Vampire Lodge (2 page)

“
Why don’t you put those
stupid kite kits in the back,” Becky complained,
frowning.

“
Because they’ll get busted
up from all your stupid junky pink Girl Luggage, that’s why,” Kevin
contested. “Who on earth would want
round
suitcases?”

“
Dad!” Becky whined.
“Kevin’s making fun of my luggage again!”

“
Oh, I am not!” Kevin said.
“Jeeze!”

“
Kevin, stop making fun of
your sister’s luggage,” Kevin’s father ordered from behind the
steering wheel. “We’re not even out of the driveway yet, and you
two are already at it. At this rate we’ll all be having nervous
breakdowns by the time we get to your Aunt Carolyn’s
lodge.”

“
I don’t even want to go,”
Becky complained. “Aunt Carolyn’s weird.”

“
She is not,” Kevin
said.

“
What’s weird about her?”
Jimmy asked curiously.

Becky chuckled. “Well, for starters,
she always wears these ridiculous spooky black dresses, and she has
this real long black hair hanging down all the way to the middle of
her back, and she’s real old.”

“
Becky,” Mr. Bennell said,
“your Aunt Carolyn is not old. She’s only in her
forties.”

“
Wow, that’s pretty old,”
Jimmy whispered aside to Kevin.

“
I know,” Kevin replied.
“But don’t listen to any of that junk my sister’s saying. Becky
never has anything good to say about anyone. Aunt Carolyn’s really
cool.”

“
You just think she’s
cool,” Becky added, “because she wears all those creepy black
clothes all the time, like the people in your stupid vampires
movies.”

“
What’s a vampire?” Jimmy
asked.

“
You don’t know what
a
vampire
is?”
Kevin asked. He was astonished. “Like Dracula and
Vampirella?”

“
Nope,” Jimmy
said.

“
Vampires are the living
dead,” Kevin answered with enthusiasm. “They come out at night from
their coffins and drink people’s blood so that they can live
forever. And they can change into bats.”

“
Wow!” Jimmy
said.

“
And they’re—”

“
They’re
stupid,
is what they
are,” Becky rudely interrupted Kevin’s explanation. “Some silly old
bald guy with fangs climbing out of a coffin. I’ve never seen
anything so stupid in my life.”

“
Oh, yeah? Well if it was
so stupid, how come you were watching it?”

“
Because you hogged the
remote control, that’s why,” Becky replied. “I had no choice. You
think I
wanted
to
watch that dumb junk. Vampire movies are stupid, and only stupid
kids watch them.”

“
Becky, stop calling your
brother stupid,” Mr. Bennell said from the front seat.

“
But, Dad, Kevin won’t shut
up about vampires,” she said back. “Vampires, vampires, vampires.
I’m so sick of hearing about vampires.”

“
Kevin, stop talking about
vampires,” Mr. Bennell said.

“
Okay, Dad,” Kevin replied,
but then he thought,
Boy, is this going to
be a long ride.

CHAPTER THREE

But actually, as it turned out, the
drive wasn’t that bad. Once they got off the interstate, heading up
toward the country, it seemed like they were entering another
world. The long, wide stretches of car-crowded highway soon changed
to narrow, twisted roads which ran through heavy woodlands and past
huge, open fields of cut cornstalks and still more fields of
waving, shimmering grass. They even passed a lake and several
swamps. Kevin loved getting out of town and up into the country
like this, especially when it was the middle of autumn. The air was
clean and fresh and cool, and the sun seemed to make everything
brighter.

“
I’ve never seen anything
like this in my whole life,” Jimmy said, gazing out the window in
complete astonishment. “This is great.”

“
Yeah, I know,” Kevin
agreed. “I love coming up here.”

“
What’s the big deal?”
Becky objected. “Just a bunch of chopped-down cornfields and ugly
swamps, and a lot of trees with hardly any leaves left on them. So
what.” Then she went back to reading one of her dumb romance
novels.

