Work Text:
October, 1928
Miss Watson was a vampire. Helen Blythe had reached this conclusion after much careful reasoning. That said reasoning had been done at the terribly grown-up hour of Adults o'clock while sat atop the Larkrise landing the better to stay concealed seemed wholly irrelevant. That this was a perfectly acceptable place to be while the long arm of the clock inched ever closer towards midnight was backed up by the presence of Christopher at her side, spindly arms wrapped sleepily around the banister.
Below the adults were reading aloud sections of a book that thrilled Helen to her soul. Also that had convinced her that Miss Watson, like the unfortunate Miss Westenra, was undead. She said as much to Christopher, who frowned over this communique in apparent puzzlement.
'It's why she's so absolutely horrible,' said Helen emphatically, and almost forgot to whisper. Christopher twitched and looked around surreptitiously, lest they be found out.
'I really don't see how she can be,' he said softly but urgently. 'I mean, the timing's all wrong. The sun's up at school. So she's probably just a…'Christopher hesitated, and it gratified Helen to see he was giving this point the consideration it was due.
'A canonabal, or something,' he said with decision.
'Can't be,' said Helen. 'Canonabals have to be nice to the people they want to eat, 'cause otherwise they'd run away.'
Christopher, clearly not having thought of this, nodded, and wriggled on the landing step. From below drifted the sounds of the adults and their story; The wind came now in fierce bursts...
'See,' said Helen, 'but if she's a vampire, she can just hypnoticalise people.'
'Like Miss Lucy does with the children,' he sad and nodded approvingly. 'Right, so we'll have to look extra-close at her throat to see if it's scratched.'
'Her teeth, too,' said Helen.
The stairs groaned and the voices downstairs lulled. Presently over the groaning a shadowed voice boomed stertorously, 'I am the great Gremlin Gobbler, come to gobble all gremlins who've escaped their beds!'
Christopher and Helen wasted no time. They jumped up as if electrified and scrambled away from the stairs and down the hall, darting into their respective rooms while the distorted voice called out with great deliberation, 'Gremlin Gobbling to start in three…two…one…'
But by then all persons eligible for gobbling were, if not asleep, then at least respectably under the covers.
'Though, of course,' said Helen to Christopher when, later, they crept surreptitiously back towards the landing, 'it's really only Teddy. But we mustn't make him sad by letting on we know it's only Teddy.'
'Quite,' said Christopher, in his wisest, most grown-up voice. 'He has such fun, you know.'
Helen nodded solemnly. She folded herself into the corner where the stair met the landing and settled in for more of the story, and then, when it had all wrapped up and the adults had stopped, lay awake in an agonised belief that every twitch of the curtains, every rustle of leaves, was Miss Watson all dressed up as a bat and come to drink her blood.
It was very hard to sleep what with prospective vampires lurking on the far side of the window, and to that end, Helen did not sleep. She lay in wide-eyed consternation watching the curtains and thinking over and over, you may not come in, may not come in…
'You look very pale, Helen,' said Mama, over breakfast. 'Didn't you sleep?'
'No,' said Helen, and kept it at that.
In the wake of what Dad had taken to calling The Great Shorthand Debacle Helen thought it best to keep her answer to a minimum rather than trying to explain about how Miss Watson was secretly a vampire who wanted to turn Helen into one, too. Then it occurred to her that lack of sleep and paleness where symptomatic of vampirism, if poor Lucy Westenras was any kind of example, and that was something else to worry about. Helen ran her tongue gingerly along her teeth for signs of alien sharpness, but everything seemed normal. Then she looked at Christopher and saw that he was also pale, and worried that maybe it had all been a misdirect and it was Christopher Miss Watson was after.
'Don't you want breakfast, Lamby?' said Teddy to her in his kindest voice, and it occurred to Helen that she did not want breakfast and that not eating was also a sign of oncoming vampirism. Obviously it was too late and she was doomed. She had probably been doomed since before the Great Shorthand Debacle. She began to cry. Teddy got a reassuring arm around her and rubbed abstract shapes into her back.
