I looked at Aunt Tabby—surely she was going to say something about this? But she didn’t say a thing. She just sat there like a goldfish whose water has just been poured down the sink.
“Um…trunk. I’d, er, better go and get it then,” muttered Uncle Drac. He gulped down his tea and stood up. His chair made a horrible scraping sound on the floor, but I didn’t mind because even that was better than listening to the weird slurping noise that Great-aunt Emilene made while she sucked up her tea like a vacuum cleaner.
There was no way I was going to stay down in that kitchen with Wanda Wizzard grinning at the little kid like he was her new best friend, so I said, “I’ll help you, Uncle Drac.”
“Would you, Minty?” Uncle Drac looked pleased. He grabbed my hand and we both shot out of the kitchen like we were being chased by a whole pack of werewolves. In fact give me a pack of werewolves any day.
It was pouring down rain when we got outside and the thunder was still rumbling, which was fun. Perkins was asleep in the driver’s seat. His mouth was wide open and he was snoring loudly. Uncle Drac tapped on his window, but there was no chance Perkins would hear anything with a snore almost as loud as the thunder.
“You’ll have to bang on the window really hard,” I told Uncle Drac, who is quite shy and usually leaves all the loud stuff to Aunt Tabby. He didn’t seem to want to, so I thumped the window hard and made my cross-eyed wide-mouth frog face through the steamed-up glass.
It worked. Perkins jumped up like something had bitten him, squashed his top hat on the roof of the car, and sat straight back down again. Then he wound down the window and said, “Yeeeees?” in a low, spooky kind of voice that would have really scared Wanda, though it did not scare me at all.
Uncle Drac coughed and said, “We have come for Maximilian’s trunk.”
Perkins—who looked like a skeleton close up—pushed open the door and nearly knocked us over. A moment later he had opened the back of the hearse and was tugging at the coffin. “A little assistance would not be amiss,” he said in his eerie voice.
Uncle Drac and I looked at each other.
Who was in the coffin? And why were they going to be buried in Spookie House?
“Not the…coffin,” said Uncle Drac. “Maximilian’s trunk.”
Perkins looked at Uncle Drac like he was being really stupid. “This is Maximilian’s trunk,” he said.
Uncle Drac and I heaved the coffin up the crumbling steps to Spookie House while Perkins the skeleton watched us through his steamy window, safely back in his nice dry car. We staggered through the front door and dumped the coffin down in the hall with a huge thump, which shook the house and brought Aunt Tabby running.
“What is that?” she asked, staring at the coffin.
“Trunk,” gasped Uncle Drac, sitting down on it and wiping the water out of his eyes. “Minty and I carried it in.”
I had never seen Aunt Tabby make a startled horse expression before, so I was very interested in what she was going to say next, but she just whinnied like you had run out of sugar lumps and rolled her eyes.
Then Wanda appeared. She was holding Maximilian’s hand.
He was trotting beside her, his short little legs, which were even shorter than Wanda’s—if that is possible—having trouble keeping up as Wanda dragged him across the hall and started up the big cobwebby stairs that sweep up from the hall. “Come on, Max,” said Wanda, sounding like she was trying to get one of Barry’s frogs to do a particularly difficult jump, “I’ll show you your room. It’s called the Saturday bedroom and it’s really great. I have to share it with Araminta but you can have it all to yourself.”
Max did not look convinced. He kept staring at me, and the more Wanda pulled him up the stairs, the more he hung back. I could see his point because who would want to be dragged anywhere by Wanda Wizzard? But Wanda kept on tugging.
“Don’t take any notice of Araminta—she’s always making faces,” she told him in a loud voice while she stared right at me. “If she’s not careful, the wind will change and she will get stuck like that. Not that you’d notice.” Then she gave Max an extra-strong tug. Max gave in and they disappeared up the stairs.
So guess who had to help carry the trunk all the way up to the Saturday bedroom? That’s right, Uncle Drac and I. Of course it wouldn’t fit up the rope ladder and through the little door at the top, so I let Wanda spend the rest of the afternoon climbing up and down the ladder with Max’s stuff, which was good for her, as she has gained a bit of weight recently.
