Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Dungeon of Despair (9780989878531) (3 page)

“Mr. Fuddlebee,” said Miss Broomble. “We can’t simply leave this child with the Deadlings.”

“The Deadlings, Miss Broomble?” the elderly ghost said, his ghostly eyebrows raised doubtfully behind his ghostly spectacles. “Surely you – who are now roughly one hundred years old – are not using that callow term to describe the Necropolis Vampires. They are an ancient race, after all.”

“They’re monsters, Mr. Fuddlebee.”

“We’re all monsters, Miss Broomble. Yet not all monsters are bad. Just look at
Skulk the undertaker
. The Christmas card he sent me last year was filled with so many nice words that I was tickled a lighter shade of green. Granted, the words might not have made sense all together, and they were written in blood, but they were very nice words all the same – words like
butterfly
and
fudge
and
cotton
.”

The elderly ghost sighed.

“No, Miss Broomble, this choice I fear is as unavoidable as death. I may be an amateur enthusiast when it comes to DIOS, but I can say without boasting that I am an authority on death – being a ghost and all. Miss Key here must go to live in the City of the Dead, or else all that we have seen tonight might never happen.”

“It might turn out for the better, Mr. Fuddlebee,” suggested Miss Broomble, sounding a little hopeful.

“But it might turn out for the worse, Miss Broomble,” Mr. Fuddlebee replied, sounding a little hopeless. “Margrave Snick is a mortal again. We should count our blessings. We have done our job as well as we could have, considering the circumstances. We cannot risk having the success of our mission turn out differently for the sake of this child. She must go to the Necropolis. She must suffer Despair, for her sake, for all our sakes.”

Miss Broomble looked from the elderly ghost down to Key, still lying on the ground. She pursed her lips in frustration. Then she appeared to suddenly brighten as she smiled and her eyes widened with wonder. “This child’s parents should take care of her,” she said, a sound of hope returning to her voice. “We could ask Lord Odio McHorrim to change them into vampires, too.”

The ghost hung his head sorrowfully. “Alas, the child’s parents are gone. Do you see them? No, of course not, and neither do I. They disappeared along with Margrave Snick, I fear.”

Key did not like the sound of this. Her parents would have never left without telling her goodbye. Why did they leave? Where could they have gone?

“This child is now an orphan vampire,” Mr. Fuddlebee continued. “She has no one to take care of her, except us and DIOS. And we must trust that DIOS knows what she is doing. She would not have led us here, to this very place, to this very moment in time, without having a very important plan.”

Key had never before heard the word “orphan,” or “DIOS” for that matter. And she did not like being called an orphan. Nor did she have a reason to trust this DIOS person, whoever or whatever she was.

Miss Broomble looked down helplessly at Key. Then the witch let out a long melancholy sigh. “I wish I understood the plan of DIOS. Then it would be much easier to accept it.”

“I share your feelings, my dear Miss Broomble,” Mr. Fuddlebee said, “but sometimes accepting that we do not understand is the first step in understanding.”

Key did not understand what he had just said, it sounded very much like a riddle to her, but that mattered little. She could not stay awake much longer. Her eyelids became too heavy. She blinked to keep awake.

But right before she fell asleep completely, she happened to notice another girl standing beside the giant wolf, whom the ghost had called “Tudwal.”

This other girl was clinging onto Tudwal’s monstrous leg. This other girl did not care that he had enormous teeth and claws. This other girl was lovingly stroking his thick brown-black fur. In fact, the more Key thought about it, the more she realized that Tudwal the wolf was this other girl’s pet.

Key thought this other girl looked very familiar, although her face was a little too out of focus to place.

The other girl let go of the giant wolf, stepped between the ghost and the witch, and she knelt before Key. Now her face came into focus, and as it did, Key saw that this other girl’s face looked like a mirror reflection.

This other girl was
another Key!

This other Key had the same bright blue eyes as Key. This other Key had the same long thick curly red hair as Key. This other Key almost had the same smile, the same walk, the same everything.

But this other Key also had long fangs like Margrave Snick. And her skin was as pale as a porcelain doll.

Key had never seen herself look so beautiful – and so scary.

