The Reluctant Vampire Omnibus
Eric Morecambe
An ebook omnibus of Eric Morecambe’s classic children’s books, THE RELUCTANT VAMPIRE and THE VAMPIRE’S RETURN, illustrated by Tony Ross..A shocking announcement from the Vampire Prince – that he doesn't like blood but prefers chips and a glass of red wine – begins a tale of ghoulish intrigue and hilarious horror.
The Reluctant Vampire Omnibus
by Eric Morecambe
Contents
Cover (#u7e4d907c-6fb5-5195-8732-051e572b14a6)
Title Page (#ua222eae5-5c07-5943-9c85-19d7e45e8e36)
The Reluctant Vampire (#uc507e866-a175-5be1-a206-02f9eb4e4a00)
The Vampire’s Revenge (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Eric Morecambe (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
This book is dedicated to (#ulink_f8d7a65e-c5d6-5c97-8c3b-bef8959f71f1)
Steven James Bartholomew
Julian Gibbs
Ian Cockhill
Kingsley Roberts
Tom Barnes
and Darcey Cohill
Their knowledge of Vampires and their habits was invaluable.
Contents
Cover (#uc507e866-a175-5be1-a206-02f9eb4e4a00)
Dedication (#ucf08d293-059a-5dea-8e76-bfa74e604170)
Chapter 1 (#ubbfd90ff-5d09-5e2d-a6c0-5c4a8116ee10)
Chapter 2 (#u18b7bf6c-7470-5ad4-a848-735a2c81b524)
Chapter 3 (#ua36f493f-a4db-59eb-930b-c98cfa49d2c9)
Chapter 4 (#u8b096c7d-f157-5ef4-85e4-6dd94018f42f)
Chapter 5 (#u7655e890-5248-5239-8b7c-6e371ff9f4d7)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1
Valentine arises,
As Dr Plump advises.
It was January in the year of seventeen ninety-nine. The sky was as wet and as black as a bottle of ink. A shaft of blue lightning suddenly lit up the seven-hundred-year-old castle on top of a hill. Small yellow lights flickered from behind a barred window in the highest room of the highest turret. For a few seconds before the lightning went out, the castle was silhouetted against thick, huge clouds, fat with rain. The wind bent double the tallest trees on the hill. They almost creaked with pain. The moon could occasionally be seen flying through the clouds at what seemed an incredible speed. Suddenly, it threw a few seconds of yellow light on to a thin ribbon of road leading up to the drawbridge of the silent castle.
On the road was a small coach being pulled by a very frightened horse. The driver was Doctor Plump. Although his name was Plump, he was the thinnest man you could ever imagine. He was six feet six inches tall but when he wore his top hat he was seven feet six inches tall, and when he was on horseback he was well over ten feet tall.
Doctor Plump was a humourless man with lips as thin as a grasshopper’s legs. A large Roman nose – almost large enough for a Roman to sit on – hung between his small, piggy eyes. His eyes were so deep set in his head they looked as if they had been put there with a Black and Decker.
He had been summoned to the castle urgently. His poor horse was wet through with rain and perspiration. The fear showed in its eyes as they rolled round faster than an old woman’s birthday. Doctor Plump urged the animal forward with the snap of a long whip that stung the horse like an injection from a blunt syringe, and they sped towards their goal, Bloodstock Castle, overlooking the small village of Katchem-by-the-Throat in the tiny mid-European country of Gotcha.
The ‘Gots’ were an unhappy people with no king of their own or even a president to rule them. They were ruled by the Vampires of Bloodstock Castle and had been for the past four hundred years.
The horse clattered over the wooden drawbridge as it took the carriage and Doctor Plump inside the courtyard. The Doctor pulled the horse to a halt, jumped off the coach and with his black doctor’s bag in his hand, ran towards the massive iron and wooden door, leaving the tired, bewildered horse covered in a cloud of hot steam.
He pulled hard on an iron bar with a handle attached. A bell sounded inside the castle loud enough to awaken the dead and their friends, the undead, who are like their dead friends but can come back to life again.
Dr Plump waited, wrapping his long, black scarf closer around his thin, scrawny neck. The echo of the bell died down and then the only sound was the rain hitting his top hat as loud as the chattering teeth of an Eskimo with flu.
From inside, the Doctor heard bars being drawn to allow the great door to be opened. It opened, but no more than a crack. He looked into the one black eye of Igon.
Igon was as ugly as it was possible to be. In fact, uglier. He had only one eye, hence the name Igon. A glass eye hung round his neck in a pouch but he only used it on certain occasions such as reading the paper. He would sometimes put it in his trouser pocket to see how much money he had left.
The Doctor spoke.
‘Doctor Plump,’ he wheezed.
‘No, I’m not. I’m Igon,’ said Igon and slammed the door.
The Doctor was left in the pouring rain, the driving wind and the dark night. He thumped as hard as he could on the great iron door.
‘Igon!’ he shouted against the door and the wind.
‘Who is it?’ said a voice from the other side of the door.
‘Doctor Plump,’ the wet doctor shouted.
‘He’s not here,’ Igon shouted back.
‘No. I’m Plump.’
‘You should go on a diet then,’ said Igon, who wasn’t the cleverest person in the world.
‘Please, I’m Doctor Plump.’ He put his mouth closer to the door. ‘I’ve been summoned.’
After a second or two the iron bars were once again removed from their sockets and the door creaked open a little. The same, single, black eye peered out.
The Doctor spoke very quickly. ‘I’m Doctor Plump and His Most Gracious Vampari, King Victor, sent for me to have a look at His Serene Vampary Prince Valentine.’
The door opened slowly. ‘Come in,’ Igon said gruffly.
The Doctor walked in with one long stride. Igon shut the door. Doctor Plump looked around the large hall. It was very dimly lit with no fire to help dry his wet clothes or furniture on which to lay his top hat and overcoat; it was just a very large, very high, freezing cold castle.
The Doctor looked down at Igon. He saw a small, twisted body with a hideous face. His back was bent double with the weight of a large hump that made him walk with his left shoulder nearer to the ground than his right one. His clothes (if you could call them that) were rags. Igon looked up as the Doctor looked down. Igon smiled, showing a most beautiful set of gums.
‘Follow me.’ He slid along the floor away from the door. ‘This way, please, Doctor Pump.’
‘Plump,’ the Doctor checked. ‘Doctor Plump.’
‘That’s what I said, Pump. I have great difficulty saying my ‘I’s as I have no teeth, so saying difficulty was even more difficult for me than saying Plump, Doctor Pump.’ Igon shuffled towards some distant steps.
The Doctor, a little nonplussed, followed behind him. He tried to make a little light conversation.
‘It’s a wild night.’
‘What do you expect for July?’
‘But it’s January,’ the Doctor said in a small, surprised voice.
‘I’ll bet it gets worse in August,’ Igon snarled. The Doctor looked mystified.
They had by now reached the steps, which spiralled round a huge wall like a vine round a tree. The steps were no more than eighteen inches wide, with no handrail. One side of the steps clung to the wall, on the other side was an empty space. One slip and you could fall to the stone flags below and be given a rather large collection of broken ribs. The safest way to climb them was slowly and carefully and to keep one open-palmed hand almost glued to the wall for support. The Doctor nervously followed Igon.
Igon’s bent body found great difficulty in climbing the steps, taking at least half a minute to move from one to the next. The Doctor, following Igon, looked up at all the steps they still had to climb and worked out quickly in his mind that at the rate Igon was climbing they would both be forty-five minutes older by the time they reached the top.
‘Do you think that maybe I should go first?’ the Doctor asked courteously, trying not to offend the bent, broken body in front of him.
‘No,’ came the painfully grunted reply. ‘We’ll rest for a while.’
‘Rest?’ the Doctor questioned. ‘Rest?’ Good Lord, we’ve only walked up five steps.’
‘You may have only walked up five steps but, my long thin friend, I’ve climbed them. We shall rest.’
Igon sat on the sixth step trying to get his breath. The Doctor stood towering over him and watched. After two minutes of gasping and heavy bronchial breathing, Igon slowly took his glass eye out, spat on it and quickly rubbed it with one of the rags he was wearing. He held it in front of him between his thumb and first finger and said, ‘It gets darker as we go higher.’
Eventually, they reached the top of the stairs and on the landing they saw the door leading into the unliving quarters of the Vampire King and Queen, Prince Valentine and Valentine’s brother, Prince Vernon.
Vernon was mean and hateful. He was the least liked in the family. He was also the elder of the two brothers.
The Doctor waited for Igon to knock on the door. As this didn’t happen, he said slowly and with a touch of annoyance:
‘Are you going to knock or have you got a key?’
‘It’s no good knocking. The rooms where they reside are at least another five minutes’ walk along the corridors.’
‘I see,’ the Doctor said with a forced calm. ‘So I presume that you have a key to get us past this massive door?’ He gave Igon a stiff grin.
‘Of course,’ said Igon nervously.
‘Well?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Yes I am, thank you. I’m very well, considering,’ Igon smiled once more to the Doctor.
‘Pardon?’ questioned the Doctor, trying to work out the conversation.
‘What?’ said Igon, not letting his eye look straight at the Doctor’s.
