Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) (16 page)

Her parents studied one another with puzzled expressions. Then they looked towards the light radiating from the Doorackle Alleyway. Before it, they saw Key watching them. Her mom and dad joined hands, cautiously walked past the frozen zombie henchmen, through their small living room, and approached Key together.

Tudwal barked happily up at them, thumping his powerful tail on the floorboards, which shattered to splinters.

“Who’s this?” her mom asked, smiling with curiosity down at the immortal puppy.

“What’s going on?” her dad asked with a concerned look.

“Where did you get these clothes?” her mom asked.

“Why are those creatures standing still?” her dad asked, glancing back at Margrave Snick’s two zombie henchmen.

Key did not know what to say. She opened her mouth to explain, but no words came from her. All she wanted to do was wrap her arms around her parents and hug them with all her might.

Her mom stepped a little closer. She cupped her daughter’s cheeks in both hands. Leaning down she looked deep into her eyes, searchingly. But all her mom could say was, “My darling one, how did you come to be such an old woman?”

Key’s tears were joyful at seeing her mom and dad again, but they were also sorrowful for having been apart from them for so long. “Over two hundred years,” Key said regretfully, as though she had done something wrong.

Her dad looked at her with sympathy also, tears welling in his eyes, too, his mouth pouting with pity for his daughter, somehow imagining not what she went through, but that she had gone through something unimaginable. He leaned forward and kissed the forehead of the ancient vampire locked in the body of his nine-year-old daughter. “You’re still so young, my love.”

Key wrapped her arms around her mom and dad. She embraced them with all the affection she had been saving up for hundreds of years. Her vampire power easily lifted them off the floor. Tudwal was leaping up and down, barking, begging to be included.

“My darling,” her mom wheezed, “we can’t breathe.”

Instantly releasing them Key stepped back, blushing for forgetting her strength. She cupped her hands over her mouth and grinned the way she used to do when her dad caught her being naughty (which wasn’t often, for she was always a very good girl). “Sorry,” she said through a giggle, her vampire fangs flashing.

The light from the Doorackle Alleyway intensified. Key had many questions about it. How long would it last? Would it stay open forever?

“Why did it bring me here?” she wondered aloud.

A familiar voice responded, not the voice of her mom or dad, not the voice of Margrave Snick or his zombie henchmen. This was the soft voice of an elderly ghost.

“I have the distinct impression, my dear child, that you might not have ever left this place.”

Key turned and saw the ghostly bowler hat and ghostly umbrella and the dandelion pinned to the lapel, all softly glowing bottle green. He smiled good-naturedly at her from behind his ghostly mustache and goatee.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, my dear,” the elderly ghost went on in his same-old soft voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Fuddlebee.”

— CHAPTER TWENTY —

Old Queen Crinkle Attacks

Behind Mr. Fuddlebee, still in the doorway, was Miss Broomble, only she wasn’t moving like him, but frozen in that moment in time, with her hand reaching towards her holster, her body leaning forward, as if she were about to dash inside at any moment.

Key could not understand how these two had gotten here. Had they also come through the Doorackle Alleyway? If so, why then would Miss Broomble be frozen in time while Mr. Fuddlebee was not? Countless more questions flooded Key’s mind, but in the end all she could ask the elderly ghost was, “Did you follow me here?”

“Follow you?” Mr. Fuddlebee floated closer. “Actually I was following Margrave Snick. His trail led me to this place – your home, I gather.”

“Darling,” said Key’s dad, “who is this?”

“What
is
he?” her mom asked, staring wide-eyed at the elderly ghost.
 

Mr. Fuddlebee tipped his hat to them both. “Egbert Fuddlebee, Professor at All Hallows University, at your service.”

“He’s a ghost,” Key offered as an explanation.

Mr. Fuddlebee smiled cordially at them both. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Do you mean,” Key asked him, “you didn’t come with me through the Doorackle Alleyway?”

“I’m afraid not, my dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee said in a regretful tone, as if a bearer of bad news. “I must inform you that, although you might have known me for quite some time, I’ve never met you before, which leads me to the likely conclusion that you are presumably from my future.”

Key nodded somberly as she studied her mom and dad’s expressions, feeling an old fear that they might punish her for something she’d done wrong, even though she hadn’t done anything deserving punishment.

