Edward Lee: Vampire Lodge

At least the room was decent. Kevin and Jimmy walked in to find a nice, large, wood-paneled room with a huge curtained window overlooking the woods in back of the lodge. There was a big wooden dresser, two closets, and two big, high beds on dark-wood frames and oak posters. And when Kevin looked closer he noticed that the big window wasn’t really a window; instead, there were two glass-paned French doors that opened up. “Hey, Jimmy, this is pretty cool!” Kevin enthused. “These doors open up to a balcony!”

“Let me see,” Jimmy said.

Kevin opened the pair of doors, and at once, a brisk breeze gusted into the room. They walked out onto a railed balcony.

“You’re right, this is cool,” Jimmy commented, leaning against the rail and looking out. All the trees in back of the lodge looked like a great, shivering wall of various colors from the autumn leaves. “What’s that path there?” Jimmy asked.

“It cuts through the woods,” Kevin remembered. “It’s kind of like a nature trail that leads to some of the campsites. We’ll check it out later.”

Jimmy’s brown hair blew in the breeze. “I guess we better get back in the room and put our stuff away.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “Come on.”

They went back in the big bedroom; Kevin closed the French doors.

“Looks like that creepy guy just tossed our suitcases on the floor,” Jimmy observed. The suitcases lay on top of each other near the closet. “I don’t think I like him much,” Jimmy added.

“Me either,” Kevin said. “And I don’t think he likes us too much either.”

“Why did your Aunt Carolyn hire him?”

“I don’t know, but I think I overheard her saying something like he didn’t charge a whole of money to keep up the lodge and the campsites.”

Jimmy ran his hand over the dresser, brushing off a pile of dust. “Well, it doesn’t look like he does much of a job. This room isn’t very clean.”

Kevin couldn’t disagree. There was a good deal of dust on the furniture, and he even noticed cobwebs in the corner of the room. “Yeah, you’re right. No wonder he doesn’t charge much to work here.”

“What was that your dad was saying, about your Aunt Carolyn going bust?”

“I’m not sure,” Kevin said, wondering himself. “I guess she’s not making a whole lot of money renting out rooms and campsites. Means she’s having money problems, I guess.”

Kevin stopped a moment, as he was putting some of his clothes on wire hangers. Immediately, he noticed two dark oil paintings hanging on the walls, set into what looked like old, expensive carved frames. Kevin had noticed a lot of paintings downstairs too. These two here, though, looked pretty dull. One showed a winter landscape, mostly trees topped with snow, and the other painting showed a fall forest scene. But the paintings were the only decorations in the room.

Kevin got his clothes hung up and put away faster than Jimmy. “I’m going downstairs to look around. Come on down when you’re done putting your stuff away.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, placing folded pairs of pants into the dresser.

Kevin walked back out into the dark hallway. Suddenly everything was so quiet. And, yes, there were lots of framed paintings that hung on the walls but it was so dark he couldn’t really see what they were paintings of. Some of them looked like people but all he could make out were dark streaks.

He went back down the stairs, to the sitting area in front of the giant fireplace. But—

Where’s Aunt Carolyn? he wondered. She didn’t seem to be around. The room crackled from the big fire, but when he went back out into the foyer, it got so quiet he could hear his own heart beat. In the foyer there were still more odd, dark paintings, most of which he couldn’t make much out of, like the ones upstairs. One painting, though, sat in a slant of daylight that came through the windows of the dining room.

What is… this? Kevin thought.

The painting showed what looked like a large rowboat coming ashore. There were several men in the rowboat but their faces all looked blank, as if they were in a trance. And sitting right in the middle of the rowboat were two things:

The first thing was a big open wooden box piled high with gold bricks.

And the second thing was—

Kevin’s eyes widened. It’s a— It’s a—

It was a coffin.

A creepy, wood-plank coffin.

Just like the one in the vampire movie he’d been watching with Becky last night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Well, it was great meeting you, Becky,” that young guy, Wally, was saying just inside the front door. Then he pushed the door open with a long creak. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

“Uh, uh,” Becky brilliantly replied, her face all lit up with a big, dopey grin. “I, uh, I will.”

“See ya.”

Wally left the lodge, shutting the door behind him.

Becky turned dreamily. “He’s just so, just so—”

Kevin smirked. “Just so what? ”

“He’s just so… wonderful…”

“Who?” Kevin said. “That Wally guy? What’s so wonderful about him?”

“Oh,” Becky gushed on, “he’s just so handsome and strong and rugged and smart and nice and—”

“ 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.”