While Wanda was climbing up and down the ladder, I did some thinking. I had wondered how Pusskins was still managing to eat my cheese and onion chips even when she had disappeared. But it was obvious now that I thought about it. It wasn’t Pusskins who had been eating them, and it never had been. It was the werewolf.
So if I wanted to ever eat cheese and onion chips again, there was a whole lot of stuff I had to do. And number one on the list was to get together a Werewolf Trapping Kit.
6
BATS
The trouble with collecting any kind of trapping kit is that sometimes someone traps you while you are doing it. And that is what happened: Barry made me help him take all the bat poo sacks out to the front gate. I do not know why people want to buy bat poo but they do. Barry says it is due to strategic advertising, which is what he calls the sign he sticks on top of the sacks that says:
When I asked Barry how he knew that the bats were happy, Barry said that he hadn’t heard any of them saying they were unhappy and that was good enough for him.
The rain had stopped while we were dragging out the sacks, but as we heaved the last one up against the hedge there was a sudden clap of thunder and the front door flew open with a bang. Great-aunt Emilene was standing on the top of the steps with Mathilda beside her. Right behind them I could see Aunt Tabby darting back and forth like a goalkeeper, making sure Great-aunt Emilene couldn’t get back in.
“Good-bye, Mother,” said Aunt Tabby in the extra-polite telephone voice she uses when she means the exact opposite of what she is saying. “It has been so nice to see you. Do come again. And don’t worry about Maximilian, his little problem won’t bother us. After all, ha-ha, we’re used to Araminta.”
I was glad that Great-aunt Emilene did not find this funny. She just glared at Aunt Tabby, then she threw the dead double ferret around her neck so fast that you could hear its glass eyes click together as she tottered off down the steps. Mathilda followed her and the skeleton Perkins jumped out of the car and held the door open for them. They drove off.
I was sad that Mathilda was going. I wouldn’t have minded at all if she had stayed. As the hearse drove slowly past Barry and me, Great-aunt Emilene stared straight ahead like a statue, but Mathilda looked out of the window and waved. It was a small wave. I waved back.
They had not gotten far when the hearse came to halt and then started reversing down the lane. Aunt Tabby saw it coming. She slammed the front door with a bang, and I am sure I heard her bolting it and putting the chain on. Great, I thought. Mathilda has changed her mind and she is going to stay too. But it was Perkins who got out. He didn’t say a word. He just put some money for the bat poo in the box, heaved all the bat poo sacks into the back where the coffin had been, slammed the tailgate shut, and zoomed away.
“Strategic advertising,” said Barry, sounding smug. “Always works.”
Now that Barry had sold some poo he was in a good mood, so I said, “Barry, have you come across any werewolves around here?”
“Werewolves? Well, no. Although last year…”
“Did you find one last year?” I asked.
“…I saw a really good movie about them,” he said.
“Oh. So nothing hiding underneath the bat poo then? Or creeping along behind you in the basement corridors?”
“No,” said Barry, “because werewolves don’t exist except in stories. Now Araminta, I’m going to fill some more sacks right away because it’s not good for business to let th
e stock run out. That way you lose potential customers. Would you like to come and help?”
“No thank you, Barry,” I said politely, since I knew he was trying to be nice. I wanted to ask him more about werewolves—like what else he thought could be hanging around staring at me with horrible flashing eyes, growling, and eating all my cheese and onion chips—but I decided not to. Instead I would get my Werewolf Trapping Kit together, trap the werewolf, and then they would all have to believe me.
So for the next few days that is what I did. And it was a good thing I had something to do because my former best friend, Wanda Wizzard, was not my best friend anymore. In fact she was more like my best “fiend,” and I think she was haunting me. Everywhere I went I seemed to bump into her, and wherever she was, there was Max Spookie, following her around like her own little puppy. Yuck. Clearly Wanda has no taste when it comes to friends—apart from me, of course. Which is, as Uncle Drac says, the exception that proves the rule.
