Trapped in Transylvania

  I made a face and rubbed my head. “So …” I asked, “where do you think Lucy has gone?”

  The wind tore at Mina’s hair as she scanned the scenery. “She has been sleepwalking recently so I thought she was doing it again. I heard a sound in the night, and sat up in bed, only to find Lucy’s bed empty. I ran downstairs. She was not in the house—”

  Kkkk! The sky lit up with a jagged flash of light.

  “Oh, my!” Mina shouted. “Look there! It’s her!”

  The storm was hurling strong wind through the harbor and blowing the fog to shreds. We could just see a figure in white sitting on a bench in the nearby graveyard.

  “It is Lucy,” cried Mina again. “Oh, I have a horrible sense of fear upon me. Let us hurry to her!”

  The moment we started for her, a dark shadow surged up behind Lucy’s bench. It seemed to grow larger with every leap we took.

  Frankie gasped. “Is that the dog? The black dog from the ship?”

  “Except it’s not a ‘dog’ anymore,” I said, making air quotes with my fingers as I ran. “It’s … changing.…”

  In seconds the dog seemed to grow into the shape of a man. In one swift move, it bent over Lucy.

  “Oh, my gosh,” I said. “It’s … it’s …”

  “What is it?” cried Mina, running as fast as she could in her old costume.

  “Well, it ain’t Scooby-Doo!” Frankie snapped. “Hey, you, Bitey Boy! Get away from her!”

  The dark thing raised its head. Its pasty white face and red gleaming eyes told us it could only be the terrible fiend himself—Count Dracula.

  I saw a flash of black cape in the fog and then a whooshing sound as he rushed away into the shadows of the graveyard. When we got to her, Lucy was alone.

  She was young, like Mina, and pretty, so I could understand why so many guys wanted to marry her. But right now she was as white as paper and just about as thin. She clung to the bench as if she were half dead.

  “Lucy, my dear, what happened?” said Mina, kneeling next to her. “Who was that person?”

  Lucy coughed slightly as Mina pulled a shawl around her and fastened it with a pin at her throat.

  “No one was here,” said Lucy.

  But even with the shawl pulled tight,. I saw two small puncture holes on Lucy’s throat.

  I shot a glance at Frankie. We both nodded. We knew.

  “No one was here, huh?” I said. “Then how do you explain those two red marks on your neck?”

  “They’re pimples?” said Lucy.

  “I scratched her when I pinned the shawl?” said Mina.

  “I tried to put on lipstick but I missed?”

  “She fell on a fork?”

  Frankie gave me a look. “Dude, here we go again!”

  Chapter 12

  With the storm easing up, we all scooted off to Mina’s house where she said her friend Dr. Sewer was visiting.

  “Dr. Sewer?” I blinked. “They need doctors for that?”

  “Not sewer, you dummy,” Frankie said, pointing to page one hundred and three in the book. “Seward, with a D. He’s one of Lucy’s three men friends. But she didn’t pick him to marry her.”

  “I think I need a scorecard,” I mumbled.

  “What you need,” said Frankie, “is to do some reading. It’s not impossible, you know. In fact, here. Take the book. My brain is tired. You read for a while.”

  “Harsh,” I grumbled, but I took the chubby book from her anyway as we entered Mina’s house. It was a nice place: small, but with cute fluffy gardens all around it.

  “Dr. Seward is here at the request of Arthur Holmwood, Lucy’s fiancé,” Mina said as we helped Lucy in.

  “Ah, so Holmwood’s the one she chose,” I said.

  When we barged in the front door, a man rushed to help us. He was dressed in a plain dark suit.

  “Dr. Seward,” said Mina. “Lucy was sleepwalking again. We found her in the cemetery.”

  “Ah, poor Lucy,” said the doctor. We all helped her upstairs to her room. Then Frankie and I stayed in the hall as Mina and Dr. Seward got Lucy set up in bed.

  A few minutes later, they came back out.

  “She is resting now,” Mina said to us. “Thank you.”

  Dr. Seward shook our hands. “Both of you, thanks for helping. When Lucy’s fiancé Arthur asked me to check on her, I didn’t dream she could be in such a state.”

