Trapped in Transylvania (7 page)

He twisted a ring of flowers into a short garland then placed it around her neck. “Ya, is good.”

Lucy coughed lightly. “Professor, the smell—”

“Hush!” Van Helsing said. “We all obey my things.”

Next the professor closed the windows and latched them shut. Taking more flowers from his coat, he rubbed them all over the window sashes, then the doors, and around the fireplace.

“This is quite puzzling,” Dr. Seward said.

“Your head is a puzzle!” snorted Van Helsing, his mustache flapping as a puff of air shot from his nostrils. “You must believe my flowers! Take care that you not disturb nothing to nothing. Open the windows not.”

The professor twirled on his heels and clomped back to the hall, motioning us to follow. “Lucy—rest!”

When her door was closed, Van Helsing said, “I must to back my hotel go now. Things are there needful for the Lucy.” Then he paused, looked to both sides, and leaned close. Tapping a finger on the side of his nose he said, “You must all on your watchness put.”

I didn't get what he meant. “Excuse me?”

“Do not let your sight pass from her.”

“What?”

“The Lucy is dangerous to be unlooked at.”

“Huh?”

“Things not Lucy should be blind of you!”

“Say that again?”

“Keep in your eyeballs—her!”

“Huh?”

“Be Lucy the only sight of your vision!”

We all stood staring at him and his floppy mustache.

Finally Frankie jumped. “Are you saying we should watch Lucy, keep an eye on her, and don't let her out of our sight?”

“Ya! What I said!”

With that, Van Helsing thumped across the floor, down the stairs, and straight out of the house.

“Upgiddy!” we heard him yell, and his horse took off.

Dr. Seward frowned. “Now we wait to see what tonight shall bring.”

With those dark words, I stuck my finger in the book and rubbed my tired eyes. The chapter had ended.

Chapter 13

The dark and stormy evening turned into a stormy dark night.

Lightning kept flashing outside the windows. Thunder boomed like armies clashing in the attic. And the smell from those flowers was making everyone sick.

Still, we set up outside Lucy's room and kept up the watch. Also the reading. After resting my eyes, I started again. I must have read about twenty pages altogether, some kind of record for me.

When my brain grew sleepy, Frankie picked up where I left off, reading in the flickering candlelight which, let me tell you, is not the greatest light to read by.

In those pages we found out that Lucy's mother, Mrs. Westenra, was freaking out about her and was expected to arrive any time. Also, Dr. Seward was writing about Lucy to some of the other characters: Arthur Holmwood, the guy Lucy was engaged to, and Arthur's American buddy, a dude named Quincey Morris, the third and final person who had wanted to marry her.

Besides getting a whole bunch of new names to keep track of, it wasn't the best part of the book, either, since it was all about how Lucy felt good, then bad, then good, then bad.

Finally we both started to yawn.

Of course, yawn. It had been a really long time since we had hopped on Harker's carriage in period two. I had no idea what time it was. Or even whether it was the same
day
we had left the library.

For some reason, it almost didn't matter. We were in this story now. What was going on back home—wherever that was—didn't seem as important or probably as interesting as what was happening right here and now in Whitby.

Besides, I was fairly sure we would find the zapper gates when we needed to get home. It would probably be at the end of the story that we would find them.

I hoped we would find them. We had better find them!

Just then I heard a strange rumbling sound and shot straight up in my chair. “Frankie, did you hear that?”

She opened one eye. “It was coming from the direction of your stomach.”

I looked down. The rumbling happened again. “It is coming from the direction of my stomach. And judging by how thick the rest of the book still is, I'm guessing there's a lot yet to happen. So I'll need my strength to get through it. I'm going munchie hunting.”

“If you find food, blow a trumpet,” she said.

“In the meantime, be Lucy your only eyeballs!”

While Frankie took a quick peek at Lucy, I tiptoed around the house searching for something to nosh. To my surprise I found another whole character downstairs.

She was in the kitchen at the back, a nice, plump lady in a long dress, hat, and coat. She was pacing back and forth, muttering to herself. Thinking she was waiting for someone to bring her into the action, I decided to help her get some lines to say.

