Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Dungeon of Despair (9780989878531) by Becket Read Free Book Online Page B

Cheeks
    or by the Sneezing Bogglesaurus
    or the Wheezing Furble Chorus.
    Let her heart be staked.
    Let her toes be baked.
    Let her nose be boiled.
    Let her fingers be oiled.
    Let her live her life
    in loneliness and strife
    in a darkness to beware
    in the Dungeon of Despair!

    The vampire gang carried Key down to the lowest part of the castle, until they came to a stone hallway, long and dark. The air down there was much colder and very thin, and it smelled of smoke and pepper and pigs.
    The gang stopped just outside a door that one vampire called, “ massumongous ,” which was barred and locked on the outside. Key assumed that massumongous meant that the door was both massive and humongous – even though the word humongous comes from the words huge and enormous , which would make this door massively huge in its enormity. Key thought that was a very accurate description because this particular door stretched so high above her head that she could not see the top.
    In the middle of this massumongous door was a large bronze knocker with the face of a hideous troll. The troll’s facial expression was frozen in a look of horror, with wide eyes and a grotesquely opened mouth. The look said in so many words to Key: “Despair: Once in, never out!”
    Key had no idea what lay beyond the door, but her imagination was conjuring all sorts of horrible monsters that lived in the dark on the other side, just waiting to gobble her up.
    Crudgel snickered at Key as he climbed up the door to unbar the bars and unlock the locks. He leaped down and struggled to swing it open. Several more vampires had to help him. Dust fell like snow from the doorframe. The hinges screamed for lack of oil. It was clear to Key that the dungeon door had not been opened for a long, long time and that nothing had come out for perhaps a much longer time.
    “How long will I be down there?” she wondered in fear as the door opened wider. She tried to look more intently into the dark, but, although her new vampire vision was excellent, she could not see much beyond the doorframe. The dungeon’s darkness was so thick you could almost slice through it with a knife – like the birthday cake she never got to have. No, she could only see an old stone stairwell that led down into pitch-black gloom. The bottom was beyond her sight, which made the dungeon seem even scarier.
    Still standing on the ceiling, Raithe looked down at Key. “Do you know what we call the dungeon, Troll?”
    The vampire gang grabbed ahold of Key’s chin and angled her head up to face Raithe. Key shook her head, despite the strong hands gripping her face. She did not want to know what the dungeon was called. She did not want to be there anymore. She missed her mom and dad. Weren’t they going to rescue her? She wanted Mr. Fuddlebee to come back. Why had he gone in the first place?
    Raithe’s thin lips curled in a cruel smile. “Welcome,” she hissed, “to the Dungeon of Despair.”
    The vampire gang then flung Key headlong through the door, right before they slammed the door closed, barring the bars and locking the locks.
    And thus, Key fell straight into darkness, tumbling down the hard stone steps, down far below the vampire castle, down below the City of the Dead, down into the Dungeon of Despair.
    Oh, but do not worry. Key was not entirely alone.

— CHAPTER EIGHT —

    Glowing Eyes in the Dark
     
    Key had been thrown into Despair. Now her world was filled with utter darkness. She could see almost nothing. No torchlights hung on the walls. No candles burned on chandeliers. No warm fires burned in hearths. The dungeon was so dark that Key could not see her hand passing back and forth before her face.
    The only thing Key could see were the slits of beastly eyes that glowed violet. Some thing was watching her.
    Whatever it was, Key didn’t want to know. She hurriedly crawled away from it. She would have crawled away from the darkness if that were possible, but as that would not be so for