The Vampire Knife

by Jack Henseleit

  The sounds of the storm had finally been muffled by the layers of castle standing above them. The sudden silence was chilling. Anna flinched at every sound, scared by a drip of water or the echo of a footstep. She tried to focus on the plan. She would distract the vampire, and Isabella would get the soup to Max. Then they could all escape, and they would never have to return to the creepy old castle for as long as they lived. The last part of the plan made her feel very pleased indeed.

  Isabella stopped abruptly. Anna skidded into her back, almost knocking her over.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  Isabella pointed to the ground. Anna saw that they had reached the foot of the staircase. Sitting on the last step was an empty brown paper bag.

  Anna picked up the bag and tipped it onto her hand. Some small white crystals fell out from the deepest creases of the paper, sprinkling onto the centre of her palm. She tested them with her tongue.

  ‘It’s sugar,’ she said. ‘This must be where Max ran out of lollies.’

  ‘He must be close,’ said Isabella. ‘This tunnel can’t be that long.’

  The girls stood nervously in the darkness. As short as they hoped the tunnel might be, it was still long enough that they couldn’t see the end.

  They began to creep forward.

  ‘Do you think this was a cellar?’ asked Anna. ‘Or was it a dungeon?’

  Isabella frowned. ‘Whatever it was before, it’s definitely a dungeon now.’

  Anna squinted, trying to see further. Where would they find Max? Would he be chained to the wall? Or would he be trapped in a cage like Hansel in the witch’s house, waiting to be fattened up with gingerbread before the monster ate him?

  Something flickered in the distance. Anna saw there was a bend in the tunnel ahead, with a faint orange light glowing out from around the corner. She gestured for Isabella to switch off the torch.

  ‘Do you think this is it?’ whispered Isabella.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Anna. ‘Be ready for anything.’

  They sneaked towards the light, arriving safely at the bend. Anna put her hand on the wall and took a deep breath, flinching as the seeping water ran over her fingertips. She slowly leant sideways, tilting her neck until she could see around the corner.

  The tunnel widened into a small room, after which a new passage led into further darkness. The room contained a small table with a built-in drawer, upon which stood a candlestick holding a burning candle – the source of the light. The flame was very still, burning calmly in its hidden home beneath the world. It looked like something was hanging above the candle, but from her current position Anna couldn’t see what it was. There were no signs of Max or the vampire.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ whispered Isabella.

  ‘Just a candle,’ Anna whispered back. ‘But don’t turn the torch on yet.’

  The girls walked cautiously into the room. It was little more than an alcove, with the new tunnel opening uninvitingly before them. The new tunnel looked drier than the last one, which Anna took as a sign that it might run deeper still.

  ‘That candle is still quite tall,’ said Isabella. ‘It probably wasn’t lit very long ago.’

  She was right. A single bead of wax was running down the side of the candle, which was otherwise white and smooth. It looked new. Anna walked up to the table and opened the drawer. It was filled with candles of all different shapes and sizes: tall ones, short ones, red ones, scented ones. There was even a small collection of birthday candles piled in one corner. Anna had assumed that the vampire could see in the dark. What did it need candles for?

  She looked up. Just as she’d thought, there was something hanging on the wall – a row of keys. There were three of them hanging from iron hooks, evenly spaced, each one slightly different from the rest. At the end of the row was a fourth hook, but it was empty.

  Isabella’s eyes widened. ‘That’s my key!’ she said.

  She pointed to the third key in the row. Anna looked at her in surprise.

  ‘It was the key to our henhouse, back when we had chickens,’ explained Isabella. ‘But one night I accidentally left the key in the lock. The next day someone stole the chickens and the key, and they even took the lock as well.’

  Anna thought about it. ‘I bet the vampire stole all of them,’ she said. ‘And the candles, too. It needs them to keep its prisoners locked up.’

  ‘How many prisoners do you think he has?’ said Isabella.

