Dan, Jolly, Angry, and Mumbles joined Dozy in the lift.

“All aboard?” said Dozy. “Right. Up we go!”

He pulled the lever. There came the groaning of ancient machinery. The lift vibrated, and slowly began to rise.

• • •

Samuel, Lucy, and the policemen had just reached the next floor when they heard a rumbling in the basement.

“What’s that?” said Sergeant Rowan.

“Sorry,” said Constable Peel. “That’s me. I haven’t been feeling very well.”

“No, not that,” said Sergeant Rowan, although he took a couple of cautious steps back from Constable Peel. “That!”

They all heard it now. It was the sound of a lift ascending.

“Over there,” said Samuel.

To their right was a dark, gated shaft, and above it a panel displaying floor numbers had just lit up.

“Something’s coming up from the basement!” said Lucy.

“It has to be something nasty,” said Constable Peel. “There are only nasty things in this shop, present company excepted.”

The number 1 lit up.

“It’ll be here in a couple of seconds,” said Constable Peel.

“Be brave, lad,” said Sergeant Rowan.

He gripped his cricket bat tightly. He’d had the foresight to grab a weapon as they ran from the spiders. Samuel and Lucy hefted their pool cues threateningly, for they had been wise enough to do the same.

Constable Peel took his place beside them.

“What are you holding?” said Sergeant Rowan.

“Ping-Pong bat,” said Constable Peel. “It was all I could find.”

“Constable, we need to have a long talk when this is all over.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

The lift came into view. The light on the second floor was poor, and the lift itself remained dark, but as it stopped, Samuel and the others could pick out five gray shapes.

“Ghouls!” whispered Lucy.

“Wraiths!” said Constable Peel.

The lift’s gate opened. The five figures emerged and stepped into a small pool of moonlight cast through the murky glass of one of the windows. It was Constable Peel who reacted first.

“It’s Dan and the dwarfs,” he said. “Look at them! They’re all gray and spooky and sickly. They’re dead, but somehow they’re still upright. Only the shells of them remain! Oh! Oh!”

He fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

Jolly raised a hand and opened his mouth.

“Look,” said Sergeant Rowan. “One of them is trying to speak.”

Constable Peel peered over the tips of his fingers. It was true. He waited to hear the hollow, undead rattle of what had once been Mr. Jolly Smallpants.

Jolly didn’t speak. He sneezed. The sneeze was so massive that it caused most of the ash to lift from him, and Jolly used the opportunity to step to one side and avoid the dust as it came down again.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just bits of dead vampire.”

Constable Peel stared at him for a time, then burst into tears again, crying even harder than before.

“Oh no!” he wailed. “They’re alive. They’re still alive . . .”