Then she showed us how to tape ripped pages using a special kind of tape. The tape also had a funny smell.
“Now I’d like you two to try fixing a book. How about this one?” She handed us a thick book with a crusty brown cover. It had gold letters on the front.
“D … R … A …” Frankie let out a screech. “Dracula? That’s the book that sent us here! Oh, I’m having a heart attack. Call the ER!”
“Dracula is a good book,” the librarian said, “a classic book written in 1897 by an Irish author named Bram Stoker. As you can see, this copy has gotten lots of use over the years. Now, I’ll be back in forty minutes, just before the period is over. When I do, I hope to see you enjoying your work!”
She trundled off between the stacks. I heard the door squeak once, then shut.
“This is the pits,” I mumbled.
“I find myself in total agreement,” said Frankie. “But we’d better do what the library lady says. Or who knows what we’ll end up doing!”
I shuddered at the thought. Frankie was right.
Carefully, I opened Dracula. The book wasn’t in too bad shape. Mostly it had ripped pages.
Frankie tucked her stray hairs behind her ears and pulled out a piece of the smelly tape. I found the first torn page and applied the tape.
“Cool,” I said. “I repair old books.”
I flipped through to find the next torn page. Frankie taped the rip on that one. “Me, also,” she said.
Then we came to a picture.
“Whoa!” I said. “Classics illustrated!”
It was a drawing of a wagon, sort of like an old carriage. It was racing along a road between bunches of mountains and forests. Four horses attached to the front of the carriage were going all crazy and wild.
The scene was gloomy and shadowy and dark. Big clouds were tearing across the sky. It was spooky.
“What’s that printing at the bottom of the picture?” Frankie asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Probably just some words,” I said.
“What do they say?”
I turned to her. “You want me to read them?”
She gave me a look. “Duh.”
I read, “’The coach … swayed … like … a boat … tossed on a stormy sea.’
“Hey, I told you I wasn’t good at it.”
“Wow!” said Frankie. “It does look like that! Those words work pretty good. What else does it say?”
“No way,” I said, pushing the book in front of her. “I’ve read enough. You read.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said, shoving it back. “You do it.”
I pushed the book. “No, you!”
“No, you!”
“No way!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Oops …”
The book went sailing out of our hands, over the stacks, and down toward the back of the room.
It fell right between those old zapper gates.
Kkkk—boom! There was a sudden flash of light and a quick, loud, booming sound.
Then a cloud of smoke puffed up from nowhere and billowed through the room.
“I can’t see!” Frankie screamed.
Chapter 4
“Well, okay, I can see,” Frankie said. “But it’s all purple and blotchy in front of my eyes, like when someone snaps your picture and you end up with those spooky red eyes staring back out at everybody!”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “But even more important—what just happened?”
I crept over to the gates, waving the smoke as I went.
The gates were glowing with a weird blue color.
“Did you break the gates?” said Frankie, creeping over next to me. “You broke them! Oh, dude!”
“Me?” I said. “You threw the book—”
“No, you!” she said. “Anyway, where did it go?”
I couldn’t see the book. It wasn’t behind the gates.
It wasn’t on the floor. It wasn’t anywhere.
But something else was.
A crack had opened in the back wall of the workroom, right behind the zapper gates. It was from the crack that all the smoke was pouring.
“I never saw that before,” Frankie said. “Did you?”
I shook my head. “The big bang must have caused it, and that’s where the book went to. Go get it, okay?”
“I’m not crawling around inside a wall!” she snapped. “Things might be living in there.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “We both go. Ready … now!”
We slid in through the crack.
It was dark inside the wall, except for a bit of light coming from somewhere ahead of us. I stepped toward it and felt cool air rushing over us.
“I think we’re heading out of the building,” I said.
“That makes no sense. We should be hitting the janitor’s supply closet any time now. Hey, there’s the book.” Frankie picked up the copy of Dracula from the ground.
I stopped. It was still smoky around me, but I realized that the ground was rough beneath my feet.
“You found the book,” I said. “But where are we?”
Frankie peered ahead, squinting. I did, too.
“Whoaaaa …”
We were on a road. A dirt road. And all around us were forests and steep hills.
Plus it was dark, as if it were the end of the day.
“This is all wrong,” said Frankie. “If we’re outside, we should be able to see the parking lot. Besides, it’s a sunny day. But I see no cars and no sun.”
“We’d better get back to the workroom before somebody says we broke the library,” I said.
But when we turned around, the bright blue light from the zapper gates was nowhere, and the crack in the wall was gone. In their place were just more woods and road stretching into the distance.
“This is so not good,” I mumbled.
“It’s so not possible, either!” said Frankie. “Unless … Devin! What if we’re dead! What if the zapper gates blew us up big time and we’re dead? And this is, you know, heaven!”
“Then where are the tables of food and the big TVs?”
Frankie thought about that. “Okay, so it’s not heaven. But it does look sort of familiar.”
