Without hesitation, Henry knocked confidently on the door. We waited for a few minutes – longer than was normal, I had started to think. But then Henry knocked again, louder this time. Still no one came.
“Must be out,” I remarked.
“Maybe…” said Henry. He stood back and scanned the windows on the upper floor. The curtains were drawn up there, too.
“Or he might have gone away.”
“I don’t think so,” Henry replied. “Notice how shiny that brass plate is. It’s been cleaned recently. Besides, he was quoted in the Unbelievable Times article from an interview last week, so he can’t have been gone long.”
As always, I was impressed by Henry’s sleuthing skills.
Henry shook his head. “There’s something not right about this, Dolf.”
I sighed. We’d been in Whitby less than an hour, and we’d already come to the end of our investigation. I looked at my watch, hoping we wouldn’t get back to school in time for double maths.
“Let’s see what the neighbours have to say,” Henry said. I should have known he wouldn’t give up that easily.
We tried knocking on a couple of doors. The first was opened by a short, fat man who took one look at us and slammed the door in our faces. At the second door there was no answer. The third was opened by a pleasant, elderly lady. By her quick eyes and keen tongue I could tell straightaway she was the kind who likes to sit all day and watch the world go by, and hence knows everything that happens.
“Dr Trembling?” she said, after Henry had posed his question. “Funny you should ask that, young man. Another gentleman was looking for him just yesterday.”
“Really?” Henry said innocently. “What did he look like?”
“Let’s see now – tall, thin… quite pale about the face, like he doesn’t see the sun much. Spoke with a bit of a foreign accent… very polite, though.”
“What were you able to tell him… about Dr Trembling, I mean?” said Henry.
“I saw the professor getting into a car two – no, wait, I tell a lie, three days ago. Came quite late it did. Stood outside the house for about an hour. Then I saw Professor Trembling get in. He seemed uneasy on his feet – like he wasn’t well – but it was dark by then so I can’t be sure.”
“I don’t suppose you remember which way they went?” Henry asked.
The old lady’s eyes gleamed. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do.” Clearly it was a point of pride that our informant hadn’t missed anything. “It went off that way.” She pointed up the narrow street, which climbed towards the looming mass of Whitby Abbey.
Henry beamed. “Thank you so much,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She returned his smile and waved as we headed off up the road. Was she wondering why two schoolboys were asking after Dr Hans Trembling? Although it has to be said that Henry didn’t look like most twelve-year-old boys. Today he wore a black fedora and a suit tailored in the famous Savile Row. I, on the other hand, in case you’re interested, was wearing an old pair of jeans and a Metallica T-shirt. (I like that retro stuff – okay?)
“What now?” I asked as we toiled up the steep street.
“Well, something’s going on, that’s for sure,” said Henry. “I’ll bet whoever took the professor away in that car was up to no good.”
“What about the foreign bloke who asked about him yesterday?” I didn’t want to mention that the elderly lady had pretty much described most people’s idea of Dracula – everything except the teeth and long black cloak, that was.
“May or may not be connected,” said Henry. “And it could be as a result of the article. But it sounds like the people who were after Dr Trembling were also being followed.”
“So what’s next?”
Henry quickened his pace, striding off in front of me up the hill. “I think it’s time we visited Bram Stoker.”
AN ENCOUNTER WITH SOME UNPLEASANT PEOPLE
I wasn’t sure how we were going to meet the author of Dracula, since Bram Stoker had been dead for ages, but I followed Henry up the steep narrow streets anyway, climbing above the red roofs of the old town until we reached a crescent-shaped row of houses. Henry produced a map from his pocket, on which he traced the way to a symbol marking where Bram Stoker had stayed in Whitby. The exact house was easy to spot – it had one of those blue plaques telling you someone famous had lived there.
“It’s a bit… ordinary,” I said, looking up at the tall, narrow townhouse.
“Expecting a Gothic mansion with blood running down the walls?” laughed Henry. “Just wait – it’s usually the places that look the most ordinary that have the most extraordinary things inside.”
Henry knocked on the door, but no one answered, so he bent down and looked through the letterbox.
“It’s empty,” I heard him mumble into the door.
“That’s that, then,” I said, turning back down the steps.
“Don’t be silly, Dolf. We have to get inside. Anyway, it’s not this part of the house we want to get into, it’s the part no one knows about.”
“If no one knows about it, how come you do?” I said. I don’t know why I asked this really – Henry knew a lot more about most things than most other people!
Henry raised his eyebrows whilst already looking around for another way in – though since the house was sandwiched between two others I couldn’t see how it’d be possible.
While I was wondering this, Henry was already pushing his way behind a large bush in front of the house. “Here we go, Dolf!” he said. “Come on!”
Glancing around to make sure there was no one watching, I squeezed in behind the bush and saw what he had found. It was a narrow, horizontal window in the basement of the house.
The glass was already cracked and before I could question him Henry had smashed a stone into it, reached in and opened the catch. He pushed the window up and climbed through.
