The Vampire’s Revenge

Vernon says he has no love

for his Mum and Dad swinging above.

Wilf the Kangaroo was very busily trying to explain the new four-two-four formation which he had worked out to stop the Gerts from winning. He thought he heard a snigger of laughter from Mr C Menott as he tried to explain what he knew would be the soccer plan of the future and that, at the moment, he was working on a plan that didn’t use wingers.

Igon looked into the darkness of the open door and asked, ‘Where are the king and queen?’

A voice, similar to the Chief Inspector’s, said, ‘They have left by the back door.’

Igon went through the open door with a more than nervous look on his face. The door closed behind him.

‘Thanks, Mr President. Well, I think there’s something fishy going on in there and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the last time we were to see Igon.’ Wilf’s kangaroo face nodded in the direction of the door Igon had just gone through.

‘Oh come now, Wilf. You may be a kangaroo at the moment but you’re not a fool. We have all heard the Inspector’s voice and it’s quite natural for the others to go out the back way. I mean to say, the Inspector wouldn’t want us to be influenced in any way by meeting the others. He will want to hear what we all think separately.’

Wilf looked across to Valentine through his sad brown kangaroo eyes. ‘Well, I don’t know. I feel there’s something wrong and we are here for a special reason.’

Wilf put his hand in his pouch and brought out an old crisp. He said, ‘It looks as if the baby has been eating in bed.’

Valentine looked at Wilf saying, ‘Wilf, you know it’s bad manners to laugh at your own jokes.’

Igon was almost at the side of the coffin. Vernon kept his eyes open, waiting for him. He hadn’t seen him since the transformation. He lay there waiting, as still as death. As Igon looked down at Vernon both their memories came flooding back. Igon’s was the pain he had had to suffer, while Vernon’s was the joy of watching and causing Igon’s pain. They looked at each other.

One thought to himself, ‘I’m glad you’re dead. You can’t make anyone suffer again.’

The other one thought, ‘I’m going to turn you back into that filthy, ugly animal you once were.’

Igon stayed by the coffin for as long as he thought it was decent to do so. He looked deep into Vernon’s eyes and, for one millimetre of a second, he thought he saw the left eye give the tiniest flicker, but that was impossible …

‘You are dead and I, for one, am glad. I’m only sad for the mother who loved you.’

As Igon turned to go, Vernon sprang up quickly and, from under the coffin’s pillow, withdrew a syringe, already prepared with a potion that could put a man to sleep almost immediately.

‘Let us be friends, then I can go to the Great Drac with peace in my unhappy, broken heart. Give me your hand in friendship, old friend of mine.’

Igon turned slowly round and almost passed out as he saw Vernon sitting up in his coffin with a stake sticking out of his heart and his right hand outstretched in friendship. He automatically held out his own right hand. As the two hands met, Vernon gripped Igon’s quickly and turned it palm up, while, with his left hand, he plunged the syringe into the exposed vein on Igon’s wrist. Igon tried to pull away but Vernon was as fast as a cobra. The needle was in, then out, before Igon realised what was happening.

Vernon screamed with laughter as Igon swayed from the effect of the potion coursing through his veins. He jumped out of his coffin and looked up into the darkness. He could see the shadows of his mother and father.

‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Look, I’ve got Igon. I have him, he’s mine. Look, you stupid fools.’

Vernon watched with the smile of a devil on his lips as he saw Igon become weaker and weaker.

His parents looked down and watched as Vernon guided a staggering Igon through a maze of shelves, phials, large bottles and bubbling crucibles towards the operating table. They watched Vernon lift a helpless Igon on to the table and fasten him with thick leather straps across his chest, then his wrists and ankles. Igon was secure and completely passed out.

Victor shouted down to his son, ‘You are a fool, ant you vill never get avay vith this!’

‘You are the fool, not me. You are the one who is going to die, not me. You are the one hanging from the roof. I’m here, so how can I be the fool?’

‘Vernon, stop being a naughty boy and do as your daddy tells you,’ his mother shouted.

He ran back to his coffin and climbed in, fastening the false stake to his left side and lying down.

