Then I looked around and saw that our troubles were not over at all.
ALMOST THE END OF THE STORY
It was still not quite dawn, which was just as well for Henry and Bella – but it wasn’t that fact which stopped us in our tracks. Facing us was a very angry crowd of the Order of the Dragon, many of them carrying flaming torches. Most of them appeared rather the worse for wear, and I saw many looking nervously at each other when they saw that Bella was still very much alive.
They were led by Mr Antonescu, his moustache bristling and the great scowl that he wore conveying his displeasure.
“What have you done?” bellowed our old guide.
“Made sure that the creature you worship will not be troubling anyone for a very long time,” answered Bella.
Antonescu was silent for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he reached into his red robe and drew out a sharpened wooden stake.
“I should have done this long ago,” he snarled.
As if they were all thinking with one brain, the whole bunch pulled stakes from their robes and surged towards us. I glanced at Henry and Bella, who were exchanging looks and grinning. Then they swung around and charged the collected members of the Order, whose mouths dropped open as they realised they had not one but two vampires to deal with.
This time I was able to stand on the sidelines, watching Henry and Bella take out the group with ease. After only a few minutes, most of our adversaries were lying in bruised heaps, groaning and holding various parts of their bodies. Needless to say, not one pointy stake landed anywhere near either Bella or Harry. They left Mr Antonescu until last, and then Henry nodded at Bella, who swept him up with one arm and threw him several metres into the air. He hit the ground and lay still.
Silence fell. Well, almost.
As I watched, glancing over the bodies to make sure no one wanted to give us any more trouble, we heard a deep, groaning sound. I soon realised that it wasn’t our attackers but the mountain itself, which seemed to shiver for a moment, as if it were feeling the cold. Then a series of deep, echoing rumbles shook the ground.
“The tunnels are collapsing!” shouted Henry, and suddenly everyone was staggering to their feet and moving away from the entrance to the Snagov Beast’s lair as fast as they could.
Except for one.
Mr Antonescu stood up, a trickle of blood running down his face from where he had fallen. He looked completely mad, his hair on end, his moustache bristling, his eyes staring. “The Great One!” he shouted, and began to run – into the open mouth of the tunnels.
Henry took a step forward, as though he was about to run after our old guide and drag him back, but Bella put a hand on his arm. “No,” she said calmly. “Leave him to his fate.”
And so the three of us watched motionless as Mr Antonescu vanished from sight into the darkness, still shouting the name of the Beast. Almost immediately there came the loudest rumble of all, as the whole front of the mountain groaned and shifted, and boulders the size of double - decker buses rained down from the mountain shelf, blocking the entrance to the tunnels for ever.
Then, almost as if nothing had happened, the mountain was still again, sealing the Beast and its would-be master inside.
I wasn’t surprised that without their leader, all the fight went out of the Order of the Dragon. They wandered off miserably into the night, and soon the three of us were all alone on the moonlit hillside.
“Do you think we killed it?” I asked.
Bella shrugged. “Who can say? It may well be immortal. But one thing is for sure: it will not be getting out of there any time soon.”
“Well, that was a mission satisfactorily completed,” Henry remarked.
“Except for one thing,” I said. “You’re a vampire.” I wasn’t entirely convinced that having a vampire for a best friend would be the ideal way to continue our adventures.
“Oh that,” said Henry breezily. “You know, I actually quite like it. The strength, the power… Think about it, Dolf – it could be quite useful.” He smoothed his long hair back from his brow in a very… well… vampirish manner.
“Until you get hungry,” Bella said. “I don’t imagine that will go down too well when you get home.”
I hadn’t even thought of that, I realised. “Bella’s right – what will you do when we get back to St Grimbold’s? Start biting people?”
Henry’s eyes grew serious – he actually looked worried. I think he’d been enjoying what it felt like to be a vampire without considering any of the practical side of things.
Meanwhile an idea started to form in my mind, something that might just save Henry. A thought so crazy that I almost didn’t dare voice it.
“Um… this is going to sound a bit mad,” I started. Two pairs of bright blue eyes turned towards me and I felt my mouth go dry. “Well, you know how much I like vampire stories…”
Henry nodded, never taking his eyes off me. Bella stared with something like a smile.
“Well, it’s just that I remember reading that for one day after someone gets bitten they can be returned to normal.”
Henry turned to Bella. “Is that true?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the vampire girl slowly. “If another vampire bites you in that time, you will go back to being just a silly boy again.”