Before I could change my mind, I followed Henry, feet first, and found myself standing in a dark, dusty basement. A dirty light bulb, which I was surprised still worked, cast a dim glow over the room when Henry flicked a switch. It was completely empty apart from swags of cobwebs and a lot of dust. Henry was standing by a warped, peeling door, which he had already opened. Beyond lay only darkness.
Henry produced a slim pencil torch from his pocket and shone it into the gloom. All we could see was a flight of narrow stairs leading down into even darker regions.
“Um, any idea what’s down there?” I asked, unable to stop myself thinking of people with long, snaggly teeth.
“Hopefully the answers to some questions,” replied Henry, setting off down the stairs. I jumped to follow him before his light disappeared completely.
Five minutes later we were still descending, occasionally twisting right and left. The walls had turned from stone to bare earth. A strong smell of damp and something else unpleasant I couldn’t identify permeated the air.
“How much further do you think this goes down?” I asked. My voice echoed back at us from every side.
“No idea,” said Henry. Then he grunted and muttered, “Ah-ha!” in a meaningful way.
“‘Ah-ha’, what?” Had the monsters appeared already?
“We’re not going down any longer,” answered Henry.
“It feels like we are,” I said as I felt for the next step with my foot.
“Yes, that’s the trick of it,” said Henry, pulling out a compass and shining his torch on it. “It’s like those theme-park rides where you think you’ve been on and on for ages but you’ve just been doubling back on yourself. This is really interesting …”
I wasn’t sure how it was that interesting, but I didn’t like to say anything. I was more worried about the cold and damp, which was making me shiver, and the fact that Henry’s torch was beginning to dim.
I was wondering how much longer we’d be going on for when Henry stopped so suddenly I bumped into him.
“What?” I shouted, clutching the earthen wall
to steady myself. Peering over Henry’s shoulder I saw that he had stopped because there was a wall in front of him. The passageway ended there, with no sign of a door.
“Now what?” I said. “Should we dig through?” I patted my pocket, thinking that my Swiss army knife wouldn’t get us very far.
Henry didn’t answer. He shone his flickering torch around the narrow space, pushing his hair back from his eyes. “This can’t be it…” he muttered. Then he shone the torch upwards and grunted. I looked at the light and saw the outlines of a trap door in the ceiling.
“Come on then, Dolf,” said Henry. “Give me a hand up.”
Henry was soon expertly climbing onto my shoulders and through the trapdoor, and then reaching down to pull me up after him. He had surprising strength for someone with so little apparent muscle. It was less dark here; a round and very grimy window let in a few gleams of evening sunlight (double maths had been and gone, I thought with a grin). We were in a small square room that seemed to have no entrance or exit other than the trapdoor. What it did have, in the middle of the room, was a large wooden box fastened with a rusted padlock. Henry stood by it, visibly shaking with excitement.
“This is it, Dolf,” he said, voice breaking a bit. “What do you think’s in there?” I asked. I had no idea what Henry was expecting or hoping for.
Henry was already on his knees, pushing at the lid.
It didn’t budge.
Reaching into an inner pocket Henry brought out a small crowbar (this early on in our adventures I was still amazed by what he carried around with him) and hit the padlock sharply. It gave at once.
With trembling hands Henry lifted the lid.
I sniffed – a peculiar smell, musty and sweetish, wafted from the box, and I peered over his shoulder as he shone his torch inside.
I couldn’t help feeling rather disappointed when all I saw was a small bundle wrapped up in what looked like oilskin – the kind of stuff they makes sailors’ jackets out of.
Henry bent down and pulled it out. He sat back on his heels and held the bundle in his hands. His face was smudged and there were cobwebs in his hair, but his eyes were gleaming. I wanted to tell Henry to get on with it, to find out what was inside, but I knew how he liked to draw out dramatic moments, and now was no exception. Slowly he unwrapped the bundle and extracted an old, battered wooden box – it looked like the kind that held cigars. He lifted it up towards the light and we could just make out a name engraved into the lid.
Even I gasped at that. Jonathan Harker is one of the main characters in Dracula, the one who went to the Count’s castle in Transylvania.
“But he’s a made-up character!” I said, my brain working overtime to figure out what was going on. “How come there’s a box with his name on?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Henry said.
Inside the cigar box was a bundle of papers and what looked like a small, green glass bottle. Henry held this up for a moment, turning it this way and that to try to catch the light. Shaking his head he laid it to one side and began sifting through the documents. Were these linked to the papers found at the British Museum, I wondered.
“This is it, Dolf,” Henry said, sitting back on his heels. “The real thing. There’s another note from the publisher, Frederick Walker.”
“What does it say?”
Henry held the yellowing paper close to his face and read it out loud.
Henry stopped and stared into space for a moment. “So not only was Jonathan Harker real but Abraham van Helsing as well.”
“I’ll bet there are some people in Hollywood who would love to know that,” I said, grinning.
Henry didn’t seem to hear me. He raised the paper again and continued reading.
“So now we know,” said Henry.
“Um… what exactly do we know?” I said, wishing I had Henry’s grasp of details and that I found it easier to keep up.
“It’s simple enough, Dolf. Everything Bram Stoker wrote in his book was real. It actually happened. All those weird things he saw, the undead. It’s all real.”
