by Becket
That evening the sun set the way it always did. Vampires began rising from their coffins the way they usually did. Tudwal licked Key’s face the way he usually did.
But then there was a terrible explosion, which made dust drizzle down from the ceiling.
Key sat up in her coffin with a start and she looked desperately around in search of what could have caused it, wondering if it was a Grimbuggle or a Toag, or maybe Warhag had finally begun her war.
More explosions shook the castle, and the dungeon rocked as if struck by an earthquake.
Tudwal leaped from the coffin, scuttled over to the dungeon wall, and barked up at the small window.
Melancholy Moat started leaking through the dungeon walls. Pitch-black water pooled on the ground like oil.
Ghost servants hurried to plug up the leaks in the walls, bringing whatever they could find to stuff into the holes and mop up the floor. There were of course the usual mops and buckets; yet there were also things like candlesticks and cabbages, sealing wax and thimbles and stockings and balls of string.
Another explosion shook the castle even harder.
Melancholy Moat’s black water now poured in even faster. The moat water drowned the glowing flowers. It washed away the vines. It destroyed the garden that Key had made out of her dungeon.
But Tudwal was having a wonderful time, springing between the leaks and the rushing water, barking and yipping merrily while Pega kept nervously chiding him, “You’re one hundred fifty years old; this is no time to act so puppyish!”
Tudwal leaped back into the coffin and shook the moat water from his coat, drenching Key in its foul blackness.
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically, as the water had a sharp odor of rotting eggs and marmalade.
Another terrible explosion shook the castle.
A huge hole burst through the dungeon wall. Looking through it, Key could see the wide dark world of a thriving city in an underground cave, yet filled with tombs and crypts and barrows and graveyards.
“The Necropolis,” Key whispered in an awestruck tone. Through her prison window, she had barely been able to see it during her long stay in the dungeon. The last time she’d had such a clear view of it was with Mr. Fuddlebee, on the night he brought her to this horrible place. And now that she was seeing it again so freely after all these years, she almost couldn’t quite believe the sheer scope and scale of the City of the Dead.
However, before she could think on this further, Key then glimpsed the thick legs of a giant standing on the other side of her dungeon wall. After having lived in the Society of Mystical Creatures for so long (if you can say she lived), Key was less surprised at seeing a giant than she was at seeing how one of his giant legs was flesh and bone while the other leg was robotic.
Right before another explosion shook the castle, Key noticed the giant’s legs move. And she began to understand what was happening. “It’s the giant,” she said to Tudwal. “The giant is striking the castle.”
With that last strike from the giant’s fury, there followed another explosion. Melancholy Moat came rushing into the dungeon like a wild river. The black water snatched up Key’s coffin and sailed her from one side of her cell to the other.
The coffin banged against the dungeon walls. Key hugged Tudwal close. She looked into the black water and she feared leaping into it, as it bore an uncanny resemblance to molten glurp. But soon Key would have no choice. The water was beating her coffin so badly against the dungeon walls that it might break apart at any moment.
So, hesitantly, Key, preferring to leap into the water than to sink with her coffin, stood up in it, balanced, and took a deep breath, preparing to take that awful step into the flood.
But right before she did, Mr. Fuddlebee floated down from the ceiling. “Good evening, my dear,” he said to Key in his calm, soft, elderly voice. “I hope you’re not considering a plunge into that ghastly water.”
Key had not heard Mr. Fuddlebee’s voice in centuries, not since she was made a vampire, not since she had lost her mom and dad, not since Mr. Fuddlebee had brought her to the Necropolis Castle where she had to live in the Dungeon of Despair. And as she looked at him now, Key saw that Mr. Fuddlebee had not aged a night. He still looked exactly the same.
Floating over the old stone stairs that led up to the castle, the elderly ghost was still wearing his three-piece pinstriped suit, his dark rectangular spectacles, his bright bowtie, his bowler hat with goggles around the rim, and a dandelion pinned to his lapel.
Mr. Fuddlebee gestured for Key to come to him. “Perhaps you should consider leaping to safety,” he said. “I fear that the Kraken might have swum into the dungeon by now. His name is Killjoy, by the way, although some just call him Dennis.”
