“Eight?” said Harker, frowning. “Eight what?”
“It was eight,” I said. “No, wait. Five. It was ten boxes plus five. Well, minus the one finger I used to point and count. So four plus ten.”
Frankie grumbled. “You’re saying there are fourteen boxes here?”
“Except that I needed a finger to scratch, so you can’t count that. But then I used my kneecaps to count back up again.”
“So … thirteen plus two. Fifteen? Fifteen boxes?”
“But then I remember scratching one kneecap.”
Frankie’s eyes blazed. “Devin!”
“Plus I picked my nose, so you can’t count that. But then both nostrils added another two—”
“DEVIN!”
I looked at her. She was mad. My fingers were all twisted up and one was in my nose. “Twenty-nine boxes sounds just about right,” I said.
When we told the others, Van Helsing announced that we needed to find Dracula’s other houses immediately to locate the other twenty-one boxes. It was like he was the boss or something. But we did what he said. It was because of his accent, I think. He was just so good at it.
So when Van Helsing, Seward, and Quincey Morris left Carfax and went to east London, Godalming, Harker, Frankie, and I went to central London. We traipsed around the foggy old city in the middle of the night waking people up and asking if they saw boxes of dirt. Some of them actually had. Lord Godalming even did his “I am a powerful and fancy person” speech to a bunch of folks and got them to help us.
It was nearly dawn when we all met outside Carfax Abbey once more.
As we headed back to Seward’s house, the professor tugged on his mustache and asked, “Well, and how smart are we now?”
“Six boxes each were shipped to two houses in East London,” said Morris.
“Is twelve!” said Van Helsing. “And the remaining nine?”
“Delivered to a black ruin of a house in central London in Piccadilly,” said Harker.
Frankie laughed when she heard the word. “Piccadilly. That’s such a funny name—”
“Is not funny!” snarled Van Helsing, stomping his foot. “If I am right, this Pillydilly house is the key to Dracula. It is his hindquarters!”
“Headquarters,” said Dr. Seward softly. “Headquarters.”
“Ya—what I said! And now we must go there—”
Suddenly, a loud bloodcurdling scream tore the air.
Harker froze where he stood. “That sounded like a woman’s scream. And from very nearby.”
“Holy cow!” said Frankie, nearly jumping out of her skin. “I knew there was something wrong, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”
“Are we talking about nose picking again?” I said.
“No!” said Frankie. “Mina kept saying she felt perfect, right? But she isn’t perfect. She’s in trouble!”
“What’s that you’re saying?” said Harker, his eyes ablaze. “Mina? My Mina? In trouble?”
Morris waved his arms around. “But, man alive, the lady said she was perfect!”
“Frankie’s right!” I said, finally getting it. “Mina was saying she was perfect way too many times. It was right after the bat came in and we were too wrapped up in the story and the boxes and our own thoughts to notice what was happening. The bat bit her. In fact—”
Another scream sounded.
“Mina!” Harker shot out of there like a rocket.
“Follow now him we must!” Van Helsing said. “His Mina is in harm!”
We ran as fast as we could back across the lawn.
The first thing we noticed at Dr. Seward’s house was lots of broken glass on the front walk.
Then we heard Mina scream a third time.
Then came an awful hissing noise from Mina’s room!
Chapter 16
When we crashed into Mina’s room, what we saw made our hair stand on end and our hearts stand still.
Harker had arrived only seconds earlier but was already lying in a heap on the floor.
Mina knelt near the edge of the bed. By her side stood a tall, thin man, dressed entirely in black. His face was turned from us, but we all knew who it was.
“Dracula!” I shouted. “You creep-head!”
He turned at once. He was lots younger! He looked like a young man. His hair was black. His skin was no longer wrinkled and craggy.
When he saw us, his eyes flamed red and his sharp white teeth dripped red, too.
“Count Dracula, you fiend!” said Seward.
“That’s our Mina you’re biting!” cried Godalming.
