Vampire Lodge

squished over them. The rain poured down. At least their kites were made of plastic and not paper—otherwise, they’d be ruined by now. It was hard to concentrate: the rain was pouring down so hard, Kevin couldn’t hear himself think from the steady, driving noise of it, and the rain clouds had darkened the sky very quickly, which made the woods even darker, almost like nighttime.

More thunder, then.

And more lightning…

Kevin flinched. He was trying real hard not to show it, but it seemed that with each additional step he took along the soggy path, the more afraid he got. Each crack of lightning was so loud and abrupt, it sounded like the sky was exploding and falling apart into giant, jagged pieces that he could almost visualize falling down on them.

Kevin had been through these woods many times in the past, but never during a thunder storm. Nothing about this path looked familiar, and they just seemed to be getting more and more lost as they trudged on through the puddles, the dripping branches and wet leaves, and the rain. What if we don’t find our way back before dark? Kevin wondered. What if we wind up having to sleep out here all night?

It was just one more thing Kevin didn’t want to think about. Sleeping in the cold woods all night, in the rain. And—

He remembered the animal heads he’d seen hanging on the wall back at the lodge. One of the heads was a bear…

Bears, he thought, his fear swelling up more and more till he could feel his heart racing in his chest. The path curved around, and then—

Wait a minute, Kevin thought. He stopped, the rain pelting his shoulders and the top of his head.

“What is it?” Jimmy asked, shivering.

Kevin squinted forward. Then he suddenly shouted with glee when he realized what he was seeing. “Look! A sign!”

Jimmy squinted forward too, till he could see it. “All right!” he shouted.

Nailed to a tree just a few yards ahead of them was a wooden sign with black, painted letters that read: LODGE, and then an arrow pointing down the path.

“Boy, are we dopes,” Jimmy said. “All this time we thought we were lost.”

“Yeah, but this path really just took us in a big circle right back toward the lodge,” Kevin realized now, “and we didn’t even know it. Come on. And when we get back to the lodge,” Kevin added, “whatever you do, don’t tell Becky about us thinking we were lost.”

“Of course I won’t tell her!” Jimmy said. “She’d think we were idiots!”

That was for sure, and so would their dads. But Kevin felt an incredible wave of relief. We’re not lost after all, he thought. We’ll be back at the lodge in just a few minutes. And to make matters even better, just as they started out in the direction of the wooden sign, the rain began to let up, and the thunder and lightning stopped. “We’ll try flying our kites again tomorrow,” he told Jimmy. “With any luck, the weather will be better.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “And at least I got to see the bluffs today. They’re really cool. And—”

thunk

Kevin and Jimmy stopped in their tracks. They both stood with their heads tilted, their kites dripping as they listened.

“That sounded like a car door closing,” Kevin noted.

“Yeah, but—”

Jimmy didn’t even need to finish. We’re in the middle of the woods right now, Kevin thought. What would a car be doing in the middle of the woods, especially right after a rain storm?

Maybe it was their imaginations, but then Kevin walked toward a stand of trees at the edge of the path. Through the trees, maybe twenty yards away, he could see—

Another path, he realized.

“Look!” Jimmy whispered.

An old, faded blue car was parked on the other path. A figure had gotten out of the car and was now—

shick, shick, shick

The very first thing Kevin noticed was the big forked tree; in other words, a tree that had grown out from a single stump but had split into two trunks. The forked tree looked like a craggy V pointing upward toward the dark sky.

And the figure was—

Digging a hole in the ground with a shovel!

Kevin remembered earlier in the day, when he’d seen Bill Bitner in the back hallway at the lodge. Holding a shovel, he recalled. Kevin squinted; it was hard to see. The woods were dark, and it was still raining a little, but a minute later he recognized the figure.

And it wasn’t that old crab Bill Bitner at all.

It’s Wally, Kevin saw.

Wally Eberhart, the young groundskeeper who worked for Bill. The guy my sister’s got a crush on, Kevin added in thought.

And right now Kevin could see Wally digging a big hole in the ground.

Or maybe he wasn’t digging just a hole…

Maybe he’s digging a grave, Kevin thought.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Did you see that?” Jimmy asked, trotting down the path past the sign.

Kevin trotted right along with him. “Are you kidding? Of course I saw it. That guy Wally was digging a hole right by that forked tree.”

“But why?” Jimmy questioned. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would the guy be digging a hole in the middle of the woods while it’s raining?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said, huffing and puffing as he continued to trot back down the path.

I don’t know, he thought to himself. But I’m going to find out…

It was just another few minutes before they got back to the big gravel courtway in front of the lodge. Kevin and Jimmy stopped for a few moments at the front steps, leaning over with their hands on their knees, to catch their breath.

“What are we going to do now?” Jimmy asked. “Should we tell your Aunt Carolyn that we saw Wally digging that hole?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “Maybe we should wait awhile on that.”

“Why?”

“Because what would we say?” Kevin posed. “We’d sound stupid. Let’s wait awhile, give ourselves some more time to find out what’s going on.”

Jimmy paused as he was shaking the rainwater off his kite. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Now that you mention it, maybe that’s a better idea.”

“Let’s stow our kites and get back inside,” Kevin said, happy that his friend agreed with him. He didn’t want to say the rest, the strange, eerie feeling that Wally wasn’t just digging a hole.

The hole that Wally was digging, after all, looked pretty big, and wide.

And maybe it was oblong shaped, though Kevin couldn’t be quite sure.

But there was one thing he was sure of—

It looked like Wally was digging a grave, Kevin thought again.

The idea made a shiver crawl up his back, and he shuddered a moment, standing there at the base of the big stone steps.