Henry chose to ignore the jibe. “Another vampire,” he said, suddenly grinning. “Wonder where I’d find one of those?”
Bella relaxed her stern features. “Is that really what you wish?” she asked.
I held my breath. I knew Henry must be thinking of how amazing it was to be a vampire. And also that living forever (providing he never encountered someone with a pointy stake) could be very useful for someone with Henry’s passion for strange bits of knowledge and investigating weird things.
Henry hesitated for at least a minute, during which time I tried to quell my rising concern that my best friend was going to remain a vampire. I couldn’t imagine it’d mean the end to our adventures, but it would definitely make them a whole lot different.
Then Henry grinned. “I suppose it could get a bit inconvenient. I’d hate to wake up one night with a thirst and only you were around, Dolf…”
I hadn’t considered that! No way did I want to become a vampire too – I was quite happy as a boy, thank you very much.
Henry looked at Bella. “But didn’t you tell us you’d given up drinking blood several hundred years ago?”
Bella shrugged. “I lied,” she said, quite matter-of-factly. “I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.”
I suddenly realised I had become much less frightened of Bella since our first meeting. Even after this admission, I couldn’t bring myself to truly worry that she was a threat.
“So… er… how do we do this?” said Henry.
“Roll up your sleeve,” instructed Bella.
I have to admit I looked away. I heard the unmistakable sound of sharp teeth sinking into flesh, and Henry’s quickly indrawn breath. Then, silence.
Finally I couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening and turned back. Henry was rolling down his shirt sleeve, covering two small puncture marks on his arm. Bella had withdrawn her fangs, but I noticed her licking her lips in a rather unsettling manner. I shuddered, but I was glad that Henry already looked more like my old friend. The bright blue glow had gone from his eyes, though he was still pale and his lips were redder than normal.
Now I think about it, ever since his brief time as a vampire, Henry has always seemed a bit paler than before. Later he confided in me that he still felt some of the strength he had gained – though he couldn’t climb vertical rock faces at speed or fly across the room any more, which even I found a little disappointing. That could have come in useful.
Bella had her eyes fixed on Henry and it seemed to me that I saw a touch of sadness there – as though the thought of a fellow vampire to hang out with was something she’d have liked. Then she recovered, and glanced up at the sky, which was beginning to grow paler.<
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“I suppose I’d better take you back to your hotel, or you are bound to get lost. Hurry. There is just time before dawn.”
So we stumbled down from the mountain, exhausted but victorious. At the bottom we climbed aboard Bella’s motorbike for the last time. It was a bit of a squeeze, but all three of us managed to perch on and behind the saddle.
Back at the hotel, which we seemed to have left days ago rather than just a few hours, Bella said goodbye. She could not have lingered even if she’d wanted, as dawn was just minutes away, but I suspected she was the kind who hates goodbyes anyway. I suppose if you are a five-hundred-year-old vampire you probably get to do it more often than you’d like.
“Thanks for everything,” Henry said. “Hope we get to see you again sometime.”
“I think not,” Bella answered, almost too quickly I thought, as if she couldn’t afford to develop a friendship with two mere mortals. “Go home now, silly boys. And do not come back!” In spite of her harsh words I thought she was smiling – but I might have imagined it. Who can tell, with a vampire?
She climbed back aboard the bike and gunned the engine into life.
“Remember, we don’t like visitors up here. It’s not good for them – or for me.”
Then she was gone, the red spot of her taillight vanishing into the early morning mist.
“Well,” said Henry Hunter, “that’s that. Time to go home, Dolf.” His eyes looked thoughtful, as if he was a bit fed up, but if the reason had anything to do with Bella Dracul he never said a word to me about it.
It took us only a day to arrange our flights home, thanks to Henry’s brilliant network of contacts. On the plane to England he was (for Henry) unusually quiet – though he still managed to explain more about vampire physiology than I really needed to know. Eventually I fell asleep while he was telling me how it felt to have your teeth suddenly grow longer.
I woke as we were landing. A car was waiting, ready to take us back to St Grimbold’s. A few hours later we were back in Henry’s rooms at school.
He was already pasting the cutting from the Unbelievable Times into one of his big scrapbooks – he kept one from every expedition. Later he wrote a few notes and filed them all away neatly in old-fashioned box files with bright green labels. I know that he also wrote a long letter to Professor Killigrew at the British Museum, giving an edited account of our ‘discoveries’. I imagine it’s buried somewhere in a very deep vault.