‘What do you mean, what?’ asked the Doctor, who in spite of the cold was beginning to lose his cool.
‘What do you mean, what do you mean? Eh? What?’ Igon was playing for time. The Doctor started to twitch, first his eye, then his bottom lip. He was getting almost to the exasperated stage. Self-control was more difficult to find. His temper was starting to show. You could always tell when his temper was ready to get the better of him. It was then that he started to crack his knuckles. Unfortunately, he was cracking them on Igon’s head.
‘The key. Where’s the key, you curled up lout?’ he whispered viciously.
‘On the table,’ Igon replied in a hurt voice.
‘Which table?’ the Doctor asked with controlled hysteria.
Igon pulled himself up to an almost upright position and with his gnarled hand pointed down the steps, and, with a dignity that any monarch would be proud of, said, ‘On the table, sir. The one in the kitchen.’
The matchstick-thin Doctor suddenly burst into tears; uncontrollable, fast-flowing tears that ran from his eyes like two small rivers in flood and about to burst their banks.
Igon was fascinated. He had never seen two eyes cry before. He had only ever seen one eye cry and that was his own when his mother used to hit him for being ugly, which was every day. Then he would look in the mirror at his one crying eye. He cried because he was so very ugly, not because of the pain inflicted by his mother’s heavy hand.
He would look in that mirror and wonder why he was so very ugly and ask his reflection ‘Why am I so ugly?’ … ‘No one is ever going to love me. No one is ever going to want me as their friend. I’m going to go through life always being lonely. I’m so ugly even I wouldn’t want to be friends with me.’ And he would watch a tear roll down from his eye.
Then, taking his glass eye out of his pocket, he would look at it and wonder why it didn’t cry. After all, it was an eye; his eye. But poor Igon was never told it wasn’t an eye at all. It was only a blue glass marble that had been in a Christmas cracker which he’d stolen and pulled. He pulled it alone as no-one wanted to share a cracker, let alone Christmas, with him and, of course, he was fascinated when the eye (as he thought) dropped out. As far as Igon was concerned, it was Heaven’s work.
By now the half-crazed Doctor had grabbed Igon and was shaking him with a fierceness and strength that reminded Igon of his dear old mum. Poor Igon, no matter what he did, it always seemed to be wrong.
‘No-one likes me,’ he thought, as the good Doctor bashed his head against the iron door and slightly dented it – not the door, his head. ‘The only person speaks kindly to me and likes me at all is Valentine.’
The knocking of Igon’s head on the door was heard in the Vampires’ rooms five minutes’ walk away. A Got servant was sent hurrying to answer the door before it was knocked down.
The servant opened the door to a strange scene. There stood two grown men and the taller one seemed to be using the smaller one as a door knocker. The servant had only started to work at the castle that week and had come to the conclusion that the things that went on around the castle were, to say the least, a little strange.
Only on his second day he saw something that would live with him for ever; maybe even longer. He had seen in the castle grounds a ‘Cowraffe’. He later found out that a Cowraffe was a cow that had been crossed with a giraffe so that you could milk it from a standing position.
The Doctor looked at the servant, and gave him a slightly embarrassed grin. ‘I’m Doctor Plump.’
The servant said, ‘Oh, I know you. You’re the doctor that looked after my old uncle when he was terribly ill.’
‘Oh, did I really? Yes, well … er, how is he now?’ asked the Doctor proudly.
‘Dead.’
‘Dead?’ said the Doctor, a little less proudly.
‘Yes.’
‘How long?’
‘Five foot ten.’
‘I mean how long has he been dead?’ The Doctor was getting to the knuckle-cracking stage again. He went on. ‘What did he die of?’
‘Too much weight.’
‘Over-indulgence?’ the Doctor asked.
‘No, over in Germany,’ came the reply. ‘Won’t you come in?’
‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said, glad to change the subject.
‘I suppose you are expected?’
‘Yes I am,’ the skinny Doctor smiled; well, almost smiled.
‘What about … er … that?’ The servant pointed to Igon.
The Doctor looked down at what he had just used as a door knocker and kicked him hard on the rump. ‘If I had my way I’d feed him to the wolves.’ And with that he walked past the servant.
The servant bent down and looked Igon straight in the eye.
‘Clear off you terrible-looking thing.’
‘I want to come in. I want to see Valentine,’ Igon said.
‘I’m not at all sure that you are allowed in here.’
‘Of course I’m allowed in. Why, I’m almost one of the family,’ the moving bundle of rags said. He then pushed his way past the servant and ran after the fast retreating Doctor.
The three of them ran along the corridors of the castle towards the Vampires’ rooms. They came to a halt outside a door with the letters VIP on it.
‘This is it,’ cried Igon. ‘This is the room. Yes. See VIP. It means Vampire In Pain.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Of course I’m sure.’ Igon jumped up and down with excitement and the thought that today he would see Valentine who liked him and never called him ugly or kicked him.
The Doctor turned to the servant and asked him if it was the correct room.
‘I don’t really know. I’ve only worked here for a week and I’ve never seen Mr Valentine.’
‘Prince Valentine,’ Igon corrected.
‘Prince, if you like. But either way I don’t know where he is. But he could be in here because VIP means Very Important Person and Mr … sorry … Prince Valentine is just that.’
The Doctor nodded his head wisely.
Igon opened the door and walked slowly into the room, followed by the not-too-sure Doctor and the servant.
The room was bereft of all furniture except for a thick, long wooden table on which rested a coffin with the lid open. From inside the coffin they heard a cough.
Igon whispered, ‘There’s someone coughing in the coffin.’
The servant kicked Igon, thinking that it was his turn to kick him. The three of them walked tentatively over to the coffin and looked inside; well, the Doctor and the servant did. Poor Igon couldn’t reach. So he started to climb up the side of Doctor Plump like a mountain climber making his way up the Matterhorn.
When he saw inside the coffin he was very sad for there was Valentine and it seemed pretty obvious that he was a very sick Vampire.
In the Doctor’s mind there was no doubt that Valentine had the vapours. As everyone knows, a Vampire with the vapours is almost as bad as Frankenstein’s monster with a screw loose; his head falls off.
Now, when a Vampire has the vapours his head doesn’t fall off but his teeth drop out. Can you imagine a Vampire without any teeth? He can’t bite you. The worst thing he can do is give a good suck.
Igon looked at the Doctor with fear in his eye. The Doctor looked worried while the servant looked forward to leaving. Suddenly the window crashed open and through it came Valentine’s father, King Victor the First, Emperor of all Vampires.
He was over six feet tall and was dressed in full Vampire regalia – a most beautiful hand-made evening dress suit, white tie (of course) with an elegant deep, red-lined cloak. All his clothes were obviously made to measure. His hair over his forehead came to a perfect point just above the bridge of his long, thin, aristocratic nose that flared as he breathed.
Here was the perfect Vampire, the epitome of what everyone thought a Vampire should be. The one that all other Vampires since modelled themselves on. He stood there, an erect, handsome man, as pale as death itself.
‘Gutt evenink,’ he hissed. The bat on his shoulder settled down to sleep. The three men stood to attention, well, two of them did. Igon did his best.
‘Did my Vamp have a nice evening out?’ Igon asked, much to the surprise of both the Doctor and the servant.
‘Yes, mine ugly frent,’ Victor the First whispered hoarsely. He then glided over to his son lying in the coffin.
‘Is vot is in your mind, mine Herr, the same as vot is in mine mind, mine Doctor?’
The Doctor looked away.
‘Do you think the same think as I am thinking? I think that mine son has got the dreaded and vile Vampire vapours.’
The Doctor could only nod his long face. King Victor’s eyes almost burnt through the shaking Doctor Plump.
‘Then I look very much forward to you curink him, mine Doctor.’
The Doctor almost had the vapours himself as he heard what the King said.
‘But your Vampship … er … no one has ever cured a Vampire of the vapours … ever.’
‘Then you vill be the first, Doctor.’
‘But … Bu … t.’
Igon, whose head only came up to the Doctor’s knees, watched his knees start to shake, rattle and roll. Victor the First carried on talking.
‘Mine dear Doctor. If you do not cure mine younkest son, the baby of mine family, if you do not cure him … then I’m afraid you vill cure no von else, ever again. I repeat, if you do not cure him ant restore him back to normal health, then I’m afraid I shall have to giff you to Vernon to experiment vit. That means, Doctor Plump, that you vill probably leef this castle in a bucket. Vernon has a liking for that sort of think. A small bucket; the type children use at the seaside. Ant I promise you, Doctor Plump, although the bucket may be small, all off you vill be in it.’
The bat fell off Victor’s shoulders in a deep sleep. Victor caught it in the toe of his Italian, hand-made shoes just before it hit the ground. He continued as if nothing had happened.
‘Do you remember Mayor Goop off Katchem?’
The white-faced Doctor nodded.
‘Did you ever vonder vot became off him?’
Once again the Doctor nodded and gulped.
‘Vell, vould you like to take him off mine shoe ant put him on mine shoulder?’
At this point the servant fainted on top of the already-fainted Doctor Plump.