  Anna looked at the three keys again. ‘Not very many. If it’s had to kidnap Max, maybe it doesn’t have any left at all.’

  The metal hooks were high on the wall. Isabella climbed onto the table and collected the keys one by one. Anna remembered how tall and thin the vampire had been when she saw it through the window. It wouldn’t have any difficulty reaching the hooks at all.

  ‘So now we just have to find three locks,’ she said. ‘Simple.’

  ‘Simple,’ agreed Isabella, climbing back down. ‘Let’s go.’

  The girls crept into the new tunnel. It was smaller than the last one. They were still able to walk along it easily, but Anna imagined that the vampire might have to stoop. Soon they came to a metal door built into the side of the passage. There was a strange lock attached to the handle, clearly out of place in the dark and dirty dungeon. It was golden and shaped like a love heart: the sort of lock a girl might use to protect her secret diary.

  Isabella held out the keys. Anna picked out the smallest one, which was exactly the same golden colour as the heart. She slid the key into the lock and turned. It opened with a small popping sound, dropping promptly onto the ground.

  Anna pushed the door. It opened onto a tiny cell, dirty and uninhabited. There was a bucket of muddy water against one of the walls, and a tray in one corner that held something that might have once been food. Now it was just a mound of mould and black slime.

  In the other corner there was a skeleton.

  A scream tried to burst out from Anna’s lungs. She struggled to keep it down, managing to reduce it to a small whimper. Had they arrived too late?

  Isabella was trembling, but she managed to speak. ‘That couldn’t be Max,’ she said reassuringly. ‘It’s too big.’

  Anna looked closely at the pile of bones. They were long and yellow-white, and clearly very old. She realised they couldn’t possibly belong to her brother. Her heart was pounding in terrified bursts, but she still felt relieved.

  ‘Okay. Let’s keep going,’ she said. She didn’t want to look at the skeleton any longer than she had to.

  They walked along until they came to a second door, this one bearing a large, rusty lock. Anna selected an equally rusty key from Isabella’s hand and slotted it in. It turned awkwardly, sticking inside the keyhole, but after a forceful twist it too popped open.

  The door swung open to reveal another cell, another bucket, and another tray. There was no skeleton this time. Anna wondered if the vampire had become so hungry that it had devoured an entire prisoner, bones and all.

  The children kept walking. Anna wanted to start running, but she forced herself to keep sneaking, crouching low to the ground, walking on her toes. Isabella stayed out in front, shining the light from wall to wall.

  ‘There it is,’ she said, stopping just ahead of Anna. ‘That’s my lock.’

  They had arrived at the final door, although it seemed that the tunnel continued for a little longer. Anna had no interest in exploring it further. The henhouse lock was silver and round, glinting from the darkness, ready to give up its treasure.

  Anna took Isabella’s key and opened the lock. It fell contentedly into her hand, happy to have been found again. It seemed like a good omen.

  The door creaked open. Isabella shone the torch into the cell. There was another bucket, and another tray, but this time things were slightly different. The water in the bucket was clean and fresh. The tray was covered with strange vegetables, long and stringy. They didn’t look as delicious as lollies, but they mi
ght have been enough to feed a small boy.

  But the cell didn’t appear to contain a prisoner. Anna stepped tentatively inside.

  ‘Max?’ she whispered. ‘Are you here?’

  Isabella followed her in. ‘Max?’ she called quietly. ‘Say something if you can hear us!’

  And then something moved in the space behind the door. The girls spun around in alarm as a hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed onto Isabella’s ankle, digging into her flesh with sharp, overgrown fingernails. Anna caught a glimpse of a wild face in the shadows, hairy and wrinkled, with bright, yellow eyes.

  Then Isabella dropped the torch, and everything went black.

  11

  A FAIRY’S TALE

  Isabella screamed. Anna heard the torch clatter past her feet; she fell to her knees and patted the ground with her free hand, desperately searching for the light.

  ‘Help me!’ yelled Isabella. ‘Use the knife!’