Vernon thumped the bottom of the coffin with his right foot. He heard the door open, then clearing his throat, he shouted in the voice of Inspector Speekup, ‘Will you please come in, President Valentine.’

Valentine smiled at Wilf and walked into the dark lab. Wilf watched as he went through the doorway and as the door closed once more, he sat on his tail.

‘In your pouch. I was getting cold, so I jumped into your pouch. There’re no more crisps in here.’

‘Yes. I’m sitting on your knee. It’s more comfortable than sitting on the rocks or the floor.’

‘Because I’ve been in there. That’s Vernon’s old lab and I’ve been in there and, as far as I can remember, there was no back door.’

‘Well, do you remember when the voice said, “And last, but not least, whatever Wilf is” and you said, “I’m a kangaroo”. Do you remember that?’

‘Well, if you remember, the voice then said, “Are you? Well, whatever you are, you will enter last.” Eh? Do you remember that?’

‘Well, I heard at the Black Bat Hotel that Inspector Speekup was as deaf as a post …’ They looked at each other for a moment. ‘So, if the Inspector is so deaf … how come he heard you say you were a kangaroo? Eh? How come?’

‘Right, and if it’s not the Inspector who else can it be, other than Vernon, eh?’

‘Great jumping kangaroos, you’re right. Vernon’s got them all in there and I’m next …’

‘Not quite … let’s say we are next. He doesn’t know me and he can’t see me either …’

Valentine looked at Vernon in his coffin for a full two minutes. Then, with sadness in his voice, he said, ‘Oh Vernon, how different all this might have been if you had been as great a Vampire as your father was. You would be ruler of all of Gotcha now. How strange life is that I am President. But, even in death, I bear you no grudge although you were so cruel.’

Fifty feet up, in a swinging net, Valeeta had her hand over Victor’s mouth so that he couldn’t speak.

Valentine continued, ‘Your mother and father loved you so much and had great plans for you. Goodbye Vernon, I wish you a good sleep.’

As he turned to go, Victor bit Valeeta’s hand and she screamed with the pain. After all, a Vampire’s bite can be very painful. The sudden noise made Valentine stop and look up. He couldn’t quite make out what it was that was swinging so far above him. Vernon quickly took the false stake off his body and, before Valentine could see what was in the net, he hit him with it on his Presidential head. Valentine fell to the ground, knocked out cold.

‘Not what I had in mind, but adequate.’ Vernon dragged Valentine away from the coffin and rolled him under a bench and left him there. He looked up to his mummy and daddy.

‘If you do that again,’ he bellowed, ‘not only will you watch the others die, but you will both watch each other die very, very slowly with a blunt stake.’

He sprang back into his coffin, fixed the stake and lay there with his foot on the pedal at the bottom of the coffin.

Wilf sprang around the room, muttering, ‘Oh I wish I wasn’t a kangaroo. I don’t know how to handle myself as a kangaroo. Now, if I was a Werewolf, I would be able to get Vernon before he could get me.’

‘Is there nothing you can do to turn yourself back?’ The voice came from a jutting-out piece of rock.

‘Well, what if you really concentrated on being yourself again? It almost worked for me once. I really concentrated hard and, for almost an hour, my nose came into vision.’

‘No, it doesn’t work like that for Werewolves. We are activated by time. With me, it’s the full moon.’

‘But you’re not a Werewolf, are you? You are a kangaroo and kangaroos are Australian, aren’t they? Now the time in Australia is different from the time in Gotcha. In Australia, you would have to wait until tomorrow to turn into a Werewolf, wouldn’t you?’

‘I know, but surely you can understand what I’m saying. Try concentrating. Keep telling yourself what the time is in Australia and see what happens. Go on, try, you’ve got nothing to lose. Have you, eh?’

‘You’re right. OK. I’m concentrating, I really am. By the way, what is the time in Australia, anyway?’

‘Oh, about ten hours ahead. It’s about midnight here, so in Aussie land it’ll be ten in the morning. Go on, hurry up and concentrate, you great big antipodal.’

Wilf had no time to be offended. He crouched in a corner and thought hard about what time it was in Australia.