Victor the First looked at both of them lying at his feet. He stepped over them with great poise, and placed his hand on the forehead of his still son. With closed eyes he stood for a few seconds. Within that time ice began to form around the inside of the coffin.
‘Ve must keep him cold, Igon, mine ugly frent.’ He then patted Igon on his head, leaving a snowball resting there. He walked over to the open window, stood on the edge and looked down at the village four hundred feet below. Flicking the ex-Mayor awake with his fingers he looked once more at his son, and said to Igon:
‘If mine vife should come lookink for me, tell her I’ve gone to the blood bank in the village to make a withdrawal, ya?’ and with that he jumped.
Igon ran to the window and waved into the darkness. He closed the window with difficulty, thinking ‘It’s all very well for these people to leave by windows, but I wish they’d close them.’ He looked back into the room.
The Doctor and the servant were starting to stir. Both of them stood up rather shakily at first, trying to work out what had happened.
When the Doctor at last fully realised the terrible situation he was in, he burst into tears and lay down on the floor, kicking his legs in the air like a badly brought-up child who has been given too much of its own way.
‘Help me. Please help me!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to leave here in a bucket. Igon, you are my friend. ‘Can’t you think of anything to save me?’
‘Why should I? Earlier you called me a curled up lout.’
‘You’re not. I’ll give you money. I’m not a rich man but I’ll give you all the money I have if you will only help me. Please, Igon. Please help me, my friend.’
‘How much is all your money?’ Igon asked.
‘I’ll give you fifty krooms,’ sobbed the Doctor.
‘Sixty.’
‘But I haven’t got sixty. I’ve only got fifty.’
‘It’s not enough,’ Igon said stubbornly.
‘But can’t you get it through that thick skull of yours, you bent idiot, it’s all I’ve got.’
‘Now it’s gone up to sixty-five krooms for calling me a bent idiot. I’ll let you off for saying I have a thick skull.’
‘All right, all right,’ the Doctor said, knowing he wasn’t going to get much change out of Igon. ‘Sixty-five krooms.’
‘O.K. Shake.’
‘I am shaking.’
‘No, I mean shake hands.’
They shook hands.
‘You heard that, didn’t you?’ Igon said to the servant. ‘You heard him say he’d give me sixty-five krooms.’
The servant who was still in a state of shock nodded vaguely.
Igon shouted to the Doctor, ‘He heard you. He heard you. The servant heard you.’
‘Yes, yes,’ shouted the agitated Doctor, ‘but how can you help me?’
‘Easy,’ answered Igon.
For the first time that evening the Doctor smiled a real, genuine smile. Igon carried on.
‘Now, it’s obvious that you do not want to leave this place in a small bucket, right?’
‘Right,’ said the smiling Doctor, eagerly.
‘Right,’ repeated Igon, ‘So – and this is the clever part – I’ll hide the bucket.’ He flashed his gums and continued. ‘Now give me sixty-five krooms.’
The Doctor looked at him with a frozen smile on his face for at least a minute, a thousand things chasing through his head. But one thought kept leaping up in front of the others. It kept asking, ‘Is he joking or does he mean that last stupid remark?’
Within the next few seconds the Doctor realised that Igon meant it. He could tell by the vacant look in his eye. Their three eyes held each other till the spell was broken by the Doctor who whispered in a soft voice, convulsed with fear;
‘You stupid, twisted fool. Hiding the bucket is no good.’ His voice became louder. ‘You can’t just hide the bucket, you … you …’ He was at a loss for words.
‘You owe me sixty-five krooms,’ Igon said defiantly.
‘Shut up you stupid, knotted nit,’ the Doctor shouted back at him, going quite red in his face.
‘I’m not a knotted nit,’ said Igon sadly.
The servant by now was leaning over the coffin, busily sucking a piece of ice.
‘Valentine’s moving,’ he said, wiping his chin. The Doctor and Igon raced to the coffin. The now near-hysterical Doctor grabbed the lapels of Valentine’s evening dress suit and started to shake him.
‘Wake up, sir. Please wake up, sir,’ the Doctor begged.
Valentine opened his eyes.
‘Hello,’ he said quietly, his head resting in the crook of the Doctor’s arm.
They all looked down at him. He was a most handsome young man, not a bit like a Vampire; more like a normal person.
‘I’m very hungry,’ he said.
‘Me too. Me too.’
Igon received a blow on the head that was so quick he didn’t know whether the Doctor or the servant had done it.
‘I really am hungry.’ Valentine slowly sat up.
The Doctor grabbed Igon by the hair and pulled a few rags from his throat and offered the exposed throat to Valentine, saying, ‘Here, Sir, try this until we can get you something better.’
‘No thank you,’ said Valentine nicely, much to the relief of Igon.
‘I’ll shake Igon for you, Sir. You’re not supposed to take medicine without it being shaken.’
The Doctor shook Igon so vigorously that a cloud of dust came from his old clothes. He once again exposed Igon’s neck towards Valentine.
‘No thank you. I don’t like blood.’
For a few seconds everyone was still.
‘Pardon?’
‘I don’t like blood, so would you mind putting Igon away please.’ Valentine asked. The Doctor dropped Igon hard on the floor.
‘You don’t drink blood?’ he said incredulously.
‘No. To be quite honest with you, it makes me feel a bit queasy.’
‘How long, Sir, may I ask, have you not been drinking blood?’
‘You may not believe this, but all my life. As a matter of fact, I don’t like any of the food we Vampires are supposed to eat or drink. I like chips and I like a small glass of red wine.
For years I’ve been kidding everybody I’ve been drinking blood, but I change it for red wine. Father doesn’t know or Vernon either. I have a feeling that Mother knows, but I’m not positive. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t even know who you are, or worse, if I can trust you. Of course, I know I can trust Igon because I look upon him as a friend.’
The servant and the Doctor looked at Igon who was now smiling gummily at everyone. The Doctor was the first to speak.
‘Of course he’s your friend, sir. He’s our friend too,’ he said, patting Igon on his head. ‘Maybe we should introduce ourselves. I’m Doctor Plump.’
Valentine’s hand came out of the coffin to be shaken by the Doctor. The servant walked slowly over to the coffin and said:
‘My name is Sed.’
‘Is that your first name?’ asked Valentine.
‘No Sir. Sed’s my last name.’
‘Well, tell his Vampship your first name then,’ Doctor Plump snarled.
‘My first name is a traditional Gotcha name, Sir. It’s Ronnoco.’
‘Yes, that’s a traditional Gotcha name all right,’ Igon said, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
‘So,’ said Valentine. ‘Your name is Ronnoco Sed?’
‘Yes Sir,’ The servant nodded.
‘How long have you been working here, Ronnoco?’
‘I started last week, Sir.’
‘And may I ask what you did before you came here?’
‘I was a troubadour, Sir. I used to sing. I toured our country and sang to the people of the cities and the villages.’
‘And why are you now working here as a servant?’ Valentine inquired nicely.
‘The people of the cities and the villages didn’t want me to sing to them.’
‘Sir, would you mind lying down in your coffin,’ pleaded Dr Plump. ‘After all, I am the doctor and you do have the vile Vampire vapours so you need all the rest you can get.’
‘I’m getting up,’ Valentine told them. ‘I’m getting up if someone will give me a hand.’
‘But you can’t …’ the Doctor spluttered, thinking of leaving the castle in a small bucket.
‘I haven’t got the vapours. The only thing I have at the moment is a chill from staying out late the other night.’
The relief on the Doctor’s face was a sight to behold.
The Doctor helped Valentine down from the coffin to the floor. The four of them quietly left the room, Valentine with the specific intention of telling his mother not to worry. He was feeling better.
CHAPTER 2
King Victor smiles with venomous grace
At Wilf the Werewolf’s hairy face.
In the village of Katchem the clock had just struck midnight, although the hands said the time was a quarter to twelve. The reason was that Victor was sitting on the pointer, his cloak billowing in the wind.
Above the din of the clock and the strong wind, the four people in the tavern heard the howling of a lone wolf; a long, piercing sound that almost stopped the blood flowing through the body. A howl so chilling as to make the serving girl, Areta, drop and break an empty Stein mug she was clearing off a table. Her father, Klaus Grabbo, who owned the tavern, gave her a look of annoyance. She, in return, gave him a quick look of apology.
Then the wolf stopped howling and within seconds the large window next to the door burst open and Victor stood in its frame. A flash of lightning lit up the tavern for a mere second, followed by a deathly silence. Areta and her father, with their two customers, stood like statues.
‘Gutt evenink,’ Victor the First said, smiling, showing a fine set of teeth of which two were noticeably longer than the others. ‘I vould like a drink, mine host. A drink out of mine special bottle, ya?’
He crossed to the bar with the movement, ease and grace of mercury on glass. Grabbo picked out a bottle hidden at the back of the bar.
The liquid in the bottle was blood red. With a shaking hand Grabbo poured from the bottle until Victor hissed, ‘Enough’. Then, with a hard look around the room at the other two customers, he raised the glass to his lips with the Vampires’ toast:
A soldier’s in love with his rifle,
A sailor’s in love with his deck,
A Vampire’s in love when he kisses a girl
And leaves two holes in her neck
He swallowed the blood red liquid in one fast gulp. The other two customers kept their eyes averted from Victor, not wanting to antagonise him in any way and not wanting to be noticed by him either. Victor smacked his lips and said:
‘Excellent. Really very gutt. Eighteen years olt, I vould say, ya?’
