The one-eyed Nosferatu, the one who had had his eye (singular) on Dozy, started to shake. He raised a questioning finger as if to say, “Hang on a minute, this doesn’t feel right,” and then his head exploded. As he had been undead for a very long time, there wasn’t much blood or brain to contend with. His head simply disappeared in a puff of gray dust, and his body quickly followed.
This began a chain reaction of exploding heads, and bodies collapsing like old pillars, filling the basement with the dust of the undead. When it finally settled, Dan and the dwarfs were all that remained standing, although they were now covered from head to toe in gray bits of vampire. The few surviving Nosferati who had managed to plug their ears beat a hasty retreat.
Angry coughed up ash.
“I think I swallowed some,” he said. “That can’t be good for me.”
“Look,” said Dozy. “It’s a lift.”
And it was. It was rickety and old and bore an unhappy resemblance to a cage, but it was definitely a lift of sorts. Its floor was made of wood, and its walls were lined with velvet. Instead of a door, it had a metal gate that could be pulled across and secured.
Dozy poked his head inside.
“I don’t see any buttons,” he said. “There’s a control lever, though.”
He stepped into the lift and gave the lever an experimental tug, but nothing happened.
“You have to close the gate first, I think,” said Dan.
“Hang on,” said Jolly. “Don’t do anything until we’re all inside.”
Dan, Jolly, Angry, and Mumbles joined Dozy in the lift.
“All aboard?” said Dozy. “Right. Up we go!”
He pulled the lever. There came the groaning of ancient machinery. The lift vibrated, and slowly began to rise.
• • •
Samuel, Lucy, and the policemen had just reached the next floor when they heard a rumbling in the basement.
“What’s that?” said Sergeant Rowan.
“Sorry,” said Constable Peel. “That’s me. I haven’t been feeling very well.”
“No, not that,” said Sergeant Rowan, although he took a couple of cautious steps back from Constable Peel.
They all heard it now. It was the sound of a lift ascending.
“Over there,” said Samuel.
To their right was a dark, gated shaft, and above it a panel displaying floor numbers had just lit up.
“Something’s coming up from the basement!” said Lucy.
“It has to be something nasty,” said Constable Peel. “There are only nasty things in this shop, present company excepted.”
The number 1 lit up.
“It’ll be here in a couple of seconds,” said Constable Peel.
“Be brave, lad,” said Sergeant Rowan.
He gripped his cricket bat tightly. He’d had the foresight to grab a weapon as they ran from the spiders. Samuel and Lucy hefted their pool cues threateningly, for they had been wise enough to do the same.
Constable Peel took his place beside them.
“What are you holding?” said Sergeant Rowan.
“Ping-Pong bat,” said Constable Peel. “It was all I could find.”
“Constable, we need to have a long talk when this is all over.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
The lift came into view. The light on the second floor was poor, and the lift itself remained dark, but as it stopped, Samuel and the others could pick out five gray shapes.
“Ghouls!” whispered Lucy.
“Wraiths!” said Constable Peel.
The lift’s gate opened. The five figures emerged and stepped into a small pool of moonlight cast through the murky glass of one of the windows. It was Constable Peel who reacted first.
“It’s Dan and the dwarfs,” he said. “Look at them! They’re all gray and spooky and sickly. They’re dead, but somehow they’re still upright. Only the shells of them remain! Oh! Oh!”
He fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.
Jolly raised a hand and opened his mouth.
“Look,” said Sergeant Rowan. “One of them is trying to speak.”
Constable Peel peered over the tips of his fingers. It was true. He waited to hear the hollow, undead rattle of what had once been Mr. Jolly Smallpants.
Jolly didn’t speak. He sneezed. The sneeze was so massive that it caused most of the ash to lift from him, and Jolly used the opportunity to step to one side and avoid the dust as it came down again.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just bits of dead vampire.”
Constable Peel stared at him for a time, then burst into tears again, crying even harder than before.
“Oh no!” he wailed. “They’re alive. They’re
45.
46. A very clever joke that plays upon the fact that the word
XXVII
In Which Dorothy Seems Slightly Confused
MARIA AND THE SCIENTISTS, trapped in the sweet factory with a hostile figure apparently made entirely from darkness, had considered their options and done the sensible thing, which was to leave as quickly as possible. They were now in Professor Hilbert’s car, heading in the direction of Wreckit & Sons by taking the shortcut through August Derleth Park. Professor Hilbert was driving, Professor Stefan was in the passenger seat, and Maria, Brian, and Dorothy were crammed in the back. Brian was beginning to recover from his encounter with the dark woman, although his entire body continued to tremble involuntarily, and he would occasionally emit a startled squeak.
Dorothy, meanwhile, was still wearing her beard. Maria had tried not to notice, but it was difficult as it was quite a big beard.
Dorothy caught Maria looking at it.
“It’s the beard, isn’t it?” she said, in her new deep voice.
Maria nodded.
“I was just wondering why you were still wearing it.”
“I like it. It’s warm.”
“Right,” said Maria. She would have moved over a little to put some space between herself and Dorothy, but there wasn’t room because of the human jelly that was Brian.
“And I don’t want to be called Dorothy anymore.”
Professor Hilbert, who had been listening, gave Dorothy a worried look in the rearview mirror. Professor Stefan turned round in his seat. His face wore the confused expression of a builder who has just been handed a glass hammer.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to be called Dorothy?” he said. “It’s your name, and it’s a perfectly
