Vampire Lodge

“No I’m not!” Kevin yelled at her. “Look!”

And with that, he pressed on the panel, and—click!—then it swung open.

“Well I’ll be,” Aunt Carolyn said. “I’ve owned the lodge all these years but I never knew this passageway existed.”

“Yeah, well Bill Bitner found out about it,” Kevin said, and then he turned on his flashlight. “Come on.”

Everybody filed behind Kevin as he led them down the damp, lightless passageway.

“Look,” Jimmy noticed. “A door.”

“The door to the secret room,” Kevin corrected, and then he opened the door and pointed his light all around.

“The kid’s right,” Wally said. “There really is a secret room. Bill never told me anything about it.”

“He never told me, either,” Aunt Carolyn said. “Kevin, lead the way.”

With pleasure, he thought. He took them into the dark room, shining the flashlight over the brick walls. Then he said, “The diary’s right here, on this desk.” And he pointed the flashlight right at it.

Aunt Carolyn slowly approached the desk, her eyes wide in amazement. She picked up the old diary, flipped through it, read some passages. “Kevin,” she said. “This is extraordinary! It’s been hidden for all these years, but you managed to find it.”

“Sounds to me,” Wally said, “that Bill Bitner found it first, and he didn’t tell you.”

And this suddenly made perfect sense to Kevin. Of course Bill Bitner didn’t tell anyone, he realized. Because he wants to keep The Count’s treasure all to himself. “Read right here, Aunt Carolyn,” he instructed, pointing the light on the last page. “That’s where The Count says where his treasure is buried.”

Aunt Carolyn’s face concentrated as she read the final few sentences in the diary. “You’re right, Kevin. It says here that the treasure is buried at… a forked tree.”

“See?” Kevin said triumphantly. “I told you.”

“And Bill had me digging out there for it and he never told me,” Wally said. “He had me believing I was looking for a broken water pipe. How do you like that?”

Aunt Carolyn nodded to herself. “No wonder he agreed to continue working for me so cheaply. He needed a reason to be on my property, so he could find the treasure. He never told me about any of this. I think we better go find Mr. Bitner right now. He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”

They all filed back out of the room and back down the hall to the kitchen.

“Let’s take my car,” Wally volunteered. “He’s probably out there right now, digging around another forked tree looking for the treasure.”

“Good idea,” Aunt Carolyn consented. “But, Kevin, it’s cold outside. Go get your coat on first.”

“Okay,” Kevin said, and then he dashed up the stairs to his room. All right, he admitted to himself. Aunt Carolyn’s not really a vampire, and I was wrong about all that other stuff too. But one thing I was right about was the treasure! It’s out there somewhere, and we’ve got to find it before Bill Bitner does!

Kevin pulled on his coat, but something snagged his vision before he could leave the room. What? he thought. Why had he stopped? He wasn’t sure why, but the next thing he knew he was looking at one of the forest paintings hung on the wall in his bedroom. He looked at it for a long time, stared hard…

It wasn’t anything like the other paintings which depicted Count Volkov’s arrival to America. It was instead just a dull landscape painting.

Just a bunch of trees in the woods, he saw.

But then he saw something else.

One of the trees in the painting was—

I don’t believe it! he thought. It’s… a forked tree!

Sure enough, there in the painting were a dozen or so trees, with autumn leaves. But one of the trees, one right out in front, was forked—two trunks growing out of a single trunk.

Wait a minute, Kevin thought. Maybe, just maybe—

He slowly put out his hand, and pressed on the wall panel where the painting hung. And—

click!

The wall panel moved!

A panel, he thought. Just like the panel downstairs. It’s another secret door. And secret doors lead to secret rooms…

The door’s hinge creaked as it swung open.

And all at once the image of what Kevin was now looking at hit him like a coconut falling on his head.

“Everybody! Up here!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “Come quick! I found it!”

And then Kevin took one slow step into the room. But it wasn’t the treasure he’d found…

Sitting there before him was a dusty coffin with chains locked around it.

Count Volkov’s coffin, Kevin realized in creeping terror.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“It’s—it’s a coffin! Becky shrieked at the top of her lungs when she looked inside. Then she began to shiver, and she ran out of the bedroom and scurried away.

“Wow,” Jimmy murmured, shivering himself.

“This is pretty freaky,” Wally said. “The kid found another secret room, only this one has a coffin in it.”

Finally, astonished, Aunt Carolyn muttered under her breath, “I don’t believe it…”

But all Kevin could think was this: It was a trick, to hide The Count’s coffin. Not at a forked tree in the woods, a forked tree in a painting. And-and—

And… what?

He’s in there, Kevin thought. Count Volkov is in that coffin right now… and he’s still alive!

“We have to open it,” Aunt Carolyn said.

“No!” Kevin bellowed. “The Count is inside!”

Aunt Carolyn ignored him; instead, she turned to Wally. “Wally, do you think you can break that chain?”

“Not without boltcutters,” Wally replied, “or a good saw. But we probably won’t have to break the chain. We can break the lock. Look how old it is. It’s almost rusted through.”

Kevin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They wanted to open Count Volkov’s coffin! “You can’t open it!” he shouted. “If you do that, you’ll let him out!”

But Kevin’s warnings went ignored, and already—ping! ping! ping!—Wally was striking the lock on the coffin’s chains with a hammer from his toolbelt.

“No!” Kevin shouted.

ping!

“No!”

ping!

“You can’t!”

ping—CRACK!

And that’s when the old, rusted lock broke in half.

The chains slid off the top of the coffin and clanked to the floor. Then Wally put his hand on the lid and began to raise it.

Kevin shrieked till he was bug-eyed. “Don’t open it! You’ll let Count Volkov out, and he’ll kill us!”

Very, very slowly, then, the coffin lid raised, its decades-old hinges creaking like nails across slate.

Higher and higher, Wally lifted the lid.