'Perhaps a day off school?' suggested Kitty, and Helen nodded vigorously. If she wasn't at school she was away from Miss Watson, and if she was away from Miss Watson…but no, because then she wouldn't be able to check Miss Watson's teeth, or her throat for that matter.
Mama was saying, 'I'll just ring Judith…' when Helen recovered sufficiently to shake her head.
'No,' she said, 'I mean, I really want to see how Annabelle Lee ends. I promise I'll write it out properly and everything.'
Total silence from the adults for a second, in which Helen became convinced they had discovered that Miss Watson was secretly vampirising Helen. They would now have to stake her, and this would make them very sad, she was sure. With great effort she forced herself to swallow a mouthful of eggs.
Then Jem said, 'Not that I'm an expert, I mean, God knows Walt was the poet among us, but isn't that the poem where the young woman dies?'
Point two towards Miss Watson being a vampire, Helen thought. Why else teach a morbid poem like that?
'Don't ask me,' said Mama, with a laugh and a shake of her golden head. Dad said, 'I think it is, you know. Which begs the question what on earth is she doing teaching it?'
Teddy said, 'The Inspector says – '
'Almost nothing ever begs the question' chorused the other adults and Christopher.
Helen would have joined in too, being likewise well versed in this pet maxim of Uncle Geordie's, but her brain was preoccupied with the small issue of vampires and becoming one. There had been that awful dream the other night…but then, that might have been because she'd sat up listening to Dracula in the first place. Not unlike her recurring nightmare about tigers that had started after Dad had read them that great story about the little boy who tricked the tigers into melting into butter. Now I'm the grandest tiger in the jungle…Oh, for the days when tigers were her greatest worry!
'Are you quite sure you're well, lamby?' asked Kitty.
Dad stuck a hand against her forehead. Helen supposed this was the moment of truth. But he said, 'I make her completely normal. Faith?'
So Mama came and it a hand against Helen's neck and looked in her mouth and agreed that yes, everything was perfectly normal, which probably just meant that Helen hadn't actually become a vampire, but did not mean that Miss Watson was not one, or that she was not planning on turning Helen into one.
Still, it was heartening to know that for the time being she was still reliably human. Perhaps she should take garlic to school. Just to be safe. Did they have any in the house? Aunt Judith might have; she could ring up Rachel and make her promise to bring some when they caught up at the halfway point on the school walk.
Christopher got up from the table and Helen dutifully followed him into the hall, where she eked out her shoes and lingered over buckling them. It had suddenly dawned on her that if she was still human, than she really didn't want to meet Miss Watson again, after all. She thought with regret of the parental offer to stay home and wished she had accepted it, and longingly of the protective garlic, which of course she couldn't take with her now. Nothing like cloves of contraband garlic to reveal her disloyalty to vampirical Miss Watson and get herself vampirism.
'We can check before class,' said Christopher in an undertone as he assembled his satchel for school. 'Noon's out of the question 'cause the book says she's very vamperised then, which makes it dangerous, and anyway, Aunt Judith would mind if we were late to dinner.'
This was sound logic. It did not mean Helen wanted to go on an investigation. She wanted to hide under her bed until it was all over, but on the other hand, she couldn't leave Christopher all alone like that. It wasn't the done thing. Terrible form. And they could hardly report it to Uncle Geordie, because the police investigated murders, not vampires. It was up to Helen and Christopher, but oh! How she wished there was someone else they could pull in.
'You'll be late if you don't start now,' said Mama, who was herself rushing out the door.
Helen thought being late was an excellent idea. Then they wouldn't have to make an examination of Miss Watson's teeth. Of course, she wanted to know– needed to know, even – but that didn't mean it wasn't terrifying. She looked at Christopher and saw that he was similarly reluctant. She knew this because he was making a terrific production of tying his laces, a feat he'd mastered over the past summer.
'You'll want coats, the lot of you,' said Teddy, perhaps louder than was necessary to catch their departing mother in time. 'It's raining out.'
Helen's heart sank. If it was raining then probably the vampiric Miss Watson would not be asleep in her earth-box on arrival. Not that Helen knew where the earth box was, exactly, but she was sure there was one. All vampires had one. The books said so.
Teddy bundled Helen into her coat, which kindness greatly interfered with her dawdling, and then there was nothing for it but to face the vampires.