“But that was all a long time ago,” I put in.
“Yes, but there’s something far more important here than the fact that vampires exist. I always thought they did anyway. It’s this other creature, much more terrible than a vampire according to Frederick Walker Esq., that I want to find out about. The Snagov Beast, that’s what we should be hunting!”
“But what do you think it is?” I asked. I was trying to work out whether the move from vampires to beasts was a good one or not.
“Well, if it’s worse than Dracula then it might be connected to the origin of all vampires. And that, my dear Dolf, is something we can’t ignore. We absolutely have to hunt down the Snagov Beast.”
“So now we go to Transylvania?” I said. There was no point trying to persuade him otherwise. Once Henry Hunter got that look in his eyes there was no turning back.
“Right you are, Dolf. But first we have to read this manuscript.”
As Henry began to untie the piece of ribbon around the bundle of papers my eyes went back to the bottle he had laid to one side.
“What do you think’s in that?” I asked.
Henry stopped what he was doing and picked up the bottle again.
“I’m not sure,” he said, shaking it. “Doesn’t seem to be anything inside at all.”
“Why would Frederick Walker leave an old glass bottle in there?” I wondered aloud. “Maybe it was part of his lunch.”
“Well, I can tell you one thing,” said Henry, ignoring my attempt at wit. “It’s Transylvanian glass. Rather a nice specimen, in fact.”
“Um, so what’s so special about Transylvanian glass?” I asked, hoping my question didn’t generate another lecture.
“Oh, it’s famous,” beamed Henry. “They use a special kind of technique…” His words trailed off as he held the bottle up to the dim light filtering in through the window.
At that moment, with perfect timing, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds. It struck the glass bottle full on and lit it up as if something inside had burst into flame. Henry gasped and I saw that he was staring at the wall across the room. Where the sunlight struck the bottle it had thrown a pattern onto the wall as if onto a screen. I could make out a series of what might have been letters, though they made no sense to me.
“It’s writing,” said Henry, “in old Rumanian.” (Was there no end to his knowledge? That made at least ten weird languages he knew.)
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Hang on… I’m a bit rusty, but I think it’s… In the… cleft… yes, In the cleft of the Mountain of the Worm is… the Snagov Beast.”
Henry was silent for a moment, then he said. “There’s another word here, Dolf…” After the smallest of pauses he delivered it with relish. “Beware.”
As he said the word I suddenly felt cold. Maybe it was because the sun went behind a cloud, returning the room to its former dimness, but it seemed more than that. I shivered in spite of myself.
It was then that we heard a thump behind us and jumped. Spinning round we saw a dark figure emerging from the trapdoor. The only feature I could make out was a flash of eyes. Apart from that, the figure was clad entirely in black.
My first thought was one of relief that it was at least human. My second thought was less coherent as the figure leapt into the room and pounced on Henry, snatching the bundle of papers from him so quickly that he had no time to react. When he did, it was the usual HH response to this kind of thing. He planted a couple of quick karate blows to his opponent’s midsection and swiped the legs from under him. (Henry was proficient in several kinds of unarmed combat.)
At the same time Henry threw me the glass bottle, which I caught and stuffed into a front pocket of my jeans. Our attacker had managed to keep hold of the precious bundle of pages, and scrambled back to his feet. I recoiled as he landed several quick punches on Henry’s torso, felling him to the floor.
Other than Henry’s small groans as he took the hits, all of this took place in complete silence. Spurred into action by the sight of Henry on the floor, I jumped our attacker, but he was too fast for me and began raining punches on me from all sides. Somehow I managed to stay standing, using my arms to block the blows, until he ended with a swift kick to my stomach. The next thing I knew I was flat on the floor, gasping for air.
I looked over at Henry, who was staggering upright once more, but something else caught my eye: a second figure appearing through the trapdoor. All in black like the first, this one was carrying nunchuks.
Henry had spotted him too. “Dolf. Follow me!”
I expected him to head for the trapdoor but instead he leapt towards the small round window and pulled out his crowbar. He hurled it, shattering the glass as the iron bar vanished through the window. Seconds later Henry dived through it and I followed, not stopping to worry what was on the other side – I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the two attackers.
There was a brief rush of air as I fell, and I remember yelling “Aaaaagh!” as I wondered if it was all up for Henry and me. But I hit the ground quickly and for the second time that day found myself gasping for breath. As I lay there I took in my surroundings: the earth on which I’d landed was actually quite soft and only a metre below the round window. Whatever strange route the underground passage had taken, it had somehow brought us out near the bottom of a cliff face, and we’d emerged from a ramshackle hut that had been built into the rock itself.
I caught a brief flash of a balaclava-covered face staring down at us from the smashed window before Henry’s face replaced it as he bent over me, asking anxiously if I was okay.
“Been better,” I said with a grin. “Who are those people?”
“Probably the same people who took Dr Trembling,” said Henry, offering me a hand up. “But they got what they came for anyway.”
I should have realised that, I thought to myself. Not for the first time, I wished I had as quick a brain as Henry’s.
Henry Hunter and the Beast of Snagov Page 2
