Edward Lee: Vampire Lodge

“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. And then—

A figure appeared.

Both Kevin and Jimmy stiffened up in a quick fear. Kevin recognized the figure at once at once.

Bill, he thought. Bill Bitner, the handyman…

And what was scariest of all was this:

It didn’t look like Bill had come out of any door—

A chill traced up Kevin’s back.

This is impossible, he thought.

It looked instead like Bill Bitner had walked right out of a solid wall…

CHAPTER NINE

“Hey, you boys!”

Bill Bitner’s shout made Kevin and Jimmy’s feet jump an inch off the floor. Bill looked at them with an angry glare. He raised an old, glowing lantern—the light they’d seen—up higher so he could see them. “You got no business back here! What’re you two up to?”

“We’re, uh, we’re just looking around, Mr. Bitner,” Kevin said with a hitch in his voice.

“Well go look around somewhere else,” Bill shot back. And it was then that Kevin noticed something else.

Bill had something long and thin in his hand, and he was sort of holding it behind him, almost as if he didn’t want the boys to see what it was.

But the glimpse Kevin had caught was enough.

It’s a shovel, Kevin realized. He’s holding a shovel…

“Now go on and get out of here, the both of you,” Bill ordered them. “Neither of you got any business snooping around back here.”

“We weren’t snooping, Mr. Bitner,” Jimmy said. “We—”

“Just go on and get out here!” Bill Bitner repeated. Then he went to the door at the very end of the hall, opened it, went in, then—

Slam!

—slammed the door shut behind him.

“Did you see that?” Kevin asked, his eyes wide as coins.

“Yeah, before he went into that room, it looked like he walked right out of the wall.”

“Let’s go check it out.”

“No way!” Jimmy objected. “You heard him. He told us to get out of here.”

“So what? He’s gone; he went into that other room.”

“Yeah, and he’s probably standing on the other side of the door listening, figuring we’ll snoop around some more. Let’s get out of here.”

“What? I can’t believe this.” Kevin challenged. “You’re chicken?”

“I’m not chicken,” Jimmy came right back, “and I’m not stupid either. That guy gives me the creeps. And what if he tells our dads that we were snooping around?”

Kevin opened his mouth to say something more, but then he thought about it and decided not to.

Jimmy had a good point.

Dad’s a cool guy, he reminded himself. But he wouldn’t be too happy if he got back from his fishing trip and heard that Jimmy and I were causing trouble.

“Look,” Jimmy said. “You can do what you want, but I’m getting out of here.”

“Me too,” Kevin agreed.

They walked back out the way they came, down the dark hallway, through the kitchen, then back out into the foyer. And in their journey, they again didn’t catch a glimpse of Aunt Carolyn anywhere.

“I know what we can do,” Jimmy suggested.

“What’s that?”

“We can put together our kites!”

“Good idea,” Kevin agreed. “Let’s do it.” He had to admit, there was nothing better to do, and things were getting pretty boring around here real fast. Aunt Carolyn didn’t even have a television in the lodge. No shows, no movies, no nothing. The pits, Kevin thought. At least if they assembled their kites now, they might be able to get out onto the bluffs today.

They tracked back through the foyer toward the stairwell. Kevin was looking forward to getting his kite together—it was a vampire bat kite—but just as he approached the bottom of the big stairwell, something made him come to a halt and pause for a moment.