Vampire Lodge

And then—

A figure appeared.

Both Kevin and Jimmy stiffened up in a quick fear. Kevin recognized the figure at once at once.

Bill, he thought. Bill Bitner, the handyman…

And what was scariest of all was this:

It didn’t look like Bill had come out of any door—

A chill traced up Kevin’s back.

This is impossible, he thought.

It looked instead like Bill Bitner had walked right out of a solid wall…

CHAPTER NINE

“Hey, you boys!”

Bill Bitner’s shout made Kevin and Jimmy’s feet jump an inch off the floor. Bill looked at them with an angry glare. He raised an old, glowing lantern—the light they’d seen—up higher so he could see them. “You got no business back here! What’re you two up to?”

“We’re, uh, we’re just looking around, Mr. Bitner,” Kevin said with a hitch in his voice.

“Well go look around somewhere else,” Bill shot back. And it was then that Kevin noticed something else.

Bill had something long and thin in his hand, and he was sort of holding it behind him, almost as if he didn’t want the boys to see what it was.

But the glimpse Kevin had caught was enough.

It’s a shovel, Kevin realized. He’s holding a shovel…

“Now go on and get out of here, the both of you,” Bill ordered them. “Neither of you got any business snooping around back here.”

“We weren’t snooping, Mr. Bitner,” Jimmy said. “We—”

“Just go on and get out here!” Bill Bitner repeated. Then he went to the door at the very end of the hall, opened it, went in, then—

Slam!

—slammed the door shut behind him.

“Did you see that?” Kevin asked, his eyes wide as coins.

“Yeah, before he went into that room, it looked like he walked right out of the wall.”

“Let’s go check it out.”

“No way!” Jimmy objected. “You heard him. He told us to get out of here.”

“So what? He’s gone; he went into that other room.”

“Yeah, and he’s probably standing on the other side of the door listening, figuring we’ll snoop around some more. Let’s get out of here.”

“What? I can’t believe this.” Kevin challenged. “You’re chicken?”

“I’m not chicken,” Jimmy came right back, “and I’m not stupid either. That guy gives me the creeps. And what if he tells our dads that we were snooping around?”

Kevin opened his mouth to say something more, but then he thought about it and decided not to.

Jimmy had a good point.

Dad’s a cool guy, he reminded himself. But he wouldn’t be too happy if he got back from his fishing trip and heard that Jimmy and I were causing trouble.

“Look,” Jimmy said. “You can do what you want, but I’m getting out of here.”

“Me too,” Kevin agreed.

They walked back out the way they came, down the dark hallway, through the kitchen, then back out into the foyer. And in their journey, they again didn’t catch a glimpse of Aunt Carolyn anywhere.

“I know what we can do,” Jimmy suggested.

“What’s that?”

“We can put together our kites!”

“Good idea,” Kevin agreed. “Let’s do it.” He had to admit, there was nothing better to do, and things were getting pretty boring around here real fast. Aunt Carolyn didn’t even have a television in the lodge. No shows, no movies, no nothing. The pits, Kevin thought. At least if they assembled their kites now, they might be able to get out onto the bluffs today.

They tracked back through the foyer toward the stairwell. Kevin was looking forward to getting his kite together—it was a vampire bat kite—but just as he approached the bottom of the big stairwell, something made him come to a halt and pause for a moment.

His head turned.

His eyes glided across the paneled wall—

—back to the creepy painting.

The painting hung there right in front of his face.

It seemed to stare back at him just as much as he stared at it…

The rowboat, the box of gold bricks, and—

The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure.

—and the coffin…

CHAPTER TEN

Jimmy had bought the “Wind-Box Deluxe”, a box kite, which was a box-shape made out of thin wooden poles with red plastic sheets wrapped around the box. Kevin’s was a standard wing-type kite: “The Vampire Bat.” It had a simple t-shaped wooden frame onto which a black plastic sheet was attached. It took them both about a half hour to get the kites fully assembled and ready to go. Kevin was proud of his finished kite; once he had attached the plastic to the frame, the kite looked just like a giant black bat, complete with big red eyes and a mouth with fangs.

“You ready?” Jimmy asked.

“Sure am,” Kevin said. “Let’s go.”

They put on their fall coats and headed downstairs. Kevin thought it best to let his Aunt Carolyn know that they’d be on the bluffs for a few hours, but once they got back downstairs, they still couldn’t find her anywhere.

“Where is she?” Kevin questioned aloud. “I haven’t seen her since our dads left.”

“Look,” Jimmy suggested, “we don’t want to waste any more time trying to find her. Let’s just go.”

“Well,” Kevin hesitated. “We really should let her know where we’re going first.”

“She already knows where we’re going, Kevin. She knows we brought our kites, and she knows we’ll be flying them. It’s no big deal. We’re not babies. We’ll be careful, we know what we’re doing.”

Kevin thought about it. “Yeah, I guess it’s all right.” And, anyway, how could they tell Aunt Carolyn where they were going? She wasn’t anywhere to be found.

By now it was mid-afternoon. Fallen leaves blew in swirls out in front of the lodge. “This is going to be great,” Kevin observed. “The wind’s really picking up.”

“So where are these bluffs?” Jimmy asked.

“Not far. Right through this trail.”

Toting their new kites, then, Kevin and Jimmy set out down the narrow, tree-lined trail. Autumn leaves continued to fall as they made their way. Acorns and branches crunched under their feet. “Look!” Jimmy shouted, pointing. “What’s that?”

Kevin peered into the dense trees to his left. Two eyes glittered at him, inside of a red face.

“It’s a fox,” Kevin said, as the animal scampered away. “There’re lots of squirrels around too, collecting