Sleepover Club Vampires

by Fiona Cummings

  “Well she would if we did it now!” I grinned. “But it wouldn’t half give her a shock if we did it in the middle of the night!”

  “You wouldn’t!” Fliss looked part shocked, part scared.

  “Well let’s just say – it depends,” I told them thoughtfully. “But, just in case, we’d better mark out exactly where Molly’s room is.”

  We dragged a couple of packing cases over to roughly mark out the boundaries.

  “Now if that sister of mine pulls just one stunt this week,” I told the others firmly, “we’re going to let her have it – big time!”

  All the time we were having lunch we kept eyeballing Molly and Carli and laughing.

  “Grow up!” Molly yelled at last. “You’re just so immature! Ignore them, Carli.”

  “Molly for goodness sake, we’ve come away on holiday! Can’t you and Laura forget your differences for once?” Mum snapped.

  “Not likely!”

  “Well there’s plenty of room for you to stay out of each other’s way then,” Mum replied tartly. “And it might not do you and Carli any harm to get some fresh air. You can listen to your tapes any time. The air is so clean here, you ought to make the most of it before we go home.”

  Molly rolled her eyes and made a being-sick face behind Mum’s back. Then she turned to me.

  “You’re dead!” she muttered before stomping out, with Carli in close pursuit.

  “I’m so scared!” I pretended to quake in my shoes.

  “What have you girls got planned for this afternoon?” asked Lyndz’s mum.

  “Exploring outside!”

  “Well don’t stay out too late,” Mum warned us. “It gets dark a bit earlier up here. And for goodness sake, stay out of trouble!”

  “Mother!” I looked at her innocently. “We always stay out of trouble!”

  “If only I could believe that!” Mum sighed.

  We grabbed our coats and, whooping and yelling, ran like mad things to the edge of the lake (or “loch” as Uncle Bob called it).

  “It’s amazing!” Fliss breathed. “It looks like something out of a fairytale!”

  “That it is, Felicity!” Uncle Bob had appeared silently behind us. “If ever I have any troubles, I bring myself here and they all seem to sort themselves out.”

  “I could sort out all my troubles by pushing Molly into the loch,” I grumbled. “And holding her under!”

  Uncle Bob laughed. He picked a few stones from the ground, then one by one he skimmed them across the lake so that they bounced along the surface, once, twice, even three times.

  “That’s wicked!” Rosie gasped. “Could you teach us how to do that?”

  “I reckon so!” he smiled. “First you’ve got to find nice flat stones – not too small and not too big.”

  We hunted at our feet.

  “Now then, stand at an angle to the loch and focus. The action’s all in the wrist. Relax, then whip it, like this.”

  His stone skimmed the lake in four easy bounces.

  “Now you try!”

  Our stones just plopped in.

  “Try again!”

  Uncle Bob encouraged us and helped us with our aim. Just when we were starting to get a bit bored, Fliss’s stone skipped twice along the lake’s surface.

  “I did it, I did it!” She leapt up and down.

  That spurred us on to try harder and eventually we all managed it. It felt fantastic, a real sense of achievement!

  “It’s a wee bit nippy!” Uncle Bob shivered. “But I know what’ll warm you up!”

  He led us away from the lake to a clearing where Dad and Mr Collins were sawing logs.

  “I’ve got us some helpers!” he grinned.

  Dad looked apprehensive. “I’m not sure about that Bob, saws can be pretty dangerous.”

  “Och, not when I’m supervising. Calm yourself, Jim,” Uncle Bob replied.

  First Frankie and I had a go at sawing, then Lyndz and Fliss. Finally Rosie had a go with Uncle Bob. When we weren’t sawing we were helping to stack up the logs in great piles. I’d never got so hot, nor ached so much in my life, not even playing football.

  “Right lassies, it’s almost dusk now!” Uncle Bob told us at last. “Time for a wee romp outside afore it’s time to go in. I’d check out the chapel by the loch if I were you. I’ve heard tell of great goings-on down there at about this time. You must have a look – if you’re brave enough, that is!”

