Frankie grinned. “See, it works!”
Just then, the driver dumped Harker’s luggage off the top of the carriage and drove away from the castle as if he were on fire.
“Well, he gets no tip,” said Frankie.
“Strange traveling companions, aren’t they?” said Harker. “Still, I can’t wait to meet this Dracula fellow!”
I gave him a look, but he just smiled and adjusted his curly hair and his tie and knocked politely on the big scary wooden door. “Oh, Count Dracula! Harker, here!”
Tap, tap, tap. No answer.
The snow was coming down pretty heavily now, so we all huddled close on the doorstep.
Harker whistled a bit, then tapped again. “Count?”
No answer still.
“Hey, castle!” Frankie yelled, pounding on the door. “Open up! Period two is gonna end soon!”
Finally, we heard steps approaching the door from the inside. Then there came the sound of rattling chains and thick burglar bolts being thrown aside. After that, a key turned in the lock with a loud scraping noise. Then another bolt was thrown aside.
“Open it, already!” I said. “We’re freezing out here!”
Errrch! The huge door cracked open.
But as cold as we were, it was nothing to the chill we felt when we saw who had opened the big wooden door.
Chapter 7
Standing in the doorway was a tall old man.
Right away, we knew it was him, the dude himself.
Count Dracula, King of the Vampires.
Also known as Mr. Fangy, Old Prongteeth, Dr. Puncture, Professor Neckman, and Old Man Thirsty.
He had sharp, pale features and eyes that glistened strangely in the snowy light.
His nose and chin were long and pointy. His hair was a weird combination of black and white and slicked back, but with three or four crooked parts in it.
He was dressed from head to foot in total black, including a long cape that billowed out behind him.
“He’s way into the black thing,” Frankie whispered.
“Until something darker comes along,” I added.
“I am Count Dracula,” the man said, his voice all echoey and distant as if he was talking in a garbage can.
I wished he were in a garbage can.
“I was not expecting … three … of you,” Dracula said, glaring at Frankie and me. As we entered, we spotted for the first time that his eyes had a reddish glow to them. His lips were very red, too.
Frankie nudged me. “His lips match his eyes. Very stylish. Unless … oh, wait. Red eyes are not good.”
Also not good were the very sharp, very white teeth he showed as we stepped in.
“He must use a tooth whitener,” I whispered.
“And a sharpener,” Frankie added.
Dracula took us through the entrance area to a large room. The first thing we saw was a fireplace as big as a garage. A fire was crackling in it, but it gave out no heat.
The room was ice cold.
“This must be the living tomb,” said Frankie. “Sorry, I mean living room.”
It was decorated like a tomb, too. The wall hangings were all torn. There were massive cobwebs drooping down from the ceiling. And there were hundreds of dust bunnies collecting in all the corners.
Dracula bowed to Harker. “Please follow me.”
He grabbed an unlit torch from the wall, lit it in the fireplace, and went up a huge winding staircase. At the top, he hung a left into a long dusty passage. After that passage was another, then another, and another. After three sets of stairs and four dark and winding passages, Dracula finally threw open three heavy doors.
“In these rooms,” he said, “you—and your friends—will be comfortable.”
“Splendid!” said Harker, as if everything were all normal. “Wonderful house, by the way! The woman I’m engaged to, Mina, would love what you’ve done with it.”
Harker seemed totally clueless.
When Dracula smiled and bowed to Harker, I saw him giving me and Frankie a look that said he was anything but clueless. He was bad, he was evil, and I think he knew we knew it, even if Harker didn’t.
I needed to see if that was true.
“Cozy rooms,” I said. “Except for the smell of … mmm … vampires?”
Dracula’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing. Then he opened a fourth door. Inside was a big table with a huge meal spread out on it. He stepped in and waved his hands over the table. “Food, after your long journey.”
Then, looking right at me, he said, “Have a … bite!”