“Hey, lady, I'm Devin,” I said, giving her a little wave. “What's your name?”

“I am Mrs. Westenra, Lucy's mother,” she said.

“Wow, her mom. Yeah, we read about you,” I said.

“I've just arrived. It was so quiet, I didn't want to disturb my Lucy, but how is she feeling, the poor dear?”

I felt bad. Her mom had to know the truth, but it was really hard to say. “Lucy's … um … so-so.”

“So-so what?”

“So-so not so good. But on the plus side, Professor Abraham Van Helsing's on the case. He's got this really big accent so he sounds very smart.”

She seemed to take some comfort from that and sat down at the table. “I wish I could help her,” she said. “Perhaps I'll make her something to eat—”

Rrrr
. It was like my stomach actually heard that word.

“Um … did you say
eat?
As in eat
food?”

“Why, young sir—you're hungry!” she said, springing up and tying on an apron covered in a whole menu of food stains. “Oh, I can whip up something for you, poor darling. What would you like?”

I happily named all my favorites, but she had never heard of peanut butter, corn chips, waffles, pizza, or cheese in a can, so I went for something simple. “Spaghetti?”

Mrs. Westenra beamed. “I know that one! Now, all I have to do is find some pasta, tomatoes, cheese, onions, peppers, garlic …”

Already my mouth started to water.

I went back to Frankie to tell her about Lucy's mom and the coming feast when we heard a bunch of noise from outside. Taking one last look to see that Lucy was okay, we hurried downstairs to look. We crept past Dr. Seward who was asleep in a chair and went out the front door to the path.

Peering through the storm at the harbor below, we saw several long wagons and a group of men unloading something from the abandoned ship. With all the scraping and dragging, they were making quite a racket.

We watched for a while before we saw what they were unloading. When we did see, we were stunned.

“The boxes!” I gasped. “I almost forgot about them. They're taking the boxes away! Ooh, that's probably not so good. Where are they taking them?”

Frankie opened the book. “The words are too fuzzy to read. But I bet we'll find out before too long. And I bet wherever they go, we'll be following. I smell another change of setting coming up.”

“And I smell tomato sauce!” I said, turning back to the house. “Let's go stuff ourselves until we're sick!”

“Or just before!” Frankie added.

The feast was delicious. Frankie and I gobbled two whole platters of the stringy stuff, then asked Mrs. Westenra for seconds, thirds, and fourths.

“Book food is good,” I said as I slurped down the last strand of spaghetti. “I feel not so empty now.”

“It's the garlic that makes the difference,” the cook said. “It spices up the sauce something wonderful. No need to have Lucy's room so stuffy with all that garlic!”

“Garlic?” said Frankie. She opened the book. “But—”

Suddenly—
wham!
—the front door burst open.

“Patient is how?” boomed a voice. A moment later, Van Helsing stormed into the kitchen to find us up to our ears in spaghetti sauce.

“Patient Lucy!” he repeated. “How is?”

Mrs. Westenra made a little bow. “Well, if she's better, I'm the one who's done it!”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Seward, coming into the kitchen rubbing his eyes. “I say, what's going on?”

Lucy's mother smiled. “I was looking for some ingredients for sauce for the young master—”

I raised my hand. “That would be me.”

“Well, and don't you know my nose told me there was something pungent in my Lucy's room!” the lady went on. “So I went in there and my! I found just what I was looking for. Garlic. Lots of it. Oh, but it spices the sauce something wonderful!”

Van Helsing's face turned as gray as his raincoat. He began to shake and shudder and sputter and spit.

“But … achhh!” the man exploded. “It was garlic on the Lucy to protect her from vampires! Now! Now! To the Lucy—let us hurry!”

Van Helsing led the charge on Lucy's room. He battered open the door with his fists only to find Lucy's window shattered and a huge black bat with red eyes fluttering out.

“Ach! My strudel! No!” Van Helsing cried.