First I found them in the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom, where Wanda was letting Max play with her acrobatic pet mice, which she never lets me touch. They had a whole mouse circus set up inside the haunted bath, which looked like fun.
Later I bumped into them in the long corridor that leads to the back door; Wanda was letting Max ride her new bike, which she won’t let me near. He kept falling off and was obviously useless at riding a bike. But when Wanda saw me, did she say, “Oh, hello, Araminta, would you like a ride on my new bike too?” No, she did not. She said, “Oh, hello, Araminta, can Max borrow your skates?” Then she acted all shocked when I said, “No way.” Max just smiled a smug smile right at me and said, “Do not worry, Araminta. I do not like to skate.”
When he smiled he showed vampire teeth at the corners of his mouth! They were nothing like Uncle Drac’s; they were really sharp, like little needles. In fact they were so sharp and pointy that they looked like the real thing—the biting kind.
I kept staring at Max, hoping for another look at his teeth, but he stopped smiling and stuck out his tongue at me. Then he fished a bag of candy from his pocket and said, “Wanda, would you like some candy?”
And Wanda said, “Ooh, yes please, Max. It is so lovely to have a friend who offers you candy instead of eating it all herself.”
I could have mentioned the gummy bears but I did not. Max didn’t offer me any candy, but even if he had I wouldn’t have taken it. Vampire candy is not good. You should never take candy from a vampire.
When Max wasn’t being Wanda’s puppy, he was being Aunt Tabby’s creep.
That afternoon, Aunt Tabby decided to repaint the wood in the hall with thick, shiny brown paint, which was a nuisance since every time I walked through the hall collecting my Spookie Werewolf Trapping Kit I tripped over all kinds of painting stuff.
“Mind those cans of paint, Araminta,” she snapped as I went past again.
“I was nowhere near those cans of paint,” I said.
“You don’t have to be near cans of paint for them to suddenly fall over, Araminta,” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes with painty hands. “They seem to take one look at you and throw themselves to the floor. Now, tell me, what do you think of the color?”
“It’s brown, Aunt Tabby,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“Yes. But do you like it?”
I don’t like brown. Not one bit. But I didn’t think I should say that. While I was thinking about what I should say, Max—who I am sure had been lurking in a dark corner and listening to every word—trotted up and said, “I love it. I think it is just the perfect shade of brown. You have a wonderful sense of color, Aunt Tabitha.”
Aunt Tabby smiled like he was the best thing in the world and then creepy Max said, “Please, may I clean your paintbrushes, Aunt Tabitha? I love to clean paintbrushes.”
Aunt Tabby looked thrilled. “What an obliging boy you are, Max,” she purred. Then she looked at me in a less than thrilled way and said, “You see, Araminta, that is what I mean about being polite and helpful.”
I left Aunt Tabby and Max discussing different shades of brown and got on with collecting the Spookie Werewolf Trapping Kit. And while I was doing that I was thinking about vampires.
This is what I was thinking: There are two kinds of Vampires. There is the nice kind, like Uncle Drac, who does vampiry stuff like not liking daylight, hanging around with bats, and having cute pointy teeth at the sides of his smile. This is the kind of vampire who would not dream of biting you, not in a million years. They just happen to come from a vampire family, that is all. After all, some people say that I look like Aunt Tabby—which I don’t—but even if I did it wouldn’t mean I actually acted like Aunt Tabby, would it? So you can look like a vampire but you don’t have to behave like one.
Then there is the horrible kind of vampire. This is the nasty, biting kind whom you would not trust one inch. You can generally tell the nasty ones, as they are extremely creepy. They say nice things to people but they do not mean them. They lurk in corners listening to other people’s conversations, they pretend that they are really helpful and considerate so that aunts love them, they steal people’s best friends, and they have really sharp teeth. Does that remind you of anyone?
That’s right: Max. Vampire Max.
