It is a wild, stormy night in the small village of Katchem-by-the-Throat, in the tiny country of Gotcha, where the unhappy Gots are still ruled by Vampires after four hundred years. At Bloodstock Castle lives Victor, King of the Vampires, and his devoted wife, Queen Valeeta. They have two sons: Vernon, who has a nasty habit of turning people into stone, and Valentine, who reveals the horrible fact that he can’t stand the taste of blood! That’s only the beginning of an incredible story that will keep readers of all ages in stitches!

The Reluctant Vampire
by Eric Morecambe

This book is dedicated to

Steven James Bartholomew

Julian Gibbs

Ian Cockhill

Kingsley Roberts

Tom Barnes

and Darcey Cohill

Their knowledge of Vampires and their habits was invaluable.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

If you enjoyed this, you may also like

About the Author

Also by Eric Morecambe

Copyright

About the Publisher

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;

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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