  “W-what does he mean?” Fliss looked at us anxiously as we walked away towards the lake again.

  “Ah, nothing, Fliss! You should know by now that Uncle Bob’s just a big wind-up merchant. He just wants to tease us, that’s all,” I reassured her.

  But as we approached the lake I wasn’t so sure. The light seemed to have faded in just a short time and everything seemed to be casting freaky shadows around us. The wind was whistling through the trees, twisting the branches into sinister shapes.

  “I don’t like this!” Fliss hung back. “Let’s go back to the house – please!”

  “We’ll just have a quick look at the chapel first,” I promised.

  A dark shell of a building stood between the lake and the house, its roof caving in and its walls starting to crumble.

  “Oooh, well spooky!” Frankie shuddered.

  We stopped a little way from it, too scared to go any nearer.

  “D-did you see that?” Lyndz gasped suddenly. “I’m sure I just saw a shadow moving about in there!”

  “And a flash of light,” I mumbled.

  “I can hear strange noises,” Rosie shuddered. “Let’s get out of here!”

  I was starting to feel knotted up and sick inside. This really was a bit too scary. Fliss was shaking and crying.

  “I want to go home,” she sobbed. “This is frightening me now.”

  I tried to pull myself together.

  “Now what would Buffy do in a situation like this?” I asked. “She wouldn’t wimp out, would she?”

  I took a deep breath and did a few high kicks and karate moves with my arms. I tried to yell something fierce but my voice came out in a reedy wail.

  Suddenly a twig cracked behind me and I sensed someone watching me from the shadows. Instinctively I lashed back with my left leg and swung round with my right arm.

  “Watch it, you moron!”

  “MOLLY!” we all yelled together.

  She stepped into the clearing, clutching her side where my foot had caught her. She flashed a torch on the others.

  “Mum told me I had to come out here and find you,” she snarled. “I wish I hadn’t bothered!”

  “It was you!” Rosie and Frankie gasped in relief.

  “Thought you’d scare us, did you?” I snarled back, the strength flooding back into my voice. “Well, you’ll have to do better than that!”

  “What are they on about, Molly?” Carli looked puzzled.

  “Don’t come the innocent!” I snapped. “We’re on to you two!”

  Molly tapped her head with her finger and pulled a face at Carli.

  “Mental!” she mouthed.

  Boy was I mad! I swear that I’d have strangled her there and then if Mum hadn’t appeared to round us up for supper.

  Mrs Barber, with a little help from Mum and Mrs Collins, had prepared this amazing meal. We started with thick soup. Then she brought out these enormous wild-boar sausages and huge bowls of mashed potato. It was the best I’d ever tasted, I could live on it forever! The sausages were kind of strong-tasting but good. Fliss and Rosie weren’t too keen, but fortunately Mrs Barber had prepared a vegetable casserole for Frankie because she doesn’t eat meat, so they shared that. For pudding it was treacle tart and custard – fan-tastic!

  We all helped Mrs Barber to clear away, then we went to flop in the lounge where we’d had hot chocolate the night before. Uncle Bob lit loads of candles and the adults sat on the big squashy sofas whilst the rest of us lay around on the floor by the fire. It was wicked, especially when Uncle Bob started telling
us all these spooky stories.

  “Some say you can hear a wailing in a chapel not too far from here,” he told us in a voice so low that you had to strain your ears to hear him. “It belongs to Flora McDonald. The poor wee lassie turned up on her wedding day to discover that her fiancé had been killed in a hunting accident. She went mad with grief and killed herself right there in front of the altar. If you listen hard you can hear the swish of her wedding dress as her ghost wanders through the chapel. Some have even seen a figure dressed in white wandering through the grounds.”

  “AHH!” Fliss screamed. “Not here? Not the chapel we went to today?”

  “No, not that chapel, Fliss,” Mum said very firmly. “Not any chapel, right Uncle Bob? These are just folktales, aren’t they? And ones that aren’t very suitable just before bedtime if I might say so!”

  “Aye, you’re right, Valerie,” Uncle Bob grinned. “Don’t mind an old fool with more tales to tell than sense. Now Felicity, I didn’ae mean to upset you. How about hot chocolate all round, Mrs Barber?”

