Trapped in Transylvania (10 page)

“Man alive,” said Morris. “It's working!”

“Mina, where are you now?” Van Helsing asked.

Her voice was soft and sleepy. “I am lying still. It feels like … death. Yes! I am … in my final box of earth!”

“Ach, it is true,” the professor said. “Go on, go on. What do you hear?”

“The lapping of water,” Mina replied dreamily. “Little waves leap and crash. There is water all around. I can hear it on the outside.”

“The outside?” said Harker. “The outside of what?”

“The hull,” said Mina.

Van Helsing jumped to his feet. “This is good! Good! We have no moments to lose! Dracula have take his last box of earth on board a ship. But where is he … where?”

“Moo,” mumbled Mina.

“Moo?” I said.

“
Cows
are mooing!” Mina said. “And I hear wagon wheels not far off, turning, turning.…”

Van Helsing crooked his finger at us. “Dracula is going up one of the narrow rivers that lead to his homeland! I know where! He returns to—Transylvania!”

“Transylvania?” said Dr. Seward. “But supposing we track him down and find him—then what?”

“Then we him destroy!” Van Helsing stated. “We must do it. For if he escape us this time, the Count may sleep for a century then come alive—”

“A century?” Frankie gulped. “Devin, when was this book written?”

I looked at the pages in the front of the book. “About a hundred years ago.”

“That's almost a century!” she said. “Dracula could come back during our time! We need to stop him now.”

“But he's far ahead of us,” said Harker, beginning to pace in front of us. “We may not have time to catch up.”

“We can catch up,” said Frankie. “And there's only one sure way to do it. Devin, we need to flip the pages!”

I gave her a look. “But, Frankie, I don't think—”

“If you won't do it—I will.” She grabbed the book. “Hold on to your wigs, everyone, because I'm flipping!”

And she did.

Kkkkk!
There was a bright flash, then the room went dark and everyone toppled to the floor screaming.

The air, hot at first, grew icy cold, then hot again, as if it couldn't make up its mind. The darkness we had seen twice before came down again, piercing the room in half like a ripping page. Some of us were on one side, some on the other. I saw Frankie being pulled away from me as the spear of darkness widened and widened.

“Frankie!” I cried out.

“Devin!” she yelled back.

But the darkness overcame everything. I fell hard to the floor. Then the room, the table, and all the furnishings were suddenly gone.

I was lying on the rough ground.

The cold rough black ground.

Mountains loomed all around me. A cold and icy wind whipped down from the frost-covered treetops.

And I saw it, perched on a nearby summit, a dark hulk against the gathering darkness.

“The castle!” I said, nearly choking. “The castle of Count Dracula!”

Chapter 18

A hand grasped mine. It was old, but strong.

“Up with you,” said the familiar voice of Professor Van Helsing. He stood with Mina, staring at the castle.

“Where are the others?” I said, gazing around the dark landscape. “Where's Frankie?”

“We had to split up to better track the evil vampire's movements,” Mina said. “Frankie is with Lord Godalming and my Jonathan, chasing the fiend by boat.”

The professor nodded. “Quincey the Morris and Dr. Seward are by land coming, on horses with many rifles. We three have pushed ahead, with Mina helping, to where Dracula must come, if he fool our friends.”

I stared up at the castle, that awful place of everything creepy and grisly. I shivered. It was then I realized that not only was Frankie not there, neither was the book.

I gulped. I hoped Frankie was all right and that she had the book safe and sound. I wasn't looking forward to staying in this story forever.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“We wait for the Count,” said Van Helsing. “I have just come from the castle where the three vampire sisters have found true death from me. Also with the holy water, Dracula's tomb is made too holy for him.”

Gazing up at the castle and rubbing her forehead, Mina said, “He is coming. I can feel it.”

Mina was pale and thin and worn down by what must have been a long journey. There was a strange look in her eyes and I remembered again what Dracula had said about her. She
would
be one of his vampires, a special one. A glance from Van Helsing told me that he was worried about that, too.