“
We’re almost there, kids,”
Mr. Bennell announced.

“
So you say there’s some
good fishing up this way?” Mr. Grimaldi asked.

“
Not good fishing,
great
fishing,” Kevin’s
father answered his friend. “Striped bass, lake trout, and perch
like you wouldn’t believe.”

“
How long has your sister
owned the place?”

“
Oh, years and years. She’s
always loved it up here. And it’s a shame too.”

“
What do you mean?” Mr.
Grimaldi asked.

“
Well, business has dropped
over the years,” Kevin’s father said. “Things are getting pretty
run down, Carolyn can’t afford to have the property properly
maintained anymore. Each year, somehow, she manages to hang on, but
it looks like she’ll probably go bust soon.”

Kevin’s ears perked up. He
wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about, but it didn’t sound
good. “Hey, Dad, what’s that mean?” he asked. “Going
bust?
”

Mr. Bennell seemed to duck the
question. “Never you mind about that, Kevin,” he said. “We’ll talk
about it later when I’ve got more time.”

Figures,
Kevin thought. That’s what adults said whenever
they didn’t want to talk about something.

“
It means she’s going
broke,” Becky said. “It means she doesn’t have enough money to run
the lodge anymore, and she’ll have to close it down,
stupid.”

“
Becky, stop calling you
brother stupid,” Mr. Bennell ordered.

Kevin discreetly stuck his tongue out
at his sister. Then he turned to Jimmy. “And just wait till you see
the bluffs.”

“
Bluffs? What’s that?”
Jimmy asked.

“
They’re like cliffs. At
the end of my aunt’s land, they’re these great bluffs overlooking
the ocean. You can see the waves and everything. And the bluffs
catch all the great wind, so we’ll have some really super kite
flying.”

“
Yeah,” Becky cut in,
grimacing, “and while you guys are flying kites, all I get to do is
sit around the lodge with weird old Aunt Carolyn.”

Before Kevin could comment, though,
his father said, “Hey, kids. We’re here.”

“
All right!” Kevin
exclaimed.

They pulled into the entrance of the
lodge, which was at the end of a long, gravel road that cut through
the woods.

“
This is something!” Jimmy
remarked, staring through the side window. “What a
place!”

“
I told you it was cool,”
Kevin said.

The lodge was a great, three-story,
cedar-shingled building with a high, peaked roof. Sheets of
sprawling, green ivy could be seen crawling up the sides of several
old, brick chimneys and fallen leaves of every color lay all around
the lot. The building itself sat back in a small dell, surrounded
by the dense forest.

“
It looks like a haunted
house, doesn’t it?” Kevin commented, enthused.

“
Yeah,” Jimmy replied.
“It’s creepy.”

“
It looks like a
dump,
is what it looks
like,” Becky threw in her own opinion, smirking.

“
Becky, don’t call your
aunt’s house a dump,” Mr. Bennell said, turning the steering wheel
around. A small gravel court wound around the front of the lodge,
and that’s where Kevin’s father parked the station wagon. They all
got out of the car, while the two adults opened the tailgate and
began taking out their pieces of luggage.

Kevin stood in the middle of the
court, looking up. Despite the bright morning sun, the lodge sat in
darkness, shaded by all the high, heavily branched trees. Bright
red and yellow leaves were falling right this minute, like giant,
slow snowflakes. The windows of the lodge seemed small and
odd.

And very dark.

“
You’re right, Jimmy
whispered. “It looks just like a haunted house. I’ll bet it’s got
ghosts and everything.”

Then, very slowly, a long, high
creaking sound could be heard that sent a prickly chill up Kevin’s
back, and that’s when he noticed the large wooden front door
opening very, very slowly.

creeeeeeeeeeeeak—

Kevin knew it was his imagination, but
for a moment it almost seemed as if the door were opening all by
itself.

