Edward Lee - Vampire Lodge

Aunt Carolyn continued, impressed by Kevin’s sense of observation. “And anyway, Count Volkov, now banished from his kingdom, loaded up his gold and his servants onto The Scrimm, and then he set sail… for America.”

“And when he got to America,” Kevin concluded, “his servants brought him ashore in his coffin, along with his gold. And they burned the Scrimm…”

“Exactly,” Aunt Carolyn verified. “The Count ordered that The Scrimm be burned in the water so that none of his servants could sail back to Europe and tell anyone where The Count was. He didn’t want any of his enemies coming after him to try to kill him.”

Kevin was astonished. He’d been right! The paintings he’d seen were depictions of the very story Aunt Carolyn was telling right now, the local legend. But when Kevin fully realized that, another question came immediately to mind.

“Who painted the paintings, Aunt Carolyn?” he asked.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!”

Aunt Carolyn smiled that creepy smile of hers again. From the shadows in which she sat, she pointed across to the room into the foyer, at the first painting Kevin had seen this morning.

“Go look,” she instructed him. “Look for the artist’s name on the canvas. It’s written in the lower right corner, in very small letters.”

Confused, Kevin got up from the couch and walked over to the painting. The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure, he read the title again. Then his eyes moved down, to the lower right-hand corner of the fancy, carved picture frame.

It was so dark he could barely see at all; he had to squint as hard as he could, and even then, it took a momentary flash of lightning for him to actually be able to read the artist’s signature.

My… gosh, Kevin thought, bug-eyed.

The signature, in fine, curvy letters, was this:

Count Volkov

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kevin rushed back to the hearth room, and, nearly stuttering, said, “You mean he painted these pictures? Count Volkov himself?

“He certainly did, Kevin,” Aunt Carolyn replied. “There’s no way you could have seen them all yet, but Count Volkov painted a lot of the paintings in the lodge. There are actually several dozen of them, hanging in various places.”

Kevin felt intrigued by this information, that The Count himself had painted the very pictures Kevin had looked at and even touched. But then, Kevin’s thoughts came to a screeching halt.

Why, he wondered, are Count Volkov’s paintings here? In my aunt’s lodge?

It didn’t make sense!

“And let me guess your next question, Kevin,” Aunt Carolyn said, still cloaked by the shadows. “You want to know why The Count’s paintings are here, in my lodge, right?”

“Well, yes,” Kevin admitted. “I was just thinking that, just this second.”

Aunt Carolyn’s voice lowered to a strange whisper. “So I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Because this lodge, this very same building that you’re sitting in right this moment, used to be owned by Count Volkov.”

“No!” Kevin exclaimed.

“Wow!” Jimmy said, his mouth still stuffed with popcorn.

“Kevin’s getting scared,” Becky rudely interrupted.

“I am not!” Kevin retorted.

“Watch out for the big bad vampire… Calve. ”

“Shut up! And don’t call me Kevvie!”

“That’s enough of that, kids,” Aunt Carolyn went on. “But what I just told you is true. When The Count arrived in America, it was the beach right off my bluffs where he landed. And since he had the equivalent of many millions of dollars in gold bricks, the first thing he needed was a home. So he paid the local villagers to build the lodge. According to the legend, the lodge was built over a hundred years ago for the price of one single gold brick that weighed over twenty pounds.”

“That’s a lot of gold,” Jimmy said, munching more popcorn.

“It certainly is,” Aunt Carolyn responded. “Today, a standard gold brick is worth almost $200,000. And it was worth a lot more back in those days.”

Kevin’s mind reeled; he was fascinated, but his fascination had nothing to do with the amount of money it cost to build the lodge. What fascinated him was this: This is Count Volkov’s house, he thought. I’m sitting in The Count’s house right this minute!

“About twenty years ago,” Aunt Carolyn went on, “I found out that the lodge was for sale. It had been vacant for years and years, and it was in very bad condition at the time. So I was able to buy it for a small amount of money, then I had it refurbished, and opened it up to campers and fishermen.”

“If it was vacant for all those years,” Jimmy asked, grabbing yet another fistful of popcorn, “how come nobody else bought it?”

“No one wanted it,” Aunt Carolyn told him.

“But it’s a great place,” Kevin said. “How come no one wanted to buy it?”

“Well, because of it’s history. Who would want to buy a lodge that was once owned by a man rumored to be a vampire? The lodge was considered bad luck, like a haunted house, so it sat for all those years without any buyers. Fortunately, I was able to fix it up pretty well, and until very recently, the lodge and the surrounding fishing dells and campgrounds attracted quite a lot of people.”

Kevin’s astonishment held him fast into his seat. There was still one more question burning in his mind…

“What is it, Kevin?” Aunt Carolyn asked. “You look like you have another question. Am I right?”

“Well, uh, yes, Aunt Carolyn,” Kevin admitted. “I do have another question.”

Aunt Carolyn smiled again, as though she already knew what Kevin wanted to ask. “Go ahead.”

“Well, uh, whatever happened to Count Volkov?”

“Nobody knows,” Aunt Carolyn said. “He disappeared, was never seen again. But of course, there are rumors about what actually happened.”

“What are they?” Kevin asked, still brimming with excitement. “What are the rumors?”

Aunt Carolyn relaxed back in her armchair. “The rumors are that the townspeople eventually found out that Count Volkov was a vampire, just like the people back in his kingdom had, and one day, when The Count was asleep in his coffin, they all banded together and overpowered Count Volkov’s servants. Then, still in the safety of daylight, they chained The Count’s coffin up… and buried it.”

“Where?” Kevin asked.

“They buried it somewhere on the grounds, Kevin, but no one knows exactly where. And they never told anyone else where The Count’s grave was, so nobody could dig him up and unleash him again.”

“Wow,” Jimmy said, digging out the last kernels of popcorn out of the bowl. “But what about all that gold?” Jimmy asked. He looked dejectedly down at the empty bowl of popcorn. “What happened to all those millions of dollars?”

“Nobody knows that either, Jimmy,” Aunt Carolyn said. “The way the rumor goes is that The Count had it buried somewhere on his own, and he wrote down the location of where it was buried in his secret diary. But no one ever found out where the diary was because The Count never told anyone. All that money is probably buried somewhere on the property too, just like The Count’s coffin, but with all these hundreds of acres of forest, it’s not likely that it will ever be found.”

Okay, Kevin thought, that crate of gold bricks is buried somewhere around here. This part he easily understood: buried treasure. There were lots of stories about buried treasure. What bothered him, however, was not the part about the buried gold bricks…

The Count’s coffin is buried somewhere around here too… with him still in it!