  “State?” I said. “England is a country, right?”

  Seward gave me a look, then turned to Mina and smiled. “My dear, the most wonderful letter has come.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Not …”

  “Yes! Jonathan is alive and safe,” Dr. Seward said.

  “All right!” I said. “He made it past the vamp babes.”

  Mina jumped for joy. “My Jonathan! Where is he?”

  “In Budapest, in Europe,” said the doctor. “He is in a hospital. But don’t worry, we are assured he is all right. He fled Transylvania and arrived in Budapest just days ago. I’ve arranged for you to take the next boat to him.”

  “I will meet him right away!” she said, running to her room to pack.

  While she was gone, Dr. Seward wrote out a telegram. When Mina appeared carrying a suitcase, he handed the telegram to her. “Please send this when you get to town,” he said. “And bon voyage!”

  “Oh, to see Jonathan again!” Mina cried happily. She raced out of the house and sped toward town singing.

  I wondered if we would meet her character again, and I found myself sort of wanting to read ahead, but Dr. Seward called us both into Lucy’s room.

  She was asleep, breathing quietly. Seward bent over her, holding a candle near her throat. He examined the two puncture holes closely.

  “She is so pale and thin,” he said. “Her pulse is weak. She seems to have lost a fair amount of blood. And what do you make of those strange marks on her throat?”

  “Those strange puncture marks?” I said. “Well, it’s so obvious. They came from—”

  “Devin!” said Frankie, making big eyes at me and pointing to the book in my hand.

  I understood. “Ah, yes, the clueless approach.”

  I looked at the ceiling. I stroked my chin and muttered for a while. Then I paced a little. Finally, I said, “Well, doctor, what do you make of the marks on her throat?”

  “I have no idea. What do you make of them?”

  “Well, what do you make of them?”

  “What do you make of them?”

  “What do you make of them?”

  Seward threw up his hands. “This is going nowhere! Luckily, that telegram I asked Mina to send was to my old friend and teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing is a great scientist from Amsterdam who knows more about strange diseases than anyone else I know. Perhaps he can tell us what is happening to Lucy. I only hope he arrives soon, before she gets worse.”

  He sat down next to Lucy’s bed and waited.

  We all waited.

  Tick-tock, went the clock. We sat for a while. We sat a little more. I stared around. Frankie stared around. Then we both stared around.

  “Maybe you should read,” Frankie whispered to me. “You know, to push things along.”

  I grumbled, but opened the book. I looked at some words. Then I read a sentence. I got to the end of it and read the next one. Then the next one.

  The problem was, we had to wait for Dr. Seward’s telegram to go all the way from Whitby, England, to Amsterdam, Holland. That could take days. Luckily, authors can make time pass as quickly as they want. About a page later, it happened. I looked up from the book.

  “It’s talking about a doorbell—”

  Ding-dong! The doorbell rang.

  I blinked. “Wow, reading works!”

  Dr. Seward jumped up and we followed him downstairs. “That will be my old friend Professor Van Helsing now—”

  Blam! The door flew open. In barged a chubby little man with large eyes, big bushy hair flying in every direction, a frizzy
beard, a long mustache, and a cane.

  “Hello, Professor Van Helsing!” said Dr. Seward. “I’m so glad you could come!”

  “Ya, is good you are glad!” the chubby man snapped.

  “Yes, well, Professor,” said Dr. Seward. “We have a patient here. Lucy is her name. She has a strange ailment. She seems to have lost a lot of blood. She is weak and pale. She was seen with a mysterious dark figure. And she has two small puncture marks on her neck.”

  I was waiting for Van Helsing to start with the clueless chin-stroking business, and the whole what-do-you-make-of-the-marks thing, but he surprised me.

  “Ach!” he blurted out in his heavy Dutch accent. “Lucy has attacked by a vampire been! It so clear is. We decide what first to do, yes? Yes! First—flowers I put in her room some.”

  The guy was really into mangling the language, but he seemed to know his stuff. As if by magic, he managed to pull a huge wad of flowers from his coat.