I nearly choked. “Did you say … bite?”
Dracula stepped toward me. “Did you say … neck?”
I backed away. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.…”
Dracula turned to Harker. “Please eat. I will read the documents you have brought from London.”
“Certainly, my good Count!” Harker said, smiling broadly. He handed Dracula a thick envelope, then sat down at the table and dug into his meal.
Right. As if chomping on chicken is what you do with a vampire hovering next to you.
Dracula grinned a sly grin, showing those sharp teeth again. He slit open the envelope with a fingertip.
That’s when I noticed that his fingernails were cut in long, sharp points—uckkk! Plus, there was hair growing in the middle of his palms—double uckkk!
When he finished reading the papers, Dracula smiled. “The documents seem in order, Mr. Harker. Ah, I can’t wait to see England and live in my new house!”
“Carfax Abbey,” Harker said in his explaining voice. “It is big and old and a bit run-down, I’m afraid.”
“Not that Dracula would notice,” said Frankie.
“I am glad that Carfax is old,” Dracula replied. “I love the dark shadows of ancient places. I love the night and creatures of the night. The howling wolf. The flying bat. I love when the wind breathes coldly through the broken battlements—”
“That’s my favorite, too,” said Frankie.
“Ah, yes?” said Dracula. “Good. But now, if you’ll excuse me …” He stepped over to the door.
“It was a great pleasure meeting you,” said Harker.
“Thank you,” said Dracula. “I must go now.”
“That’s an even greater pleasure,” said Frankie.
Dracula growled under his breath, then stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind him.
“I can’t believe it,” I said when I was sure he was gone. “It’s actually him!”
Frankie nodded. “He’s not just a movie monster. It’s really him. The real Dracula. King of the vampires. Right here with us.”
“King of vampires, oh, tut, tut,” said Harker, leaning back in his chair and patting his stomach. “Our rooms are well lighted and warm, the roast chicken was tasty, and there are at least three kinds of cheese on this table! Vampire? Pish-posh! Dracula is very polite and educated. It may be a strange land, but it’s never too soon to say thank you for such hospitality—”
Suddenly, the door sprang open and Dracula leaned in. “I nearly forgot to say, you may go anywhere you wish in my castle, except where the doors are locked. If you wander there, you may find danger. You may find darkness. You may find unspeakable terror. In short, you take your life in your own hands! Sleep well!”
Dracula flashed a toothy grin at us, then closed the door sharply and was gone.
“Hospitality, huh?” I looked at Frankie. “Is it too soon to say … gulp?”
Chapter 8
Harker rose from the table, tossed down his napkin, and stroked his chin. “I admit Dracula is a bit quirky—”
“Quirky?” I said. “How could you not pick up those clues? The guy’s a vampire! Like the old dude in the carriage said: Those big sharp teeth are made for biting!”
Frankie agreed. “The hair alone ought to tell you the guy is not normal. He has four crooked parts going on!”
“And those fingernails!” I said. “And did you see the hairy
palms on the guy? It’s like—uck!”
Harker was nodding through this, then said, “But you must remember, we are travelers here. A man such as the Count is bound to seem unusual. It doesn’t mean he’s terrible ….”
“Cha!” said Frankie. “He’s worse than terrible! And don’t go calling him a man. First of all, I found out he’s hundreds of years old. Second, he’s fairly undead. Believe me, I’ve been reading and I think we need to leave this castle right now. If we stay, we may not be as alive as we are now.”
I nodded. “Translation: This guy is definitely going to put the bite on us. On our necks. With teeth!”
Harker smiled at us. “Don’t be so concerned. Speaking of necks, I’m going to my room. I need a shave. It’s been a long journey and I must clean up.”
I looked at the guy. He wasn’t getting it. Not at all.
“Shave. Right. Good. Uh-huh. But with a deadly vampire lurking, you really should be thinking about staying alive, not looking all neat.”