The landlord picked up the bottle and looked at it before answering. ‘Nineteen,’ he said.
‘Nineteen? Vos she really? I vould haff said eighteen. Maybe, mine bar-keeping frent, you are keeping it too cool. I don’t like it ven it’s too cool. Unterstant, Grabbo? I don’t like it ven it’s too colt, ya?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Grabbo grovelled. Areta continued to clear the tables although she had done them twice already.
Victor watched her, a smile coming to his lips. ‘You know somethink, Grabbo?’
‘Sir?’
‘You daughter has become very beautiful, ya?’
‘Er … thank you, Sire.’
‘Ya, very beautiful inteed. Giff me a drink off the twenty year olt.’
Grabbo filled the waiting glass from another hidden bottle.
‘Vill you join me, mine frent?’
‘Er no, Your Greatness. Er … I’m off it at the moment. I’m … er … trying to lose weight,’ Grabbo quickly lied, not wanting to offend a customer.
‘I haff the perfect vay off losing veight. Vot you do is simple like your two customers over there.’ Victor looked very hard at the two other customers. ‘You eat nothing but roobs, ant then …’
‘Roobs?’ questioned Grabbo.
‘Yah, roobs.’
‘What are roobs, Sir?’
‘Roobs are a special fruit. They are very rare ant are only to be fount ten feet unterground.’
‘But, how will they help me to lose weight, if I may ask, Sire?’
‘It’s obvious. The exercise vile you are diggink for them. And then, ven you haff fount them you von’t eat them because they have such a horrit taste. That vay you vill lose even more veight, ya?’ Here Victor burst into almost uncontrollable laughter; laughter so chilling that the mirror behind the bar cracked.
Grabbo looked into the mirror. He could see his own reflection and the look of terror on his own pale face. He could also see the entire room. But he could not see Victor who was stood next to him because, being a Vampire, Victor had no reflection.
‘I’m sorry, mine frent,’ Victor said, looking at the cracked mirror and although Grabbo couldn’t see the reflection of Victor, Victor looked towards the mirror and straightened his tie.
A long scratch at the door of the tavern made everyone, including Victor, turn their heads. No one moved. The door slowly creaked open. There stood a smiling werewolf, a man covered in long, shaggy wolfhair looking a bit dishevelled on account of the rather strong wind. He had the werewolf’s almost red, fiery eyes and long, canine teeth. He stood erect in the doorway with the wind blowing his long hair as a woman blows on a fur coat. King Victor looked at him and thought he looked like a rather untidy crow’s nest.
‘Come in, Vilf, ant close the toor,’ Victor said.
Wilf the Werewolf, as he was known, walked into the tavern, shutting the door behind him.
‘Hello Victor,’ he said in a rather sing-song voice. ‘How’s the wife and kids?’ He was pleased to be indoors on such a night as this and he showed it by wagging his tail.
‘They are all very vell, thank you, mine covered-in-hair frent, and it vos very nice of you to ask.’
‘Not at all,’ Wilf smiled. ‘You know me. I’m very fond of your brood. How’s poor Valentine? Is he any better?’
‘Whom tolt you he vos ill?’
‘Dick.’
‘Tick?’
‘Yes, Dick. You remember Dick … Dick the big, daft dwarf,’ he almost barked.
‘Ah yes, Tick. Tick the bick taft twarf. Ya, I remember him. Ya.’
‘He told me Val wasn’t too good,’ Wilf continued. ‘I met him in the forest and we went for a walkies. That’s when he told me.’
‘Vell, Valentine’s a lot better I think. The Doctor’s vith him now. Doctor Plump.’
‘Plump?’ Wilf thought a while. ‘Doctor Plump?’
‘Ya.’
‘Yes, I think I used to go about with his alsatian. I’m not sure.’
‘Very tall.’
‘No. Short, rather fat with a scruffy tail.’
‘I mean the Doctor.’
‘Oh!’ Wilf snarled sweetly.
Areta had joined the other two customers while her father was once more behind the bar. Wilf joined Victor at the bar.
‘Can I get you anythink?’ King Victor asked Wilf.
‘No. No thank you, Victor. I’m off it at the moment. The hard stuff, that is. The vet says it’s best if I keep off it for a few more days. I’ve got a touch of hard pad.’ He showed Victor the sole of his left foot. ‘That’s why I’m limping a bit.’ He put his hind foot gingerly back on the floor.
‘I vould think you get the hard pad from all the runnink you do, ya?’
‘Never stop. I’m always running,’ Wilf said proudly, turning and leaning his back on the bar.
‘Ya, you run a lot, Vilf.’
‘I’m always running. Well, you see, farmers are always after me for frightening their sheep and enraged parents and all that, and bears and the like. Bears don’t like us much so they chase us a lot. Parents, farmers, bears … That’s why I do a lot of running, you see. I’ll tell you what …’
‘Vot?’
‘If you were to throw a stick now, across this floor to the other side of the room, I’d run after it. It’s our nature, you see.’
‘Vould you also brink it back?’
‘Sometimes, but sometimes I forget.’ Wilf looked around the tavern once more. ‘Mind you, I don’t run so much when I’m not a werewolf. When I’m an ordinary human being I like to sit at home with my legs up. I rest because I know that as soon as the full moon comes up again I go to bed and in about ten or twenty minutes or so I look down at the back of my hands and the hairs are starting to grow.’
‘Vot do you do then?’ Victor asked with keen interest.
‘Well, I get up and go on to the landing and shout through my mum’s door, “The hairs are growing Mum, so I’ll be off now and I’ll see you in about a week or ten days” and she shouts back something like, “All right, love. Be a good boy and bring back a fresh loaf with you” so then I’m off again, running.’
Wilf finished talking and noticed that everybody in the tavern was listening to him. This made him feel quite important.
Victor nodded agreement all through Wilf’s conversation. He turned to Grabbo saying, ‘I’ll haff one for the road, Grabbo. I’ll haff half a forty year olt.’ Turning back to Wilf he said:
‘I mustn’t haff anythink too stronk at the moment. I’m meeting the vife later on ant takink her out for a bite.’
‘Where?’ asked Wilf with enough interest in his voice to make Victor think, ‘He vants to come too.’
‘Er, vell, it’s more off a small family get-together than anythink else. Just the vife, Vernon, me and Valentine, if he’s any better. Ve vill propaply go and vait at the bridle path ant see if there is anythink vorth bitink.’
Victor was trying to get away quickly. ‘Oh, gutt Lord, is that the time? I tolt the vife I vould pick her up at twelf thirty.’
‘Is that the time she falls down?’ Wilf asked.
‘Pardon me?’ said a puzzled Victor.
‘You said you would pick her up at twelve thirty, so I was asking you if that was the time she fell down … Twelve thirty?’
‘Vilf, I haff never unterstood your jokes ant I still don’t. Guttbye Vilf,’ Victor said, patting Wilf on the head and giving him a tickle under the chin. Wilf showed his approval by licking Victor’s ear.
Victor left the tavern the same way as he had arrived – by the window. Areta went to close the window after him, thinking, ‘He’s just like all men. Never closes anything after him.’
Grabbo started to clean the glasses and whistled a late night tune. The tune was very popular in Gotcha at the moment. It was called ‘Show me the way to my cottage and my bed’. He hoped Wilf and the other two customers might take the hint and realise how late it was. But Wilf was in a talking mood that night.
‘Nice man, Victor, eh Grabbo?’
‘Charming,’ Grabbo said, oozing sarcasm that went straight over Wilf’s head. Wilf was quiet for a few seconds and then asked:
‘I don’t suppose you have anybody fresh in the cold cellar have you Grabbo?’
‘No,’ said Grabbo truthfully while putting the forty year old away.
‘It’s just that I fancy somebody fresh, that’s all.’
‘You heard what my father said, Wilf,’ Areta said, bustling around and clearing the table of the two customers who took the hint and left without saying goodnight to anyone.
‘Well, have you got any crisps then?’ Wilf asked.
‘What flavour?’ Grabbo asked with a tired voice.
After a moment’s thought Wilf said, ‘Human please.’
Grabbo threw him a pack of crisps saying, ‘Smokey bacon, take it or leave it.’
‘I’ll take it,’ Wilf said, his lips and teeth tearing open the packet.
‘That will be three lukas.’
‘What?’ Wilf asked, spraying crisps all over the bar.
‘That will be three lukas. Are you going deaf, Wilf?’
‘I haven’t got three lukas. As a matter of fact I haven’t got any money at all.’
‘No money? No money at all?’ Grabbo said, looking at his daughter.
‘No. You see, when I’m a werewolf I haven’t any pockets so I can’t carry any money.’
‘All right, Wilf,’ Grabbo said in a bored and tired voice. ‘You owe me three lukas.’
‘Thanks Grabbo.’
‘That’s O.K. Now take your crisps and go.’
