‘Prudence,’ squeaked the bat, clinging to the wall with its little claw-like feet.
‘Huh?’ I said.
‘Oh, Prudence, I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t disturbed anyone. It’s only me.’
‘Mrs Olsen!’ I exclaimed.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ squeaked Mrs Olsen, the bat. ‘I was just out for a bit of exercise—when you get to my age flying’s much easier on the knees than jogging—and I saw this castle and I couldn’t resist swooping around it for a few minutes. It reminded me so much of the castles of my childhood.’
‘Where was that?’ I asked.
‘Ruritania, of course,’ peeped Mrs Olsen.
‘I thought vampires came from Transylvania,’ I said.
‘You get a better class of vampire in Ruritania,’ squeaked Mrs Olsen.
‘Did you live in a castle, too?’ I asked.
Mrs Olsen gave a sort of creaky bat-like laugh. ‘Yes, and a horrible, draughty place it was, too. There were beetles in every room and the rats! There was no sewerage in those days, so the whole place stank.’
‘We’ve got proper bathrooms in our castle,’ I said.
‘I suppose you have. It’s a thoroughly modern castle, but it still has the feel of the ones at home. Yes, they smelt and they were cold…but we had such good times then, too! Oh, I remember the picnics. Picnics by moonlight. We’d each fill a beaker, and pack them in hot bricks to keep them warm—there’s nothing worse than cold blood on a picnic. Sometimes we’d have mulled blood, with cinnamon and cloves. My
cousins and I would play swoop the loop. It’s a game all young vampires used to play back then.’
‘Did your cousins live in the castle?’
‘We all lived there, all the family,’ said the bat-Mrs Olsen wistfully. ‘Uncle Theo and Grandma Katanya and all the others. So much fun we had, even if the floors were cold and the heating never worked…’ For a moment her voice sort of slid into an accent from somewhere far away.
‘Why did you come to Australia?’ I asked. I mean if they’d had so much fun in Ruritania…‘Was it because of the civil war?’
Mrs Olsen, the bat, was silent. For a moment, I thought I’d offended her. Then suddenly she said, ‘No. No, I left Ruritania a long time before the civil war. It was my cousin, Boris.’
‘Boris?’ I asked.
The bat-Mrs Olsen nodded. ‘You know there are good humans and bad humans. People who like to hurt other people, just as there are people who like to help them.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Well, vampires are just like everyone else. There are good ones and there are bad ones and Boris…Boris was about as bad as you could get.’
‘How?’ I asked, though I think I already knew.
‘There’s no need for vampires to attack people. Not while there are cattle killed in the village, and pigs and hens. We would buy cattle blood from the villagers, and we kept sheep ourselves. There was no problem storing it, not in a Ruritanian castle. It was so cold we didn’t need a fridge at all. And Mam would heat it up in the old black cauldron in the kitchen, great steaming bowls full of sheep blood, or maybe chicken blood for
a treat, or she’d make us blood puddings for our birthdays and Christmas.
‘But Boris…Boris liked hurting people. Even when we were playing he would swoop and crash into you and laugh like it was a joke. It was always the smaller cousins he crashed into, never anyone his own size.’
‘What else did he do?’ I breathed.
The bat glanced up at me. ‘I cannot tell you, Prudence. It is so many years ago, but still I cannot speak of it. It is too horrible. Too horrible.
‘The villagers blamed us all. They knew we were vampires, of course. You can’t keep things like that hidden, not in a village. No village child would play with someone from the castle. But at least they left us alone.
‘Until that night.
‘They came with torches—long sticks dipped in pitch and set alight, so they burnt with stinking smoke and terrifying flickering. They stormed up the drawbridge and into the castle.’
‘But…but couldn’t you escape?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t you all turn into bats and fly away?’
‘Yes,’ said the bat-Mrs Olsen. ‘We turned into bats. We flew around the castle and we watched the people below. They had never been our friends but they had never hated us like that before.
‘They burnt what could be burnt. Which was a lot, even in a stone castle. They smashed and they destroyed.
‘They destroyed our coffins. A vampire must return to their coffin every day, or else they die. One by one they found our coffins and they smashed them, then they tossed the remnants down onto the ground below.’
Mrs Olsen was silent again.
‘How…how did you survive?’ I whispered finally.
