1. Oh No! Oh No!
Tony was cozy and curled up tight when a voice woke him.

“Is Tony still asleep?” it said. That was his mother’s voice, and it sounded a bit muffled, as if it were coming from somewhere off in the distance.

“Yes! We should let him sleep a little longer,” replied another voice. That was Tony’s father.

Tony opened his eyes and blinked.

His head felt strangely empty, and for a few seconds he didn’t know where he was or what was happening. Bright sunlight filtered in from an opening past his feet. And strangely enough, he was not lying in bed but on the ground.

Then it all came back to him:

Three days ago, he and his father had come to Misery Valley on vacation, a so-called adventure vacation. For Christmas, his parents had given him a tent and a sleeping bag and a voucher that said:

Voucher for an adventure vacation.

To be redeemed during spring break.

This had been the psychologist Dr. Crustbrusher’s idea. It was supposed to help Tony stop thinking about his friends the vampires all the time. Tony was even allowed to choose where he wanted to go on the adventure vacation. Of course he had chosen Misery Valley. After his friends Rudolph and Anna and their family had been driven from their crypt in the old town cemetery, they’d come to live in some old castle ruins in Misery Valley.

Tony and his father had taken the train to Long Suffering and had continued from there on foot. Once in Misery Valley, they had settled into a cave called the Wolf’s Den. On the second day, when they’d been exploring the castle ruins, Tony’s father had gotten his fingers crushed when trying to play the old organ. Tony shuddered when he thought back to how terrible his father’s fingers had looked last night. They’d been dark purple and swollen and had looked painful.

The crushed fingers must be why Tony’s mother—who hadn’t been so thrilled about the idea of a vacation without hot running water, and so hadn’t come with them—was suddenly standing outside the cave. Tony assumed that the pain had gotten so bad that Tony’s father had called home and asked her to come pick him up—him and Tony!

“Oh no!” Tony moaned softly and bit his lip. He didn’t want to leave Misery Valley, and Rudolph and Anna.

When he looked around the cave, he discovered that it was almost empty—except for his sleeping bag, his socks and sneakers, and the book Vampires: Fact and Fiction. Apparently, Tony’s parents were so eager to get going that they had already packed his sweater and jeans. Tony was annoyed at the thought of walking around outside in his pajamas. Then he felt something rough and tattered in his sleeping bag. That wasn’t his pajamas. It was the vampire cape he had used to fly to the ruins the night before with Anna.

There, in the chapel, Rudolph had read to him from The Sackville-Bagg Family Chronicles. Afterward Tony had walked back to the Wolf’s Den alone. He’d been so exhausted that he had forgotten to take off the vampire cape and hide it in a crevasse in the rocks outside the cave. He had just crawled into the sleeping bag with everything on and fallen asleep.

Tony quickly pulled the zipper of his sleeping bag up to his chin so his parents wouldn’t be able to see the cape. But now what was he supposed to do? Should he try to take off the cape while still in his sleeping bag? Since the bag was tight and thickly padded, that was easier said than done.