As Henry worked on his scrapbook, I noticed a strange object on the desk in front of him. I was about to pick it up when I realised what it was – one of the barbs from the Snagov Beast’s tail. I did a double take and snatched my hand away as fast as I could.
“What did you bring that thing back for? Hasn’t it got some kind of vampire-inducing venom in it?”
“It’s just a souvenir,” Henry said. “Besides, it might come in useful if I ever want to prove the existence of vampires.”
There was just nothing to say to that, so I watched Henry wrap the barb very carefully in an old T-shirt and put it in an ornately carved box that he had picked up on an earlier adventure (I think it was The Case of the Haunted Tramp Steamer but can’t be one hundred per cent sure).
The box is in front of me now, along with a file labelled ‘The Beast of Snagov’. Because, you see, the reason I’m documenting Henry’s adventures is not just because they are great stories (although they are) but because HH is missing.
Yes, you read that right. Henry Hunter is missing. Not right after this adventure – it was over a year later. One minute he was there – the next he wasn’t. (Well, maybe not quite as suddenly as that, but that’s how it felt to me.)
He vanished on a perfectly ordinary morning in May, without leaving a note, and no one has seen him since. There was a huge search, but even the vast resources of the Hunter family failed to find so much as a trace. And now two years have passed, and pretty much everyone has given up looking – except for me.
Even Henry’s parents, who came home as soon as they heard their son was missing, went back to South America eventually. But I can’t stop thinking that Henry is still out there somewhere, probably being held in some dark, dank prison, and that just as he never gave up on me on any of our adventures – whether I was kidnapped, or tied up, or threatened by monsters – neither should I give up on him.
And that is why I’m telling some of our adventures, because I’m convinced that somewhere in these files are clues to Henry’s whereabouts. Did you spot anything? If you did, please let me know, because I’m sure Henry needs my help.
And I wonder whether, like so many of the strange and wonderful objects Henry hunted down, the scary barb has anything to do with his disappearance…
Perhaps, or perhaps not. But wherever Henry is right now, maybe he, or someone who can help, will read this account and get in touch. Because I’m not going to stop looking till I find him.
TO BE CONTINUED…
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is the first proper children’s novel I have written, despite having begun many others over the years. It was a lot harder to write than I expected and quite a few people gave me encouragement to get it finished.
In particular, I would like to thank Dwina Murphy-Gibb for the many cups of coffee and fantastic suppers at the Sir Charles Napier, and for listening to me go on (and on) about Henry Hunter and Dolf, and always being interested.
To Ari Berk, doyen of all things mythic and folkloristic, for reading the first draft and being kind enough to tell me it was okay. (Part of the book was written in the little house we shared with our families in the Orkney Islands, and I hope that some of the fresh air and sea got in here somewhere.)
But my greatest thanks go, as always, to my family. To my wonderful wife Caitlín, for her tireless support when I was tearing my hair and declaring I would ‘never finish it’, and to our son Emrys, who kindly read the manuscript when he was busy performing in Guys and Dolls, and put me right on some of the ways twelve-year-old boys think.
Thanks also to Mark Ryan for the suggestion about exploding rocks.
Thanks must go to Amanda Wood from Templar, who took a chance on this after only seeing a few pages, and then stuck by me when it looked for a while as if the book would never be published, and to my two resolute editors, Helen Boyle and Catherine Coe, who wisely ignored my rants and persuaded me to listen to them. This is a much better book than it would have been without them.
For those who like to know such things, most of the places mentioned in Henry Hunter and the Beast of Snagov are real. I have taken some liberties with descriptions of the various castles – though several were exactly what I had imagined. There are no caves near Snagov that I am aware of, but the local people still talk of ‘Dracula’s Tomb’ in the nearby monastery ruins.
For those who love vampire tales and can’t get as far as Transylvania, I recommend a visit to the atmospheric town of Whitby, where Bram Stoker came in 1890 and where he gathered both locations and lore for his great novel Dracula. To the best of my knowledge there is no underground passage leading to the abbey ruins (though there could be), but all the rest of the details are as accurate as I could make them.
John Matthews
Oxford, 2014
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2014 by Templar Publishing, an imprint of The Templar Company Limited,
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London, EC1V 0AT
www.templarco.co.uk
Copyright © 2014 by John Matthews
Cover design by Mina Bach
Interior design by Will Steele
Illustrations by Nick Tankard
First edition
All rights reserved
ISBN 978–1–78370–044–8
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon, CRO 4YY
Henry Hunter and the Beast of Snagov Page 9