This other Key was wearing a very strange outfit, the likes of which Key had never seen before. This other Key had on a long dark green jacket over a white blouse. Around her middle was a copper bodice covered with gauges and cogwheels. She wore black fingerless gloves, violet shorts, and a pair of mechanical boots with lights and gauges and wires. Above her eyes were metal goggles with several swiveling lenses of various sizes. Holstered to her side was a brass-plated pistol. Clutched in one hand was a bronze rifle, much taller than her, and loaded with copper canisters and wrapped in glass tubes filled with blue and red ink.

This other Key seemed the same age as Key – nine years old.

But her eyes looked like the eyes of a much older woman. They were red with tears. They had seen too much Despair.

Am I crying
, Key wondered,
or is she?

This other Key wiped away the tears from her own cheek. Then she wiped away a tear rolling down Key’s cheek also.

They both smiled at one another.

The other Key’s smile did not look happy, but sorrowful.

Then this other Key spoke in a voice as gentle as a lullaby. “I wish I could save you from the suffering you’re about to go through. I wish I could save you from the Deadlings and the Necropolis Castle. I wish I could save you from Old Queen Crinkle. I wish I could save you from the Dungeon of Despair. But I can’t. You need to go into Despair so that I can come out of it. But I want you to know – because you need to know – that I love you very much, and that you’re going to be all right, Key the vampire.”

Now the other Key’s smile seemed a little happier.

“Happy birth-night,” she added.

— CHAPTER FIVE —

City of the Dead

Key awoke in the back of a black carriage.

Outside it was night; the half-moon was high in the sky. The carriage was riding through a dark forest.

All of a sudden she noticed she wasn’t alone. Mr. Fuddlebee the elderly ghost was sitting beside her, inasmuch as an elderly ghost can sit in a carriage bumping along a dirt road. Key had the impression that he was not riding in the carriage, but floating in a seated position along with it because, whenever the carriage hit a bump along the way, he briefly passed right through it, or it passed through him – Key could not tell which.

He had been looking through one of the windows. And when he sensed that she had awoken, he turned to her and smiled a warm greeting. “Welcome back to the living,” he said, “so to speak.”

Key looked around the carriage. She’d never been in one before, and she wondered now if all carriages looked like this one.

All around her were dials and gauges and copper wiring. There were levers and switches and buttons with blinking lights. There were clocks and gears and brass rods with currents of electricity zapping between them.

There was also a strange brass horn coiled into a dumbwaiter on the other side of the carriage. In case you don’t know (because Key didn’t and she had to ask Mr. Fuddlebee about it) a dumbwaiter is a little elevator about the size of a shoebox. “Having them in your carriage is a rare treat,” Mr. Fuddlebee explained, “for most dumbwaiters are in mansions. All sorts of things are sent through them from one part of the mansion to another.”

“What sort of things?” wondered Key aloud.

“Well,” replied Mr. Fuddlebee thoughtfully, “things like books and bells and breakfast for normal mansions, and for Mystical Mansions things like fangs and bats and bedgoblins.”

Key had heard of hobgoblins before, but never
bedgoblins
. She was about to ask Mr. Fuddlebee about them when he leaned forward and spoke into the mouth of the brass horn. “Chai tea with maple syrup, please.”

Then he leaned back in the carriage seat and waited until steam rushed out from the sides of the dumbwaiter. That must have been the sign he was looking for because, with a contended smile, he slid up the dumbwaiter’s door and reached inside. But his smile quickly vanished when he discovered that the shoebox-sized elevator was empty.

The elderly ghost sighed irritably, muttering to himself, “The GadgetTronic Brothers must make another update to this infernal contraption.”

Then he leaned so deep inside the dumbwaiter that Key wondered how far down it went below the carriage. She could hear Mr. Fuddlebee repeating his order in a louder, more commanding tone, his voice seeming to echo a great distance. “I said,
Chai tea with maple syrup!”
He closed the door abruptly, but opened it once more to add into the dumbwaiter,
“Please!”

Then he shut the door again and sat back on the carriage seat. He looked over to Key to say in a calmer tone, “It’s always best to be polite, you know.”

Then he took out his ghostly pocket watch and studied it for a moment.