There on the bed lay poor Lucy. She was more white and pale than ever. Even her lips were white, and her gums seemed to have shrunk back from her teeth, which were longer and sharper than before.

“The fiend has been here and Lucy's blood is gone!” Van Helsing shouted. “We need blood to go in her, not out!”

“Hurry!” cried Dr. Seward. “Hurry, or Lucy will die!”

Stunned at how things were suddenly going, I opened the book and read as fast as I could for the next hour.

With Van Helsing helping, Dr. Seward gave Lucy a blood transfusion. That's where you take blood from a healthy person and give it to a sick person. It worked for a while, but then Lucy got weak again. I kept reading and found out that the next night there was a big black bird at her window. The night after that there was a wolf trying to break in.

On the third night, Lucy got out of the house somehow while everyone was dozing. Nobody knew where she went, and Lucy herself didn't remember anything.

That's when Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris finally entered the scene. Holmwood, Lucy's fiance, was this very English guy with perfect manners and a fancy velvet vest. But Morris was a big blustery American and tramped around like a cowboy in a tight suit. I guess he was the author's idea of a Texan from Texas. He was all “howdy” and “gosh” and “man alive!”

Frankie and I liked him right away.

Both Holmwood and Morris gave Lucy blood transfusions, too, but nothing seemed to work.

This went on for over a week.

Finally, one morning, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and Holmwood did their usual check on Lucy while Frankie and I stayed in the hall. When they came out, Holmwood was crying, and Van Helsing's face was all sad and droopy. He shook his head. “No … no … no …”

Frankie looked at me. Her eyes were wet.

It was a fairly unfunny and grim moment.

We walked down the hall together. Finally, Frankie stopped. She pointed to the book in my hands.

“Lucy … um … sort of … dies … doesn't she?”

I skimmed the next couple of pages until the words got a little blurry. Finally, I had to nod my head.

“I'm pretty sure she does, Frankie. Sorry.”

“Oh, man. We've made some wrong mistakes before, but the garlic mistake is one of the wrongest.”

“It was sort of in the book anyway,” I said. “Lucy's mom really does take the garlic away. But, yeah, I guess we all goofed up pretty major.”

Frankie was way bummed. I hated to see her like that. I became bummed, too. I could imagine that we might just want to give up on the whole book. The story was just too sad in a lot of ways. But then I realized that the story had to keep going. It had to, or we'd never get to the end.

“On the plus side,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “she's only a character in a book.”

“But you get attached, you know?”

“I noticed that. But on the plus-plus side, Lucy doesn't really die. She becomes one of the undead. Dracula recruits her to be a vampire and she starts doing the biting thing on other people. Think of it as a career move. Not a good one, but a move.”

She almost smiled. “Thanks for trying to make me feel good, but I gotta ask. Why do people write sad stories?”

I shrugged. “Why do people read them?”

“That was heavy, Devin. Very heavy.”

“It must be all that spaghetti I ate.”

She snorted a laugh at that. “Dude, I know what you mean. Mine isn't sitting too well, either.”

Over the next half hour, Frankie and I took turns reading the sad pages about Lucy's death. She died, was buried, then became a true vampire, attacking and biting people living in Whitby. Van Helsing convinced everyone that they had to perform a ceremony on Lucy by driving a wooden stake through her heart. He said it was the only way to cure a vampire.

It was brutal. But we found we couldn't stop reading until we were standing outside Lucy's tomb. By then, all the guys had done the ceremony to stop Lucy vamping around the neighborhood at night. It was pretty sad and gross, but at least it was over.

Van Helsing stared at Frankie, Dr. Seward, Holmwood, Morris, and me, the wind swirling his frizzy hair.

“It is done,” he said. “Lucy is no longer of the undead. She is now just plain dead.”

Dr. Seward shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a letter. “Today, I received news from Jonathan Harker and Mina. They have returned from the hospital in Budapest and are now in London. And they have seen Dracula there—”

“Then go to London we must!” Van Helsing announced. “Two nights from now, we will all meet at the home of Dr. Seward in London to plot our next move.”

I nudged Frankie. “A sort of big meeting of the guys.”