Tudwal stood on Key’s lap. He placed his front paws on the edge of the coffin and he began barking wildly at the elderly ghost.
Mr. Fuddlebee, gripping the handle of his umbrella as if it were a cane, stared at Tudwal in a look of shock and confusion. But then a moment later, he covered his mouth to hide an embarrassed smile. “Why yes,” he chuckled at Tudwal, “this is a new umbrella. Thank you for asking.”
A sudden surge of anger overcame Key. She felt like she wanted to blame someone for all her misery in Despair, and right at that moment, seeing Mr. Fuddlebee again, she felt as though all of this was his fault. In her heart of hearts, Key knew this wasn’t true. But she was looking to lay blame, not to acknowledge the truth, even though she wanted to know the answer to a question that could provide the truth: “Why?” she demanded. Why had he come to her house? Why had he abandoned her to this place? Why did she have to suffer so much? Why did she have to be so lonely for so long? “Why should I trust you?” Key shouted, staring fiercely at the elderly ghost.
Mr. Fuddlebee looked with compassion into Key’s eyes. He was calm and patient. He was without fear and anger. “Yes,” he said, “this is all my fault.”
His response surprised Key. She had expected him to make excuses, to argue, to insist that he was right. She had expected him to behave like a Necropolis Vampire, acting selfish and cruel.
Neither selfish nor cruel, Mr. Fuddlebee was not someone who met other people’s expectations, but surpassed them, as he did so now with Key, for she was completely surprised that he was not surprised or alarmed by her anger towards him.
Yet Key was even more surprised when, from behind the elderly ghost, appeared Miss Broomble. “Don’t blame him,” the witch said. “This is all my fault.”
Key blinked with a bewildered expression, feeling more shocked than ever!
Miss Broomble was dressed like a warrior. Her long curly black hair was tied back. Covering her mouth and nose was a half-mask made of old brass. Over her chest and arms were plates of thick metal. Over her hands were gauntlets of copper and leather. Rising from behind her shoulders were two pewter smokestacks with steam billowing from them. Cogwheels ran from her shoulders down her arms. And over her heart was a seven-sided hole with bright blue light shining out.
Miss Broomble pressed a button on the side of her half-mask. Its old brass plates folded away. “I have been your friend for over one hundred years,” she said to Key, “but I never helped free you from this dungeon. I never helped free you from Despair. I wanted to do so, but I could not. It’s been eating away at me. I am so sorry, child.”
“As am I,” Mr. Fuddlebee added.
Key would not blame Miss Broomble since the witch became one of her dearest friends. No, her urge was to blame Mr. Fuddlebee. “You knew I’ve been locked in this dungeon all these years,” Key said, glowering at the elderly ghost, “yet you did not help me from Despair.”
“My dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee replied calmly, “I know that this is difficult to believe, but the Dungeon of Despair was the best home you could have had. The day I brought you here was the saddest of my afterlife, as I knew you would be poorly treated. However, alternative vampire homes would have been worse. Much worse.”
A shiver ran through h
is ghostly form.
“We could have sent you to the Vampire Mafia of Chicago,” he continued. “They would have entombed you in cement and dropped you in Lake Michigan. We could have sent you to the Vampire Gang of Brooklyn. They would have eaten you alive, figuratively and literally, and not necessarily in that order.”
Mr. Fuddlebee floated out over the black water, closer to Key.
“We could have sent you to the Orphanage for Mostly Mad Vampires,” he continued, “or to the Vampire Asylum in Biloxi, or to the Vampire Academy in Opelousas. We could have sent you to any number of places, even high school. In the end, Despair was where you had to be. It has given you the least amount of suffering and the most amount of knowledge.”
Pain stabbed Key’s heart. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What kind of knowledge has Despair given me?” she demanded.
Mr. Fuddlebee floated closer to her. “You now possess a greater knowledge about who you really are, my dear. You had to suffer what you have suffered now. So that, later, you will become the vampire I have come to know as a friend. Believe me, I know it’s all so confusing at the moment, but it will, I promise, make sense in time. Then you will explain it better to me than I have explained it to you. You have not yet learned everything about your self.”