Mr. Fuddlebee then floated closer to the Doorackle Alleyway. “While I have not passed through all Doorackle Alleyways, I have seen quite a few, but I never knew that one this magnificent was even possible. Given our peculiar situation at present – someone from my future appearing in her own past – I can only conclude that someone has used the Eye of DIOS to open the Tomb of Thomas à Tempus. Is that not so, my dear?”

Key gestured inside the Doorackle Alleyway.

Mr. Fuddlebee peered through and saw Old Queen Crinkle, who could see them now and was trying to swim through spacetime to the Doorackle Alleyway. “Oh, Matilda,” he sighed wearily to her, “what have you done this time?” Turning away from her rather bemused expression and facing Key, the elderly ghost remarked, “If I was at Thomas’s Tomb – or I guess I should say, if I will be there in the future (time tense can be quite bewildering) – by the looks of things in this present, I doubt that I can effectively argue Crinkle out of using the Eye of DIOS. (One cannot convince others they’re wrong.) But if I will be there in the future, I shall certainly try to warn her that harnessing the Sparks of Timefire with the Eye would be about as useless as employing Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops to help her escape the Hand of DIOS. I certainly hope she won’t do that, either.”

Key’s mom and dad looked at one another confusedly, neither understanding anything about the Eye of DIOS or the Cybernetic Cyclops.

Key felt confused, too, but more specifically she wanted to know why she’d come to her old home. “Why this place?” she asked Mr. Fuddlebee. “Why come to this moment of time?”

The elderly ghost gestured towards Margrave Snick looming over the nine-year-old Past Key. Her mom and dad, now seeing this gruesome sight for the first time, rushed over to free her from the large vampire. Together they tried pulling Margrave Snick away, but as he was frozen in time, he would not budge.

“This is a present moment,” Mr. Fuddlebee said to them as he floated over. “Only the past can change it. There is nothing you can do now. This moment either has to move to the next, or it has to go back a few. But as the former is much more natural than the latter, I recommend patience.” With a contented expression he studied the ancient vampire, Key. “Everything appears to have worked out all right in the end.”

Key calmly went to her mom and dad. “I’m right here,” she said to them. “You don’t need to struggle anymore.”

Slowly, she drew them from Past Key. Slowly, they stopped trying to move the frozen form of Margrave Snick. Slowly, they turned towards their two hundred and fifty year old daughter, Key the vampire.

“I’m safe,” she reassured them, smiling her fangs.

“How can you be here and there?” her dad asked her, looking from one Key to the other.

“For me, this moment happened a long time ago,” she tried to explain, although she feared she wasn’t succeeding. Pointing from Past Key to herself, she told them, “I already went through what she’s going through now.”

“How is all this possible?” her mom asked in dismay.

Mr. Fuddlebee examined Margrave Snick’s fangs. “I might have an answer,” he responded. “It is just as I thought. His vampire canines are gone. This is the very instant that I turned him back into a mortal.” Mr. Fuddlebee then turned to Key. “This is also the exact instant when you, child, became what you are – his child.”

“
His
child,” her mom and dad said incredulously.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Mr. Fuddlebee in an objective tone. “You see, your daughter is still yours, but she is also his, since he bit her and made her a Mystical Creature like himself – an immortal vampire, and a powerful one, too, it would seem.”

Key’s mom and dad stared at her in fear and amazement, both struggling to understand what was going on, so that they might best know how to care for their daughter’s needs.

Mr. Fuddlebee continued examining the frozen form of Margrave Snick while also speaking with Key. “I had to harness the power of the Hand to change Margrave back into a mortal. It appears as though you harnessed the power of the Eye from your time. You and I, using the power of DIOS, made them touch across time, it seems – your past, my future.”

“How are you not frozen like everyone else?” asked Key.

Mr. Fuddlebee considered this, tapping his ghostly fingers against his ghostly lips. “Who knows the workings of DIOS?” he said resignedly. “I certainly don’t; that’s for sure. I consider it a mercy that I am free to speak with you now. And that is indeed enough for me.”

“But you’ve used the Hand of DIOS before, turning other immortals back into mortals,” Key replied. “Why didn’t my time touch with those other times?”