It was very rainy, too. Great, fat, icy raindrops that slid off of Helen's hat and down her neck. Probably ordered by Miss Watson, now she thought of it.
'I don't think she can do that,' said Christopher. 'I mean, Dracula can't, can he?'
'Fog,' said Helen. 'He makes fog. So, I guess he could make it rain, too.'
'Probably,' said Christopher. He sounded dubious, but not so dubious that he didn't commence dragging his feet in the wet pavement. Helen followed suit. Anything to delay getting to the school and Miss Watson's vampiric lair.
'We could not go,' said Christopher, suddenly. The wind was whistling up their coat sleeves and the rain was working itself up into a positive crescendo as he said it. Still, it meant not coming into contact with Miss Watson.
'She might ring Mama,' said Helen. Christopher looked, if possible, more doubtful than previously.
'Not after that letter Mama wrote her, she won't,' he said.
'You don't think,' said Helen, 'she wants to make us vampires because of the letter? You know, sort of a punishment?'
Christopher stopped suddenly and sat down, so that Helen almost tripped over him and was obliged to join him on the pavement. It was cold and damp and moulded her dress to the backs of her knees through her coat.
'I hadn't thought of that,' he said. They sat miserably on the wet pavement growing cold and shivery until epiphany found them.
'We'll have to tell Aunty Mara, that's all,' said Helen, suddenly.
'Do we?' asked Christopher.
Helen nodded vigorously. 'Yes,' she said. 'Because she's Roman, isn't she? Susan Baker says so. So…so…she'll have the waiver.'
Christopher blinked at her. Helen really couldn't understand how he could be so thick. 'You know,' she said, 'the con- con- constabalised thing that seals up Lucy's tomb!'
'Oh!' said Christopher, understanding dawning. Then, eyebrows knitting together, 'Are you sure that's what it's called?'
'Definitely,' said Helen. 'Constabalised. It's what makes it actually God to them and not only pretend.'
The frown in Christopher's forehead eased slightly.
'I don't know,' he said. 'I'm pretty sure everyone constabalises it. I mean, isn't that what Grandpa Meredith does?'
'Oh,' said Helen, who had not thought of this wrinkle. 'That sounds right. So, what makes it actually God?'
Christopher frowned. The rain continued to fall on them. Helen began to shiver. Christopher chewed his lip, considering, then, brightening, said, 'Transtabularisation! The Romans transtabularise it!'
Helen blinked at him perplexed, but Crhistopher was certain. 'It has to be transtabularised,' he said with triumph. 'That's the difference. I heard Auntie and Grandpa debating it once.'
It was impossible to argue such watertight logic. Helen accepted it gratefully, then noticed the frown was back on Christopher's forehead.
'You don't think,' he said anxiously as a raindrop slid off his nose, 'we have to believe it's God for it to work, do you? I mean, really-truly definitely God instead of symbolical God?'
That was an unlooked for obstacle. Helen had to think about it. She was by now very cold, and did not want to stay sitting on the pavement with its growing puddles. If nothing else, people were starting to notice.
'Come on,' she said, tugging Christopher upright. She began to march them towards the school, if only because it gave them a place to go. It took great effort not to think about the vampire waiting for them in the schoolroom.
'I think,' she said, on consideration, 'it doesn't matter about us, you know. Only someone has to constabalised it who believed in the trans…transtabular thing. Did I say it right?' Seeing Christopher nod, she hastened on, 'Well, anyway, since we can't do that to the waiver, and Grandpa Jo, who's closer than Grandpa Meredith, doesn't transtabularise things, I think it's probably all right if we just find someone who can.'
'You know,' said Christopher, 'I think it's more like biscuit, the waiver. Like the wafer things Aunt Poppy bakes, but fewer layers.'
'Oh, all right,' said Helen irritably. After all, it was his fault that she was now cold, damp and worried about vampires. It hadn't been her idea to listen in on the adults and their reading. She'd just gone along with it because Christopher so obviously wanted to and it had sounded like a lark. If she'd known it would reveal the world to be full of vampires…. 'Wafer, then. The point is it has to be constabalised by a Roman and I think Aunt Mara can do it if we can't. Or she will know someone who can.'