Dracula threw Mina roughly to the floor. “You fools! You idiots in your English suits with all the buttons—you cannot stop me!”
“But try we will!” came a cry from the door. Van Helsing finally burst in after huffing up the stairs. He advanced toward the vampire with a wooden stake.
“Ha!” Dracula laughed. “You are too late. I have shared my blood with your precious Mina. She will be my companion, my helper, my bride—”
“Eeeww!” said Frankie.
“She will help me defeat you,” Dracula said. “When I call her, she will come. I can speak to her mind across the miles. We are … the same. But enough talk—”
Instantly he sprang at us. At the same time, Van Helsing whipped something out of his pocket and held it up.
Dracula screeched to a stop, hissing loudly. Van Helsing was holding a silver holy medal in his hand.
“Back, you dark creature!” the professor intoned.
Further and further back the vampire cowered, shielding his face as he had done back at his own castle.
Suddenly, the moonlight failed, and a big black cloud sailed across the sky, plunging the room into darkness. Everybody yelled. Frankie and I jumped for Dracula, but thudded on the bare floor instead. When finally Quincey Morris lit a match, we saw that Dracula had vanished, leaving nothing behind but a wisp of bad-smelling fog escaping under the door.
A moment later, a large bat shrieked and squealed from outside as it flapped across the yard and high over the trees into the paling night.
“It is him!” Van Helsing shouted.
As he did, Mina let out a scream so wild and ear-piercing that if the window hadn’t been broken already, it would have shattered right then. We all rushed to her.
Her face was as pale as a sheet, and the only color on her was red from the drops of blood on her neck. Her eyes were consumed with terror. “He bit me,” she said. “I felt my strength fading away. Then he spoke.…”
“What said him?” asked the professor.
“He told me that I would be special. He said that our minds are joined together. When he called me, no matter where he was, I would find him and join him. I would help him in his terrible work!”
Harker shook his head. “And we let the horrible creature escape!”
“Ah,” said Van Helsing, tapping his forehead. “But I think I know where he goes. To his final where!”
“And just where is his where?” Godalming asked.
“Pillydilly, that’s who!” replied the professor, stomping his foot. “We go. We stop the fiend. We do it now!”
Leaving Mina resting calmly and safely at Dr. Seward’s house, and after Van Helsing had sterilized the boxes at Carfax with holy water, we raced to Piccadilly in a horse-drawn carriage. We piled out before another of those haunted-houselike places Dracula seemed to go for.
“Gosh, that’s some lair of evil!” muttered Morris.
“We keep finding them,” said Frankie.
The lair looked as if no one had been living in it for a long time. Which in Dracula’s case was true. The windows were encrusted with dust and the shutters were closed, except where they were falling away from the walls.
We entered the black house and within minutes found a bunch of keys to Drac’s other dirt-box houses. Godalming and Morris took off to destroy the boxes there, while Dr. Seward, Harker, the professor, Frankie, and I set out to find and destroy the ni
ne boxes remaining in this house.
We found eight boxes.
“Eight!” Van Helsing exploded, stomping both feet, pulling his hair, twisting his mustache nearly off, and clacking his teeth together. “Shtink! Shtank! Shtunk!”
“Excuse me?” said Frankie.
“Our work is not done! He has hid a box! One box!”
For the next hour, we turned the broken-down old house upside down—which wasn’t hard to do—searching for Dracula’s final box.
Nope. It wasn’t there.
Frankie looked worried. “Devin, I’m getting—”
“Scared?” I said. “Yeah, me, too.”
A little while later Morris and Godalming returned, happy that they had destroyed the other twelve boxes, but sad when we told them about the box that got away.
After that we waited for him to return.
“There is danger for us,” the professor said. “We need many arms of many kinds.”
“I’ve got two,” I said. “The regular human kind.”
“I think the professor means weapons,” said Morris.