As if on cue, the mountain wolves began to howl.

Then, just like the first time I was here, snow began to fall, sweeping cold white flakes into the darkening air.

“Soon he is come,” said the professor. “So let us find a waiting place. When he be come, we be ready!”

As we made our way down from the castle, I felt something wild and frightening about the whole place. Night was falling. Soon it would be dark. Dracula was coming. All the old fears came rushing back. I didn't like it. But what I liked even less was what was right there in front of us.

“Look, look!” cried Mina. “Coming up the road!”

Straight before us and not far off came a group of Gypsies on horses galloping wildly toward the castle. In the middle of the gang was a long wagon.

On the wagon was a great big box.

I nearly swallowed my head when I saw it.

“It's him! Mr. Floss-a-lot! Fangmouth! Dr. Dental!”

“Dracula,” said Van Helsing grimly. “King of Vampires!”

“Yeah, him.”

As if we were all thinking the same thing, the three of us jumped behind a large rock and crouched there, waiting. The wagon driver lashed his horses violently and they sprang with greater speed toward the castle.

“They come quickly,” Van Helsing whispered. “Racing for the sunset. If Dracula rise from his box, and our friends come not soon, we may be too late!”

Closer and closer the Gypsies came, hurtling over the road toward us. The sky was growing darker, streaking us with shadows from the setting sun. Our wooden stakes ready, we watched the wagon lurching closer.

I was so scared, I wanted Frankie to be right there. And I wanted her to have the book. I wanted to read it and read it and read it until this scene was finally over.

“There are too many of them!” I said. “We need help!”

Suddenly, there was a loud crackling sound. Everything seemed to light up and get dark at exactly the same time. We were all thrown up in the air and bounced back down again. Smoke whooshed in from nowhere. We all started coughing.

Then a voice pierced the fog.

“Stop that wagon!”

I knew that voice! It was Frankie!

“Frankie!” I cried. “You're here! You're here!”

And she was—charging out of the smoke with Harker and Godalming by her side. Not far away were Dr. Seward and Quincey Morris galloping at top speed on a pair of raging horses.

“Man alive, we're here just in the nick of time!” Morris shouted. “That old sun's nearly down!”

But the Gypsies drove even more wildly to the castle.

Seeing our friends, Van Helsing, Mina, and I felt bold. We jumped up from behind our rock and stood in the road.

The Gypsies were going to drive straight over us, but before they knew what was happening Harker and Quincey forced their way to the wagon.

“We must finish this before the sun sets!” Harker shouted. With strength that seemed incredible, he leaped onto the wagon and pulled on the heavy box. In one move, he flung it over the side of the wagon.

“Man alive!” Morris cried. “I mean, vampire alive. I mean undead. I mean … get him!”

We formed a wall around the box, but the Gypsies swarmed us, weapons drawn. One of them wounded Morris with a knife, but Godalming and Seward pulled out their rifles and the Gypsies shrank back.

That left only us … and
him
.

All this time, Harker was kicking at the box and pounding on it. “Dracula! Dracula! You evil fiend! I'll get you for what you did to my Mina!”

Suddenly—
kkkkrrrrk!
—there was the terrible sound of splintering wood.

As the last rays of sunlight faded below the horizon, the lid of the box burst open and Dracula bounced out, hissing like a leaky balloon.

“Sooooo! You think you can stop the great Dracula? What can a boy, a girl, a woman, and a few weak old men do against the king of vampires? Why are you even here? Don't you see my enormous fangs?”

His mouth shot open and his teeth, as long as a bunch of bananas, sparkled in the fading light.

“He ask too much question!” Van Helsing said.

But I raised my hand. “The answers are: yes, lots, the book brought us here, and is that broccoli between your fangs? Because if it is, you really need to floss—”

Dracula narrowed his red eyes at me, then glanced at the sun as it finally sank below the horizon.

Sunset. Breakfast time for vampires.

Dracula's look of hate turned to triumph.

And my legs turned to jelly.

