Vampire Brat (6 page)

W
anda could not stay awake. Soon she was snuffling away like a hedgehog, which is how she always sounds when she sleeps. So I had to stay awake to make sure we were down in the hall at midnight. I sat in bed and finished the
Werewolf Spotter's Handbook
. Then I started reading
Vampire Trapping for Beginners
, which was okay but a bit boring because it seemed you had to be a German
professor with a funny name before you had any hope of catching a vampire. My eyes began to feel very sleepy and kept closing, and I had to keep jumping awake again. It was very annoying, since I really didn't want to miss midnight.

To try and stay awake I listened to all the nighttime noises. Most people would find it really spooky in Spookie House at night, as there are all kinds of weird sounds, but I do not find it spooky at all because I know what they all are.

Most of the noises are made by Uncle Drac. Uncle Drac spends a lot of the day asleep in his sleeping bag in the bat turret, which means he wanders around Spookie House in the night. But I know Uncle Drac's grumbly cough and the sound of his footsteps,
and I like to hear him padding about. Aunt Tabby does not sleep well and she often gets up and goes all the way down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I know her footsteps too; they are kind of impatient and spiky. Recently she has been watching vampire movies in the furry bathroom so I sometimes hear the whirr of the projector and the clattering sound the film makes when it comes to the end of a reel.

Brenda and Barry do not walk around Spookie House at night at all. No way. Although Brenda pretends that she is not afraid of the dark, I know she is. And I also know that she locks the door of their big bedroom at the front of the house and makes Barry stay with her. He is not allowed to go
out for even one moment, just in case the monster statue outside their window comes alive and bites them. Well, that's what Wanda said and she should know.

There are other things that make nighttime noises in Spookie House. There is Sir Horace—who rattles when he walks, which is a bit of a giveaway; there are the hot water pipes, which gurgle; the big floorboards on the landing that creak as the house cools down; the grandfather clock in the hall, which has the loudest tick you can imagine and—ever since Aunt Tabby tried to fix it—chimes thirteen times every hour; and the family of rats that chase each other all around the attic and sound like they are wearing hiking boots.

So if you stayed the night in Spookie House I guess you might spend a lot of it lying awake and listening to everything, just like Wanda did when she first came. But if you stayed for a few more nights you would soon get used to it and end up snuffling like a hedgehog just like Wanda. Except
no one
snuffles like Wanda.

The clock in the hall had just chimed thirteen again and I opened my eyes with a jolt. I didn't
think
I had been asleep and I figured that it was now eleven o'clock. So I listened to the Spookie House sounds, and everything was surprisingly quiet, apart from the odd creak from the floorboards on the landing. And then I heard a new sound….

First I heard the sound of a door opening, but it was not Aunt Tabby's door or the door
to Uncle Drac's turret—it was the door to our Saturday bedroom. I knew that because it has a particular sound, kind of an oooooohah-
eeeeek
. Then I heard a soft creak-thump-creak-thump, and I realized it was the sound that the rope ladder makes when someone climbs down it. And at once I knew who that must be—
Vampire Max
.

I shot up to the snuffling hedgehog and shook her awake.
“Wandaaaaaaa!”
I hissed right in her ear. Wanda sat up with her hair sticking out on end like she had had an electric shock.

“Wherrr?”

“Vampire Max—he's out vampiring. I can
hear
him.”

“Eer?”

“Come on, Wanda. Hurry
up
.”

The trouble with hedgehogs is they do not like waking up. I had to drag Wanda out of bed and make her feet walk down the ladder, which was not easy, but I did it. Soon she was standing by the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit in her yucky sweet-dreams-pink-fairy pajamas, rubbing her eyes. “Is it morning?' she mumbled.

“No,” I said. “Put your slippers on and follow me.”

I don't think Wanda had figured out what we were doing, but she put on her fluffy rabbit slippers with the silly ears while I heaved the Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Kit over my shoulder. I think it was only when we got outside our bedroom that Wanda really woke up. Her eyes popped wide
open and she stared around as if she was really surprised at where she was. I am sure she would have squeaked out loud if I hadn't shoved my hand over her mouth.

“Wrrrrer!”
she gasped.

I put my finger to my lips and beckoned her to follow me, which she did. We hid in the shadows and crept along the wide passageway that runs along the back of the attic, where all the doors to the days-of-the-week bedrooms are. Wanda is quite good at creeping and so am I, since I have had lots of practice creeping up on Aunt Tabby when she is not looking, so it was easy for us to get really close to our Saturday bedroom rope ladder. And sure enough, there he was: Vampire Max was climbing down the ladder like a little black spider.

A bright shaft of moonlight was shining onto the ladder and as Vampire Max stepped off, it shone onto his pasty white face and glinted on his slicked-back hair. He was wearing black pajamas and a weird black velvet jacket tied with a silk cord. He looked just like a minivampire from one of Aunt Tabby's movies.

Wanda was wide awake now. Her fingers were digging into my arm and they really hurt, but I had to keep quiet because this was a
real-life Combined Vampire and Werewolf Trapping Expedition. And the vampire part was already up and running.

