Vampire Lodge

Wally will show you your rooms.”

“Okay,” Kevin said. “We’ll be back down in a little while, Aunt Carolyn.”

The wide, heavily banistered staircase curved upward from the dark foyer. The thick carpet swallowed the sound of their footsteps as Kevin, Jimmy, and Becky clattered up the stairs. But before they could even get to the top, Kevin noticed two tall shadows on the landing.

“You two must be Jimmy and Kevin, huh?” one shadow asked in kind of a rude, unfriendly voice.

“That’s us,” Kevin said when they got to the top. “Who are you?”

“I’m Bill Bitner,” the voice replied, and then the first shadow stepped forward. It was an older guy, in a faded flannel shirt and overalls. He had short, grayish hair, a thin, gangly body, and lots of wrinkles in his face. “You two just come with me,” he said, “so’s I can show you to your room.”

“Are you Becky?” asked the second figure.

“Yeah,” Becky said.

“I’m Wally. Wally Eberhart. Nice to meet you,” the second figure at the top of the stairs said. Kevin noticed a much younger guy, like someone in his late teens, with long brown hair and broad across the shoulders. Oh, no, Kevin thought. A young guy. Becky will go nuts!

“Follow me, Becky,” this Wally character said. “Your room’s right down at the end of the hall. You’ll like it.”

Becky didn’t say anything, which came as not much of a surprise to Kevin. All she did instead was gawp at the guy.

“You kids coming, or are you gonna dawdle all day?” Bill Bitner asked impatiently. “Kids these days, I’ll tell ya. They putz around like a bunch of old ladies.”

Kevin and Jimmy followed him down the dark, carpeted hall to the last room on the left. “That there’s your room,” he said, and pointed to a half-opened door. “I stuck your suitcases inside.”

“Thanks, Mr. Bitner,” Kevin said, trying to be courteous.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jimmy added.

Bill Bitner walked away grumbling, and he didn’t say another word.

“What a creep,” Jimmy said aside to Kevin.

“Tell me about it,” Kevin said. “He must’ve gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

At least the room was decent. Kevin and Jimmy walked in to find a nice, large, wood-paneled room with a huge curtained window overlooking the woods in back of the lodge. There was a big wooden dresser, two closets, and two big, high beds on dark-wood frames and oak posters. And when Kevin looked closer he noticed that the big window wasn’t really a window; instead, there were two glass-paned French doors that opened up. “Hey, Jimmy, this is pretty cool!” Kevin enthused. “These doors open up to a balcony!”

“Let me see,” Jimmy said.

Kevin opened the pair of doors, and at once, a brisk breeze gusted into the room. They walked out onto a railed balcony.

“You’re right, this is cool,” Jimmy commented, leaning against the rail and looking out. All the trees in back of the lodge looked like a great, shivering wall of various colors from the autumn leaves. “What’s that path there?” Jimmy asked.

“It cuts through the woods,” Kevin remembered. “It’s kind of like a nature trail that leads to some of the campsites. We’ll check it out later.”

Jimmy’s brown hair blew in the breeze. “I guess we better get back in the room and put our stuff away.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “Come on.”

They went back in the big bedroom; Kevin closed the French doors.

“Looks like that creepy guy just tossed our suitcases on the floor,” Jimmy observed. The suitcases lay on top of each other near the closet. “I don’t think I like him much,” Jimmy added.

“Me either,” Kevin said. “And I don’t think he likes us too much either.”

“Why did your Aunt Carolyn hire him?”

“I don’t know, but I think I overheard her saying something like he didn’t charge a whole of money to keep up the lodge and the campsites.”

Jimmy ran his hand over the dresser, brushing off a pile of dust. “Well, it doesn’t look like he does much of a job. This room isn’t very clean.”

Kevin couldn’t disagree. There was a good deal of dust on the furniture, and he even noticed cobwebs in the corner of the room. “Yeah, you’re right. No wonder he doesn’t charge much to work here.”

“What was that your dad was saying, about your Aunt Carolyn going bust?”

“I’m not sure,” Kevin said, wondering himself. “I guess she’s not making a whole lot of money renting out rooms and campsites. Means she’s having money problems, I guess.”

Kevin stopped a moment, as he was putting some of his clothes on wire hangers. Immediately, he noticed two dark oil paintings hanging on the walls, set into what looked like old, expensive carved frames. Kevin had noticed a lot of paintings downstairs too. These two here, though, looked pretty dull. One showed a winter landscape, mostly trees topped with snow, and the other painting showed a fall forest scene. But the paintings were the only decorations in the room.

Kevin got his clothes hung up and put away faster than Jimmy. “I’m going downstairs to look around. Come on down when you’re done putting your stuff away.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, placing folded pairs of pants into the dresser.

Kevin walked back out into the dark hallway. Suddenly everything was so quiet. And, yes, there were lots of framed paintings that hung on the walls but it was so dark he couldn’t really see what they were paintings of. Some of them looked like people but all he could make out were dark streaks.

He went back down the stairs, to the sitting area in front of the giant fireplace. But—

Where’s Aunt Carolyn? he wondered. She didn’t seem to be around. The room crackled from the big fire, but when he went back out into the foyer, it got so quiet he could hear his own heart beat. In the foyer there were still more odd, dark paintings, most of which he couldn’t make much out of, like the ones upstairs. One painting, though, sat in a slant of daylight that came through the windows of the dining room.

What is… this? Kevin thought.

The painting showed what looked like a large rowboat coming ashore. There were several men in the rowboat but their faces all looked blank, as if they were in a trance. And sitting right in the middle of the rowboat were two things:

The first thing was a big open wooden box piled high with gold bricks.

And the second thing was—

Kevin’s eyes widened. It’s a— It’s a—

It was a coffin.

A creepy, wood-plank coffin.

Just like the one in the vampire movie he’d been watching with Becky last night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Well, it was great meeting you, Becky,” that young guy, Wally, was saying just inside the front door. Then he pushed the door open with a long creak. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

“Uh, uh,” Becky brilliantly replied, her face all lit up with a big, dopey grin. “I, uh, I will.”

“See ya.”

Wally left the lodge, shutting the door behind him.

Becky turned dreamily. “He’s just so, just so—”

Kevin smirked. “Just so what?”

“He’s just so… wonderful…”

“Who?” Kevin said. “That Wally guy? What’s so wonderful about him?”

“Oh,” Becky gushed on, “he’s just so handsome and strong and rugged and smart and nice and—”