Key felt more confused than ever. How could she be a friend of this elderly ghost? She had only met him once before. Yet he was speaking with her as though he had known her for years. “What’s going on?” she asked herself.
On the verge of tears, she now glared at Mr. Fuddlebee. “You haven’t been my friend!” she shouted at him. “You left me down here in the dark. Alone. Lonely! My only friends have been a witch, an invisible ghost, and an immortal puppy.”
“Immortal puppy?” Mr. Fuddlebee said inquisitively. He studied Tudwal for a moment with a look of surprise and curiosity. Then he stared at Miss Broomble with a questioning expression. “You gave her Winifred’s puppy?”
Right then another violent explosion rocked the castle.
— CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO —
Freedom
The hole in the dungeon wall became wider. The black water of Melancholy Moat came rushing in even faster. Despair was filling up quickly with darkness and suffocation.
And as the black water rose higher, all the businesses in the dungeon shut down. Mystical Creatures of all kinds began fleeing from the watery chaos. The Beastly Barbershop wrapped up their razors, scissors, and meat cleavers to prevent rusting, and then used their barber chair cushions as floatation devices. Cackling Cauldron Makers floated in their cauldrons, paddling along desperately toward the stairwell that led up to the exit. The Partly Dead Brownie Folk made little ships out of their Snuckle Truffle boxes and oars out of spoons; and they rowed hard to safety. Skulk the undertaker curiously surfed by on five very ancient-looking coffins. The Living Firelight went skipping across the water, screaming madly as it went. Students from the Skeleton School of Psychology made a raft out of their schoolbooks. Scientists from the Leprechaun Laboratory stopped up test tubes to use as water wings. Nightly patrons of the Hobgoblin Hex Bar floated by in barrels of pumpkin rum. Many more hordes were sailing across Melancholy Moat in whatever they could find, some in boxes and some in cans, some in bottles or boots or magic lamps. The Toags naturally floated across the black water like ducks. All the while, Warhag watched the goings-on from a rafter, until the sounds of chaos and screams for mercy lulled her into the deep sleep of purring kittens.
The black water surged all around Key’s coffin and rushed it away from Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble. The force of the current slammed the coffin against one wall, causing the coffin to crack. Water began seeping in all around Key and Tudwal. Any minute now, the coffin would break apart and sink.
Miss Broomble removed a copper box from her sleeve and hurriedly spoke a command to it, “Bridge,” before setting it down at her feet.
The small copper box began unfolding. It unfolded and unfolded and unfolded some more. And it went on unfolding until it transformed into a long narrow bridge that lengthened across the dungeon, just above Melancholy Moat’s black water, stretching all the way from Miss Broomble to Key. Then little metal clamps at one end of the bridge clamped down at the stairwell near Miss Broomble’s boots while the other end clamped onto the wall beside Key.
Key set Tudwal on the copper bridge just as a massive clawed hand suddenly burst out from the black water. The hand was much wider than Key’s coffin, colored the grey-blue of great white sharks, yet it had claws as long as black swords.
“Oh dear me,” Mr. Fuddlebee stated. “Killjoy the Kraken.”
“Hurry!” Miss Broomble shouted to Key.
Key leaped to the copper bridge just as the Kraken’s claws sliced through her coffin and dragged it down into the black water, leaving only splinters and broken boards floating along the surface.
She was about to run toward Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble, but she stopped, realizing that she was still in her nightgown. A horrific moment of clarity overcame Key right then, for she knew she’d left everything she owned in the coffin – her ghostly green slippers, her little book, her Crinomatic, and even her most valuable possession stored inside the Crinomatic’s core processor – her white birthday dress.
Key turned to look for the coffin, hoping that some of it might still be left on the surface of the water. But as she saw that the coffin had indeed sunk along with all her possessions, her heart sank too, knowing that it was all lost, perhaps forever.
“Leave it and come on!” Miss Broomble shouted, waving for Key to hurry.
