Edward Lee - Vampire Lodge

Kevin used his time wisely. He searched all the kitchen cabinets and counter drawers quickly and efficiently. There were quite a few of them, and this took several minutes. But unfortunately—

A, darn it!

He didn’t find a single flashlight anywhere.

Without a flashlight, there was no way he could expect to investigate Bill’s secret passageway. I’ll never find out what’s going on around here! he exclaimed to himself, frustrated. He looked through a few more drawers and cabinets, found nothing, but then—

All right!

It wasn’t a flashlight he’d found, but it was the next best thing. There, lying in the last drawer, was a box of long, white candles, and right next to the candles was a large box of blue-tip safety matches.

He took up one candle and removed the box of matches. Then, very carefully, he struck one of the matches across the flint striker on the box, cautious to make sure the box was closed when he did so, and then he lit the candle.

Now he was ready to get on with it!

He walked to the end of the kitchen, past the long butcher-block counter, and stepped into the back hallway.

It was like stepping from a world of light into a world of grim, silent, eerie darkness. Suddenly Kevin found himself standing in the middle of what seemed a corridor of faint, shifting shadows, the shadows of course being thrown by the single candle in his hand. Again, the darkness made the hallway seem a lot longer; it seemed to stretch on for a hundred yards, but he knew this was only his imagination working on him. Get on with it! he ordered himself. What are you? A chicken?

And if there was one thing Kevin swore he would never be, it was a chicken. So he walked on down the dark hallway, with bizarre, ghostly shadows roving about him from the candle. The shadows, above him and on both sides, looked like weird butterflies flittering about…

Butterflies—

Or bats! he thought.

But that was silly. He was just getting scared.

Instead, he let his imagination get behind him, and he proceeded down the corridor. Each wooden panel on the wall had one of the dark paintings hanging on it, and Kevin inspected each one as he passed, holding the candle close to the canvas.

His eyes widened, and a breath caught in his chest.

Each painting showed a different depiction of The Count’s arrival to the shores of America. His coffin and crate of gold bricks being carried across the beach, through the woods, up hills and dales. Then another painting showed the lodge being built. And another painting showed the lodge fully erected, and it looked just like the lodge today.

And one more thing:

All of these paintings bore the same artist’s signature in the lower right-hand corner:

Count Volkov, Kevin read.

The Count had painted all of these pictures. So Kevin was right:

The Count is more than just a legend, he realized. He was a real person, who really came here over a hundred years ago, and he really had this lodge built, and it must have cost a lot of money, so maybe The Count really did have a crate full of gold bricks that he’d brought with him from Europe…

And if all of that was true, then maybe the rest was also true.

Maybe it was true what Aunt Carolyn said earlier, he considered. About how all legends are based in truth. Maybe Count Volkov really was a vampire too. And maybe his crate of gold bricks really is buried somewhere around here, and maybe his coffin is too. With The Count still in it, just like Aunt Carolyn said!

Eventually Kevin came to the end of the hallway, to the wall-panel on which hung the painting entitled The Count Comes Ashore.

This is it, Kevin thought to himself. He knew there was no way he could be mistaken. This was the exact same place he’d discovered earlier.

He steeled himself. His hand, very slowly, raised up in the candle-lit dark, and then he pushed against the panel.

And, just as he’d remembered, the panel moved, and—

click!

The panel nudged forward, then began to move inward, with a slow and steady creeeeeeak…

A moment later, Kevin found himself standing before a pitch-black, open doorway.

The secret passage, he thought.

Here it was, right in front of him.

The candle shadows seemed to move faster, like a flurry of birds. Kevin felt his heart suddenly begin to beat more quickly, like an impatient fist pounding on the inside of his chest. Total silence wrapped around him—he didn’t even hear the thunder and lightning anymore. All he could hear now were his own thoughts:

Here’s the secret passage…

And he knew there was only one thing left to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When Kevin entered the great, black mouth of the passageway, he immediately felt the drop in temperature. Outside in the hallway, it was cozy and warm. In here, though, it was cold enough to make him shiver. And the floor of the passage wasn’t carpeted, it was flat, smooth cement which felt cold as ice against the bottom of his feet.

Second thoughts began to occur to him:

Maybe this is stupid, he thought. Maybe there’s nothing back here. Maybe I’m being an idiot and I shouldn’t be fooling around back here at all…

But Kevin somehow knew that none of this was true. There was something very wrong about the things going on around his aunt’s lodge, and he was determined to find out what those things were. And he knew something else, too:

This passageway is the perfect place to start.

And with that thought, he continued down the chilly passageway. The air felt damp; when he coughed once, the sound echoed. After about ten more yards, he came to a large, wooden door.

There must be another room behind it, he considered. The room that Bill Bitner was in…

Kevin knew it wasn’t locked—he could see it standing open an inch. His teeth ground together when he pulled back on the rusted, iron handle; the door’s hinges suddenly sounded like a cat with its tail stepped on.

What faced him now was a pitch-black chamber.

Kevin cautiously moved into the room, holding the candle out in front of him. The walls were made of old, red bricks with yellowed cement oozing out from the gaps. What kind of a room is this? he asked himself, moving forward a few steps. He didn’t see any lamps or light fixtures, nor did he notice any electrical switches on the walls, and suddenly this made sense because then he remembered that when he and Jimmy had seen Bill Bitner coming out of the passage this morning, Bill had not only been holding a shovel, he’d also been holding a lantern. The darkness here seemed so thick it was like wading through a cold, black pond. The candle threw a fluttering shape of light before him, and eventually, he could see things. A rickety wooden table, several chairs, a dented coffee pot, and—

Kevin stopped when he turned.

Shovels , he realized.

There, propped up in the corner, were two long-handled shovels with large blades, almost like—

Almost like gravedigging shovels, he pondered, like the ones he’d seen in so many vampire movies…

He and Jimmy had seen Bill Bitner with a shovel just out in the hall, hadn’t they? And they’d also seen Wally digging in the wood earlier. With a big shovel like one of these, Kevin recalled.

And, again, he wondered about something else:

What were they digging for?

In another corner, he noticed a bunch of old rolled up tents, sleeping bags, and lanterns, and on the wall opposite, hanging on a large piece of pegboard, was an assortment of regular tools, like the kind his dad had int their garage. None of this was any big deal.