“Ya, weapons!” Van Helsing said. He tapped a black bag that he’d brought with him. “Wooden stakes, to kill the vampire … if we need them.”
We didn’t have to wait long. As we shivered in the cold house, we could hear the sound of footsteps clacking up the walk.
“Get ready for the Drac attack,” I said.
Blam! With a single bound, a dark shape burst through the door and leaped into the room. There was something so like a panther in how he moved. When the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face. Then he showed his fangs as we all jumped at him.
Harker was in the lead. “You wretched beast!” he cried. “I shall pummel you.”
He launched himself at the vampire, but it was Harker who was pummeled. Dracula tossed him back like a puppet and Harker crashed into the wall and crumpled to the floor, mumbling in a daze.
The Count turned on Dr. Seward next, pushing him roughly into Godalming and Morris. All three tumbled out the door.
Van Helsing charged forward quickly, holding his foot-long wooden stake out firmly. As he lunged at the vampire, however, Dracula hurled a chair, hitting the professor in the leg and sending him flopping onto a table. With a single, swift bound, Dracula leaped for Frankie and me, growling and hissing.
Luckily for us, Morris and Seward bounced back to their feet and charged at him.
Dracula swept his arms up and knocked both men back.
“Ach, he is strong!” Van Helsing said, unflopping himself from the table. “But we are stronger! Take a stake and a holy medal!”
Dracula howled like a wolf as we advanced on him, stakes in one hand and holy medals in the other. His skin turned a greenish-yellow in contrast to his burning eyes. His whole face showed hatred and rage.
Then in a sort of animal leap, he dived over us, dashed across the room, and threw himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled to the flagstones below.
“He loves the window escape method,” Frankie muttered. As we ran over we saw him spring unhurt from the ground. He ran across the yard, his cape swishing around him, then turned and spoke to us.
“You think you have stopped me. But you have not!”
Van Helsing grunted and shouted back. “But we shall find your last box of evil dirt! You will have no place to be. At sunrise—pfft!—you will burn like a potato!”
“At sunrise?” howled the vampire. “How much more evil can I do by then? My revenge has just begun. I shall live for centuries until the world is ruled by vampires. And I shall be their king! And as for my final box of dirt, you shall never find it. In it, I shall live forever!”
With a hateful snarl, Dracula jumped away across the lawn, vanishing into the night.
“Again!” Harker cried, pounding his fist on the window frame. “Again, he has escaped our grasp! All because of one little box of dirt, Dracula will keep on biting and biting and biting. He will live forever and ever and ever and ever and ever—”
I turned to Frankie. “It sounds pretty bad when he says it like that.”
“Devin,” she said, her eyes suddenly wet. “It is bad.”
Chapter 17
Everybody was bummed out and depressed about Dracula’s escape when we met back at Dr. Seward’s house later that morning. When Mina saw our faces, her own went as pale as death itself. It finally got to me how bad things really were.
“Listen people,” I said, “we can’t let Dracula keep on escaping and living forever to bite more people and turn them into a huge army of biting vampires. Somebody around here has got to have a plan!”
Harker sat in the dining room, calming Mina as best he could. But she looked worse and worse. I was scared she was becoming a vampire right before our eyes.
Van Helsing and Dr. Seward paced the room, back and forth, back and forth. Quincey Morris and Lord Godalming muttered quietly to themselves. Frankie was chewing her lip and frowning, stopping only to sigh and shake her head. It wasn’t a jolly group, for sure.
I raised my hand. “Someone does have a plan, right?”
“We got nothing!” Van Helsing said. “There is one more earth box. But where it is … we know not. Dracula has fled away, and there is no knowing where his goneness has taken him.”
They all sighed and shook their heads. It was terrible.
I looked at Frankie. “Dracula is evil,” I said.
She blinked. “Well, duh.”
“No, I mean, he’s evil and he’s hurting these people.”
I looked at them in the fading candlelight.
