“I wish that music would stop,” said Dan. “It sounds like the ice cream van from Hell.”

The music was bothering the Nosferati as well. Some of them snatched at the air, as though trying to pull the notes from the ether and grind them into musical dust. It was no good. The unseen organ kept on playing.

It was Jolly who wondered aloud if the Nosferati had ever even heard the organ music before. By now, Dan and the dwarfs had slowed from a run to a stroll, as it was clear that the Nosferati, though a nuisance, weren’t likely to catch up with them any time soon.

“I mean, they were in a silent film,” said Jolly, “which was, you know, silent. It was only in the real world, our world, that the music played. Imagine if, every time you took a step, there was someone banging away on an organ behind you. It’d drive you crazy. They’d have to lock you away before you killed him.”

The Nosferati had stopped making any progress at all. They were now curled up in balls with their coats over their heads, or were trying to jam their fingers in their ears, which didn’t work because their fingernails were too long. One of them was banging his forehead repeatedly against a wall.

“See?” said Jolly. “There’s only so much of it you can take before—”

The one-eyed Nosferatu, the one who had had his eye (singular) on Dozy, started to shake. He raised a questioning finger as if to say, “Hang on a minute, this doesn’t feel right,” and then his head exploded. As he had been undead for a very long time, there wasn’t much blood or brain to contend with. His head simply disappeared in a puff of gray dust, and his body quickly followed.

This began a chain reaction of exploding heads, and bodies collapsing like old pillars, filling the basement with the dust of the undead. When it finally settled, Dan and the dwarfs were all that remained standing, although they were now covered from head to toe in gray bits of vampire. The few surviving Nosferati who had managed to plug their ears beat a hasty retreat.

Angry coughed up ash.

“I think I swallowed some,” he said. “That can’t be good for me.”

“Look,” said Dozy. “It’s a lift.”

And it was. It was rickety and old and bore an unhappy resemblance to a cage, but it was definitely a lift of sorts. Its floor was made of wood, and its walls were lined with velvet. Instead of a door, it had a metal gate that could be pulled across and secured.

Dozy poked his head inside.

“I don’t see any buttons,” he said. “There’s a control lever, though.”

He stepped into the lift and gave the lever an experimental tug, but nothing happened.

“You have to close the gate first, I think,” said Dan.

“Hang on,” said Jolly. “Don’t do anything until we’re all inside.”