Vampire Lodge

astonishment. “This is great.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kevin agreed. “I love coming up here.”

“What’s the big deal?” Becky objected. “Just a bunch of chopped-down cornfields and ugly swamps, and a lot of trees with hardly any leaves left on them. So what.” Then she went back to reading one of her dumb romance novels.

“We’re almost there, kids,” Mr. Bennell announced.

“So you say there’s some good fishing up this way?” Mr. Grimaldi asked.

“Not good fishing, great fishing,” Kevin’s father answered his friend. “Striped bass, lake trout, and perch like you wouldn’t believe.”

“How long has your sister owned the place?”

“Oh, years and years. She’s always loved it up here. And it’s a shame too.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Grimaldi asked.

“Well, business has dropped over the years,” Kevin’s father said. “Things are getting pretty run down, Carolyn can’t afford to have the property properly maintained anymore. Each year, somehow, she manages to hang on, but it looks like she’ll probably go bust soon.”

Kevin’s ears perked up. He wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about, but it didn’t sound good. “Hey, Dad, what’s that mean?” he asked. “Going bust?”

Mr. Bennell seemed to duck the question. “Never you mind about that, Kevin,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later when I’ve got more time.”

Figures, Kevin thought. That’s what adults said whenever they didn’t want to talk about something.

“It means she’s going broke,” Becky said. “It means she doesn’t have enough money to run the lodge anymore, and she’ll have to close it down, stupid.”

“Becky, stop calling you brother stupid,” Mr. Bennell ordered.

Kevin discreetly stuck his tongue out at his sister. Then he turned to Jimmy. “And just wait till you see the bluffs.”

“Bluffs? What’s that?” Jimmy asked.

“They’re like cliffs. At the end of my aunt’s land, they’re these great bluffs overlooking the ocean. You can see the waves and everything. And the bluffs catch all the great wind, so we’ll have some really super kite flying.”

“Yeah,” Becky cut in, grimacing, “and while you guys are flying kites, all I get to do is sit around the lodge with weird old Aunt Carolyn.”

Before Kevin could comment, though, his father said, “Hey, kids. We’re here.”

“All right!” Kevin exclaimed.

They pulled into the entrance of the lodge, which was at the end of a long, gravel road that cut through the woods.

“This is something!” Jimmy remarked, staring through the side window. “What a place!”

“I told you it was cool,” Kevin said.

The lodge was a great, three-story, cedar-shingled building with a high, peaked roof. Sheets of sprawling, green ivy could be seen crawling up the sides of several old, brick chimneys and fallen leaves of every color lay all around the lot. The building itself sat back in a small dell, surrounded by the dense forest.

“It looks like a haunted house, doesn’t it?” Kevin commented, enthused.

“Yeah,” Jimmy replied. “It’s creepy.”

“It looks like a dump, is what it looks like,” Becky threw in her own opinion, smirking.

“Becky, don’t call your aunt’s house a dump,” Mr. Bennell said, turning the steering wheel around. A small gravel court wound around the front of the lodge, and that’s where Kevin’s father parked the station wagon. They all got out of the car, while the two adults opened the tailgate and began taking out their pieces of luggage.

Kevin stood in the middle of the court, looking up. Despite the bright morning sun, the lodge sat in darkness, shaded by all the high, heavily branched trees. Bright red and yellow leaves were falling right this minute, like giant, slow snowflakes. The windows of the lodge seemed small and odd.

And very dark.

“You’re right, Jimmy whispered. “It looks just like a haunted house. I’ll bet it’s got ghosts and everything.”

Then, very slowly, a long, high creaking sound could be heard that sent a prickly chill up Kevin’s back, and that’s when he noticed the large wooden front door opening very, very slowly.

creeeeeeeeeeeeak—

Kevin knew it was his imagination, but for a moment it almost seemed as if the door were opening all by itself.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Hey, everybody! It’s so great to see you!” announced the thin, slinky figure that, moments later, stepped out of the lodge’s front entrance. The entrance, framed by big blocks of rock, looked like an oblong black hole, and it made Kevin think of the coffin he’d seen in the vampire movie last night—it was the same shape, an odd oblong shape.

“Is that your Aunt Carolyn?” Jimmy whispered.

“Yeah, that’s her,” Kevin answered. “She is a little weird looking, but you’ll like her.”

Weird looking, that was a fact! Aunt Carolyn reminded Kevin of some sleek kind of vine. She was curvy and very thin, with long, shiny black hair hanging nearly to her waist. She was wearing—as she always did—a long black dress like an evening gown, that was very tight. And her face—

“Jeeze,” Jimmy commented. “Look at her face.”

—her face was almost snow-white, with dark, penetrating eyes, and thin, pale lips.

Almost like a woman vampire, Kevin couldn’t help but think. Instead, he said, “Yeah, well, Aunt Carolyn doesn’t get much of a chance to be out in the sun. The trees here block out all the sunlight, and she spends most of her time inside the lodge, taking care of guests and stuff.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, but he didn’t seemed terribly convinced of this. Instead, he just looked at Kevin’s aunt like she was some sort of strange piece of furniture.

“Hi, Carolyn,” Kevin’s father greeted, and walked up the front stone steps to kiss his sister on the cheek. After that, all the proper introductions were made. “Oh, you’re just getting so big!” Carolyn exclaimed of Kevin, and then pinched him on the cheek. Kevin liked his Aunt Carolyn a lot, but if there was one thing he didn’t like, it was the way she always pinched him on the cheek and told him how big he was getting. This constant comment always made him feel like a little kid.

“Well, come in, come in!” Aunt Carolyn said. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“Come on, guys,” Kevin’s father instructed. “Let’s grab our suitcases and bring them into the lodge.”

“Oh, don’t worry about your luggage,” Aunt Carolyn gushed. “Bill and Wally will bring them in.”

Bill and Wally? Kevin thought. He’d been to his aunt’s lodge a bunch of times, and he’d never heard of anyone with those names.

“Aunt Carolyn?” he asked. “Who are Bill and Wally?”

“Oh, of course, you’ve never met them,” she said. “They’re my new assistants. They take care of the lodge and the grounds.” Then, oddly, Aunt Carolyn turned to Kevin’s father and said in a much lower voice, “I had to let my regular maintenance people go, unfortunately. They charged too much, and with the decline in guests over the past few years… well, you know. But Bill and Wally work for a lot cheaper.”

And then Kevin’s father nodded silently, like he understood exactly what Aunt Carolyn meant. Kevin felt sure they were referring to what he’d heard earlier, about his aunt not having enough money to keep up the lodge.

They all followed her into the lodge then, which was dark and a little dusty. Their footsteps on the wood-tile floor echoed up through the high foyer and reception area.

“Kind of messy,” Kevin whispered to Jimmy when they walked in. He could swear that dust actually drifted up from the floor as they walked in.