‘Yes. Well goodnight then, Grabbo, and goodnight Areta. By the way, Areta, I’m not a werewolf next week so I was wondering if you would come to the fair with me a week on Thursday?’
‘Goodnight Wilf,’ Areta said softly.
‘Goodnight Areta,’ Wilf said sadly.
CHAPTER 3
A Vampire family on the street;
A Werewolf with only crisps to eat.
Valentine suddenly stopped Igon by putting his hand out. The Doctor and the servant behind nearly bumped into them. Since they had left Valentine’s room the four had been walking along seemingly endless corridors. Now Valentine had spotted the motif of a bat biting the throat of another bat on a door. He turned to his new friends and nodded.
Slowly he opened the door and they all looked into a very large, beautifully furnished room. Even the coffin in the middle of the room was made from Japanese walnut and highly polished. The handles of the coffin were gold, as was a massive candelabra holding twelve sixteen-inch lighted candles on a round, exquisitely-made satinwood table.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Valentine smiled, directing the other five eyes to the coffin. ‘Mum?’ he called, ‘are you in there?’
Queen Valeeta’s head rose slowly out of the opened coffin. She saw Valentine and smiled.
‘Darling. My darling boy,’ she breathed heavily. ‘Give me a hand, there’s a good boy. It’s time I rose. I have to meet your father. He’s taking us out tonight. You, too, Valentine, if you are well enough.’
Valentine helped his mother out of the coffin. She stood on the floor and swayed for a moment, then quickly composed herself. She took three or four deep breaths then looked at Igon, Doctor Plump and the servant. She raised a quizzical eyebrow at Valentine which asked what these people were doing in her room. She was a strikingly beautiful woman and at the moment was striking Igon beautifully over the head with a lighted candle.
‘Who are these people?’ she hissed.
‘They are my friends,’ Valentine said. ‘Doctor Plump, Ronnoco Sed and Igon, who you have known since being a little girl.’
‘I’ve never been a little girl,’ Igon protested. Ronnoco Sed and Doctor Plump both hit him at the same time.
Vernon suddenly joined them in the room. He didn’t come in through the door. He didn’t come in through the window. He just appeared in the middle of the room behind a flash of bright blue smoke.
They all looked at Vernon, with a surprised look on their faces, including Vernon himself. This was the first time he had done the trick right. He had transported himself from the cellars up into his mother’s room.
He stood there, in the middle of the room, dazed and slightly on fire, trying to put himself out by patting himself hard and blowing on himself even harder. He was having little success. At the moment he was smouldering like an old bonfire.
Igon was the first to come to his senses. He picked up a pitcher of water and threw it at Vernon but, sadly, he let go of the pitcher too and it landed slap-bang on the back of Vernon’s head.
The pitcher broke on impact, covering him with water and therefore putting out the fire. It also put Vernon out, cold. The Doctor fainted on top of an already fainted Ronnoco Sed for the second time that evening.
Valentine could hardly hold back a smile while his mother laughed out loud and applauded. Igon knew he was in for it as soon as Vernon came round, so he tried to climb up the chimney.
Igon was a very lucky warped old man that night for, just as Vernon came to his senses and was just beginning to think of knocking the already minute senses completely out of Igon, Victor came into the room through the window. In this household Victor was the King. His word was law.
He looked at his family and the Doctor and the servant and then at Igon scrambling about in the fireplace among the ashes.
‘Igon,’ he hissed. ‘Vot are you doink? Are you arrivink or are you goink, ya?’
Vernon suddenly spoke. ‘He hit me, father. That stupid, stunted swine hit me. He hit me with a pitcher.’ Vernon, his eyes glowing with rage, glared at poor Igon but Victor’s satanic eyes slowly turned towards Vernon and Vernon knew he made a bad mistake in interrupting his father. Quickly and sullenly he murmured an apology. The King hissed softly in a voice filled with venom:
‘Since ven has it been permissible to interrupt your father?’ He hit Vernon with the flat of his hand across the cheek, leaving a blue mark across his white face. ‘Ant since ven,’ he continued, ‘has it been permissible to interrupt the Kink?’
Once again he slapped Vernon across the other cheek, leaving another blue mark that matched the first one. Vernon’s eyes, blood-red with anger, looked steadily at his father. Valentine looked at the ground while Valeeta looked at her husband, her eyes filled with pride and love. Doctor Plump and Ronnoco Sed slept soundly on in their faint.
Igon had stopped scrambling in the ashes and was now trying to cover himself with logs.
‘Igon, mine little filty frent. Come here,’ Victor commanded.
Igon did as he was told and came to Victor, expecting another powerful blow about his head. Victor put his hand out to rest gently on top of Igon’s head, saying:
‘Igon, you are the most beautiful ugly think I haff ever seen, ant I’ve seen a few ugly thinks in mine time. But I haff never seen anythink quite as beautifully ugly as you.’
Igon gave Victor the kind of look an obedient dog gives its master. Victor then playfully kicked Igon to the other side of the room and as Igon rolled over and over, the only thing he could hear was a deep-throated laugh coming from the direction of Victor, King of the Vampires. As Igon rolled to a stop, Victor continued to speak.
‘Vell, mine beloved family. Tonight ve vill go out together. How gutt it is to see you lookink so vell, Valentine.’
The Doctor stirred.
‘Ah, Doctor. I’m glat to see you. I’m thankink you for curink mine son, Valentine, from the vapours. You see, I knew you could do it.’
The Doctor, who was still not quite himself, got shakily to his feet. Valentine spoke before the Doctor could say anything.
‘Yes, Father. The Doctor was very good and also very quick. He found out the cause and the cure too.’
‘Vot was the cause?’
‘Er … too much blood, Father. I’ve been drinking too much blood,’ Valentine lied, looking sideways at the Doctor, hoping he wouldn’t be fool enough to say something else.
‘Ant the cure?’ Victor asked his son.
‘Blood oranges.’
‘Blood oranges?’
‘Yes Father. From now on I have only to eat blood oranges. Isn’t that correct, Doctor?’
Doctor Plump half smiled and half nodded.
‘The Doctor said that blood oranges would be better than real blood if I want to stay cured of the dreaded Vampire vapours, and you know how contagious they are, Father.’
‘Blood oranges are contagious?’ asked his Father.
‘No Father, the vapours are contagious,’ Valentine corrected.
‘I see,’ said Victor, almost to himself. ‘Vell, iff you haff to haff blood oranges, then blood oranges it vill be.’ He looked at his wife, who knowing Valentine’s feelings about blood, nodded her head in agreement.
‘But I’m tellink you this, mine son. Blood oranges vill eventually rot your teeth. Come everyvon. Ve vill all go into the village to celebrate Valentine’s recovery.’ He led the way to the window.
Valentine didn’t want to go out of the window and neither did the Doctor. Nor would Ronnoco Sed when he came round.
‘Er … Father.’
‘Yes, mine son.’
‘Maybe I should take the others out by the front door.’
‘Vy?’
‘Well, they are not like us. They can’t turn into bats and fly out of the window.’
‘Throw Igon out of the window. Please let me throw Igon out of the window, Father,’ Vernon begged.
‘There, there, dear,’ his mother said. ‘Not tonight. Maybe some other night. Now do as your Father asks.’
Victor fixed his eyes on his wife. ‘Asks?’ he said loudly. ‘Asks,’ he said even louder. ‘Do as your Father tells him, not asks. I am the Kink ant you all do as I command. All off you. Unterstant?’
Vernon and the King of the Vampires looked at each other. The air in the room crackled with electric hate. Vernon backed down under his father’s gaze. Victor, knowing he had beaten his son, gave a smile that could freeze two flames together. He looked around the room, his gaze resting on his other son, Valentine.
‘Very vell, you take the others out through the front door.’ He looked at the Doctor and the servant. ‘I vould take you out that vay mineself, but I’m afraid I don’t know vere the front door is.’
With that he gathered his wife and Vernon close to him, put his hand inside his cloak pocket, bringing out the ex-mayor of Katchem, and put him on his shoulder. He led them to the window, saying before they all jumped.
‘Ve vill see you in the main street, in the doorvay off Motherscares, ya?’
It took Ronnoco Sed a little while to come round fully. The three of them then made their way to the door. Then Valentine looked round and saw Igon huddled in a corner of the room with tears of sadness welling up in his eye.
‘Come on,’ Valentine called. ‘We can’t go without you, can we? You are the only one who knows the way.’
Igon wiped the tears away from his eye with his sleeve and ran after his hero, Valentine.
It took them forty minutes to get to the front door and that was at speed. It took Igon forty seconds to get to the same door. He had found a shortcut. To be perfectly honest, the shortcut found him.
He was leaning against a wooden panel along the corridor, trying to get his breath back, when suddenly the panel opened and he fell straight down, landing on the stone flags below, just outside the front door.
Lady Luck continued to be with him that night and luckily the fall was broken by his legs. He didn’t cry out in pain, having been taught from the beatings given to him by his lovely and much-missed Mummy to be impervious to pain. He always used to say she had the best left hook he had ever felt and she could have been the world champion heavyweight boxer if she hadn’t been disqualified in the tenth for consistent butting.
Igon lay there, thinking of Mummsy and what the other lads would think of him being there before them. They were quite surprised.