Vernon lay back with a big smile on his face that showed the two large teeth at the corners of his mouth. He lay there thinking, ‘I’ve got Mummy and Daddy up there, swinging in the breeze. I’ve got Igon fast asleep and I’ve got my stupid brother knocked out cold under the bench. I’d better check he is asleep and give him an injection. If he were to come to while Wilf is here, it could prove a little awkward.’

I’m a Vampire, aren’t we all?

Just a Vampire slim and tall.

In my dreams I hear such lovely screams

That I recall, but don’t we all?

He picked up a syringe that had been filled with K.O.D. (Knock-out-drops) and gently rolled Valentine’s sleeve up above his wrist. With perfect aim, he found the vein and filled it with K.O.D. Valentine did not move and wouldn’t for hours.

Vernon’s mother looked down and saw what her wicked son was doing to his brother. She thought, ‘Well, the rest will do him good.’

Fortunately for Wilf, all this activity had given him the extra time he needed hopefully to change back into either a Werewolf or his normal self. At the moment it seemed to be working. He really was concentrating hard and he wasn’t a kangaroo any more. He was now a wallaby.

Wilf felt that he was winning and Mr C Menott was a great help with all sorts of encouraging words like, ‘come on, you big dope, you can do it’ or ‘what’s the matter with you, you hairy twerp?’ Wilf felt that these words did help him to concentrate, but they were also words that he wouldn’t easily forget; he would have to get Mr C Menott at least to say he hadn’t meant them.

Vernon pressed his foot down on the door release and heard the door open once again. He did a quick check on his mother and father swaying above him and gave a quick look towards the outstretched bodies of Igon and Valentine who were in the Land of Nod.

He looked down at himself to see if everything was all right and he suddenly noticed that he had forgotten to put the false stake in position. Quick as a flash, he stamped hard on the door-close button and, as he tied the stake into its position, heard the door creak shut.

Wilf was doing his best and thanked the good Lord for reshutting the door as he still wasn’t quite right, although he was no longer a kangaroo. He was no longer a wallaby either. He was something very pretty – he was a koala bear. A very large, but very pretty, koala bear.

Wilf seemed pleased and tried to concentrate harder. He groaned and grunted and Mr C Menott watched as Wilf’s big, black nose changed shape and colour.

Wilf went. He went from a koala to a very quick platypus then, all of a sudden, he was Wilf again. He looked down at his hands and feet.

‘You certainly did, Wilf, but you’re not as pretty as you were.’ He smiled, but no-one saw him smile, so he told Wilf, ‘I’m smiling, Wilf.’

‘I wouldn’t know. I wonder why the door closed again. But I’m glad it did. It gave me enough time, the time I needed. I would have felt such a fool going in there as a platypus.’

Vernon once more sprang into his coffin and checked that his stake was firm and real-looking. He knew that Wilf, whatever he was, was as sharp as a tack and as bright as a button. There were no flies on Wilf, except when he was a Werewolf on a hot day. Vernon’s foot did its job and opened the door.

Wilf straightened his cravat and walked in. The door slowly closed behind him. For a moment Wilf couldn’t see very well but, like all the others, after a few minutes he could see perfectly.

He walked to the candlelit coffin and tentatively peered in. He saw Vernon skewed and a big smile came to his face as he said out loud, ‘Well, well, well, at last. At last someone, somehow has got rid of you, and about time. You have been the most hated man in the whole country. Not the county, but the country. All the time I knew you, I never met anyone who liked you one little bit. You were cruel, mean and not very nice.’

Here Wilf stopped for a second, as he was distracted by the buzz of a small housefly, nothing very magnificent, just an ordinary housefly. It flew around Wilf in circles, eventually landing on Vernon’s long straight nose.

Wilf watched fascinated, as it slowly made its way along the nose towards Vernon’s forehead, stopping every second or two, seemingly to sharpen its two front legs. He was going to swat the fly away, but he thought he saw something move which he felt shouldn’t move, not when someone is supposed to be dead. It was only slight, so he waited and watched as Vernon’s eyes slowly seemed to cross, as the fly made its tickling way along and up to the forehead. The eyes were now beginning to moisten from the effort of looking across at each other …

Vernon still tried to play the part of the dead Vampire, not moving a muscle other than two hard-to-control wet eyes. Wilf put his hand out slowly to touch the stake which was piercing Vernon’s heart. The two eyes uncrossed and looked down to where the stake was sticking out of the left hand side of his immaculate evening dress. As Wilf’s hand came into contact with the stake it wobbled, rather like a loose tooth.