“Frankie, you were right when you said that you get attached. I didn’t really think about it before. But you’re right. It’s the people in the stories that make people read books over and over.”
She nodded finally. “And why books get chewed up and libraries have to get kids like us to fix them?”
“Exactly. And I want to fix this book. I mean really fix it. Give me the book, Frankie.”
“You mean you’re going to read?”
“We need to stop Dracula,” I said. “You’ve been doing most of the reading. Now it’s my turn. The answer’s in the book. I’m going to find it before it’s too late.”
A smile crept over Frankie’s face as she handed me the book. “Read, Dev,” she said. “Read like you’ve never read before!”
I cracked open the book and did just that.
I read as fast and as well as I could. I didn’t understand some of the words, but I got most of them. And I didn’t stop reading until I had the answer. After what seemed like hours, I knew what had to happen.
I stuck my finger in the page and jumped up.
“What is it?” said Frankie.
Without answering, I marched directly into Mina’s room. She was sleeping.
“Mina,” I said loudly. “It’s all up to you.”
She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. And then she said exactly what was on the page where my finger was.
“Go call the professor. I want to see him at once!”
In a few seconds everyone was crowded by her bed.
“Ya, what is?” said Van Helsing, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Professor,” said Mina, “you have to hypnotize me.”
“Of course, of course—what?”
“If what the Count said is true,” said Mina, “then there is some kind of a connection, a mental link, between me and him. If Dracula can speak to my thoughts, perhaps we can listen to his thoughts through mine. And by listening, we may be able to find him!”
The professor’s face lit up. “Ya, is an idea!”
Looking fixedly at Mina, Van Helsing began making passes in front of her face, from over the top of her head downward, with each hand, one after the other. It all looked like mumbo jumbo to me and Frankie, but soon her eyes got droopy. At last, she sat completely still.
“Man alive,” said Morris. “It’s wor
king!”
“Mina, where are you now?” Van Helsing asked.
Her voice was soft and sleepy. “I am lying still. It feels like … death. Yes! I am … in my final box of earth!”
“Ach, it is true,” the professor said. “Go on, go on. What do you hear?”
“The lapping of water,” Mina replied dreamily. “Little waves leap and crash. There is water all around. I can hear it on the outside.”
“The outside?” said Harker. “The outside of what?”
“The hull,” said Mina.
Van Helsing jumped to his feet. “This is good! Good! We have no moments to lose! Dracula have take his last box of earth on board a ship. But where is he … where?”
“Moo,” mumbled Mina.
“Moo?” I said.
“Cows are mooing!” Mina said. “And I hear wagon wheels not far off, turning, turning.…”
Van Helsing crooked his finger at us. “Dracula is going up one of the narrow rivers that lead to his homeland! I know where! He returns to—Transylvania!”
“Transylvania?” said Dr. Seward. “But supposing we track him down and find him—then what?”
“Then we him destroy!” Van Helsing stated. “We must do it. For if he escape us this time, the Count may sleep for a century then come alive—”
“A century?” Frankie gulped. “Devin, when was this book written?”
I looked at the pages in the front of the book. “About a hundred years ago.”
“That’s almost a century!” she said. “Dracula could come back during our time! We need to stop him now.”
“But he’s far ahead of us,” said Harker, beginning to pace in front of us. “We may not have time to catch up.”
“We can catch up,” said Frankie. “And there’s only one sure way to do it. Devin, we need to flip the pages!”
I gave her a look. “But, Frankie, I don’t think—”
“If you won’t do it—I will.” She grabbed the book. “Hold on to your wigs, everyone, because I’m flipping!”
And she did.
Kkkkk! There was a bright flash, then the room went dark and everyone toppled to the floor screaming.
The air, hot at first, grew icy cold, then hot again, as if it couldn’t make up its mind. The darkness we had seen twice before came down again, piercing the room in half like a ripping page. Some of us were on one side, some on the other. I saw Frankie being pulled away from me as the spear of darkness widened and widened.