It was obvious now: That was the reason why Max was suddenly best friends with Wanda. Wanda is not easy to be best friends with—I should know. But Max didn’t really want to be Wanda’s friend; he wanted to bite her. And although I kind of thought it would serve Wanda right if she did get bitten, I didn’t really want that to happen. That would make her a vampire too, and I didn’t think Wanda would be a very good vampire. She would just be trouble. And she might bite me.
Something had to be done. The Spookie Werewolf Trapping Kit was now going to be the Spookie Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit.
7
THE TRAPPING KIT
By evening I had put together the best combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit ever.
It had:
1 bag of dog biscuits
1 extra-large fishing net
1 bat poo sack
1 long piece of rope
1 flashlight
1 roll of string (in case I had to go down any secret passages)
1 pencil and 1 piece of paper (in case I got trapped and had to write an SOS note)
1 pair of werewolf eyeglasses
I am sure that there are lots of combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kits around, but the werewolf eyeglasses were what set the Spookie Trapping Kit above the rest. I made them from an old pair of Aunt Tabby’s glasses that I had found in the back of an armchair and some hologram eyes from one of my last year’s birthday cards. The birthday card had what was meant to be a cute little bunny on it, with cute little bunny eyes. But every time you looked at the bunny, its hologram eyes stared back and you got the creepy feeling that the bunny was watching you and waiting to pounce, because they were not cute bunny eyes at all—they were werewolf eyes. Someone in the card factory had stuck the wrong eyes on. I expect that somewhere there was a kid looking at a Halloween card that had a werewolf with cute bunny eyes thinking, Well, that’s not at all scary; in fact I wouldn’t mind one of those as a pet.
I saved the card and when I was getting the Trapping Kit together I had the really great idea of making the glasses. So I stuck the werewolf-bunny hologram eyes on the glasses and put them on. I couldn’t see much because Aunt Tabby’s glasses make everything blurry anyway and the eyes kind of blanked everything else out, but I figured that in the dark I could easily be mistaken for a werewolf. And that might come in handy on a werewolf vampire hunt, particularly as I figured there was a good chance that Vampire Max would be scared of werewolves.
Now I began to make plans. I was in the basement corridor working out the best place to spring the trap, when Wanda and Max came around the corner. They were so busy talking—and eating candy—that they didn’t notice me.
“Come, Wanda,” Max was saying,
“you can show me the bat turret. I love to see bats.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. The bat turret is Uncle Drac’s place, and the only people allowed in are me—of course—and Barry, who collects the bat poo. Horrible little vampires are most definitely not allowed.
Wanda trotted toward me and I stepped back into the doorway of the second-larder-on-the-left-just-past-the-boiler-room. She didn’t see me. Max was following her, and as I watched him he took another piece of candy and bit into it with his pointy teeth, just as if he was doing a practice bite before he bit Wanda. Wanda may not have been my best friend just then but I had to save her. So I jumped right out in front of them.
Wanda screamed. And then she saw it was me and she looked really annoyed. “Araminta, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“None of your business,” I said. I could have told her that I was saving her from being bitten by a vampire but I didn’t bother. I could tell that Wanda would not be grateful.
“Stop following us around,” said Wanda.
“I am not following you around,” I told her. “I have important business here.”
“You are following us. Everywhere we go you are there, lurking,” said Wanda, getting pink around the ears like she does when she is really fed up.
“Me, lurking?” I said, shocked. “It’s not me who lurks. It’s Vamp—it’s Max who lurks.”
Max didn’t say anything. He just took another big chunk of candy from his bag—a horrible blood-red piece this time—and shoved it into his mouth. I stared at his vampire teeth, wondering how come Wanda hadn’t noticed them. Sometimes I think Wanda needs glasses.
“Come on, Max,” said Wanda, taking Max’s little sticklike arm. “We are going.” And she stuck her nose in the air and stomped off back the way they came.
After that I decided that if Wanda wanted to get bitten by a vampire brat, then that was perfectly all right with me. The sooner the better, in fact. I carried on with my plans. I found a really great place to spring the werewolf trap, and then I took the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit up to our bedroom.