  “Cool!” I said. “She’ll like those—”

  “They are not for liking!” Van Helsing exploded in my face. “They are for not dying!”

  Without another word, Van Helsing clomped up the stairs and burst into Lucy’s room.

  She was propped up in bed, pillows stacked behind her. Her face was even paler and grayer than before. Her lips were thin. Her eyes drooped. Her hair was a mess. She looked even worse than the first time we’d seen her, which was pretty bad. Sorry to say, she didn’t look much like a babe anymore.

  “I am afraid,” said Lucy, clutching at her throat.

  “Flowers are for fearing not,” Van Helsing said, crunching his words again. “There is much goodness to you in these so common flowers. See, I place in your room myself them. I make a wreath to wear you.”

  He twisted a ring of flowers into a short garland then placed it around her neck. “Ya, is good.”

  Lucy coughed lightly. “Professor, the smell—”

  “Hush!” Van Helsing said. “We all obey my things.”

  Next the professor closed the windows and latched them shut. Taking more flowers from his coat, he rubbed them all over the window sashes, then the doors, and around the fireplace.

  “This is quite puzzling,” Dr. Seward said.

  “Your head is a puzzle!” snorted Van Helsing, his mustache flapping as a puff of air shot from his nostrils. “You must believe my flowers! Take care that you not disturb nothing to nothing. Open the windows not.”

  The professor twirled on his heels and clomped back to the hall, motioning us to follow. “Lucy—rest!”

  When her door was closed, Van Helsing said, “I must to back my hotel go now. Things are there needful for the Lucy.” Then he paused, looked to both sides, and leaned close. Tapping a finger on the side of his nose he said, “You must all on your watchness put.”

  I didn’t get what he meant. “Excuse me?”

  “Do not let your sight pass from her.”

  “What?”

  “The Lucy is dangerous to be unlooked at.”

  “Huh?”

  “Things not Lucy should be blind of you!”

  “Say that again?”

  “Keep in your eyeballs—her!”

  “Huh?”

  “Be Lucy the only sight of your vision!”

  We all stood staring at him and his floppy mustache.

  Finally Frankie jumped. “Are you saying we should watch Lucy, keep an eye on her, and don’t let her out of our sight?”

  “Ya! What I said!”

  With that, Van Helsing thumped across the floor, down the stairs, and straight out of the house.

  “Upgiddy!” we heard him yell, and his horse took off.

  Dr. Seward frowned. “Now we wait to see what tonight shall bring.”

  With those dark words, I stuck my finger in the book and rubbed my tired eyes. The chapter had ended.

  Chapter 13

  The dark and stormy evening turned into a stormy dark night.

  Lightning kept flashing outside the windows. Thunder boomed like armies clashing in the attic. And the smell from those flowers was making everyone sick.

  Still, we set up outside Lucy’s room and kept up the watch. Also the reading. After resting my eyes, I started again. I must have read about twenty pages altogether, some kind of record for me.

  When my brain grew sleepy, Frankie picked up where I left off, reading in the flickering candlelight which, let me tell you, is not the greatest light to read by.

  In those pages we found out that Lucy’s mother, Mrs. Westenra, was freaking out about her and was expected to arrive any time. Also, Dr. Seward was writing about Lucy to some of the other characters: Arthur Holmwood, the guy Lucy was engaged to, and Arthur’s American buddy, a dude named Quincey Morris, the third and final person who had wanted to marry her.

  Besides getting a whole bunch of new names to keep track of, it wasn’t the best part of the book, either, since it was all about how Lucy felt good, then bad, then good, then bad.

  Finally we both started to yawn.

  Of course, yawn. It had been a really long time since we had hopped on Harker’s carriage in period two. I had no idea what time it was. Or even whether it was the same day we had left the library.

  For some reason, it almost didn’t matter. We were in this story now. What was going on back home—wherever that was—didn’t seem as important or probably as interesting as what was happening right here and now in Whitby.

  Besides, I was fairly sure we would find the zapper gates when we needed to get home. It would probably be at the end of the story that we would find them.

  I hoped we would find them. We had better find them!