CHAPTER FOUR

“
Hey, everybody! It’s so
great to see you!” announced the thin, slinky figure that, moments
later, stepped out of the lodge’s front entrance. The entrance,
framed by big blocks of rock, looked like an oblong black hole, and
it made Kevin think of the coffin he’d seen in the vampire movie
last night—it was the same shape, an odd oblong shape.

“
Is that your Aunt
Carolyn?” Jimmy whispered.

“
Yeah, that’s her,” Kevin
answered. “She is a little weird looking, but you’ll like
her.”

Weird looking, that was a fact! Aunt
Carolyn reminded Kevin of some sleek kind of vine. She was curvy
and very thin, with long, shiny black hair hanging nearly to her
waist. She was wearing—as she always did—a long black dress like an
evening gown, that was very tight. And her face—

“
Jeeze,” Jimmy commented.
“Look at her face.”

—
her face was almost
snow-white, with dark, penetrating eyes, and thin, pale
lips.

Almost like a woman
vampire,
Kevin couldn’t help but think.
Instead, he said, “Yeah, well, Aunt Carolyn doesn’t get much of a
chance to be out in the sun. The trees here block out all the
sunlight, and she spends most of her time inside the lodge, taking
care of guests and stuff.”

“
Oh,” Jimmy said, but he
didn’t seemed terribly convinced of this. Instead, he just looked
at Kevin’s aunt like she was some sort of strange piece of
furniture.

“
Hi, Carolyn,” Kevin’s
father greeted, and walked up the front stone steps to kiss his
sister on the cheek. After that, all the proper introductions were
made. “Oh, you’re just getting so
big!
” Carolyn exclaimed of Kevin, and
then pinched him on the cheek. Kevin liked his Aunt Carolyn a lot,
but if there was one thing he
didn’t
like, it was the way she
always pinched him on the cheek and told him how big he was
getting. This constant comment always made him feel like a little
kid.

“
Well, come in, come in!”
Aunt Carolyn said. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“
Come on, guys,” Kevin’s
father instructed. “Let’s grab our suitcases and bring them into
the lodge.”

“
Oh, don’t worry about your
luggage,” Aunt Carolyn gushed. “Bill and Wally will bring them
in.”

Bill and Wally?
Kevin thought. He’d been to his aunt’s lodge a
bunch of times, and he’d never heard of anyone with those
names.

“
Aunt Carolyn?” he asked.
“Who are Bill and Wally?”

“
Oh, of course, you’ve
never met them,” she said. “They’re my new assistants. They take
care of the lodge and the grounds.” Then, oddly, Aunt Carolyn
turned to Kevin’s father and said in a much lower voice, “I had to
let my regular maintenance people go, unfortunately. They charged
too much, and with the decline in guests over the past few years…
well, you know. But Bill and Wally work for a lot
cheaper.”

And then Kevin’s father nodded
silently, like he understood exactly what Aunt Carolyn meant. Kevin
felt sure they were referring to what he’d heard earlier, about his
aunt not having enough money to keep up the lodge.

They all followed her into the lodge
then, which was dark and a little dusty. Their footsteps on the
wood-tile floor echoed up through the high foyer and reception
area.

“
Kind of messy,” Kevin
whispered to Jimmy when they walked in. He could swear that dust
actually drifted up from the floor as they walked in.

“
It’s a dump, like I told
you,” Becky said. Her frown now seemed to be a permanent part of
her face, and she fussily held her hands up as though touching
anything in the lodge would get her dirty. “My nice new dress is
going to get all dusty and gross.”

“
You’re the one who’s
gross,” Kevin muttered under his breath.

“
What!” she said and
glared. “What did you say to me?”

“
Nothing,” Kevin
muttered.

“
Hey, Dad,” Becky
complained. “Kevin just said that I was gross!”

“
Kevin,” Mr. Bennell
scowled. “Don’t call your sister gross.”

Kevin sighed.

CHAPTER FIVE

“
I’ve reserved the best
rooms for you,” Aunt Carolyn said.

“
How many guests do you
have staying right now?” Mr. Grimaldi asked.