Christopher said, 'We're going the wrong way for Fox Corner.'
'Well yes,' said Helen. 'Because we have to get to school to see about Miss Watson's teeth.'
The fact that her stomach was all knotted and her feet felt leaden was a moot point. Christopher said, 'We could do that tomorrow.'
'We could,' said Helen. They stopped short in the middle of the road, hesitating, and collided perforce with a loose-jointed, long-legged personage bustling the direction they were rapidly leaving behind.
'Hullo,' said this person in surprise, as a warm arm encircled Helen. 'Fancy running across you both. Rather late for school, aren't you?'
It was Grandpa Jo. A shame he couldn't transtabularise the waivers. Wafers. Whichever. He smiled kindly down at them, his hat dripping with rain, completely unruffled, in the usual way of adults by the fact of their lateness or being in the wrong place. This probably explained why Christopher, unprompted and without consultation with Helen, said, 'We've decided we can't go to school, Grandpa Jo. You see, our teacher's a vampire.'
'Is she?' said Grandpa Jo, and pulled them forthwith under a sheltering awning. Helen and Christopher nodded in rapid unison.
'Oh dear,' said Grandpa Jo, still very kindly. 'I fear that might take some explaining. Why don't you come back to the Manse?'
They did, chiefly because he still had an arm around each of them, and was propelling them forward like little, living appendages to his long-legged person. It was easier than not to trot along beside him, and anyway, it meant out of the rain, and possibly something to eat, and a safe place to go that wasn't Miss Watson's vampirical lair. And it was blissful to be out of the rain. The Martyrs' Kirk Manse was not big, or indeed particularly warm – it had a boiler that was reckoned by Granny Phil as having more moods than your average cat – but it was cosy, smelled of fresh baking, and there was a fire crackling away somewhere. Helen could hear it the moment they stepped over the barrier. The heat of it seeped generously into her sodden little limbs, which were really too spindly to stand much sitting about on pavements.
'You're back rather earlier than expected,' said Granny Phil, emerging from Helen knew not where. Then, as she took in Helen and Christopher, 'And you've brought guests! How charming!'
'They were just about to explain to me how Miss Watson at the local primary came to be a vampire,' said Grandpa Jo, as if this sort of thing were a perfectly mundane occurrence. Perhaps it was. Perhaps he'd dealt with scores of vampires. Helen was very glad they'd run in to him.
She began to speak simultaneously to Christopher, but Granny Phil said with her famous imperiousness, 'Oh, no! Tea first. We'll save Miss Watson afterwards.'
Helen wasn't sure she wanted to save Miss Watson, but now that she was safe and secure and among adults that understood her dire circumstance, she was suddenly, ravenously hungry. Tea sounded vastly appealing. So she let herself be shepherded into the Martyrs' living room, and into the comfiest chair on offer. This wasn't much, because Martyrs' Manse, as Mama was fond of saying was the House Time Forgot and crammed full of old, awkward furniture that tried to force the sitter into expert posture. Still, the chair was big enough that Christopher could scramble up next to her, and the blanket Grandpa Jo draped over them was a jaunty, chaotic crocheted affair. Helen secretly suspected Granny Phil must have made it because some of the squares were really too crooked and holey even by crocheted standards to be strictly normal, and Granny Phil was famously haphazard in her domesticity.
Even so, Helen helped herself to an outsized rock cake and munched on it appreciatively. It wasn't quite Aunt Judith's standard, but that was all right. Someone handed her a teacup too, and it was awkward to hold it on its saucer and eat the rock cake simultaneously, but she managed. Some of the tea sloshed onto the blanket, and the crumbs from the rock cake were a lost cause - they would insist on falling into the seams of the chair - but no one seemed to mind. She was onto her second cake and Christopher his third when Grandpa Jo said with all the geniality of a mug of drinking chocolate, 'Now, tell me about this vampire.'
Out it all came. How Helen had been humiliated, absolutely humiliated at the hands of Miss Watson for daring to write in shorthand. 'And it was really very good, too!' said Helen, not liking to boast but feeling this was relevant to the point at hand. 'Everyone else said so!'