Wilf thought, ‘That shouldn’t be. If that stake had pierced the heart, it should be firm, but it’s loose.’

He put his hand around the wooden stake, gripped firmly and tried to pull it. It held. He pulled again, harder this time, hard enough to lift Vernon into an almost-sitting position. He looked at Vernon’s eyes as he held him sitting up. Vernon, always the supreme actor, still played dead dog.

Wilf took the pillow out of the coffin and, putting all his strength into it, he hurled Vernon back into a lying position. Vernon hit his head with an almighty whack on the wooden base of the coffin. Not only did his eyes cross but they shut, opened and shut again. A slight moan of pain came through his right lips. This time Wilf was certain.

For the first time, Vernon allowed himself to become undead. He rubbed the back of his large Vampirian head.

Victor and Valeeta shouted down to Wilf, ‘Vilf, Vilf, help us. Ve are trapped up here in dis net!’

‘We are just above you.’ Valeeta waved as Wilf looked up. He grabbed hold of the swinging rope. Victor panicked. ‘Don’t touch that rope, Vilf. Ve vill fall out.’

Vernon slowly crept out of his coffin and, while Wilf had hold of the rope, he quickly grabbed it and untied it. His mother and father screamed as the net suddenly dropped. They clung on to the net in mid-air, and Vernon laughed as he watched them swinging fifty feet above them.

Wilf, who was still hanging on to the rope, felt himself slowly rising upwards. The weight of their two bodies was easily pulling the weight of his one body up over the pulley. He knew that if he let go, they would come crashing down to the stone floor with a splat and a splot, probably a lot more splat than splot. So being a good as well as a brave man, he held on. They passed each other about twenty-five feet up, Victor and Valeeta slowly dropping to the ground while Wilf slowly went up.

Vernon, with tears of joy in his vicious black eyes, grabbed the rope and held it for a second while he looped it round and through a ring handle on the floor. He knotted it tightly and looked up to see all three of them stuck twenty-five feet above him. Vernon knew that soon the rope would burn their hands and all three would hurtle to the floor, split, splat.

He danced with happiness, shouting, ‘Come on down. The floor isn’t very hard.’

As they looked down, all three of them knew that the least that they would get away with would be a broken leg each. Valeeta was the first who started to slip. Victor put one arm around her, begging her to hold on.

He ran over to Igon and slapped his face. ‘Wake up, Igon. Wake up and see them fall!’

Wilf needed no second telling. He swung the rope with all his strength and grabbed the net. All three of them were now hanging on to it. The loosened rope was somehow being held taut as the three of them were slowly, and somehow invisibly, let down to the floor.

When they were about three feet from the floor Wilf heard a voice say, ‘You’d better jump, I can’t hold on much longer.’

Wilf jumped and landed on the floor, grabbed the rope, and helped Mr C Menott ease the other two to the floor.

Vernon had watched all this with an incredulous look on his face, while he still slapped Igon on the cheek although not with any power, just an automatic slap as he watched and heard Wilf talking to himself. His mother and father were in a state of collapse. Igon was still out cold, as was Valentine, who at one stage had woken up under the bench but, not knowing he was under a bench, had stood up quickly and knocked himself out again.

Vernon let Igon’s head fall back on to the slab and, in a furious temper, pulled the strap that was holding him to the slab two notches tighter, across his chest, almost breaking Igon’s ribs. He walked to his parents and to Wilf.

‘You’re very clever, Wilf, very clever indeed. I’ve always thought you were smarter than the others. But what’s this habit of talking to yourself? That’s a new one, isn’t it? I thought only children did that, children and very old people,’ he sneered at Wilf.