Without thinking on it any further, Key turned and dashed barefooted across the bridge with Tudwal scuttling alongside her.
The Kraken’s clawed hand once more rose up from the black water and slammed down on the bridge, right at Key’s heels.
Tudwal barked furiously at the Kraken.
But Mr. Fuddlebee shook his head in confusion at the immortal puppy. “I seriously doubt, old fellow, that Killjoy knows what you mean by face punch.”
The Kraken’s long claws ripped through the copper bridge, tearing it entirely apart, and pulling it down into the flood.
Key and Tudwal leaped toward the stairwell, but their leap was not far enough, and they began plummeting down toward the black water. Yet just before they splashed down, Pega’s invisible hand grabbed Key and Key quickly grabbed Tudwal.
“It’s all right, Mistress,” came the voice of Pega out of the air. “I’ve got you.”
“Pega!” Key exclaimed delightedly, realizing that the ghost had broken the castle rules. “You spoke to me!”
“I know, Mistress,” Pega said nervously, “don’t tell anyone!”
Pega raised Key and Tudwal far from the water. She glided them toward Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble on the stairwell.
Mr. Fuddlebee rose higher into the air also with ghostly green trails of light swirling after him. He soared up to the dungeon ceiling. “Keep the child safe,” he called down to Miss Broomble. “I’ll see if I can talk some sense into Crinkle. If her ridiculous plan of escape destroys the castle, there’s no knowing how many Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures might escape also. Common people would see them in the streets and panic, realizing that the afterlife is like life as much as Old Queen Crinkle is like Little Mary Sunshine.” And with that, Mr. Fuddlebee vanished through the dungeon ceiling.
Pega set Key and Tudwal down beside Miss Broomble on the stairwell. Key and Miss Broomble hugged, glad to see one another again.
Then Key asked the witch, “Did the Queen release the Kraken?”
“Old Queen Crinkle is trying to escape,” the witch explained, “and Killjoy the Kraken is using this as an opportunity to attack the castle. You’re not the only prisoner, and this dungeon isn’t the only prison. Killjoy has been imprisoned in Melancholy Moat for over five hundred years. He’s pretty upset about that.”
“I know how he feels,” Key remarked under her breath. Then she recalled the two giant le
gs that she had seen through the hole in the dungeon wall, one leg flesh and bone, the other robotic. “I saw a giant attacking the castle also,” Key said. “Is he in league with the Kraken?”
Miss Broomble shook her head. “No, that giant is in fact a part of the Queen’s plan of escape. We’re still trying to figure out how he fits into it all. The giant is a Cyclops, a cyborg called Silas.”
“Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops,” Key mused to herself – the same creature that she had overheard Raithe and Crudgel talking about. “Was this Raithe’s plan, or the Queen’s?” Key wondered.
Miss Broomble squatted down to the copper bridge. She inspected the box that it had been, although there wasn’t much to inspect, except shredded metal. “Return,” she ordered it, but the bridge did not budge. “Return,” she commanded it again with greater emphasis, yet again the bridge remained perfectly motionless in its demise. “Broken,” the witch spat in frustration under her breath as she stood and faced Key. “Another one gone. Let’s hope the GadgetTronic Brothers will give me another Oscillobox for work.”
“What kind of work do you do?” Key asked.
“This,” Miss Broomble said, gesturing and looking up.
Key looked around, but all she saw was the flooded dungeon. She did not understand what “this” meant.
“Mr. Fuddlebee and I work for DIOS,” Miss Broomble explained. “We turn immortals back into mortals.”
Key was shocked. “You mean to say that this whole time you could have made me mortal again, but you did not? You kept this secret from me?”
“Much has been kept from you, and not by me alone, but by yourself also,” Miss Broomble said to a rather confused looking Key. “Look,” the witch went on, “there is no time to answer all your questions now, but I will answer one.” Miss Broomble sighed heavily before she spoke. “No, I could not change you back into a mortal for many reasons. You’re not seven hundred seventy seven years old, first off. Secondly, you would not let me change you back into a mortal.”