Meanwhile, King Victor, Queen Valeeta and Prince Vernon stood in the doorway of Motherscares, sheltering from the rain. They were huddled together, trying very hard not to attract the attention of Wilf the Werewolf who was across the street, also sheltering from the rain in the doorway of Boots the Cobbler, whose son was in England learning to be a chemist. Of course, everyone wondered what good that would do him.
Wilf stood there, leaning near the window, loudly eating the last of his smokey bacon crisps. It was two in the morning and the rain was still pouring down. Wilf normally wasn’t bothered about rain but tonight he wasn’t too happy as it was affecting his hard pad and as most of you realise, there’s nothing worse for a werewolf than a wet hard pad.
A lonely, huddled figure walked nervously along the pavement. Wilf squeezed back against the shop doorway, trying to press himself against it so as to be almost invisible.
The lonely figure looked round to see if it was being followed and as it passed the entrance to the shop where Wilf was hiding, a parcel fell on to the ground. The figure stooped down to pick it up at the same time as Wilf sprang out to grab the figure.
Victor, Valeeta and Vernon all watched Wilf sail over the top of the bent figure and land in the middle of the road. In all his years (over two hundred of them) Victor had never seen a werewolf with such a surprised look on his face. Its face had the same look a midget would have who had just been told he had won the long jump in the Olympics.
The huddled figure stood up and looked across the road to see Wilf sprawling in the gutter. Instead of running off while it had the opportunity, it walked towards Wilf and helped him out of the road.
‘Are you all right, Wilf?’
‘Fine thanks, Mum,’ Wilf answered back. ‘I didn’t know it was you. What are you doing out at this time of night?’
‘Well dear, I thought you would be about the village, what with it raining so hard and your corns …’
‘Hard pad, Mum.’
‘Oh yes. Well, like I was saying, I thought you’d be around on account of the rain. I thought you wouldn’t be going off into the woods and all that scaring the children stuff …’
‘And grown-ups as well, Mum.’
‘Of course, dear … in the pouring rain.’ Wilf’s mum smiled at her son. ‘So I’ve brought your favourite; a toasted cheese sandwich.’
‘Aw Mum. Who ever heard of a werewolf eating a toasted cheese sandwich? I mean to say, Mum. Couldn’t you have brought something like a pork chop?’
‘A pork chop? Why, Wilf Igrate.’ She called him by his full name. ‘You don’t like pork chops. You always say “I don’t like pork chops” and here you are in the middle of Katchem, actually asking for pork chops! Well I never. Wilf, you worry me the way you never know what you want. Lord knows, I’ve accepted the fact that you’re a werewolf, although what your father would say if he ever came back I shudder to think. But I honestly cannot get used to your not knowing what you want.’
‘I tell you what, Mum,’ Wilf said, trying his best to get back into her good books. ‘I tell you what.’
‘What?’ she said sharply.
‘Leave the sandwich and I will eat it, I promise. Cross my heart.’ He drew a cross on his body.
‘That’s your liver, you big oaf.’
‘Well, you know what I mean, Mum.’ He put a paw around her ample body and tried to lick her face. She pushed him away gently, saying:
‘Stop that, you big soft thing. I’m going home now so if I don’t see you, be a good boy and don’t forget when you come home I want a loaf. Fresh, mind you.’
Wilf nodded and gave his Mum another quick lick. She walked back up the street, glad she had made the effort and seen her boy.
All through this mother and son reunion the royal family of Vampires stood stock still and watched them from the doorway of Motherscares. Wilf had no idea they were there, and the Vampires were happy to keep it that way, especially Valeeta who really didn’t like Wilf on the rather selfish grounds that he could grow his own fur coat, while she had to beg and pray to her husband to get her one. In all fairness he did so, even though the first time she wore it two dogs chased her up a tree.
Wilf would never have seen them at all if it hadn’t been for Ronnoco, Doctor Plump, Valentine and Igon coming noisily down the street and stopping in front of Motherscares.
He limped across the street to them, kicking his rolled-up smokey bacon crisp packet in the style of Gotcha’s most famous footballer, Cruft, whom Wilf had a tremendous admiration for. Valeeta spoke in a vicious whisper to Victor.
‘Get rid of him.’
Victor looked at his wife in surprise. ‘Eh?’
‘Get rid of him.’
‘Who?’
‘Him.’ She nodded towards Wilf playing football in the middle of the road.
‘Vilf?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Vilf … I mean Wilf.’
‘You mean kill him?’
‘If you have to.’
‘But I can’t do that.’ He spoke quickly and softly out of the corner of his mouth. He always found this difficult to do on account of the rather large teeth on either side. ‘He is von of our biggest tourist attractions. He brinks in thousands of gripples a year. It’s through him that ve haff vater runnink out off the taps.’
Wilf kicked the rolled crisp packet towards them with all his might and shouted ‘Goal’. The ‘ball’ hit Vernon in the face. As it bounced off his face it left a small piece of crisp on the end of his nose which Wilf licked off. Vernon stood there and fumed.
‘Hello everybody,’ Wilf said, offering his paw to be shaken. Valentine spoke first.
‘Hello Wilf. The way you’re playing you’ll soon make the national team.’
‘Thanks Val. I thought you had the dreaded vapours.’
‘No. Er … not now. Doctor Plump cured me.’
‘Well done, Doc,’ Wilf said, walking over to the Doctor and shaking his wet fur all over him. Ronnoco looked at Wilf and passed out on the shop door entrance. Everyone ignored him.
Queen Valeeta was starting to get a little angry with all the noise and the confusion. It was a mite too much for her. She asked rather loudly what the time was. No one had a watch with them and the village clock was broken because someone kept sitting on the long hand at a quarter to twelve every night. But Wilf told her not to worry about the time as he could easily find out for her.
He went over the road and under a closed, curtained window he began to howl at the top of his voice. After about a minute of howling, the window opened and a voice shouted down to Wilf:
‘What are you doing, Wilf? Don’t you know that it’s almost two thirty in the morning?’ and with that slammed his window.
Wilf thanked him and skipped back across the road to Valeeta to tell her the time was two thirty. She was quite impressed with Wilf’s guile.
They all stayed there in the shop doorway until it was almost dawn and then, of course, the Vampire family had to go back to the castle to sleep for the rest of the day.
But Valentine wasn’t happy. He wanted to get away from all this Vampire business and to live a normal life with a pretty wife and roses around the door of a cottage and the patter of little children’s feet, and not the patter of little rats’ feet like at the castle. But, sadly, he thought, ‘That can’t happen. Not for me. I’m a Vampire and that’s it. It’s the old saying of Vampires: “Home is where your artery is.”’ Sadly he pulled down his coffin lid and went to sleep.
Vernon thought of diabolical ways of getting rid of Igon before pulling his coffin lid down for the day. King Victor had a daymare, dreaming of living on blood oranges while Queen Valeeta softly smiled to herself in her dream of Wilf.
Wilf stayed in the doorway of Boots and scratched himself to sleep. Ronnoco was left in the doorway of Motherscares, while Doctor Plump went back to his horse and buggy and fell asleep driving home.
Igon sat in the corner of Valentine’s room and thought of his dear, old, kind, generous, heavy-fisted Mother. The wry smile on his face was put there by that same fist!
CHAPTER 4
Valentine’s shocked at his own reflection.
Vernon wants Igon for closer inspection.
Valentine jumped up quickly and hit his head on the coffin lid. Igon awoke instantly and slid over to Valentine’s coffin.
‘What can I do, my Prince?’ he asked through the closed lid.
‘Open the lid, please, Igon,’ came a muffled reply.
‘Pardon?’ asked Igon.
‘Open the lid please, Igon,’ Valentine’s voice said softly but with urgency.
‘I’m sorry Sire, but I can’t hear you properly. I’ll open the lid so that I can hear you.’
Igon opened the lid but hardly more than a crack.
‘Thank you, Igon, but could you just open the lid a little more, please?’
‘I mustn’t, Sire. It’s daylight and it’s dangerous for Vampires to be abroad in daylight.’
‘Just open the lid. It’s too heavy from the inside.’
‘No, Sire,’ Igon was at a loss. Although not a Vampire himself, he knew all the laws and rules of the Vampires’ needs and ways.
‘Igon,’ Valentine nearly shouted. ‘Just for the moment I want you to forget all that rhubarb and list …’
‘You want some rhubarb, Sire? I’ll fetch some immediately.’
‘No, Igon.’ This time Valentine did not shout. ‘Don’t get any rhubarb.’ He spoke very precisely and slowly. ‘Look, the only thing I want you to do is to open my bed lid. That’s all. Just open my bed lid. Now that’s got to be simple, Igon, hasn’t it.’
‘Oh yes, Sire. But it’s daylight and what would your father say if he found out I’d let you out in the daylight? You might die and I definitely would.’
‘I won’t tell him, Igon. Honest, I won’t tell him you let me out,’ Valentine pleaded through the crack of light. ‘Igon, haven’t I always been kind to you?’
Igon nodded at the coffin where the sad voice was coming from.
‘And haven’t I always been on your side and stuck up for you? Haven’t I, Igon?’