‘They left before dawn. Their torches were flickering out and they were afraid of the darkness, so they left. And we changed back—me and my cousin and Mam and Papa and Grandma Katanya.
‘I was the youngest, the smallest, not quite two centuries old. So all my family, my wonderful family, they collected the pieces of the coffins from the ground. There was just time to make another one—a small one. A coffin for me. And as the sun rose they put me into it. I cried, I screamed, I didn’t want to go. They put me back into safety. And they stayed out to die.’
We stood there silently, Mrs Olsen perched on the wall and me beside her. Finally I said: ‘What happened then?’
‘I came out of my coffin the next night. I looked, of course, but there was no sign of my family. That is what happens if a vampire has to face the sunlight. They simply fade away…
‘I couldn’t stay there, not knowing if the villagers might come again. Not where we’d been so happy. So I took my coffin and as much as I could carry of the family gold, which had been kept hidden under the kitchen flagstones, and loaded them on a donkey and set out through the night.
‘I hid in barns, but barns are never safe. Who knows when an animal might discover you in daylight and moo or neigh and call someone to see? I hid in caves.
‘And finally I came to the sea. And there was a ship. I thought, no matter where it goes it can’t be as bad as what I have left behind. So when the next night came I took some gold and bought a passage from the Captain. I bought a ship’s trunk and loaded my coffin into it. And the next day I sailed.
‘I said I was seasick so no one would wonder why I hardly ever came out of my cabin during the day. I had some food with me, but not enough. Six months it took. A vampire can go a long time without food, but I was tempted—those lovely, lovely necks. But then I thought of Boris and said, No, I will never be like that. I would rather starve than be like that.
‘So I came to Australia. And it was easier. Most people in those days had never heard of vampires, not so far from Transylvania and Ruritania. I worked as a barmaid. A barmaid is a good job when you are only able to work at night. Later on, I went to night school and took evening courses at the University. I became a teacher, and a year ago, as you know, I was even able to admit, right out in public, that I was a vampire and work in the daylight with my coffin with me.’
‘When did you get married?’ I asked.
The bat smiled. It was a lovely smile, especially for a bat. ‘Only a hundred and fifty years ago. A little more. We have two children. One is nearly a hundred and ten—that’s a teenager for a vampire. And the other only sixty-four.’
‘Is…is that the reason you don’t want a birthday party?’ I asked. ‘Because of all your memories?’
‘No. Oh, no,’ said Mrs Olsen. She hesitated. ‘Oh, I must tell someone! It is my husband. You see he doesn’t know.’
‘Doesn’t know you are a vampire?’
‘No—he doesn’t know I am 400! He thinks I am only three and a half centuries old, just like him. How can I tell him?’
‘Natasha!’ said a voice behind us.
We turned. It was a bat. Another bat; a bigger bat.
It was perched on the wall just behind us. It must have landed while Mrs Olsen was speaking.
‘As though that matters!’ cried the bat. ‘As though it…’ he was suddenly squeaking in bat talk, and Mrs Olsen was squeaking back and they were fluttering around the tower again, and even though they were bats and I was a human, I could tell that Mr Olsen didn’t care less how old his wife was.
I went back inside and rang up Phredde. ‘Hey, it’s me,’ I said. ‘You know what? I think we need to organise a birthday party for Mrs Olsen!’
Well, I suppose it’s not often you organise a birthday party for your teacher, but then, how often does your teacher turn 400?
The question was, what should we give her?
‘Chocolates,’ announced Edwin.
‘What would a vampire want with chocolates?’ I objected. ‘Vampires only drink blood.’
‘I know,’ said Edwin smugly. ‘That’s why she’d have to share them with us.’
‘A bunch of flowers,’ offered Amelia. ‘My mum really loves roses.’
‘Great one, Amelia,’ I said. ‘Flowers wilt as soon as a vampire touches them. Don’t you know anything? You’ll be suggesting we give her a mirror next.’
‘I know a lot more than…’ began Amelia, when Phredde interrupted.
‘How about those fluorescent stars? You know, the ones that light up in the dark. She could stick them on the lid of her coffin so it would look like night-time during the day.’
We all looked at Phredde with respect. I mean, like I said, I’m usually the one that comes up with the ideas.
‘I thought an electric toothbrush,’ I said. ‘But that idea’s great.’