Vampire Max walked off along the attic corridor and then started down the stairs, with the intrepid Professor Von Spookie and her gullible but well-meaning sidekick following close behind. He didn't notice a thing. There was a tricky moment when Wanda walked through a big spiderweb and I thought she was going to yell, but she didn't. We followed Vampire Max down the attic stairs and then we set off along the landing, keeping to the shadows and away from
the really creaky floorboards. It was weird, but fun in a spooky kind of way.

In Spookie House there are lots of doors and winding passageways that go to bedrooms and bathrooms and turrets and all kinds of places. We walked along the passage that went past the furry bathroom and I could see the flickering light of the movie streaking out of the half-open door. As we crept by I glanced in and saw Aunt Tabby's head silhouetted against the light from the projector. Her head had a very strange shape because she wears great big headphones so that the noise does not bother anyone. This was good because there was no chance that she could hear us creeping by—even when Wanda trod on a creaky floorboard and we had to dive into the shadows in case Vampire Max turned around.
But he didn't. He just kept moving, his little legs walking in that creepy vampiry way of his, as if he knew exactly where he was going.

It is quite easy to get lost in Spookie House, especially at night. There are dead-end passages, stairs that go nowhere, and all kinds of zigzag corridors that go around in circles and make you confused. There are also tons of moldy curtains that hang around the place and jump out on you when you are least expecting it, and
that
was how we lost Vampire Max. One minute we were tailing him along the twisty passageway in the west wing that goes to the locked turret, and the next moment a horrible dusty curtain had flopped in front of us, and Wanda was covered in a flock of moths.

“Ugh!” yelped Wanda.

“Shhh!” I hissed, and pulled her back behind the curtain. Everybody knows that the most important thing about a vampire hunt is that they must not know you are hunting them, otherwise they can get very nasty indeed, and I was afraid that Vampire Max would hear us. We hid behind the smelly old curtain listening for his footsteps coming back toward us, but we heard nothing. Very carefully, I pulled the curtain back, half expecting to see Max staring at us with his little beady eyes and blood dripping from his mouth—but there was no sign of him. We had lost him.

But Wanda did not care. She yawned and said, “Let's catch him tomorrow then. I'm
really
sleepy, I want to go back to bed.”

“You can't,” I told her. “It will be midnight
soon, which is when we promised Edmund that we would meet Sir Horace at his treasure chest. Remember?”

“Oh,” said Wanda.

There was no sign of Sir Horace in the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom. After what felt like a few centuries I asked Wanda what time it was, since I do not have a watch.

Wanda always wears her pink fairy watch. She says that Pusskins gave it to her for her birthday, which is obviously not true because cats cannot give birthday presents, and even if they could I do not think that cats would
bother
to give birthday presents—especially a grumpy cat like Pusskins. But on the card it had said
Happy Birthday, Wanda. Love from Pusskins xxx
, and that is what Wanda believes. On the watch is a prancing fairy, and instead
of regular watch hands the fairy's wings go around. Wanda was squinting at the wings for ages trying to figure out what the time was, so I took a look. It was hard to tell, but it looked like one wing was straight up, and the other one nearly was too. I figured it must have been almost midnight.

Wanda started up again about going back to bed.

“No,” I told Wanda very firmly, “you are
not
going back to bed. We are on a Combined Werewolf and Vampire Trapping Expedition and we haven't even finished the
first
half of it since we have not found a single werewolf, let alone trapped the vampire.”

“I don't care,” said Wanda grumpily. “I don't want to find a single werewolf. I don't even want to find a double werewolf. I don't
care about vampires. I want to go back to bed.”

“All right, go back to bed then.
I'm
waiting for Sir Horace. I'll see you later,” I said.

Wanda stared at me like I'd said something really dumb. “I'm not going back on my
own
, Araminta,” she said.

At that moment I heard the telltale clank of Sir Horace's armor.

“Ah, Miss Spookie and Miss Wizzard. Thank you for meeting me here. It is most kind,”
Sir Horace boomed as he walked into the ghost-in-the-bath bathroom.

“It's a pleasure, Sir Horace,” Wanda piped up, conveniently forgetting that a few seconds earlier she had been about to bunk off to bed and desert Sir Horace.

“How kind of you, Miss Wizzard. It is always
a pleasure to meet you, and Miss Spookie, too,”
said Sir Horace.

I didn't want to hang around too long with Sir Horace, as we still had a vampire and a werewolf to catch and time was getting on, so I asked, “Why did you want to see us, Sir Horace?”

“I would be most grateful if you would do me a favor, Miss Spookie. Would you be so kind as to open my treasure chest for me?”

I wondered why Sir Horace needed us to open the chest at midnight, seeing as he could have asked us
any old time of day, but I didn't say anything. I lifted up the lid. “There you are Sir Horace,” I said. “We'll be off now.”

“Could I trouble you to do me one more favor before you go, Miss Spookie? Would you be so kind as to take out the small silver whistle and
blow three times, just as the clock chimes the hour?”

This sounded very mysterious. I scrabbled around in the chest and found the whistle. It looked very small and scratched.

“Ah,”
said Sir Horace when he saw the whistle.
“There it is. Those were happy days. I remember when Fang would—”
At that moment the clock in the hall began to chime thirteen and Sir Horace almost yelled,
“Blow! Blow the whistle, Miss Spookie.”