Igon blinked as a tear rolled down his left cheek. He also looked at his glass eye to see if that was crying, but it wasn’t.
‘Yes, Sire, you have been the only one,’ he sobbed.
‘So trust me, Igon. Trust me. Lift the lid and I promise you that nothing will happen to me and nothing, my little friend, will happen to you. I give you my word.’
That was good enough for Igon. Not because Valentine had given his word, although that in itself was enough, but because he had called Igon his little friend. And he had called him little friend without putting words like ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid’ in front of it.
Within a few seconds Valentine was sitting up, shading his eyes against the sunlight that was filtering in through the dark, heavy curtains.
‘Open the curtains, Igon.’
‘Should I, Sire? I don’t want you to die, Sire. You are the only friend I’ve got. If you die, Sire, I might as well die too.’ Here Igon looked as sweet as he could, rather like half a lemon that had been squeezed two weeks ago. Valentine gave a smile of thanks and true affection.
‘I promise you, Igon. The daylight will not kill me,’ he said, and at the same time sprang to the floor. ‘Come, let’s get some wonderful hot sunlight into this musty old room.’
Valentine strode boldly over to the curtains and with one swift movement threw them apart. Igon ran around the room like a demented gerbil. The entire room was bathed in hot, bright, beautiful, life-giving sunshine.
Igon covered his eye and face with his hands while Valentine looked down on the village below and watched happily as the heat of the sun warmed his body. For the first time he could remember, he felt not only well but good. He wanted to do someone, somewhere, some good. He wanted to share his happiness with someone. He looked at Igon and, still smiling, said:
‘It’s all right, Igon. I’m still here. You can look at me. I’m not dead. Look at me.’
Igon nervously took his hands away from his face and through a squinted eye looked at Valentine who was fully bathed in sunshine.
‘This can’t be right, Sire,’ Igon said with a shaking voice.
‘Ah, but it is, Igon, it is,’ said Valentine, taking a huge, deep breath.
Igon sat in the middle of the room on the floor, looking quite lost and befuddled.
‘Come, Igon,’ Valentine continued. ‘Let’s go to the village and meet some real people. People who we’ve never seen before. Maybe even a pretty girl.’
‘For me?’ Igon asked, his eye brightening up.
‘Who knows?’ Valentine laughed.
They left the castle, Valentine hoping it was for good. He intended to send the King and Queen a night letter thanking them for all they had done for him, but somehow things don’t always work out the way you plan.
The first thing they heard when they got to the village was the gossip that Ronnoco had been put in the only cell of the jail for being found supposedly drunk in the doorway of Motherscares.
To both Valentine and Igon the village seemed packed. They had never seen so many people at once. Valentine was very excited at seeing things that he had never seen before. Things like birds in a cage, all singing; beautiful, bright little things. He had never seen birds at the castle. Only once he remembered seeing a vulture flying over the castle when his old Uncle Vermillion had died. It was said that he had fallen down at night on to a stake that somehow had pierced his heart.
Igon, as a boy, had been taken to the village, but he had almost forgotten the things he’d seen. Today the thing that caught his eye was a monocle which he thought he would save up for, then put in his eye pouch for his glass eye.
The whole day for the two of them was spent looking at everything. Igon soon got over the fact that Valentine was still alive and that the daylight hadn’t killed him or even slowed him down for that matter. It seemed to make him stronger although it worried Igon slightly that Valentine’s skin was starting to turn a little on the red side.
It was now late afternoon. Both of them were starting to feel a little hungry, particularly Igon who was one of those people who could eat a lot of anything at any time. But they had no money and they both knew that in the outside world money was the most important of things and that humans would kill for it.
They stood looking wistfully into the window of Ari Hovis the baker at the hot bread and the beautiful cakes and scones. It was then that Igon noticed his reflection.
His heart missed a beat, if not two or three, not at his own ugliness but the fact that standing next to him in the reflection of the window was Valentine. A thousand thoughts raced through Igon’s tiny mind.
‘Vampires have no reflection. Should I tell him? Should I tell his father, the King of all the Vampires, that one of his sons had a reflection? What should I do?’ He was so agitated he started to jump up and down, so much so that people stopped to watch him doing his jig in the middle of the main street. This ugly little man with a tall, handsome fellow in full evening dress.
But, the people just thought they were from the circus, always due around this time of the year, and that these two fellows were here to advertise it. No one considered it would be anyone from the castle. Why, the only person to be seen from the castle was the King and he was only ever seen at night and very late at that.
Valentine realised they were being stared at, so, in a nice, gentle way he tried to stop Igon from doing this foolish jig. Igon couldn’t be stopped and still carried on with his dance, pointing towards the window. He was so excited he couldn’t speak.
Valentine looked in the window, saw their reflection and thought they looked like a circus ringmaster and his performing monkey. It was almost a full minute before Valentine realised why Igon was so excited and kept pointing to the window. For the first time, Valentine saw his reflection!
He raised an arm above his head to see if the other person who looked like him would raise his arm. He did. Valentine then lifted his top hat. So did the other fellow in the window. Igon and Valentine walked to the next shop and looked in their window. Yes, they could still see each other. They ran along the street, looking in all the windows, still seeing themselves. They were now shouting with joy, pointing to themselves in the window and to passers-by, who thought it was some crazy publicity stunt thought up to attract them to the circus.
At last, Igon and Valentine threw themselves down on the grass just outside the village, almost completely exhausted. Sweat was running off Valentine’s forehead. This was also a new phenomenon to Valentine. Vampires do not perspire or even sweat under any circumstances.
‘What does it all mean, Sire?’ Igon asked.
‘I don’t fully understand yet. It started when I bumped my head in my coffin this morning. I somehow knew that I had to get up, no matter what time of day it was. I knew something was that little bit different. I’ve really felt it since it was thought I had the dreaded Vampire vapours and yet, you see, I knew I didn’t have the vapours. I knew I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, catch the vapours. I couldn’t catch the vapours for one very good reason.’
‘What was that, Master?’
‘Because, my faithful little friend, I’m not a Vampire. I can’t be. Have you ever seen a Vampire’s reflection?’
Igon shook his head.
‘Have you ever seen a Vampire perspire the way I am right now?’
Igon shook his head again.
‘And last, but by no means least, have you ever seen a Vampire walking about in the daylight as I am now? Have you? In all your years of living in the castle, have you ever seen a walking-about-in-the-daytime, perspiring and looking-at-himself-in-the-mirror-type Vampire?’
‘Never,’ said Igon, a glimmer of understanding coming through. ‘Never, never, never.’ He was shouting now.
They both stood up and looked at each other with love and understanding.
Igon asked, ‘Does this really mean then that you’re not a Vampire?’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Valentine said with a smile a mile wide.
‘Then, could the same thing happen to me?’ Igon asked, slowly and seriously.
‘How could it? You’re not a Vampire.’
‘Forget about the Vampire bit. I mean, like you, could I … me … wake up one morning and find out that I’m not ugly any more. Could that happen to me? Like waking up and finding you’re not a Vampire. Could that happen?’
Not for the first time Valentine saw the sadness in Igon’s squat, dirty face.
‘Well … er … I don’t see why not,’ Valentine answered a little too glibly for the truth.
‘I’d like that,’ Igon said with a sigh. ‘So. What next? What are we going to do now. Go back to the castle and tell the King and Queen that you’re not a Vampire?’
‘I think not, Igon. I think not. You see, I have a feeling and I don’t know why, but I have this feeling that that would not overplease them.’
Igon looked at Valentine and although not really understanding, nodded wisely. It was all too much for him but as he looked into the distance he saw a figure walking along the footpath about a half a mile away, towards the forest.
‘That’s Wilf. Wilf the Werewolf,’ Igon said. ‘Should we tell him? Should we shout and tell him you’re not a Vampire?’
Valentine put his hand over Igon’s mouth. ‘No. If that’s Wilf, then it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.’
They both laughed out loud, almost loud enough for Wilf to hear.
That night they stayed out of the village and went deep into the forest to sleep and work things out. Valentine had the sneaking feeling that King Victor would soon find out about their disappearance from the castle and would not be too happy about it. He would almost certainly send out the Vampire guards to search for them. If the guards found them they would be taken back to the castle and Valentine would be heavily chastised and punished while Igon, in all probability, would be given to Vernon to play with and do as he wished.
As they slowly walked into the forest, keeping an eye out for trouble – well Igon kept an eye out, Valentine kept them both out – our young hero tried to think back to the days of his early childhood but the only thing he could remember was always being at the castle. Victor was his father, Valeeta was his mother and Vernon was his brother. He could not remember any time of his life when he was not at the castle living with them as a Vampire. He had a vague memory of a childhood fight with Vernon and Vernon lost his temper and said something about ‘… and I wish you hadn’t been brought here’, but it was such a long time ago that he couldn’t really be sure. They sat down to rest for a while.
‘Igon.’
‘Master.’
‘How long have you lived at the castle?’
‘All my life. I was born there.’
‘You’re human aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes, Sire. You only have to look at me to see that.’
‘How come you were born at the castle?’
‘Mummy worked there.’
‘What did your … er … Mummy do and where is she now?’