  The knife. Anna could sense its point in the air before her, as warm and as sharp as ever. But what could she do in the dark? It seemed too risky. What if she attacked Isabella by mistake?

  And then a voice spoke from the shadows. It was very faint, croakier even than Mrs Dalca’s voice was.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ it said. The words curled around the cell like a wisp of smoke. ‘Did you hide it? Is it safe?’

  Anna’s hand brushed against the edge of the torch. She seized it and switched it back on, holding it out like a burning branch to keep the wild voice at bay.

  There was a man lying against the wall of the cell, half-hidden behind the open door. His body was white, colourless except for an occasional speckle of green or grey. The hair on his head was faded as well, hanging around his pointed face like dying grass.

  But the scariest things of all were the holes. The man’s arms and legs were covered with hundreds of tiny puncture marks, each one evenly spaced across his skin. It looked like everything beneath the surface had been sucked away, leaving his flesh to sag from his bones like the rubber of an old balloon. The man looked just about as dead as the skeleton from the first cell.

  And yet the man’s yellow eyes were still open, and his fingers were still closed around Isabella’s leg. Anna saw that Isabella had bitten down on her scarf to stop herself from screaming any further. The man was staring at Isabella furiously, almost as if he recognised her. Then the man looked at Anna, and at the knife in her hand. His eyes flickered.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said again.

  Anna felt compelled to answer. She was about to speak when the knife suddenly pulsed with heat, tingling against her palm. She gasped, looking down at it in surprise. Somehow the shock made her feel less afraid, and she began to think more clearly. The man’s eyes were far too yellow, and the words spoken by the whispering voice crept around her ears in a way that wasn’t normal. The person in the cell was not the vampire – but Anna realised he might not be a human, either.

  And if she wasn’t dealing with a human, there might be rules she had to follow.

  Do not accept food from a fairy. Do not tell a fairy your real name. If you are on a quest, do not tell a fairy where you are going or what you hope to do.

  ‘My name is Rose,’ she said confidently. ‘And this is my friend, Violet.’

  Isabella shot her a confused look. Anna hoped that she wouldn’t give them away.

  ‘Rose,’ said the man (who might not have been a man). The word fell from his mouth like a flake of snakeskin. ‘Why have you come here, Rose?’

  ‘I’d be happy to tell you,’ said Anna. ‘But first you have to let go of my friend.’

  The man seemed to consider it.

  ‘I could talk to you now, Rose,’ he said. ‘But soon you will leave me, and I will lie here again, alone in the darkness. Why shouldn’t I hold on to your friend, so I can talk to her forever?’

  The rules from the fairy tale book scurried through her head. Anna tried to work out a way to escape without telling the man anything about their mission, but she couldn’t think of anything else she had to bargain with.

  ‘We’re here to find the vampire,’ she said finally. ‘It stole my brother, and now we’re going to rescue him.’

  The man remained silent. Anna searched for something else to say.

  ‘If you let go of my friend, we could try to rescue you as well,’ she said.

  ‘It is too late,’ said the man. ‘All of my blood has been stolen from me. I will never leave this cell.’

  Anna tried again. ‘If we do defeat the vampire, it won’t come back. It won’t be able to bite you ever again.’

  ‘That is a nice thought,’ said the man. ‘But you will not defeat the creature that lives in this castle. It has grown too old, and it has grown too strong. Too strong for two little girls.’

  ‘We have garlic,’ said Anna. ‘It hates garlic. And we have this.’

  She held out the knife. It sparkled in the torchlight, its edge as thin as a razor. Anna noticed that the blade didn’t even seem to cast a shadow.

  The man’s gaze was fixed on the knife. His eyes gleamed in their sunken sockets.

  ‘You do not know what that is,’ he said.

  Anna was starting to feel bolder.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But I bet it’s sharp enough to cut your hand off.’

  The man smiled. His lips were very thin, as white and dry as parchment.