  Just then I heard a strange rumbling sound and shot straight up in my chair. “Frankie, did you hear that?”

  She opened one eye. “It was coming from the direction of your stomach.”

  I looked down. The rumbling happened again. “It is coming from the direction of my stomach. And judging by how thick the rest of the book still is, I’m guessing there’s a lot yet to happen. So I’ll need my strength to get through it. I’m going munchie hunting.”

  “If you find food, blow a trumpet,” she said.

  “In the meantime, be Lucy your only eyeballs!”

  While Frankie took a quick peek at Lucy, I tiptoed around the house searching for something to nosh. To my surprise I found another whole character downstairs.

  She was in the kitchen at the back, a nice, plump lady in a long dress, hat, and coat. She was pacing back and forth, muttering to herself. Thinking she was waiting for someone to bring her into the action, I decided to help her get some lines to say.

  “Hey, lady, I’m Devin,” I said, giving her a little wave. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Mrs. Westenra, Lucy’s mother,” she said.

  “Wow, her mom. Yeah, we read about you,” I said.

  “I’ve just arrived. It was so quiet, I didn’t want to disturb my Lucy, but how is she feeling, the poor dear?”

  I felt bad. Her mom had to know the truth, but it was really hard to say. “Lucy’s … um … so-so.”

  “So-so what?”

  “So-so not so good. But on the plus side, Professor Abraham Van Helsing’s on the case. He’s got this really big accent so he sounds very smart.”

  She seemed to take some comfort from that and sat down at the table. “I wish I could help her,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll make her something to eat—”

  Rrrr. It was like my stomach actually heard that word.

  “Um … did you say eat? As in eat food?”

  “Why, young sir—you’re hungry!” she said, springing up and tying on an apron covered in a whole menu of food stains. “Oh, I can whip up something for you, poor darling. What would you like?”

  I happily named all my favorites, but she had never heard of peanut butter, corn chips, waffles, pizza, or cheese in a can, so I went for something simple. “Spaghetti?”

  Mrs. Westenra beamed. “I know that one! Now, all I
have to do is find some pasta, tomatoes, cheese, onions, peppers, garlic …”

  Already my mouth started to water.

  I went back to Frankie to tell her about Lucy’s mom and the coming feast when we heard a bunch of noise from outside. Taking one last look to see that Lucy was okay, we hurried downstairs to look. We crept past Dr. Seward who was asleep in a chair and went out the front door to the path.

  Peering through the storm at the harbor below, we saw several long wagons and a group of men unloading something from the abandoned ship. With all the scraping and dragging, they were making quite a racket.

  We watched for a while before we saw what they were unloading. When we did see, we were stunned.

  “The boxes!” I gasped. “I almost forgot about them. They’re taking the boxes away! Ooh, that’s probably not so good. Where are they taking them?”

  Frankie opened the book. “The words are too fuzzy to read. But I bet we’ll find out before too long. And I bet wherever they go, we’ll be following. I smell another change of setting coming up.”

  “And I smell tomato sauce!” I said, turning back to the house. “Let’s go stuff ourselves until we’re sick!”

  “Or just before!” Frankie added.

  The feast was delicious. Frankie and I gobbled two whole platters of the stringy stuff, then asked Mrs. Westenra for seconds, thirds, and fourths.

  “Book food is good,” I said as I slurped down the last strand of spaghetti. “I feel not so empty now.”

  “It’s the garlic that makes the difference,” the cook said. “It spices up the sauce something wonderful. No need to have Lucy’s room so stuffy with all that garlic!”

  “Garlic?” said Frankie. She opened the book. “But—”

  Suddenly—wham!—the front door burst open.

  “Patient is how?” boomed a voice. A moment later, Van Helsing stormed into the kitchen to find us up to our ears in spaghetti sauce.

  “Patient Lucy!” he repeated. “How is?”

  Mrs. Westenra made a little bow. “Well, if she’s better, I’m the one who’s done it!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dr. Seward, coming into the kitchen rubbing his eyes. “I say, what’s going on?”

  Lucy’s mother smiled. “I was looking for some ingredients for sauce for the young master—”