“But I’m all stubbly,” Harker said, running his fingers up and down his chin. “It’s good I brought my own shaving mirror. I don’t see one around here anywhere.”
“Because vampires don’t like mirrors!” Frankie said.
“Would you, if you looked like Dracula?” I asked.
She nodded. “It so explains the hair.”
Harker just kept stroking his chin. “Yes … yes … a nice close shave.” Then he went to his room and closed the door quietly, whistling a merry tune.
I blinked at Frankie. “The guy is clueless. A clue, he does not have. Of clues, he is out.”
“No clues anywhere near the guy.”
We mulled it over. “It’s the book,” I said finally. “Harker can’t know what’s going on before it goes on.”
“And I guess we can’t tell him,” said Frankie. “It’ll all be blah-blah-mumble-mumble to him. It doesn’t matter what we say.”
“Which is good for making jokes about Dracula,” I said, “but bad if we want people to believe us. So, what do we do now?”
“Well, I’m not sure of all the rules,” said Frankie, “but I was peeking in the book just now and I found out that there are rooms in the castle where we haven’t been yet. I figure if the author writes about them, somebody must see them. That means we should be able to go exploring. Maybe we can find a way out of the castle.”
I grinned at my friend. “That sounds pretty excellent.”
Carefully, I opened the door Dracula had closed on us and peered out to the hall. The gloom before us was lit by a couple of faintly flickering candles mounted near the ceiling halfway down the hall. Beyond the candles were the stairs leading down to the next level.
“Could it be any scarier?” I muttered.
Frankie grabbed a candle and held it close. “Let me see what the book says.”
“‘Gulp,’ probably,” I replied.
Together, we made our way to the stairs and climbed down step by creaking step. To make matters worse, the wolves had begun to howl outside again. I shivered.
“Frankie, did you get to the fun part of the book yet?”
“Harker is shaving,” she said.
I snickered. “Right. But I was thinking of the fun part where we go home and play sock ball—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, trembling as she read the book. “You remember that page I read in the coach? Harker was shaving and … and …”
I gasped. “And Dracula attacked him!”
Frankie pushed the book at me. “It’s right here. I’m too scared to read it. You read it. Hurry!”
Being careful not to rip the pages that we had fixed, I took the book and found the part Frankie had read to Harker earlier in the carriage.
“Got it,” I said. “Harker’s shaving and he cuts himself. ‘At that instant … I saw that the … had bled a little … and the blood was trickling over my chin. When the Count saw my face … his eyes blazed with fury … and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.’”
I stopped reading. “Frankie—his throat!”
“That’s right where his neck is!”
“Vampires bite necks!”
“And it’s happening now!”
“Hurry!”
We charged back up the staircase in a mad scramble to reach Harker’s room before anything bad happened. We ran as fast as we could. Maybe a little too fast.
The moment I took the final corner at full blast was exactly the same moment that Frankie decided to give her sprint one final burst of speed.
Wham! I crashed into her and fell forward.
The first thing I felt was the top of my head go slightly flat. It’s like those slow-motion replays of a bat hitting a baseball, and though you would never believe it, the bat actually flattens the ball a little bit when they connect.
Imagine my head as the ball and the door as the bat.
Wham! Crunch! Luckily the door couldn’t hold against the force of my speeding head.
It burst open with a bang. The door, I mean.
When we sailed into the room, it was all happening just as the book said. Dracula’s eyes were redder than ever and his lips were super plump. And he was lunging at Harker. But the worst part was that his white hair was darker than before. His cheeks were puffy and full. And there were drops of blood on his long, pointy chin. He looked half as old as when we first saw him.
“He’s been feeding!” Frankie exclaimed. “It talks about that in the book. He attacks poor innocent people and lives off them! And he’s getting younger!”
Harker had a very surprised look on his face, a blot of blood on his chin, and he was staggering backward to the window, saying, “Oh, my! My, my! Oh!”