  ‘Maybe it is,’ he said. ‘But maybe I’ll be fast enough to catch your arm. And once I’ve got a hold of it, maybe I won’t let go.’

  Anna looked at the man’s free hand. She could see the finger bones under his skin, long and delicate. His fingernails had grown out like claws.

  She decided she had better think of a different plan. She looked around the cell. The tray of strange vegetables caught her eye.

  ‘Would you like some food?’ she said. ‘I could move your tray closer.’

  The man didn’t reply. Anna nudged the tray with the side of her foot, sliding it across the floor. She left it close enough to the man that he would be able to grab it and pull it closer, careful to keep her leg out of reaching distance.

  The man sniffed.

  ‘This food is dead,’ he said. ‘But I can smell something I would eat. Something in your pocket.’

  What was in her pocket? Anna tried to think. Then she remembered – the cloves of garlic, stolen from the kitchen pantry. They were supposed to protect her from the vampire. Should she really give them to the fairy-man?

  Isabella looked at her pleadingly. Anna realised that she didn’t have a choice.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘It’s a deal. If you let my friend go, you can have the thing in my pocket. Say it’s a deal.’

  ‘It is a deal,’ said the man.

  Anna passed the torch from one hand to the other, so that she was holding the white knife and the torch together in her right hand. She slowly lowered her left hand into her jacket pocket, keeping her eyes locked on the gaunt face in the shadows. Every story she had ever read told her that making deals with fairies was dangerous, and she was determined not to be tricked.

  But then Anna was surprised. She had been expecting to feel the smooth husk of the garlic clove, but instead her fingers touched something else. It was something soft, furry and warm: something that had sneaked into her pocket without her even knowing.

  It was something alive.

  Anna squealed and flung out her hand – and a mouse dropped from her pocket. It landed on its feet, standing perfectly still in the centre of the room, unmoving but for its twitching whiskers. In the middle of a very confusing night, the mouse suddenly seemed to be the most confused of all.

  And then the mouse bolted, scurrying frantically towards the darkness in the corner of the cell.

  The man’s arm was as fast as a snake. It shot out from his body so quickly that Anna barely saw it move, his fingers landing around the mouse like a cage of bone. The mouse began to squeak in terror, wriggling around in the man’s hand,
squeezing its head out between the man’s knuckles. The man smiled.

  ‘A strange thing to carry in one’s pocket,’ he said. ‘But if this is to be my last meal, let it be a feast.’

  And before either of the girls could say another word, the man raised the mouse to his lips. Anna caught a glimpse of rotting teeth as his mouth opened, and a second later the mouse had disappeared. Its tail slipped between the man’s lips like a piece of spaghetti.

  ‘You are free to go,’ said the man.

  His shackle-hand creaked open. Anna waited for Isabella to move, but she seemed to be petrified from shock. Anna took her hand and pulled her away from the man. She noted with some concern that the man’s yellow eyes now seemed to be glowing a little brighter.

  ‘Our bargain is complete,’ said the whispering voice. ‘But I will offer you this advice for free. You should not stay here. This is not a place for children.’

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll rescue my brother, and then we’ll leave.’

  The man made a gulping sound. Anna saw a bulge squirm down his throat, writhing beneath his wrinkled skin. She could still hear a muffled squeaking.

  ‘You should heed my advice,’ said the man. ‘You are not the first who has tried to rescue a brother from this tower. It is not a story with a happy ending.’

  ‘Who was the first?’ asked Isabella shakily.

  ‘A warrior,’ said the man. ‘A great warrior, with a great weapon. He came to this forest to take back his brother. But the creature beat him down, and it drank from his veins, and then both brothers were lost.’

  Anna didn’t know what to say. She looked down at the white blade. A great warrior, with a great weapon. When they had first entered the cell she had thought the man might have recognised the knife – and then he had told her that she didn’t know what it was. But if a great warrior couldn’t defeat the vampire, what chance did they have? Then Anna remembered that the man had seemed to recognise Isabella as well.