Then it hit me. “Of course it looks familiar! It’s just like … like … like … whoa!”
I grabbed the book from her and flipped it open. “It’s—this!” I showed her the picture of the dirt road with mountains on both sides and forests all around. It was creepy and gloomy and shadowy and dark. Big black clouds were racing across the sky.
I looked up.
Big black clouds were racing across the sky.
“Whoa and double whoa!” said Frankie. “The only thing different is that there’s a carriage in the picture—”
That’s when we heard hooves pounding on the road.
We whirled around, and there it was—a carriage with four wild horses tearing down the road right at us. The wheels were squeaking and squealing. The carriage was bouncing. Exactly like in the picture.
“Just like a boat on a stormy sea!” Frankie gasped. “Devin, you know what this means? We’re—”
“I know!” I said. “We’re not in school anymore!”
“No, it means we’re—”
“In big trouble!”
“No, we’re—”
“Probably going to die!”
“WILL YOU LET ME FINISH!” Frankie yelled. “It means—we’re in the book!”
She grabbed the book from me and shook it in my face. “We’re in … DRACULA!”
Chapter 5
We were just about to dive into the bushes when—errrrch!—the carriage driver pulled on the reins and the horses screeched to a nasty stop.
A moment later, the carriage door swung open.
Nobody came out.
Nobody said, “Hi!”
Nobody said, “Get back to the library!”
Nothing.
It was just the carriage door swin
ging on its hinges and the horses snorting noisily.
I looked at Frankie. “Okay, pal. Options?”
“I don’t see any,” she said. “I mean, look around.”
I did. Dark night. Dark sky. Dark clouds. Dark woods. Not a Palmdale Middle School in sight.
“You’ve got a point,” I said.
We hopped in the carriage.
As soon as we did, the driver cracked his whip and the carriage jerked away, sending us crashing onto the seat next to a man dressed in a suit. He looked a little younger than my dad, had curly brown hair, and seemed more or less fairly normal.
On the seat across from us were two extremely old people who I think were women. Their faces were all pruney with wrinkles and they appeared to be wearing everything they owned.
“The layered look must be big here,” I whispered to Frankie. “Wherever here is.”
Between the two old ladies sat an even more ancient old guy with white hair and a long frizzy beard that spread halfway out to his shoulders.
All three old folks stared at us.
“Hey, people,” I said, trying to be upbeat. “I’m Devin. This is my friend Frankie. From Palmdale Middle?”
While the three old people just stared, the young man turned to us, inhaled a huge breath, and began to speak.
“My name is Jonathan Harker; I am a lawyer from London, England, and I’m traveling here in Europe on business. I am taking this coach into the mountains to meet with a nobleman who lives in a castle in Transylvania. He has just bought a large house in London and I’m bringing the ownership papers here for him to sign. Then I’m returning to London, where I am engaged to a wonderful woman named Mina. She will be my wife as soon as I return. I’m anxious to return because I’ve never been away from her or from England and this country seems quite strange to me. The people sitting across from us do not speak our language very well and are highly superstitious about something or other.”
I blinked. “Uh-huh …”
Frankie looked up from the big fat chubby book and grabbed my arm. “Dev! Everything he said is right here. In the book! It’s like he just gave us a summary of what happened so far in the story! Is that cool or what?”
“Cool … and handy!” I said. “Hey, wait. Frankie, are you actually, you know … reading?”
She gasped quietly, her eyes going big. “I guess so.”
“Better you than me!” I said with a laugh. Then I turned back to Harker. “Thanks for all that useful info, sir. Including that bit about the setting. But why don’t you keep going with the story so we can get back to school before period two ends and Mrs. Figglehopper gets all mad.”
His face made a confused look. “What story?”
“The one in this book,” I said, tapping Frankie’s book. “We were supposed to be fixing the book, but then Frankie grabbed it, then I grabbed it, and then Frankie did this twisty thing with her fingers, then the zapper gates went all kkkk! and there was a crack in the wall and we went into it and then there’s suddenly this road and the carriage with the door swinging open and we climbed in and here we are!”
“Wicked summary!” said Frankie, slapping me five.
“What … ish … book … called?” said one woman, eyeing the book as if it were something to be afraid of.
“Dracula, of course,” Frankie said, smiling. “It’s—”
“Akkkk!” the old people shrieked. “Akkk! AKKKK!”
They pulled away as if we had just burped garlic or something. Then they pointed their bony fingers at us and muttered words over and over in a weird language.
“Is it something I said?” Frankie asked.
Jonathan Harker turned to us. “They are talking among themselves about the legends in these parts of Transylvania. Legends of evil spirits and creatures that prey on poor travelers. Why, the innkeeper at my last stop even put a holy medal around my neck, ‘to ward off the evil that lurks,’ she said. But I am a lawyer. I come from London. It’s 1897—nearly the twentieth century!—and I’m afraid legends seem rather silly to me. I don’t believe a word of them.”
