Isadora the Demented Vampire Detective
Have you been reading Evie Pearman's spine tingling tales of wizardry and witchcraft? If not, you don't know what you've been missing! Evie, from our Alpha Club, that meets every week on Wednesday evenings in Rainham, has kept herself busy over the past year or so, writing a series of short stories, displaying a vivid imagination and a real talent for story telling. Here's her latest offering....
Isadora, a pale vampire (well, paler than the usual vampire) with heavily hooded amber and jet eyes and ebony hair, eternally seventeen, was just setting down to buttered crumpets and a glass of blood for breakfast (Isadora always dined fine) when there was a knocking at the door. “Answer it, will you, Uriel?” she asked her familiar. Vampires, unlike witches do not usually have familiars, although if they wish to, they can easily summon one. Isadora had a charming black snake. Uriel hissed and moved forwards. Isadora heard murmurs. A young girl’s voice, frightened but trying to be brave. “It’s a customer.” Uriel hissed.
Isadora rose from her seat, swishing her cape and went to door. She found herself face to face with Raven Black. The girl was scruffy (Isadora looked disdainfully at her untied, scuffed boots) with violet hair and fading green highlights. She was a witch and held her tattered broom proudly. But her familiar was nowhere to be seen. “Charmed.” responded Isadora, who was nothing of the sort. But it was right to be kind. “How may I help you?” she vaguely wondered whenever Raven was related to the almighty wizard Horatio Black, head of the Black coven. Isadora doubted it, telling by the smell of ash, diluted magic and too much sugar upon the girl.
“My familiar’s gone, missing, Miss.” Raven explained in a rush. “And I can’t find him. It’s been two days and my father is to return from a business trip soon. If Dusk doesn’t return, he’ll go mental. I can’t do my magic the same without him.” she held back a sob. “And I’ve got an exam.” she added as an afterthought.
“I don’t suppose there could be a reason?” Isadora asked, wrinkling her nose as Raven had stepped towards her. “Conflicting odours and table manners perhaps?” Raven pouted. Isadora felt an inkling of guilt. And she hadn’t liked the girl’s half sob. And she’d tried to be brave and hold it back. Isadora was demented but not sadistic. She only drank criminals’ blood.
“We did have an argument.” Raven said hesitantly. “But we always argue. And then we went to bed and when I woke up, he wasn’t there!” indeed, she seemed a stubborn tyke. “You’re not the first to have had a familiar go missing in the night.” Isadora said, beckoning Raven inside. “We’ve had five reports already this week.”
Isadora brought Raven to her study, where she had shelves and shelves of dark, tightly bound books. “And in each case the person finds a note...”
“I found a note!” Raven exclaimed and she rummaged in her pocket for a dog-eared, yellowish thing. Isadora gulped her breakfast (or what she had had of it) back down. “You didn’t mention it before.” Isadora sniffed at her, although she had gotten the reaction she wanted. “Didn’t think it was important.” Raven shrugged.
Isadora sighed and read the note. We have captured your plagues of the Earth, If you want to find them, send search, We are waiting to burn them on the sacred hearth.
The cogs in Isadora’s intricate brain started to turn. She studied the note for a few more seconds. It hadn’t been written per se, the letters had been snipped from a newspaper of some kind. They were inky and small. She had seen this type of type before. Human propaganda pamphlets.
Sacred hearth... burn them... A-ha! How could Raven not have realised its vitality?!
“I know who has your familiar!” Isadora cried brightly.
For Raven it had only been a few seconds of looking at the note, so she gawped in astonishment. “And I now know where they are too.” “Who and where?” Raven asked.
Isadora hesitated. Then she decided. “You may join me tonight in finding them.” she said. Back-up might meant a decoy and maybe, just maybe, she’d get home before her breakfast turned cold. “Ooh goody!” Raven said clapping her hands. “I believe they’re at an old witch burning ground. Likely crossroads. They wouldn’t have gone far, so it’ll be the one near the moors. They want us to find them.”
“Does that mean we’re walking into a trap?” “Well... duh.” Isadora said. “But I love a good trap. Especially when you spin it around and trap them.”
Raven gulped. “So who are these people?”
“The Witchsnatchers.”
“Oh. Not goody, then.”
“Obviously.” snapped Isadora, feeling more and more irked by this troublesome little girl. “We must leave at once if we are to get there in time.”
“We can use my broom.” offered Raven helpfully, proffering it forward. Isadora hesitated and almost bit her own lip with her fangs. She didn’t like brooms. Uriel hissed encouragingly. Sighing, Isadora realised Uriel was right.
Ten minutes later, Isadora had draped her going-out cloak around herself and was clutching her detecting kit. Stuffed with magnifying glass, dangerous substances and posions, potions, a dental kit, a fingerprint kit, microscope, swabs and vials to carry tasty blood to snack on. Nervously, she perched upon the end of Raven’s hovering broom and clung to the young girl sitting in front of her.
“How skilful are you with a broom?” Isadora asked imperiously.
Raven ignored her. Deliberately. Isadora huffed and retrieved two of the other notes, the first two sent:
We have your creatures; unsafe and unsound,
A shivery crow, two silent hares, a barking hound,
To Isadora The Demented this message is bound,
If you want your beloved pets to be found.
Pets! Calling familiars pets! How derogatory! Isadora flushed a feeble pink (the reddest a pale vampire can get) and snorted. Suddenly there was a gut-wrenching jolt and Isadora let out a fittingly demented screech. The broom was suddenly spiralling upwards into the air, seemingly aiming for the Moon. Raven whooped.