Her adults nodded conciliatory; they had the utmost faith in Helen's shorthand.
'Well, and then,' said Christopher, not to be left out, 'we started reading Dracula, and it all made sense!'
Well, strictly speaking, the adults had been reading it after hours, and Helen and Christopher had rebelled against the exclusion. They were in the habit of sharing things with the Larkrise adults, after all. Murder inquiries, newspaper investigations, bridge hands…it had really seemed most unfair that they were cut off from this one story.
'And you know,' said Christopher, 'we went away whenever they caught on to us listening in. You know, whenever anyone insinininuated that we couldn't be.'
Grandpa Jo nodded solemnly. Helen took over to explain how they had come to realise that Miss Watson, like the poor Miss Lucy, had been bitten by this ungodly monster, and now they had to find the constabalised wafer – she enunciated this most particularly – to seal up Miss Watson's earth box. Here, even with Helen's precise pronunciation, both adults blinked perplexity.
'Constabalised,' said Helen, again, brightly.
'I told you,' said Christopher in his most irritating, older-brother-ish tone, 'that it was transtabularised.'
Only it clearly was not, because that begat still more blinking among the adults.
'You know,' said Helen, trying to salvage what she could, 'God. What Grandpa Jo does at Easter except not symbolically.'
Dawn, or maybe only understanding seemed to blossom across Grandpa Jo's creased, round face. 'Ah,' he said as one enlightened. 'I begin to understand. You mean consecrated bread.'
Helen was almost certain this was what she had said. But not so certain as to begin to quibble now.
Granny Phil volunteered with a smile, 'I think they really want it to be transubstantiated, darling.'
'Possibly, possibly,' sad Grandpa Jo. He handed Helen another cake.
'But you see,' he said, unflappably, 'if that's all, then I fear your Miss Watson isn't a vampire after all.'
'Really?' said Helen, shocked.
'Are you sure?' said Christopher. 'Quite sure?'
'Oh, yes,' Grandpa Jo said. 'You see, Miss Watson was one of the handful of people that took communion back at Easter. Very few people do that, you know. You have to be quite sure you're one of the Elect, and almost nobody is. Sure, I mean.'
Helen felt herself deflate. Little nerve endings that until now had been all ravelled up in tightrope lines began to unspool within her. 'Oh,' she said flatly.
Christopher was not so downcast. He said, 'Easter was an awful long time ago.'
Granny Phil nodded agreement. But Grandpa Jo said, 'Yes, but you know, I do believe I saw Miss Watson polishing the crucifix over the pulpit at Martyrs' just the other day – you know the one?' Helen and Christopher did know it, so nodded dutifully.
'And I really don't think,' said Grandpa Jo, 'a vampire could do that. At least, not without being in great pain.'
Helen didn't think so either. Neither did Christopher.
'The terrible thing is,' said Granny Phil, 'that as misfortune would have it, Miss Watson is your garden-variety awful person. A shame, really, I'd have helped you put a stake in her if it had come to that.'
'Then,' said Helen, defeated, 'I suppose we'll have to go back to school after all.'
It would be dreadful, of course. Really, truly, unbearably awful. Miss Watson would be ever so cross that they had missed the best part of the morning, and worst of all, Helen couldn't explain! How did one explain that one had shirked class on the suspicion that one's teacher was a vampire? Somehow, Helen didn't see that meeting with any more charity than her shorthand. Still, it was heartening to know she wouldn't have to inspect anyone's teeth. Even better to know she and Christopher were safe from the prospect of being vampirised in their sleep. She hunched down under the woolly blanket with its crooked crochet squares enjoying the combined smell of rock cakes and blanket.
'Perhaps tomorrow,' said Grandpa Jo. 'I think for today I'll put a call through to the police surgery and advise your father his intrepid vampire hunters are safe and recovering from their adventure. After all,' with a smile Helen felt was specially for her, 'it's arduous work, vampire hunting. Especially coming on top of the maligning of your character like that.' He smiled the smile of a man who believed all to be right with the universe.
If Helen was not exactly sure what maligning was, she did not say so. It sounded terribly grown up. And for the time being she was free from the twin evils of Miss Watson and vampires. It was hard to do better than that.