Growling like a panther, Dracula swished his cape and opened his mouth as wide as possible. “Prepare to die!” he snarled.

“Think again, Dracu—loser!” yelled Frankie.

Without warning, the Count leaped away from his box of dirt and thrust himself in my direction, leading with his teeth. But he didn't get far.

Harker and Morris leaped on him, their knives drawn. There was a sweep and a flash of silver in the moonlight.

“No! No! I—must—bite—you!” Dracula cried.

“Bite the dust instead, Fangboy!” said Frankie.

Trying to jump out of the way, Dracula slipped on his cape, and Harker and Morris made their final attack.

“Ugh!” groaned the vampire, as their knives pierced his evil heart.

KKK-POOOOOOOOF!

The vampire burst into a million tiny little chunks. They sprayed everywhere in a large cloud of foul-smelling dust. Dark flecks exploded over us, across the road, and into the distant trees.

Finally, there was nothing left. Just flakes of fluffy white snow whirling swiftly through the night air.

“Rest in pieces, Count Dracula,” I said. “Your part in this story is over.”

“Ya,” said the professor. “The undead king is now just plain
dead!”

Thinking we had something to do with the sudden vanishing of the man in the box, the Gypsy horsemen and the wagon driver finally fled out of there at top speed.

It was peaceful.

It was calm.

It was over.

Almost.

Chapter 19

Quincey Morris made a sudden strange noise and sank to the ground, clutching his chest where he had been wounded by the Gypsies.

We all jumped to him, but it was clear that he wasn't going to make it to the end of the chapter.

The strange thing was that even in his pain he was smiling. “Look,” he said, pointing to Mina. “The curse is lifted. You are healthy again!”

Mina's face, so pale and thin before, was full of life, and normal, and her neck holes were healed. The evil that Dracula had done was gone.

Then Morris coughed. “Man alive …” he said. Then he rested his head on the ground. “I mean … dead.”

He breathed a long breath, and it was over for him.

Quincey Morris was gone. It was definitely a bummer, but I figured that he had made it through most of the book and was a fairly cool character, so it wasn't too bad for him. Plus, he was one of the two guys who actually killed Dracula. Not bad for a Texan from Texas.

For a long time after he died no one made a sound. Then all of us—Harker, Mina, Dr. Seward, Lord Godalming, Van Helsing, Frankie, and I—looked over at the place where Dracula had been.

Finally, the professor breathed deeply and spoke.

“No one will have belief of what happened here.”

“It's sort of very impossible,” I said.

“But we know it
did
happen,” Frankie added, tapping the brown book she clutched so tightly.

At that moment, we spied something blue and flickery in the trees just beyond where we stood.

I blinked. “Frankie, is that—”

“The zapper gates!” she said. “I guess our story really is over. I can hardly believe it.…”

We turned to our friends.

“Thanks for the great book, you guys,” I said. “But it looks as if Frankie and I need to leave now.”

Mina gave us a hug. “Be watchful, always,” she said.

Harker nodded. “You've been a great help.”

Dr. Seward shook our hands. “There are strange things in the world. May you both travel safely.”

“Thanks,” said Frankie.

“No, thank you, for everything,” Lord Godalming said. “You proved yourselves good friends to us.”

Finally, Van Helsing stomped over. “Well, my youngsters two. Today a great thing you have done. Always you shall remember what happened here between us.”

“I'll say!” I said. “We read a whole book!”

“Not quite,” said Frankie.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She held up the book. Between her thumb and forefinger was a single page. “We are here.”

“Not …”

She nodded. “The last page.”

“Holy cow, I want to read it!” I said, reaching for the book.

She pulled it back. “Me first! I earned it.”

“No, me!”

“It's mine!”

“No, mine!”

The book flew out of our hands. We jumped after it.

KKKKKK!
The whole world went blue when the book fell between the gates. Then everything went dark for a split second, and we found ourselves tumbling over and over industrial carpeting until we hit the leg of a table.

We unrolled ourselves and looked around.

“The library workroom!” Frankie shouted.