’s torch into the open doorway. It looked as if the light was being sucked away into nothingness, lost forever in a black hole.
Anna raised the white knife, tensing her arm.
‘Let’s do it,’ she said.
The girls stayed close together as they walked into the first room. It was a small relief to finally be out of the rain. Anna shook the droplets from her jacket while Isabella shone the light around them. The room was empty, and the walls were completely bare.
‘Nothing,’ said Anna.
‘They tried to burn all of the count’s possessions, remember?’ said Isabella. ‘It makes sense that there’s nothing here.’
But Anna refused to believe that the castle could be entirely empty. ‘Let’s find the tower,’ she said.
They walked further into the ruins, soon finding the entrance to the castle spire. Anna saw with dismay that the wooden staircase had been burnt away long ago, leaving behind only a pile of grey ash. The tower was nothing more than a hollow tube of stone.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Isabella. ‘There are still lots of places Max could be.’
The children searched room after room, climbing over fallen stones and ducking through crooked doorways, moving deeper and deeper into the castle. Their findings were the same as before: all of the rooms were silent, abandoned and empty. Anna’s frustration began to grow. Had they come all this way for nothing? Had the vampire built a secret lair somewhere else, in a place they would have no hope of finding?
Eventually there was only one room left. The old wooden door was still in place, although the lower half was riddled with holes. Anna’s heart beat faster as they approached it. This was their last chance.
‘We’d better get ready,’ said Isabella, shrugging the knapsack off her shoulders. She undid the straps and took out the thermos of garlic soup. ‘We need Max to drink this before the strigoi bites him. Then he’ll be safe.’
Anna wondered whether the soup-stew alone would be enough to keep Max – or them – entirely out of danger.
‘What if the vampire is in there with him?’ she asked.
Isabella frowned. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘What should we do then?’
Anna quickly thought it through. ‘If it doesn’t look like Max is in danger, then we can hide and wait for the strigoi to leave,’ she said. ‘But if it looks hungry, one of us will have to distract it while the other one gets to Max.’
One of those jobs sounded a lot more dangerous than the other. With a sinking feeling, Anna looked at the thermos in Isabella’s hands, and then at the knife in her own. It seemed like the decision had already been made for them.
‘I’ll distract the vampire,’ she said. The words seemed so terrifying that she barely managed to force them from her mouth. ‘You can take the soup to Max.’
Isabella smiled reassuringly. ‘You’ve already eaten some garlic, remember? The strigoi won’t be able to bite you.’
But what else could it do? The vampire had already sent a bear to attack her. How else might it be able to harm her without needing to drink her blood? Anna shuddered. It might have been better not to think about it, but thinking about it was all she seemed able to do.
Isabella took off her scarf and tied it around the torch so that only a small amount of light shone from the end. Then the girls tiptoed up to the door. Isabella put her fingers on the handle and nodded at Anna, and Anna understood that the nod meant get ready.
The door swung open.
Immediately there was movement in the room beyond. Isabella quickly switched off the torch. Anna froze, trying not to move a single muscle. She was listening intently, but the only sound coming from the room was a quiet rustling. She hoped it was Max. She wished that he would say something, to let them know he was safe, or to tell them where the vampire was hiding.
But nothing else happened. The girls remained poised at the entrance to the room, unmoving, listening to the rustling. It almost sounded like birds cheeping.
Isabella switched the torch back on and held it close to her face. ‘What do we do?’ she mouthed.
‘Shine the torch in,’ whispered Anna. ‘Let’s see what it is.’
Isabella nodded and pointed the torch through the doorway. She began to unwrap her scarf, gradually allowing more and more light to enter the room.
And then Anna saw it: a pair of eyes, glowing in the torchlight. Then she saw another pair, and then another. Suddenly the room was filled with them: hundreds and hundreds of tiny white eyes.
‘Oh no,’ she said.
The floor of the room was covered with mice – and now they had been disturbed. The rodents ran around the room in a panic, clambering over each other as they tried to escape, blindly searching for an exit. They soon discovered there was only one way out: through the door the girls had just opened.