‘How about both?’ suggested someone else. ‘Neither of them cost much…’
So that’s what we did.
It was a great party.
Just as the volcano went off at lunchtime, Phredde changed the classroom into a tropical beach—as soon as you walked through the door there were the waves and sand and palm trees. And Mrs Olsen cried, ‘What?’, and we all yelled, ‘Happy birthday!’, and someone started to sing:
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you…
The whole school filed in, and most of the parents as well. The parents got a real shock when they walked through the classroom door onto the beach, especially those who hadn’t heard about Phredde. Even Dad took the day off.
Everyone brought a plate and put it on the trestles under the palm trees, and there were chips and party pies, and lamingtons and corn chips and sliced watermelon, and ninety-six different kinds of sandwiches, and cakes…more food than even Uncle Mordred could eat when he’s in his dragon shape (he couldn’t come, he was off on an expedition somewhere).
And Mum and Phredde’s mum had brought these little blood puddings from the butcher. I thought blood puddings were something only vampires would like,
but it turns out they used to be really popular (YUK) and some people still like them. I mean some people are really
weird.
You should have seen Mrs Olsen’s face.
She cried when Mum gave her the blood puddings and she loved the electric toothbrush and the fluorescent stars (we got a few moons as well) and said we could all try her coffin whenever we wanted so we could look at them in the dark.
She had lots of other presents, too.
Mrs Allen, the headmistress, gave her this great bunch of plastic roses, which I thought was really thoughtful. Even a vampire can’t wilt plastic flowers.
And all the teachers had signed this great big card that said: ‘Life begins at 40’, except they’d added an extra O, and they gave her a crystal decanter as well, and Mrs Olsen sobbed a bit and said NOTHING makes blood look so delicious as crystal…she’d keep it for rare vintages.
And you know what? Dad gave her his jaguar.
I was really proud of him, giving away something he loves so much just because he thought someone else might love it too.
‘It’ll remind you of your youth back in the old country,’ said Dad, handing her the lead. He’d put a red bow around its neck and everything.
Mrs Olsen just blinked. She leant down carefully—well, it IS a jaguar—to pat it. And you know what? The jaguar looked up at her and purred. (It’s funny. It never purred like that for Dad, even though they say animals can sense if someone really likes them.)
I didn’t feel like pointing out to Dad that Mrs Olsen came from Ruritania, not South America. I didn’t want to embarrass him, not when he’d been so kind.
I made up my mind to give Dad something else South American for his birthday to make up for it. Something
really
great. A three-toed sloth…or some piranhas for his bath…
When Mrs Olsen got over the shock—it was a really fantastic present, even better than the electric toothbrush and the fluorescent stars—she said she was THRILLED with the jaguar and she’d always wanted a kitten—especially a black one. It reminded her of her Uncle Vlad, and she began to sniff again.
She was just a
bit
worried that her backyard might be too small for a jaguar, but Phredde’s mum fixed that by shrinking the jaguar to the size of a guinea pig. It was even cuter like that than before. It kept on pouncing around after crabs in the sand and shaking them and biting them, and then it went to sleep in a coconut shell.
We’d invited Mrs Olsen’s husband and sons as well.
Mr Olsen was a real surprise. You’d never have guessed he was 50 years younger than his wife. It didn’t show at all.
He looked quite different when he wasn’t being a bat, and he had blonde hair. I thought all vampires had black hair, but that just shows I don’t know everything, as Mrs Olsen is always telling me after my social studies tests.
Her youngest son was blonde, too, but her eldest son (he’s called Jason just like my cousin Jason, the werewolf) has dark hair just like Mrs Olsen’s and these really dreamy brown eyes and white, white skin. I mean, he is REALLY gorgeous. Maybe…someday…in a few years time…
Everyone said it was the best 400th birthday party they’d ever been to.
The school band played ‘Happy Birthday’ fourteen times and then
tried
to play stuff to dance to.
So Phredde changed them into a rock band and they were great. (She forgot to change them back after the party. Or maybe she didn’t forget at all). So we danced and danced along the beach in the classroom.
Mum and Dad did these really weird old dances from twenty years ago and Phredde’s mum showed us phaery dances and Mr and Mrs Olsen did the Charleston, which is a crazy old dance from the 1920s.