* * *
President Valentine rose early that morning, looked out of the window of the Presidential Palace and saw a most beautiful day. Summer was wonderful in Gotcha. He wondered if the freak storm in the night had done much damage. It had awakened him at about two thirty in the morning and he had had difficulty getting back to sleep. When he did, he had dreamed a terrible dream, a dream that took him back three years into the past. He had seen Igon as he used to be and the old King and Queen, but worst of all he had seen Vernon, who seemed to be smiling. He had smiled all through the dream – a smile frightening enough to frighten the strongest of men. When Valentine awoke he was covered in perspiration.
The sound of the daily paper being squeezed under the bedroom door brought him back to reality. Quickly he picked up the paper and scanned first the headlines and secondly the gossip column. The headlines screeched the words:
PREZ SEZ BIZZ BOOM AT CHRIS
which roughly translated means: ‘The President of Gotcha has given much thought to the unemployment situation and feels that, within the next few months, things are bound to improve and, in spite of what people are saying, business will boom before Christmas.’
President Valentine read the page quickly and was quite happy that neither he nor his wife had been misquoted. As he threw the paper on to the bed he made his way to the window, when suddenly he stopped. His eye had caught the words STOP PRESS tucked away in the corner.
He read: ‘Last night in a freak storm, lightning hit Vernon statue in park. No sign of Vernon … 2.30 a.m.’ Valentine read the words, ‘No sign of Vernon’ again and again. A sharp knock on the door broke his concentration.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Your Secretary of War, General Motors.’
‘Come in, Motors,’ the President called out. The General entered the room. He was a man of average height and above average width. He tried to salute his President but he was so wide his hand couldn’t reach his forehead. It always stopped about nine inches away. He did once go on a diet and his hand actually got to within four inches of his forehead.
‘What can I do for you, General? I’m a very busy man at the moment.’
‘Sah, hi was wondering, Sah, hif you ’ad read the mornin’ pypers, Sah?’ he asked. Well, actually he shouted. He shouted everything as if he were still on the parade ground. His wife and children were not only nervous wrecks, but slightly deaf as well.
To give the General his due, he had worked his way up from the ranks of the Gotcharion Army to become their General. The Gotcharion Army consisted of six men, six including the General. At the moment there were two deserters, two on leave and one on manoeuvres.
‘Please, General, can you keep your voice down?’ the President asked.
‘Hov course, Sah,’ the General shouted back, the echo making the chandeliers tremble. Valentine shook his head.
‘What is it you wish to see me about, General?’
‘Well Sah, the late edition hov the mornin’ pypers said that the, er, statue hov Vernon had been blown darn, Sah,’ the wide General bellowed.
‘Yes, I had read that, General, thank you,’ the President waved his hand towards the door, hoping that the General just might take the hint.
But the General continued, ‘Blown darn, Sah, hand there ain’t no sign hov Vernon, Sah. Nah we bofe know that Vernon was put inside the statue, Sah.’ The last sentence was spoken in a whisper from the General that could be heard in the next village.
‘Please try to keep your voice down, General, I beg you.’
‘Hi ham keepin’ my voice darn, Sah,’ the big General’s soft voice once more shook the chandeliers.
‘Yes, well I think the best thing you can do, General, is send me a memo.’
He took the General’s fat arm and purposefully walked towards the door with him, while at the same time, to show there were no hard feelings, he put an arm around the General’s generous shoulder. It reached about halfway between the start of his shoulder and his spine.
‘I do appreciate the fact that you thought it necessary to come and see me but please do write to me, eh?’
‘Sah,’ screamed the General as he saluted his President. His President smiled. The smile faded as he saw a very expensive Ming vase break into little unrepairable pieces.
Once the General was outside the room, Valentine sat down on the edge of the bed. A hundred things went through his mind. He thought about Vernon; about how he had invented a fluid that, with the slightest touch, could turn people into stone; and how he had accidently let some of that terrible fluid drop on himself and he had been placed in the park as a statue. He realised that Vernon would be out to get his own back, not only on him, but on his mother and father and, in particular, Igon whom he hated. He knew that right now Vernon would be in hiding somewhere, planning how to kill them all, and anyone who stood in his way.
* * *
It was dark, very dark in the cave. Vernon opened one eye as he lay on a slab of stone. He knew he was as safe as the Bank of England, which, from the position he was lying in, was West by Nat. West. He allowed himself a grin. Why not? He had slept the reviving sleep of the undead and felt quite strong again.
He had also dreamed a pleasant dream, a dream filled with bare throats, exposed necks and bulging veins just waiting to be bitten. He was hungry now he had rested. The only thing he wanted to do was to satisfy the desire to plunge his teeth into someone.
His black eyes were getting more accustomed to the dark, dank cave. As he swung his feet to the ground he saw a small shape. Heady with the rest and the joy of being alive again, he kicked the small shape. It was his hat, filled with stones and bricks and rocks. When the hat was kicked it didn’t travel very far. Had the hat been empty it would still be travelling, he had kicked it so hard.
He looked down at his shoe. The pain was awful. For a moment he didn’t know whether he still had a toe on the end of his shoe, or even worse, if he still had a toe on the end of his foot. He jumped around the dark cave holding his foot in his hand, screaming vile oaths and swearing old Vampire swearwords like ‘Yacoub’ and ‘Slumpy’ and, the most evil swearword of all, (three words really) ‘Srettah uoyno emoc’. Those particular words were such naughty swearwords that even Vernon didn’t shout them out loud; he only said them through clenched teeth.
He whimpered and limped towards the entrance of the cave. The pain gradually faded away and after a few minutes he was starting to feel his normal unpopular self again as he stood at the entrance of the cave and cursed the world. He stood there and looked at one of Gotcha’s special and most beautiful sunsets. He shaded his eyes as the sun dropped silently behind the distant hills; within seconds it was cool and dark, black dark, Vampire dark. Like all Vampires, he hated sunsets. Sunsets with that great, big, cruel ball of fire hanging in the sky, making the clouds a bright blue and red and pink and green and white and purple … ‘Horrible,’ he thought.
He had once heard about a thing called a rainbow, but, thank Dracula, he had never seen one. Who in their right minds would want to look at lots of colours in the shape of a large bow, hanging in the sky – not doing anything, just hanging there. Now to see a falling star, that was something a bit special, because that meant in Vampire folklore that another Vampire had been born.
He left the cave and