Vampire Lodge

“And,” Kevin cut in, “he’s probably twenty years old! You’re only fifteen, Becky! Mom and Dad would go crazy! What is wrong with you? I can’t believe you have a crush on a twenty-year-old guy!”

“He’s not twenty!” Becky objected. “He’s seventeen. He just seems older because he’s so mature…”

So mature, Kevin thought, rolling his eyes. Yeah, right. He decided to let the topic drop—trying to convince Becky that older boys weren’t for her was always a lost cause. “Come here a minute,” he said instead, remembering what he wanted to show her. “Look at this picture over here —”

“I don’t have time to look at some stupid picture,” Becky snapped back. “I’ve got important things to do.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like deciding what I’m going to wear later on. Wally said he’d be back in this evening to do some work. I want to look my best.”

Kevin frowned hard. “Okay, fine, but just come here for one second and look at this picture on the wall. It’s a painting of a boat—”

“Big deal,” Becky said.

“It’s like a rowboat, with a bunch of guys in it, only the guys have these really weird blank looks on their faces, and right in the middle of the boat there’s a big crate full of gold bricks—”

“Big deal.”

“But there’s also a coffin in the boat!” Kevin excitedly went on. “And the coffin looks just like the one in the vampire movie we saw last night!”

“You have vampires on the brain,” Becky sniped. “I’m going back upstairs. Oh, but you know what?”

“What?” Kevin said, frowning.

“Wally even drives. He even has his own car!”

Great, Kevin thought. He can have his own bus for all I care.

Becky stomped back up the steps, leaving Kevin alone in the dark, dusty foyer. He looked at the painting some more, squinting, and then he noticed that the painting had a title, written in tiny cursive letters along the bottom.

The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure.

Kevin’s scalp tingled. He’d been right…

“The Count,” he whispered to himself. “As in Count Dracula, the king of the vampires…”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Drac–who?” Jimmy asked, peering at the dark painting on the foyer wall. Kevin had made sure to point out the strange picture the minute Jimmy had come back downstairs.

“Drac-u-la,” Kevin slowly pronounced for his friend. “Like what I was telling you about on our way down in the car. Count Dracula. He’s from some place called Transylvania, and he’s, like, hundreds of years old.”

“Aw,” Jimmy scoffed, “no one lives that long. How can he be hundreds of years old?”

“Like I told you, Jimmy. He’s a vampire.”

“Oh, yeah, someone who comes out of his coffin at night and drinks people’s blood so he can live forever.”

“They have fangs,” Kevin added. “And they bite people on the neck, and they can never go in sunlight. And if they want to, they can turn into bats, and sometimes they can even change into wolves.”

“You mean like werewolves, the things people change into whenever there’s a full moon?”

“No,” Kevin said. “I don’t think they can turn into werewolves, just the regular kind of wolves.”

Jimmy seemed impressed at first, but he hesitated a little. “That’s pretty cool but… vampires can’t be for real. I mean, you don’t believe that this Count Dracula really exists, do you?”

“Well, no,” Kevin answered. “Of course not. Vampires are just make-believe, and so are werewolves and zombies and the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy, all that kind of monster stuff. Somebody in Hollywood invented them so they could make movies about ’em.”

Jimmy looked back at the painting. “I wonder who painted this?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said.

“And why would your Aunt want a painting of a vampire’s coffin in her lodge?”

Hmm, Kevin thought. That’s a good question. As a matter of fact, that’s a real good question. “You’re right. It seems like a pretty weird thing for an adult to have hanging in a place like this.”

Jimmy nodded. “And adults can be pretty weird sometimes.”

“You’re right about that,” Kevin agreed. “We can ask her about it later.”

“Good idea.”

They wandered around downstairs for a little while, looking at all the other paintings. But most of them were just landscapes and beaches and paintings of bowls of fruit, stuff like that. They didn’t see any more vampire paintings.

And they didn’t see Aunt Carolyn anywhere. I wonder where she went, Kevin thought. It wasn’t like she could be busy with other guests because there weren’t any guests. And she wasn’t fixing lunch either—the big country kitchen was empty.

“This place sure is big,” Jimmy observed.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And dark.”

This too was true. All of the windows in the lodge seemed to be oddly narrow, and they were all covered over by heavy curtains. It’s almost as if Aunt Carolyn likes it to be dark in here, Kevin considered. Like she’s keeping all the curtains closed on purpose.

“I think your sister’s got a crush on that Wally guy,” Jimmy remarked as they wandered down another hall off from the kitchen.

“You can say that again,” Kevin said, and smirked. “She’s got a crush on a new guy every week.”

“But what do you think of this Wally guy?”

“I don’t know. He’s nicer than Bill Bitner, that’s for sure,” Kevin commented.

“Anybody’s nicer than Bill Bitner.”

“Yeah, but Wally… I don’t know. I don’t trust him,” Kevin remarked. “He looks like bad news to me, like a hood or something.”

“Then you better tell your sister to stay away from him.”

Kevin laughed sharply. “Becky? Are you kidding? She never listens to me. You know Becky—she knows more about anything than anybody, and everybody else is stupid.”

Then—

click!

Both stopped and turned. They’d definitely heard a sound—a loud and sharp click! Like a—

Like a door opening, Kevin realized.

But… where was the door?

They peered down the dark corridor that came off the pantry from the kitchen. The low, wood-paneled walls made the corridor look even darker, but Kevin couldn’t see any doors. It’s just a hallway with a bunch of shelves, he saw. The only door was at the very end, and that couldn’t have been the one that opened because if it had, Kevin and Jimmy would have seen it.

And then—

Light, Kevin saw. An eerie, wavering swell of light was slowly moving into the hall.