Once a brief spell had passed, he seemed satisfied. Mr. Fuddlebee then slid open once more the dumbwaiter door, and to Key’s great surprise, now inside was a silver tea tray. On the tea tray was a china tea set and beside that was a bottle of maple syrup.

Mr. Fuddlebee took out the tea tray. Metal legs automatically extended beneath it so that the tea tray became a tea table.

Then he set the tea table before Key. He poured a generous helping of maple syrup into the teacup and filled the rest of the cup with chai tea. He stirred it with a teaspoon and then brought the teacup to his nose to smell the flavorful scent. His bottle-green color darkened with delight.

Mr. Fuddlebee offered Key the cup. “You’ll probably want something a little stronger later,” he said, “such as strawberry blood nectar with perhaps some Snuckle Truffles on the side. But I’ve always found a good cup of tea quite refreshing, especially one sweetened with maple syrup.”

Key thought the tea had a delicious scent. She felt very thirsty, but, as she missed her mom and dad very much, she did not have much of an appetite.

“I want to go home,” she told Mr. Fuddlebee in a piteous tone.

The elderly ghost sighed thoughtfully. Then he told Key all he could about what had happened to her parents. “I do not know much,” he admitted, “but what I do know I will share.” He told her how they had fought bravely against the two zombies. He told her how they had tried to fight against Margrave Snick. He told her how they had sacrificed themselves to save Key.

This was all so confusing. The only thing Key could recall was that Margrave Snick had bitten her neck. She had no idea that her mom and dad had done so much.

But then a startling question came into Key’s mind. “How did they save me if I was turned into a vampire?”

Mr. Fuddlebee gave a long melancholy sigh. “There are worse fates, my dear,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Well,” Mr. Fuddlebee said sadly, “like being half a witch and half a werewolf. Such an unfortunate occurrence did indeed happen to my dear friend Winifred. She’s never been the same since. With hind paws like hers, how on earth will she ever rollerblade again?”

Once Key had a few sips of Mr. Fuddlebee’s chai tea with maple syrup, she began to feel warm inside. A red glow came into her cheeks. And now, with a little more hope in her voice, she turned to the elderly ghost and asked, “How did my mom and dad sacrifice themselves for me?”

Mr. Fuddlebee was not entirely sure how to answer her. After taking a minute or two to consider this, he spoke to her in a reassuring tone. “Do not fret, my dear. SPOOK has launched a thorough investigation into the matter. We’ll get to the bottom of this oddly odious kerfuffle.”

Key wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What’s SPOOK?”

Mr. Fuddlebee proudly straightened his bowtie and sat up a little higher. He spelled it out for her: “S-P-O-O-K stands for
Subcommittee Preventing Oddly Odious Kerfuffles
.”

“What’s a
kerfuffle?”
Key inquired.

Mr. Fuddlebee opened his mouth to speak, but he paused with a look of confusion on his ghostly face. After pondering her question for a moment or two, he could only shrug and confess, “You know, my dear, I’m not entirely sure. But if it’s anything like what I’ve seen in the field, then it’s definitely odd and most definitely odious.”

“What does
odious
mean?” Key asked.

Mr. Fuddlebee thought about this too, but in the end all he could say was, “If my work is mysterious to you, just imagine how mysterious it must be to me also.”

Key did not think this made much sense. “But nothing has made much sense today,” she remarked sorrowfully to herself.

Key looked out the window and noticed that the carriage was heading straight for a large mountain. She grew worried when it seemed they were going to collide into it. But at the last possible moment, the carriage drove straight into a tunnel that took them far underground, deep down into the mountain’s unfathomable depths.

Mr. Fuddlebee leaned close to Key and spoke in a hushed tone, as if fearful someone might hear him. “This is Morrow Mountain, my dear. The Dwarves of Morrow live in the mountain’s upper crust while the Necropolis is in the lowest realms. The Dwarves are excellent fellows. I hope you get a chance to meet them. Their pumpkin rum is to die for – again.”

The tunnel had been carved into the mountain’s rock. It wound around and around so much that the journey under the mountain seemed to take an eternity. The chai tea kept Key awake for a while, as the carriage bumped along. But soon the effects of the tea wore off, and Key began to get very drowsy. Her eyes became heavy with sleep. And not too much later, Key began to doze in the darkness under the fabled Morrow Mountain.