Vampire Lodge (7 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kevin could scarcely think
of anything else all throughout dinner.
A
vampire legend? Here?
What could it be? And
could it have anything to do with the strange painting he’d seen in
the foyer? The painting of the men in the rowboat, with the box of
gold bricks and—

And the coffin?
he wondered.

Kevin felt charged up with excitement.
He couldn’t wait to hear about it.

“
That was a great dinner,
Aunt Carolyn,” Kevin said when they were all finished
eating.

“
Yeah, thanks,” Jimmy
said.

“
Well, I’m glad you liked
it,” Aunt Carolyn said.

But just then, something occurred to
Kevin. The big meal they’d had was very good, but—

Aunt Carolyn didn’t eat
anything at all,
he thought now as they
were taking their plates out to the kitchen.

And she hadn’t drunk
anything.
And this morning, when she
served everybody the spiced cider, she didn’t drink any of that
either.

“
I have some things to do
around the lodge,” Aunt Carolyn said then. “Would you kids mind
doing the dishes?”

“
We’d be happy to,” Kevin
said. “But—”

Aunt Carolyn stopped. “But what,
Kevin?”

Kevin knew he shouldn’t bug her about
it, but he couldn’t help asking. “When are you going to tell us
about the local vampire legend?”

Aunt Carolyn smiled to herself. “Later
on. Tonight.”

Then she disappeared down the hall,
leaving the three of them in the large country kitchen.

“
I shouldn’t have to wash
dishes,” Becky complained. “I’ll get my brand-new dress all messed
up.”

“
Fine,” Kevin said, turning
on the hot water. “Go find something else to do then. Go haunt a
house.”

“
I’d need your ugly face to
do it,” Becky came back.

“
Go look for your lover boy
Wally,” Jimmy chuckled. “You can help him dig holes in the woods,
in your brand-new dress!”

Becky glared at them both. “I just
can’t believe how stupid you two guys are.”

“
You’re still here?” Kevin
asked sarcastically.

Becky stomped off, frowning, as Kevin
and Jimmy laughed out loud.

“
Boy,” Jimmy said. “You
sure got rid of her in a hurry.”

But that’s exactly what Kevin had
intended to do. “I can’t talk around her,” he said. “Wasn’t that
kind of weird?”

“
What? Your
sister?”

“
No, no, she’s
always
weird,” Kevin
said. “I mean Aunt Carolyn.”

Jimmy dried each plate that Kevin
passed to him from the sink. “Well, she does dress weird,” Jimmy
admitted. “Those long, black dresses and all.”

Kevin lowered his voice to a sharp
whisper. “That’s not what I mean. Don’t you think it was weird that
she didn’t eat anything during dinner?”

Jimmy paused, drying a plate. “You
know, you’re right. She didn’t eat. It was just us.”

“
And did you see the weird
way she looked up when Becky told her I was interested in
vampires?”

Jimmy paused yet again, thinking.
“Well, yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess she did look pretty
weird now that you mention it.”

But before Kevin could say anything
more, a gust of wind blew in, and then the back door to the kitchen
slammed.

And Wally walked in.

“
Hey, guys,” he said. His
long hair was wet from the rain, and he had a bunch of firewood in
his arms. “Carolyn told me to bring in some firewood, said she was
running low.”

“
Oh,” Kevin said, and he
couldn’t think of much else to say. All he could remember was how
they’d seen Wally in the woods earlier…

“
Uh, uh,” Kevin said, “I
think Becky was looking for you. She’s around here
someplace.”

“
Any idea
where?”

“
Probably out in the hearth
room, near the fireplace,” Kevin told him.

“
Okay, thanks,” Wally said.
Then he walked off toward the hearth room with his armload of fire
wood.

“
Maybe we should’ve asked
him,” Jimmy speculated. “Asked him what he was doing digging in the
woods today.”

“
I don’t know,” Kevin said,
rinsing off the last plate under the running faucet. “That would
just tip him off that we saw him. Then he might tell Bill and get
us in trouble.”

“
Yeah, I guess you’re
right. The last thing either of us need is that old creep giving us
a hard time.”

But that gave Kevin an idea. He
quickly peeked out into the hearth room and saw Becky talking to
Wally as he loaded the wood into the holder next to the fireplace.
Then Kevin peeked around the corner into the dining room and
foyer.

No one was there.

“
Look, you stay here,” he
told Jimmy, “and put the dishes away. I’m going back down that
hallway we were in this morning. If anyone comes, slam one of the
cabinets real hard so I’ll hear it and know to come
back.”

“
Well, okay,” Jimmy said.
“But do you think it’s a good idea to go back there. Bill already
caught you there once.”

“
I know, but he’s probably
not there now. What would he be doing at the lodge this late? I
want to check some things out real fast.”

“
All right,” Jimmy agreed.
“But be careful.”

Kevin quickly turned the corner at the
back of the kitchen and was at once standing in the long dim rear
hallway. Only a single, small light fixture glowed from high on the
back wall; Kevin could barely see. But he did notice more paintings
hanging on the paneling, dark, swirly paintings set into heavy,
ornate frames, just like the paintings in the den and foyer and
upstairs hallways. He stopped a moment to look at one…

It was a large sailing ship, crashing
through waves on the high seas, its many huge white sails puffed
out from the wind. And like the painting in the foyer, this one had
a title. In tiny letters along the bottom, the artist had painted
the words:

The Count’s Mighty Sailing
Ship, the Scrimm, on its Way to the Coast
.