  “I think we’ll take ours to our room with us if that’s OK,” I said when Mrs Barber appeared back with a tray full of steaming mugs. The others looked at me, amazed.

  “We’re very tired, aren’t we?” I stared at them hard.

  “Oh yes, ’course, all that sawing you know!” Frankie followed my lead. “Night everybody!”

  The others followed us out of the sitting room and we all trooped upstairs to our bedroom.

  “Couldn’t we have stayed downstairs a bit longer?” Fliss asked apprehensively. “You know, with the others.”

  “No Fliss, we’ve got business to attend to,” I told her, leaping on to my bed. “Molly and Carli business. They scared us outside, remember, so now it’s payback time!”

  I pointed to the attic. The others squashed on to my bed and, huddling together, we formed our grand plan. When it was all sorted we did high fives and ran giggling into the bathroom. It was important that we were ready to go as soon as we figured that Molly and Carli were settled down for the night.

  It seemed like about five hours before they even came up to bed, and another hour before they’d finished in the bathroom.

  “What are they doing in there?” Frankie sounded exasperated.

  “Molly’s so ugly she needs about a million potions to hold her face together,” I snorted. “One day it’ll probably crack up completely and fall off!”

  By the time they’d emerged from the bathroom Lyndz had dozed off so we had to wake her up.

  “Wassup!” she grumbled.

  “Come on, sleepy-head. It’s action time!”

  We crept to the door. I was just about to reach for the handle when I could hear footsteps along the passageway.

  “It sounds like everybody else is coming to bed now!” I grumbled.

  We crept back into bed and had to wait again until we were sure that the coast was clear.

  “Everybody ready?” I whispered as we huddled for a second time behind the door. “Everybody know what we’re supposed to be doing?”

  With excited butterflies chasing about in my tummy I reached for the door handle. Instead of the door creaking open, as I’d expected, the handle shot off in my hand! There was a clunk on the landing as the knob on the other side fell off too.

  “What’s happened?” asked Fliss anxiously.

  “Erm, it’s not looking good actually,” I admitted, brandishing the knob. “We’re stuck in here, and I can’t see how we’re going to get out.”

  “It’s that ghost!” wailed Fliss. “Flora McDonald has come to haunt us!”

  “Don’t be so stupid!” I snapped. “There’s got to be some perfectly sensible explanation…”

  Frankie was crouched by the door, squinting through the keyhole.

  “You know that perfectly sensible explanation?” she said at last, straightening herself up. “I think it’s called Molly and Carli! They’re on the other side of the door looking like the cats who got the cream!”

  “They’ll look like cats who’ve got the SCREAM when I get hold of them!” I fumed. “But first we need to get out of here.”

  I pushed the door again, but there was no way it was going to budge.

  “HELP!” Rosie and Fliss started banging on the door. “Get us out of here!”

  “Love to help you!” Molly said from the other side of the door. “We can’t open it from this side either. I wonder how that could have happened?”

  “Yes, I wonder, young lady!” There was no mistaking Mum’s voice and she sounded A-N-G-R-Y!

  “But Mum!” Molly didn’t sound so smug now. “It’s nothing to do with us!”

  “Molly, it’s too late for silly games. I want that door open and I want you to get back to bed!”

  “I really think it’s a job for a locksmith,” Lyndz’s dad announced seriously.

  “They’ll never get one so late!” Frankie hissed. “We’re going to be stuck in here all night!”

  “I knew this place was doomed!” Fliss sobbed. “There’s something really creepy about it.”

  “Now I think that’s just your imagination, Felicity!”

  We all spun round to see Uncle Bob grinning at us from the far corner of the room. He had suddenly appeared. Out of thin air. The door hadn’t opened and the window was closed so there was no way he could have got in there…

  We all took one look at him and started screaming. We clung together shrieking our heads off like we were in some really bad horror movie. And all the time Uncle Bob was watching us with this silly grin on his face. At last he chuckled:

  “Girls, girls, please! There’s no need to be alarmed.”