Ignoring us, Dracula lurched at Harker, his eyes swollen like big red golf balls. His mouth was wide open and his sharp huge teeth were sticking out like a mouthful of new chalk all ready to bite.
“I am hungry!” Dracula said, licking his lips.
“But, Count,” said Harker, “I don’t understand????”
Frankie jumped to Harker. “Look at the mirror! It shows you and me and Devin—but no Dracula. See—Dracula is a vampire! That’s proof!”
Dracula exploded in anger. He pushed Frankie to the floor, then made a grab at me. His grip was icy cold and as strong as an animal’s. With a single move, he launched me at the wall. Then he turned to Harker again.
Suddenly, a flash of silver came from Harker’s throat. It was the holy medal the innkeeper had given him. Once Dracula saw it, he pulled back instantly, shielding his face from the glinting medal.
“Ahhhh!” he howled. At once, he flung open the heavy window and hurled himself through it. We rushed to the casement and popped our heads out. The drop was straight down a hundred feet to the courtyard.
But there was Dracula, clinging like a lizard to the wall below the window.
“You shall not leave my castle!” he hissed at us. “You are—all of you—my prisoners!”
Then, with a snarling laugh, Dracula began to crawl down the side of the castle, facedown, his cloak spreading out around him like a pair of giant wings.
Chapter 9
It was horrible to watch.
Dracula’s fingers actually dug into the spaces between the stones as he edged slowly down the castle wall.
Harker drew back into the room, set his jaw firmly, and shook his head. “This is the creature I am helping to get to London?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Now do you believe us?”
“We must escape,” said Harker, trying the door, but finding it suddenly locked. “There must be a way. There are doors, doors, doors, everywhere!”
“And all locked and bolted,” Frankie said, holding up the book. “It says so here. We are prisoners!”
“There’s got to be a way!” I said.
Frankie kept reading. “Wait a second. There is a way. But you’re not going to like it. I think we have to … follow him.”
“Follow him?” I said, bl
inking at the open window. “You mean … follow him … out the window?”
Frankie nodded, pushing the book right under my nose and pointing to a sentence. I read it. It was about climbing out onto a narrow ledge. I stepped to the window and peeked out to the awesome depths below.
“Oh, man!” I groaned. “We’re dead for sure!”
“It seems to be the only way,” said Frankie, her eyes still glued to the page.
I thought and thought and looked and looked and finally I realized she was right. There was no other way.
“Okay,” I said. “I mean, it’s only a book, right?”
Frankie gave me a look that said she wasn’t so sure.
One after another, all three of us climbed out the window and onto a narrow ledge of stone that ran around the castle. The stones were big and cut roughly, so it wasn’t too hard getting a grip on them. Slowly—very slowly—we edged out across the outer wall.
“Dracula’s room is … below … down there,” said Harker, huffing and puffing and nearly losing his grip. “Let’s hope … he hasn’t locked … his own … room.”
“Good thought,” I said.
It took us about two hours of slow climbing, but we finally made it to the casement of another window. His eyes crazed with fear, Harker yanked at it until it opened. We slid feet first through the window into a dark space. Harker was right. It was Dracula’s room.
There were spare capes everywhere and lots of dust.
“Uck!” said Frankie, gagging on the thick air. “I love that we’re not clinging to the side of a castle wall a hundred feet above the ground, but seriously, how can that vampire live with all this dust?”
“I think the clue is that he doesn’t live with it,” I said. “He’s undead, remember?”
“Thanks for the reminder,” she grumbled.
Harker spotted a heavy black door beside the ash-filled fireplace. “Let’s try this,” he said. Together we pulled it open and found a dark set of stairs circling down steeply into what I guessed was the castle cellar.
We listened closely for a while and heard nothing. Harker nodded to us. Taking the lead, he tiptoed down the stairs, and as we followed him, our noses were attacked by a heavy, thick odor.