‘Well, she was a nurse to a Doctor Frankenstein’s monster. She used to care for him and get him ready for bed and, of course, when he needed it, she would also change his oil. Then, as far as I know, she ran away with a man from the circus, the tattooed man.’
‘What happened to the monster?’
‘She took him with her. They all went with the circus and I’ve never seen her since.’ He wiped a tear from his eye as he always did when he talked about his Mummy. ‘I never knew my Daddy,’ he continued. ‘He was killed. He fell in a vat of wine and, instead of trying to swim, he tried to drink his way out.’
‘Good Lord.’
‘Yes, he hiccupped to death.’
‘Do you remember me being born at the castle?’
‘You weren’t born at the castle.’
‘Go on,’ Valentine urged.
‘Oh no. One night you weren’t there and the next night you were. We were all told you were magic and that you were a special baby but I saw you being brought in by King Victor. You were wrapped in a blanket and he carried you in. That was the only time King Victor came in by the front door and not by the window. He always used the window but not that night.’
Valentine remained silent for a while as he thought over what he had just been told.
‘Do you think I was kidnapped; stolen from my real mother?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, if I was kidnapped, that means that the King isn’t my father. The Queen isn’t my mother and Vernon is not my brother.’
‘Am I still your friend?’
‘More than ever,’ Valentine smiled.
‘Well, that’s the only thing that’s important to me.’
After a pause of a few minutes Valentine spoke again. ‘Igon, we must go deeper into the forest. We have got to get away from Katchem.’
Igon rose from the log.
‘Don’t you see, Igon. I’ve got to find out the truth. I’ve got to find out who I really am.’
‘But that’s easy. You are Prince Valentine, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Realm. Last night, tonight and tomorrow night.’ Igon spoke with solemnity and more than a touch of pride.
CHAPTER 5
‘A President!’ the people cry aloud.
King Victor quells an angry crowd.
The moon shone directly on to King Victor’s coffin through the open window of his room. Inside the open coffin King Victor opened his eyes and lay there thinking about the daymare he had just had.
After a moment he majestically climbed out of the coffin. But as he stood up he knew that something was out of line. He knew that one or two things would go astray this night. He felt that his biorhythms weren’t so good.
There was always one thing that Victor liked about being a Vampire and that was, unlike humans, you didn’t have to get dressed when you got up. He was already dressed. He stood there and stretched himself. Then he went into a few late-night exercises. First of all he raised his arms level with his shoulders and practised a few cloak sweeps. He then did a few deep breathing exercises, one every four minutes, and finally sat cross-legged and cross-eyed on the window ledge with the moon full on his face, trying to get a little moonburn.
He had a slight headache but he knew that it was his own fault. He had been sleeping with his top hat on in his coffin all night and the coffin wasn’t long enough for him and his top hat so it had squashed down on his forehead. His mother had always told him, ‘Victor, never go to bed with your top hat on, for two reasons. One, it gives you a headache and, two, it puts a quiff in your widow’s peak.’ He felt the front of his widow’s peak and sure enough, there was a quiff there. Mums are always right.
He had one or two things lined up for the night. He would start off the evening with a few glasses of the red stuff at the tavern, but not too many as it affected his flying. Then, maybe, a little picnic in the graveyard. Yes, that would be nice.
He glided down from the window ledge and went over to the hat rack where the last Mayor of Katchem was sleeping. He looked at the bat who was hanging upside down from the hat rack. Victor thought he would scare the old bat so he stood on his head and, with a flick of his fingers, awakened the ex-Mayor. The bat opened its eyes and thought he saw King Victor standing the right way up so he turned over and fell to the floor.
King Victor laughed so hard the moon hid behind a cloud for a moment. He soon had the bat on his shoulder and, knowing that this bat didn’t like leaving the room by the window, walked towards the door as if they were going to leave that way. Suddenly King Victor turned round and ran as fast as he could for the window. The bat, whose eyes were almost popping out of its head, dug his little claws into the shoulder of Victor’s suit and held on for dear life.
But the King of the Vampires stopped as suddenly as he had started and the impetus took the bat forward and Victor watched him leave the room through the window, alone, as he himself remained firmly in the room.
The ex-Mayor, who was not the best of flyers, fluttered around outside rather like a dragonfly doing its first solo flight. The King, who enjoyed a cruel joke, watched as the bat flew out of control towards the ground. He then left the window and followed the ex-Mayor down. When the bat thought its time had come, Victor dived underneath it and took it safely on to his shoulder.
The bat, who was now so nervous that the fear of flying overtook the fear he had for the Vampire, once more dug his claws into Victor’s clothes and grabbed the Vampire’s ear with its sharp teeth. King Victor, who was no more than three feet from Queen Valeeta’s window, veered with the pain to the left of the window and hit the wall very hard. They both slid down the wall to the ground. The bat let go of his master and flapped his wings as hard as he could to keep himself up in the air. King Victor had nothing to hold on to and continued to slide down the wall to land in the slimy moat below.
Victor’s frightening scream was heard the other end of Gotcha, and most of the inhabitants thought that the end of the world had come. He slowly climbed up the damp wall of his castle, making his way to the Queen’s window. He gingerly climbed into his wife’s room, looking like a not-too-jolly green giant. The Queen, who had been awakened by her husband’s first scream and was now peacefully dropping back into sleep, screamed herself when she saw him.
‘Shut up, you silly olt fool,’ Victor ordered sharply.
‘Who are you?’ the Queen asked.
‘Your husbant,’ Victor said curtly.
‘Are you going to a fancy dress ball?’
‘No, I’m not goink to a fancy tress ball. If you must know, I fell in the moat.’
The Queen settled back in her coffin, saying, ‘Well, you drink too much. That’s your trouble. You’ve been at that bottle of twenty-year-old again, haven’t you? I’ve been watching you lately and you have definitely been coming home well and truly drunk. Every evening we watch you leave by the window heading for the tavern.’
King Victor was looking and feeling a little uncomfortable in his wet clothes.
‘And when you get there it’s straight for the twenty-year-old bottle. It’ll rot your socks, believe me. Look what it did to your father and mother. Your father drank so much twenty-year-old he couldn’t fly straight any more and the doctor grounded him, and he was only young. What was he, ninety?’
The green algae was now starting to dry on Victor and his suit was also starting to stiffen up. He only had one change of suit and that was at the cleaners. Valeeta droned on.
‘I’ll tell you this, Victor. If my mother and father were alive tonight they would turn over in their graves.’
‘Vife. You talk too much. I’m goink to see mine children. They should be outside on a beautiful night like this.’
‘Vernon is up, down in the cellar. I heard him,’ the Queen said.
‘Vhat’s he doink?’ asked the King.
‘I’m not sure. I think he’s making someone. Go and see if Valentine is out and about. As a matter of fact, I’ll come with you.’
The Queen, as beautiful and elegant as ever, rested her arm on that of the beginning-to-pong-a-little King, and together they walked along to Valentine’s room.
King Victor softly opened Valentine’s door. They crept towards the coffin, expecting him to be asleep. When they discovered the coffin was empty they at first didn’t know what to think.
They looked at each other over the open, empty coffin. The Queen looked back into the coffin, not really wanting to look at Victor, while Victor stood there in his now almost green suit, a blue vein quickly pumping on the left side of his white face, his black eyes staring almost unseeing into the coffin. He drew his purple lips back to show his pearl white teeth biting into his pink tongue.
‘He’s gone,’ he hissed. ‘He’s escaped.’
‘How can he escape?’ the Queen asked. ‘And why should he escape? He’s been with us all these years. He knows nothing. Only you and I know how he came here.’
‘And Igon?’
‘Why should Igon know?’
‘Because a fool like Igon knows everythink.’
‘Then we are safe. If Igon is a fool who will believe him?’
‘Don’t spout your female logic at me. The only thing I know is that mine son has escaped. I know he has. I haff a feelink.’
The Queen was not to be intimidated.
‘Nonsense. You are talking nonsense. He’s probably in his playroom listening to his musical boxes. He’s got all the latest ones. Only last week he sent away for Mick Jugular and the Rolling Tombstones.’
‘Vy do you prattle on so? Valentine has gone. Vy has he gone? I vill tell you. Somevon in the castle has told him he is not a Vampire. He knows he is not a Vampire. So beink a human child he wants to fint out whom his real parents are and you prattle on about … er … Tick Tracular ant the Writhing Twobones.’
‘Mick Jugular and the Rolling Tombstones, dear,’ his Queen corrected.
The King looked at his wife for a long time before he spoke, as if he was trying to recollect the past events. ‘You remember the night I brought him to the castle?’
‘Of course,’ the Queen said.
‘I found him, a small, little thing, not much more than a day old. He vas wrapped up in a blanket vit the vords on a piece of parchment sayink “Please somevon vill you take care off mine little boy,” ya?’
‘Yes. Look dear. I know all this.’
‘But dit you know whom his parents vere, eh?’
‘No one did.’
‘You are wronk. I dit.’
‘How?’
‘Because I made it mine duty to find out.’
‘Who? Tell me who.’ The Queen stared at her husband.
‘The Mayor. Ya, Mayor Goop. He vas his father. That is vy I turned him into a bat.’
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