He pointed to Past Key. “She must be the key.”

“You’ve said that before,” Key said, “not about her – about me.”

Mr. Fuddlebee held up his hands warningly. “Careful,” he said looking a little nervous. “I’m hoping to avoid time paradoxes. But, yes, you both might be the key to this particular paradox before us – two halves of the same key, one half who you are, the other half who you were.”

“Are you saying that I brought myself here?”

“Perhaps,” the elderly ghost conceded. “Perhaps, this moment of time matters to you. Perhaps, the Eye of DIOS and the Hand of DIOS worked together to bring you here.”

Key considered this and she thought she was beginning to understand what he meant.

Mr. Fuddlebee, seeing a spark of comprehension in her eyes, leaned closer to fan the flame of her understanding. His voice became gentler, more sympathetic. “If I may be so bold as to suggest: Perhaps this is a moment of time that you have never left. You’ve lived your life as if you’ve been arrested to this very spot, imprisoned in your home, in the past, in this place of tragedy and trauma. After all these years, it is as though you’ve never left. Yes, perhaps it is your past that has been haunting you – and I should know a thing or two about haunting, being a ghost.”

Key’s mom looked from Mr. Fuddlebee to Key. “What’s he saying, darling?”

Key’s heart was beginning to hurt. “I’ve never stopped thinking about this night,” she admitted in a soft voice. “I’ve tried to forget, I’ve tried to stop remembering, but every time I lay in my coffin, every time I close my eyes, I see this night.” She looked at her mom and dad. “This is the night that I lost you both.”

“What’s happening tonight?” her dad asked desperately.

“You were taken from me.”

“How do you lose us?” her mom asked with desperation also choking her.

“I can’t remember,” Key admitted, breaking into tears.

“Child,” Mr. Fuddlebee said with his usual calmness, “what do you remember about this night?”

Key wiped her eyes. She glanced at him doubtfully through the corner of her eye. “Are you sure this isn’t going to start any time paradoxes, if I tell you?”

“A greater paradox is a lack of love in the world,” he remarked. “I doubt you’ve ever told anyone what you’re about to say. The present moment seems as good a time as any to unburden yourself.”

Key nodded, trying with some difficulty to swallow past the lump in her throat. “On this night, two hundred and fifty years ago –
tonight
, from your point of view – I was celebrating my ninth birthday. A vampire knocked on the door. He came in looking for food. He found us. Then you entered the house, Mr. Fuddlebee, and a bright flash of light came from your hand.”

“Ah,” Mr. Fuddlebee remarked, “that light came from the Hand of DIOS. I had just used it to turn Margrave back into a mortal.

“That’s all I know,” Key concluded. “The next thing I realized was that mom and dad were gone, and that you, Mr. Fuddlebee, were bringing me to the City of the Dead.”

“The Necropolis!” the elderly ghost gasped with a horrified expression. “Why in the Name of DIOS would I take you there? They’d throw you in the dungeon, then throw away the key.”

Key’s expression became angry. “They did!” she snapped with more rage in her voice than she’d intended. “For two hundred and fifty years. You said it was the only place that would accept me.”

“Oh dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee sighed, looking downcast. “This has indeed most certainly become a very wretched paradox.” He lifted his ghostly bowler hat to scratch his ghostly forehead. “Ah well,” he remarked resignedly, “I must have known what I was talking about – or I must know what I will talk about – I can never get time tense straight. I fear we’re stuck in this choice. I wish you wouldn’t have told me about the Necropolis, my dear. Indeed the snake has most certainly bitten down on its own tail and it is now wincing from the pain. If we break this loop of time, who you are now will never come to be. We have no other option.” He gestured to Past Key. “This young one must go to the Necropolis, for you have already gone there.”

“I’ve just come from there,” Key said wryly.
 

“As have I,” a cackling old voice called out.

Immediately following this was an electrical burst that shot straight out from the Doorackle Alleyway, struck Key in the back, and sent her hurtling across the room. She collided into the frozen figure of Margrave Snick and fell to the ground. Her mom and dad rushed to her and helped her up.

With smoke coiling up from her, trying to catch her breath, Key looked up and she saw Old Queen Crinkle stepping out from the Doorackle Alleyway.