The Count,
Kevin thought, staring long-faced at the painting.
This was the second painting he’d seen that referred to “The
Count.”

The Count,
he thought again, with the faintest of shivers.
The word rang in his head like a bell.

Count Dracula?
he wondered.
The most
powerful of all the vampires?

It had to be. What other
Count could the painting be referring to?
This really is weird,
Kevin thought,
taking one last glance at the dark painting.

But he’d come back here for
a reason, and looking at paintings wasn’t it. This was the same
hallway where they’d heard that
click
earlier this morning, and then
they’d seen Bill Bitner holding a shovel, and—

It looked like he’d walked
right through the wall,
Kevin reminded
himself.

Nervously, he proceeded deeper into
the hallway, taking slow, quiet steps. When he got toward the end,
he stopped, scanning the dark walls with his eyes. Another strange
painting hung right before him, at the same place he and Jimmy
thought they’d seen Bill Bitner come out of the wall.

Kevin stared at the
painting…

Things just keep getting
weirder and weirder,
he told
himself.

The painting showed a band
of blank-faced men carrying two large boxes across a beach. Behind
the men, just at the shoreline, was a rowboat—
The same rowboat in the foyer painting?
he wondered—and beyond that, the same large sailing ship, The
Scrimm, could be seen burning in the distance. That was weird
enough, but the weirdest part was what the blank-faced men were
carrying. Two boxes. One box was the same large wooden crate full
of gold bricks, and the other box was—

The coffin,
Kevin instantly recognized.

Then Kevin’s eyes flicked down to the
bottom of the painting, to see if this one had a title too. Sure
enough, there it was, in the same tiny painted letters.

The Count Comes
Ashore.

So now he’d discovered a third
painting that referred to The Count, and Kevin knew it had to be a
vampire because there was a coffin in this picture too.

What is going on
here?
he thought.

This was all just too bizarre. Kevin
leaned against the wall, to think, but in the same moment that he
did so, he heard a tiny but very sharp sound:

click

And he thought for sure that he’d felt
the wall behind him

…
move.

Wh—what?

He turned around immediately, looked
hard at the wall he’d just been leaning against. The painting
stared back at him. Then, very slowly, Kevin reached forward with
his hand, pressed his fingers gently against the paneled
wall—

The wall moved.

Or, rather, a
section
of the wall
moved, and when Kevin pushed on it a second time, he realized
exactly what it was he had discovered.

A secret
passageway…

Just like in the old vampire movies. A
secret passageway right here in the lodge! Kevin pushed it open and
noticed several tiny roller-mounts along the edge, like the kind
that keep the doors on kitchen cabinets in place. That’s what had
caused the clicking sound.

This explains it,
he realized.
Bill Bitner
came out of this same passageway this morning, and that’s why it
looked like he’d walked out of the wall.

Next, Kevin pressed his palm against
the hidden door’s dark-wood panel, then he pushed the door open all
the way—-

creeeeeak

Total darkness faced him; he had no
way of telling how deep the passageway went, not without a
flashlight or something he could see by.

Where does it lead
to?
he couldn’t help but wonder.
How far back does it go? And what was Bill Bitner
doing back here this morning when we saw him with the
shovel?

All of a sudden, there were so many
questions spinning around in Kevin’s mind—he couldn’t keep them
sorted out.

He pulled the door to, heard it click
shut.

I’ve got to find out
what’s back there,
he thought.

And he knew there was only one way to
do that.

I’ll have to get a
flashlight,
he realized,
and come back here.

Tonight…

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kevin decided not to tell Jimmy about
the secret door and passageway—Jimmy sometimes had a big mouth, and
Kevin thought it best to keep things to himself, at least until he
could find out more about what was going on. So instead he came
right back to the kitchen and helped Jimmy put away the rest of the
dishes.

“
Did you find anything back
in that hallway?” Jimmy asked him, hanging up the dish
towel.

“
A couple more weird
paintings,” Kevin said, and that was where he would leave it for
now. “It sounds like the rain has finally stopped. Let’s go walk
around outside.”

“
Okay,” Jimmy agreed. “Not
much else to do right now.”

They pulled on their coats and headed
for the front door, but as they passed the big hearth room and the
crackling fireplace, they noticed Becky sitting on the couch,
talking to Wally, who was stoking up the fire with an iron rod.
Becky had a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes as she listened to
Wally.

“
Looks like your sister is
in love,” Jimmy said when they stepped out onto the front
porch.

“
She falls in love every
week,” Kevin complained. “Thinks she’s the greatest girl in town.
But I’m sure Wally the Lover Boy will find out what a nag she is
real soon.”

Outside, a chill wind gripped them,
brushing across their faces and blowing down their collars. The
night sky was full of cloudy black murk; not a single star could be
seen, and of course there was no sign of the moon either. Leaves
fell steadily from the high trees around the lodge.

“
How come your aunt seems
to disappear all the time?” Jimmy asked as they rounded a stand of
floodlit hedges.

That’s a good
question,
Kevin thought, but he kept it to
himself. “I guess, like she said, she’s got a lot of stuff to do
around the lodge, you know, upkeep and stuff like that.”

“
But there aren’t even any
guests,” Jimmy observed, “except for us.”

“
Yeah, I know. But there’s
still lots of stuff to do, I guess, probably a lot of paperwork and
taxes, things like that.”