‘You forget, Vernon, I’m a very old child. At least, I’m still a baby to my mother and, when I’m a Werewolf, I’m a very old one.’ He seemed never to be afraid of Vernon and this always made Vernon regard Wilf with some admiration.

‘You know, all of you, that I could kill you with one snap of my fingers. I could create magic that would astound you, even you, Father.’

Vernon’s father was having difficulty untying some rope which was entwined around his arms and legs and which was making him stand in a crouched position on one leg. Valeeta was doing her best to help but she was in a weak state and was really of no help at all.

‘Allow me,’ Vernon said with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. ‘Watch this, Wilf,’

He pointed to the rope and what seemed like a powerful light left his forefinger and hit the rope around Victor. After a few movements of his hand, the rope was lying limp on the floor.

Wilf smiled back as if to say, ‘I have more up my sleeve than my arm,’ hoping all the time that Mr C Menott was still around and willing to help. He was around and was standing behind Wilf.

He whispered very softly into Wilf’s ear, ‘You say “watch this”, then point to Igon.’

Wilf nodded. ‘Watch this, Vernon.’ He pointed at Igon and an amazed Vernon, and an amazed Wilf, watched as Mr C Menott undid all the straps holding Igon to the slab. Unfortunately Igon was still dreaming sweet dreams, so he couldn’t be of any help.

‘Is that all?’ his mother laughed. ‘I thought you had something serious in mind.’

‘I am serious. You’re going to die, all of you.’ He was starting to shout.

‘Vill you please not shout at your mother. Vere did you learn these terrible manners?’ Victor shouted.

‘That’s all right. Now carry on, you vere sayink you vere serious ant you vere goink to kill us, all of us.’ Victor smiled at his son.

‘I think your father means how. You know, dear, how are you going to kill us, er, in what manner?’ Valeeta smiled at her son.

‘I’m sure they will. They were the best I could get. But the prices since I’ve been away in that statue! They’ve shot up.’

‘Oh, nothing special for him. I thought poison, a three-day one. The one there’s no antidote for. That’s risen in price, too.’

‘Ah, well, yes, I have something special for you, Wilf. You see, if you had been a Werewolf, I was going to roast you on a spit and, if you weren’t a Werewolf, I was still going to roast you on a spit.’ Vernon laughed – well, if you could call the throat noises he made a laugh.

‘Yes, just once.’ Wilf was trying to keep any form of conversation going, until Igon and Valentine came round and saw what was going on and could help him. He continued, ‘Then, in spring, I was a rabbit, then a kangaroo, then a wallaby and, for a few seconds, I was a platypus.’

‘How sad,’ Vernon replied. ‘You know, you haven’t asked about Igon. I’m saving Igon till last.’

‘You used to do that as a little boy,’ his mother said. ‘When you had anything special that you liked for dinner you used to save it till last, then eat it too quickly,’ she reminisced.

Vernon looked at her with scorn and carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘As I was saying, I’m saving Igon until last. I’ve thought of something really good for him. First of all … Wilf, would you like to sit down, are you getting tired?’ Wilf shook his head. ‘Well, Igon is going to be turned back into what he was! A filthy, ugly, toothless, slimy bunch of rags, then – now this is the best part – then I’m going to shoot him.’

He pointed to the darkest corner and, with a swirl of his hand, lit up the whole area. They saw a huge cannon pointing upwards at the wall.

He closed his eyes tightly for a second and, in that moment, part of the wall moved open like a window. They saw the sky, then it closed. Vernon was beaming with the thrill of it all.

‘I’m going to shoot him from that cannon. I have invented such a powerful gas that I can shoot him to the stars. The ignition is the difficult thing to do, but I’ve mastered that. So the next thing is to turn him back by doing the opposite to what you did, Father, when you turned him into what he is now. If I reverse the process, he will go back to his old horrible self. Then into the cannon and, pow, he’s off to the stars!’

‘Mother, would you like to see the stakes?’ Vernon asked, with hatred in his voice.

‘No, thank you, dear. You were very fond of lamb chops, but not very fond of steaks …’

Victor put his arms around his rambling wife. ‘There, there, dear, don’t worry. Everythink vill turn out vell.’

CHAPTER 9