“Not legends!” said one of the old women. “It is all true! At midnight tonight, the evil things in the world will come out. The dark castle you are going to is the very center of evil! Count Dracula is evil!”
“Bad evil!” said the other woman. “Very bad evil!”
“Dracula isss a … vampire!” the old guy hissed.
Harker forced a laugh. “What! Dracula, a vampire?”
“That’s somebody who drinks blood,” said Frankie. “Believe me, we did an awesome report on the guy.”
“But that’s just silly!” Harker insisted. “Count Dracula is a very educated man. I am delivering legal documents to him. I have the documents right here.”
He tapped his travel bag.
“Except that I think the old folks are right,” Frankie said, flipping ahead in the book a few pages. “Dracula is a vampire. The book probably even says so. Let me see if I can find a place. Okay, here. It’s actually written as if it’s your diary. You’re in your room at his castle and you’re shaving and you cut yourself and … yeah! Listen to this! ‘When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat—’ Wait a second. The words are getting all blurry. I can’t read it. Hey—”
Suddenly the carriage began shaking wildly from side to side. The air crackled with electricity. Frankie and I were thrown hard to the floor. Everyone started screaming. The horses reared and took off like rockets.
It felt like the whole scene was cracking open right in front of us. A jagged rip opened in the air above us and got wider and deeper. Soon it would be over us.
Frankie clutched my arm. “Help!” she cried.
“Double help!” I yelled.
But our cries were drowned by the horrible sound of the ripping air and the wild screams of the driver—
“We’re going to crash!”
Chapter 6
I slammed the book shut.
Suddenly, everything was normal again. We were all back in our seats, riding along as if nothing happened.
Harker was still tapping his travel bag and saying, “… I have the documents right here.”
My eyes bugged out. So did Frankie’s.
“Time out!” I cried. “Emergency huddle!”
Frankie and I huddled.
“Awesome instant replay!” she whispered.
“Holy crow!” I gasped. “You know what?”
“Our book report shouldn’t have been so lame?”
“No,” I said. “Well, yeah. But no, what I mean is, I figured something out. Somehow that book of yours is controlling what happens! And the people around us—”
“You mean the characters?”
“Whoa! Yes! The characters! Good one. Anyway, they can’t learn something before they’re supposed to find out in the book. I think maybe we’re not allowed to just jump ahead in the story.”
“No page jumping, huh?”
“No,” I said. “Something bad happens. You said the words get all blurry. And the next thing you know, the whole world starts to crack apart and get all brutal.”
Frankie made a face. “That was fairly ugly. So, it’s like, if you flip ahead, it ruins the story or something. But are you saying that the only way out of this story is to read every word all the way to the end of the book?”
I nodded sadly. “I think so. Forgetting for a second that all of this is fairly impossible.”
“The most impossible thing ever!” she said. “So if we can’t go home yet—which, by the way, is going to make us way late for lunch—I guess we’d better do some serious reading.”
“Which sounds so bad, I think you’d better start.”
“Thanks a lot,” Frankie snarled under her breath. “Something tells me this book isn’t the biggest barrel of laughs in the world.”
“Then we’ll just have to add our own laughs,” I said. “Otherwise it’ll take forever and be fairly dead
ly.”
“Death is all around us!” the old man blurted out.
I glared at the guy. “Way to lighten the mood, dude.”
As we traveled steadily up into the mountains, Frankie opened the book. Right away her forehead wrinkled and she began moving her lips silently.
Soon snow began to fall. It whirled around us in thick swirls. The road ascended steeply into the mountains, but still the driver whipped his horses to go faster.
Then we heard strange howling coming from all around us. It sounded as if every animal in the neighborhood was wailing at the same time.
“What’s that?” I asked. “The Twilight Bark?”
“Wolves!” the driver called down as if it was an everyday thing. “They are hungry for … people.”
Frankie turned to me, wrinkling her nose. “It’s going to be a full-time job making it through this story.”
Suddenly Harker bounced up in his seat.
“I see it!” he said. “The castle!”
The coach slowed, then turned up a narrow curvy road. Soon we entered the walled courtyard of an enormous ancient castle.
“Dracula’s lair of evil!” the driver yelled down.
“Everybody out who wants to visit vampires!” one of the old ladies said, giving Harker a queer look.
Then the old mustache guy stared at Frankie and me. “You two and your book, leave us now!”
“Have a happy,” I said as they kicked the carriage door open. “Not!”
The courtyard was gloomy and large and black. We stepped out onto rough black stones in front of a giant black door that was old and studded with huge black nails. Above it, tall black windows glared down at us like blind black eyes.
“Check it out, everything is black,” said Frankie.
“I’m with you,” I said. “Mr. Wexler probably has a word for the way they use colors in a book.”
Frankie nodded. “I bet the color thing is a clue. Like now. When everything is colored black, it probably means like nighttime and darkness and fear and scariness and terror and stuff.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel right now,” I said.