  “B-but how did you get in?” I squeaked nervously as soon as I’d recovered my voice. The guy was freaking me out big time.

  “There’s a secret doorway here, look!”

  He pressed against one of the panels on the wall and it sprung open, revealing a door.

  “That’s amazing! Like something out of a film!” Frankie said open-mouthed, hurrying to see where it led.

  “It goes into the bedroom next door,” Uncle Bob explained. “That’s why I gave you this room. I thought maybe your Sleepover Club might discover it for yourselves.”

  Suddenly Uncle Bob wasn’t spooky any more. He just seemed like a little guy with a wicked sense of fun.

  “You didn’t take the doorknob off so we’d find out about this, did you?” I asked him.

  “No Kenny, I wouldn’ae go to all that trouble, believe me!” he grinned. “I suggest you leave this door open tonight, just in case the doorknob gremlin decides to have another go. Although I doubt she’d dare, the mood your mother’s in!”

  We all laughed. Outside our room we could still hear Mum tearing a strip off Molly.

  “Have a good rest now. Goodnight!” He left as quietly as he’d arrived.

  Even though it was very late by the time Mum and Lyndz’s mum had been in to check that we were all right, we were still wide awake.

  “I guess we’ll just have to have a midnight feast!” I shrugged, pretending it was just about the last thing on earth that we wanted to do.

  We grabbed mini-Snickers, fizzy lollies, a carton of Pringles and mini cans of marshmallow soda from our bags and piled on to Frankie’s bed.

  “I thought I’d die when your Uncle Bob appeared!” giggled Rosie. “My heart stopped beating, I swear!”

  “He’s a pretty cool guy, isn’t he?” I grinned.

  “I still think he’s weird!” Fliss moaned.

  We all bombarded her with crisps and sweets.

  “Gitoutofit!” She threw them back at us. “I mean, you have to admit it’s pretty strange how he keeps appearing behind us without us even hearing him.”

  “He’s just light on his feet,” I told her. “And remember, that’s exactly what we have to be when we get our revenge on Molly in the attic.”

  I was so pumped up that I would happily have gone into the attic there and then, but Frankie persu
aded me that it would be more sensible to wait.

  “Your mum’s pretty wound up at the moment, Kenz,” she reasoned. “And if she caught us pulling a stunt like that tonight she’d go into meltdown!”

  I reckoned the next day was bound to drag as we waited to put our plan into action. WRONG! It actually flashed past, because we made the most amazing discovery when we retraced our steps from the previous evening.

  “We’re not going back to the chapel, are we?” Fliss looked alarmed. “You don’t really think Flora McDonald’s ghost will be there, do you?”

  “Don’t be daft Fliss, there’re no such things as ghosts,” I reassured her. “What I’m interested in are the vampires.”

  “WHAT?” Fliss looked like she was about to faint.

  I ploughed on. “Look, we heard noises right, round an old chapel? And where does Buffy do her vampire-slaying? In a graveyard, right? Well, I reckon there might well be graves round that old chapel and I think it would be an ideal hanging-out spot for those Scottish vamps. Especially now they’ve heard that there are two slayers on the scene.”

  I did a ferocious side-kick to prove my point. “Eh Frankie, what do you say? Do you reckon they want to try their luck with us? Maybe this is Sunnydale Mark Two!”

  “You’re mad!” Lyndz and Rosie were shaking their heads. “You don’t really believe all that stuff, do you?”

  “Sure thing!” I nodded. “Come on, I bet we can find some signs of vampire activity last night.”

  We got to the edge of the woods, then crept cautiously towards the chapel. It wasn’t as scary as it had been the night before, but there was still something a bit eerie about the place.

  “Right everyone, look out for signs,” I hissed.

  As we approached the chapel we all stooped close to the ground.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” asked Fliss weakly.

  “Footprints. Like this one!” I pointed excitedly to the ground.

  There in the earth were footprints, enormous ones.

  “Those weren’t made by Molly and Carli, were they?” Rosie looked scared.

  “There are more,” Frankie pointed, “and they’re all leading to the chapel.”