Anna tried not to squeal as the first wave of mice scurried over her feet. They poured out of the room like dirty water, flooding the corridor with their small, soft bodies. Some of them massed into squirming piles, climbing up the backs of the girls’ legs and falling into their gumboots. Anna frantically tried to swat them away. For every mouse she slapped, another would rise from the pile to take its place. The feeling of their wriggling fur was utterly disgusting.
It took a whole minute for the room to empty. The girls spun around like clumsy ballerinas as they struggled to knock the mice away. Eventually the last mouse ran past them, a final drop in the hairy river.
‘That was horrible,’ gasped Isabella. She shook her arms in distaste, as if the sensation of tiny mouse paws was lingering on her skin.
‘They must have come in here to get away from the storm,’ said Anna. ‘It’s probably the driest place in the entire forest.’
Isabella was still shaking. Anna took the torch from her and shone it into the mouse room. Now that the rodents were gone she could see that the floor was covered with mottled red carpet. It was the only place in the castle where the stone floor was not exposed.
‘None of the other rooms had carpet, did they?’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s a clue.’
She stepped inside. The room seemed better preserved than most of the others they had searched through, but it also looked as if the walls had been damaged from the inside. Huge flakes of stone had been broken away, giving the room a scarred, ragged appearance.
Anna looked at the walls closely. One area in the corner hadn’t been scratched as badly as the rest. It looked like a picture had been carved into the wall, long before someone had come along to destroy it. Anna traced her fingers over one of the delicate lines. It might have once been the end of a claw.
‘The count must have put his crest on the wall,’ said Isabella, who had followed Anna into the room. ‘And the people who live in the woods tried to take it off again.’ She sighed sadly. ‘They tried very hard to stop this from happening.’
Anna turned back to face the empty room. ‘But where’s the vampire? Where’s Max?’ She stamped her foot. ‘We’ve been through the entire castle now, and we haven’t found anything!’
She stopped. Isabella had a funny look on her face.
‘Do that again,’ she said.
Anna was confused. ‘Do what? Complain?’
‘No, not that,’ said Isabella. ‘Stamp your foot!’
Anna stomped on the floor. A small puff of dust rose from the carpet, filling the air with the smell of mice. But this time Anna heard it as well: a creaking noise directly beneath her foot. She tappe
d her heel firmly on the ground. It sounded like she was banging on a squeaky drum.
‘That doesn’t sound very solid,’ said Isabella.
Anna bent down and grabbed a handful of carpet. It lifted up easily as she dragged it away from the wall, exposing the grey-white stone beneath – and something else as well. A wooden square had been concealed under the shaggy red rug. A thick iron ring was attached to the top, almost like a doorknocker.
It was a trapdoor.
‘It looks like there’s still some castle left to explore,’ said Isabella.
Anna nodded. She grasped the iron ring and pulled on it as hard as she could.
The trapdoor swung open. The girls leant over the hole. A stone staircase stretched down into the earth, following a tunnel that was as dark as dark could be. Water was leaking down the walls, trickling out of cracks in the foundations of the castle. The whole place smelt stale and musty, like a tomb that should never have been opened.
Anna knew she had to go inside, even though she didn’t want to. She knew Isabella must be feeling the same way.
‘Are you sure you want to do this with me?’ she asked.
Isabella smiled nervously. She placed the thermos back in the knapsack and took out the rope instead, tying it around the metal ring.
‘This is the most scared I’ve ever been in my life,’ she said. ‘But we don’t have any choice, do we? Max is your brother, and you’re my friend.’
Anna had only known Isabella for one day, but so far they had chased a vampire up a mountain, escaped from a pack of wolves, and avoided being eaten by a horde of mice. She decided that Isabella might be the best and most interesting friend that she had ever had.
‘I’m glad you’re here with me,’ she said.
Then the girls took hold of the rope and stepped down into the tunnel, closing the trapdoor behind them.
10
THREE KEYS
It felt like they were being eaten. The tunnel was like a throat, dark and dripping with saliva, slowly leading them into the stomach of a great beast. The stone staircase was long, slippery and treacherous, and more than once the girls slipped and fell, dangling helplessly from the rope until they could regain their footing.
The Vampire Knife Page 5