Swallowing her vomit, Isadora tried to focus upon the next note.
What are you waiting for, Isadora?
Every minute the mystery grows?
Is this where your twisted mind explodes?
Every minute the people’s faith slows.
Isadora clenched her fists and tore up the note, flailing her arms and screaming away at it. “You all right?” Raven asked. Isadora nodded. Of course she wasn’t, but it was in her job description and she didn’t want to be any ruder to the little girl than what she already had been.
They landed, a little way from the crossroads- where zealots hung the magical folk. They were shielded by a thick cover of fog and landed as quietly as possible.
Neither Raven or Isadora or Uriel breathed for a moment or two. “You must leave now, little witch.” Isadora murmured finally. “I cannot have you placed in harm’s way.”
Raven had opened her mouth to argue but then reluctantly closed it. She hopped on her broom, wished Isadora good luck and flew off into the dark night.
Isadora walked on, Uriel hidden up her sleeve. Then she saw them- a shivery crow, two silent hares, a barking hound. And a black cat who must’ve been Dusk. They were chained within iron, notoriously (and also falsely) known to Humans as sucking away magic. However, they were bound so tightly, that they cold hardly move (or shiver, in the case of the crow) or speak (or bark, in the case of the hound and this likely did not affect the rabbits as much as the others) and without their master nearby, they would be trapped and magic-less anyway.
“I knoweth you’re here.” Isadora spoke clearly into the darkness, the way her enemies spoke, looking sadly at the harrowed familiars. “Visage me yourselves, thee tiresome cowards.” and then two men stepped forwards. Fed by magical heretics and traitors and Humans erratics and spies, these two men were of all four categories- dangerous, selfish, radical and vicious. One was tall and spindly and relied upon a squat henchmen. If they weren't so vile Isadora would’ve laughed at their cartoonish mannerisms and appearance. The tall leader was Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry Wallis who despised magic and Isadora. The feeling was mutual: Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry Wallis was demented too— but he was a demented sadist.
“We has't hath caught thee at lasteth, Isad'ra the demon-spawn detective!”
Isadora pretended to know exactly what he said, when really, she only got the gist of it. He pointed a spindly finger at her, and spat on the ground like a troglodyte. And they call us the primeval demons, bristled Isadora.
“And how so?” she scoffed at him. “I’m not here to be captured, thee blinking fool. I’m here to right thy wrongs.”
“Git ‘er.” grunted the sidekick Thy-Shalt-Not-Be-Ignorant, who never quite lived up to his name.
“Don’t maketh me drinketh thy blood, as well.” hissed Isadora at the silly little man. “Rest assured, thee endeth is here, murderers.” Thy-Shalt-Not-Be-Ignorant shifted from foot to foot.
“WE SHALL BURNETH YOU ALL TO THE GROUND!” screeched Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry.
Isadora wondered how many words they added ‘-eth’ to. Ignorant chuckled and lit a match. Isadora bared her teeth and Uriel sprang out, attacking Ignorant first.
Then there was whoop from above: Raven, that foolish, ridiculous, disobedient witch was flying high up above and then threw down a glass vial below. It smashed upon the ground and there was a massive explosion of smoke.
“Fie! Cometh down h're and englut mine own coxcomb thee distemperate blinking idiot!” wailed Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry as he vanished, the smoke engulfing him. Isadora could hear Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry coughing loudly and scampering away, but her priority was the familiars. She rushed towards them and tore away at the chains, her super strength eventually cracked them open. Cradling the familiars, she helped them stand upright and looked up to find Raven standing behind her smirking unbearably, Thou-Shalt-Not-Cry gone and the smoke dispersed.
“You should not have come back.” Isadora hissed at her.
“You promised me-“
“That you could help me find them! Not fight these... monsters!” Isadora gestured to a whimpering Ignorant who lay upon the ground. “But thank you.” she said, breathing slowly again, trying to calm down.
“I had to see it through. And I couldn’t abandon my little baby Dusk, could I?” Raven responded apologetically, picking up Dusk and kissing him on his pink nose. The cat openly rolled his eyes. “And you need a lift home.”
“It’s getting early.” Isadora said finally. “So we best be quick if we want to return all of these familiars before dawn.”
“Hop on then!” Raven cried out as the familiars did the same, uttering their thank-yous to both detectives as they went. “I don’t suppose I could be a detective.”
“No.”
“Protégée?”
“No.”
“Volunteer.”
“No.” Isadora almost scoffed but put it back. It would be cruel. “Ain’t you getting on?”
“I’ll have my breakfast first.” Isadora said, eyeing the writhing man, who Uriel had coiled himself around, greedily. For him, being cruel was no problem. “My crumpets will be cold and I’m simply starving!”
“But... oh.” Raven caught on. “Oh.”
Isadora went home satisfied. She threw her crumpets in the bin and then wondered about what she could have for lunch.
If you'd like to read more of Evie's short stories, click here;
http://www.sycamoretrust.org.uk/latest/article/The-case-of-the-ghostly-child
http://www.sycamoretrust.org.uk/latest/article/The-case-of-the-Haunted-Lake
http://www.sycamoretrust.org.uk/latest/article/Raven-and-the-Yule-Festival
http://www.sycamoretrust.org.uk/latest/article/Raven-and-the-Barmy-Cauldron%21
