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 made his way to the dusty ribbon of road, carrying his bent top hat, while, with his hands, he brushed away three years of dust from his suit.
He shouted across the fields and trees, ‘Watcha Gotcha, I’m here to getcha!’ He smiled at the only joke he had ever made in his entire life – if it was a joke.
Igon, Victor, Valeeta the Queen;
All very worried, Vernon’s been seen.
Vernon’s mother and father, Victor and Valeeta, the ex-King and Queen of Gotcha, opened the curtains the second the sun dropped behind the distant hills and looked out on to a beautiful moonlit night. Victor was always agitated at this time of evening, when he had only just got up. He hadn’t even made his coffin yet and making the coffin wasn’t a thing he looked forward to. As he refused to make his wife’s coffin, she refused to make his, and so they both had to make their own. But, to be fair, the old King did polish both their coffins twice a year. He quite enjoyed doing that; therapy, he called it.
He went to the front door and picked up the paper, The Nightly Express. It was lying face down on the mat so he read the back page first. Wilf the Werewolf, a big friend of Victor’s and now the manager of Gotcha’s football team, had picked the Gotcha team to play Gertcha. Gotcha v Gertcha was the match of the season. Victor walked slowly, reading the sports page as he went.
In all probability he would be able to see that game as it was being played at night. Wilf had thought of the idea of playing at night under what he called floodlights; it was a very clever idea and it was typical of Wilf to think of it. Victor thought, ‘I’ve got a lot of time for Wilf.’ It was really very simple: at the ground they had installed four huge candles (one at each corner), ten foot thick and sixty feet high, so that on still, clear nights you could see the game.
Of course one or two of the hooligan element tried to stop the game, if their team was losing, by climbing to the top of the candles and blowing them out. But, as they got closer to the flame, the hotter and greasier the candles became, so they soon slid down and were then carted off to the sin bin at the back of the ground. The punishment meted out was short and sharp: the afternoon before the next game they had to reclimb the candles, right to the top, and clean the wick. On the evening of the match they had to climb the candles once again to light them. So hooliganism was down to a minimum.
The only problem with night football was that the game had to be postponed if it was windy, because the wind blew the candles out. A windy summer could cause havoc with the league fixtures.
Victor was reading the sports page as he sat down at the table waiting for his evening breakfast, blood red jelly, a double strength tomato juice and three red black puddings. Valeeta looked at him and the headlines of the paper were facing her:
VERNON’S STATUE SMASHED,
VERNON THE VAMPIRE WAS
NOT ENCLOSED AS THOUGHT
She snatched the paper out of Victor’s hands, leaving him reading empty space. It was quite some seconds before he realised the paper was gone.
With a surprised look still on his face, he said, ‘Vot are you doink?’
Valeeta showed him the headlines. ‘Look,’ she said.
He read them quickly, then again slowly. He looked at his wife and asked, ‘Vot does it mean?’
She put the paper down on the table and said, ‘If it means what I think it means, then we are in for trouble, all of us.’ She picked up the paper and read the article out loud:
‘Last night your Nightly Express reporter was first on the scene. In our lovely well-kept park, last night’s storm in its fury lashed out and hurled down the statue of Vernon the Vampire. As it crashed to the ground it smashed open. Vernon the Vampire was not inside it …’
Victor and Valeeta looked at each other.
‘Of course he vos,’ said Victor.
Valeeta carried on reading:
‘If Vernon the Vampire was still alive when the statue was broken into fragments like a cheap mirror on the concrete surround then, in the opinion of the park’s spokesman, “He will be on the prowl and he will be out to get those who planned his downfall.” When asked if he thought that Vernon would be out to kill the President, the park’s spokesman, Mr Spadenfork, nodded his head in agreement saying, “Vernon is still alive ’cos when I’ve cleaned that statue I’m sure I’ve seen it breathe, seen it move as you might say.”’
Valeeta looked once more at her husband.
‘Ivor Spadenfork. He’s no spokesman, he’s a park attendant,’ Victor continued. ‘I’ve known him for years.’
Valeeta smiled, saying, ‘It must be over four years, dear.’
‘No, I’ve known him for years, not four years.’
‘Darling, how can you have known him four years and then over four years, you silly billy?’
They looked at each other, both thinking, ‘You’re mad.’
Victor forced a small smile and said, ‘Vot else does the paper say, mine orchid petal?’
Valeeta looked down at the paper and found where she had stopped, ahemmed, and carried on:
‘It is not the policy of this newspaper to spread fear or panic, but until the Vampire is caught, please keep your children indoors and no-one should venture out between sunset and sunrise. Please do not talk to strangers. The advice of this newspaper is:
If you think you’ve seen the Vampire Vernon, keep calm and, if he grabs you and starts to squeeze the life out of you, do not fight back, as this could annoy him. If you think he is going
