Vampire Lodge (6 page)

Jimmy squinted forward too, till he
could see it. “All right!” he shouted.

Nailed to a tree just a few yards
ahead of them was a wooden sign with black, painted letters that
read: LODGE, and then an arrow pointing down the path.

“
Boy, are we dopes,” Jimmy
said. “All this time we thought we were lost.”

“
Yeah, but this path really
just took us in a big circle right back toward the lodge,” Kevin
realized now, “and we didn’t even know it. Come on. And when we get
back to the lodge,” Kevin added, “whatever you do,
don’t
tell Becky about us
thinking we were lost.”

“
Of course I won’t tell
her!” Jimmy said. “She’d think we were idiots!”

That was for sure, and so
would their dads. But Kevin felt an incredible wave of
relief.
We’re not lost after all,
he thought.
We’ll be back
at the lodge in just a few minutes.
And to
make matters even better, just as they started out in the direction
of the wooden sign, the rain began to let up, and the thunder and
lightning stopped. “We’ll try flying our kites again tomorrow,” he
told Jimmy. “With any luck, the weather will be better.”

“
Yeah,” Jimmy said. “And at
least I got to see the bluffs today. They’re really cool.
And—”

thunk

Kevin and Jimmy stopped in their
tracks. They both stood with their heads tilted, their kites
dripping as they listened.

“
That sounded like a car
door closing,” Kevin noted.

“
Yeah, but—”

Jimmy didn’t even need to
finish.
We’re in the middle of the woods
right now,
 Kevin thought.
What would a car be doing in the middle of the
woods, especially right after a rain storm?

Maybe it was their imaginations, but
then Kevin walked toward a stand of trees at the edge of the path.
Through the trees, maybe twenty yards away, he could
see—

Another path,
he realized.

“
Look!” Jimmy
whispered.

An old, faded blue car was parked on
the other path. A figure had gotten out of the car and was
now—

shick, shick,
shick

The very first thing Kevin noticed was
the big forked tree; in other words, a tree that had grown out from
a single stump but had split into two trunks. The forked tree
looked like a craggy V pointing upward toward the dark
sky.

And the figure was—

Digging a hole in the
ground with a shovel!

Kevin remembered earlier in
the day, when he’d seen Bill Bitner in the back hallway at the
lodge.
Holding a shovel,
he recalled. Kevin squinted; it was hard to see.
The woods were dark, and it was still raining a little, but a
minute later he recognized the figure.

And it wasn’t that old crab Bill
Bitner at all.

It’s Wally,
Kevin saw.

Wally Eberhart, the young
groundskeeper who worked for Bill.
The guy
my sister’s got a crush on,
Kevin added in
thought.

And right now Kevin could see Wally
digging a big hole in the ground.

Or maybe he wasn’t digging just a
hole…

Maybe he’s digging a
grave,
Kevin thought.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“
Did you see that?” Jimmy
asked, trotting down the path past the sign.

Kevin trotted right along with him.
“Are you kidding? Of course I saw it. That guy Wally was digging a
hole right by that forked tree.”

“
But why?” Jimmy
questioned. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would the guy be
digging a hole in the middle of the woods while it’s
raining?”

“
I don’t know,” Kevin said,
huffing and puffing as he continued to trot back down the
path.

I don’t know,
he thought to himself.
But I’m going to find out…

It was just another few minutes before
they got back to the big gravel courtway in front of the lodge.
Kevin and Jimmy stopped for a few moments at the front steps,
leaning over with their hands on their knees, to catch their
breath.

“
What are we going to do
now?” Jimmy asked. “Should we tell your Aunt Carolyn that we saw
Wally digging that hole?”

“
I don’t know,” Kevin said.
“Maybe we should wait awhile on that.”

“
Why?”

“
Because what would we
say?” Kevin posed. “We’d sound stupid. Let’s wait awhile, give
ourselves some more time to find out what’s going on.”

Jimmy paused as he was shaking the
rainwater off his kite. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Now that you mention
it, maybe that’s a better idea.”

“
Let’s stow our kites and
get back inside,” Kevin said, happy that his friend agreed with
him. He didn’t want to say the rest, the strange, eerie feeling
that Wally wasn’t just digging a hole.

The hole that Wally was digging, after
all, looked pretty big, and wide.

And maybe it was oblong shaped, though
Kevin couldn’t be quite sure.

But there was one thing
he
was
sure
of—

It looked like Wally was
digging a grave,
Kevin thought
again.

The idea made a shiver crawl up his
back, and he shuddered a moment, standing there at the base of the
big stone steps.

“
Hi, boys,” Aunt Carolyn
greeted when they entered the dark foyer.

“
Hi, Aunt Carolyn,” Kevin
returned. He kept his fingers crossed that she wouldn’t realize
they’d been out to the bluffs during the storm.

“
You boys are
drenched!
” she exclaimed,
noticing their wet clothes. “Where have you been?”

“
Oh, we were just walking
around outside, and it started raining,” Kevin said. One thing
Kevin didn’t like to do was lie, but what he’d said wasn’t really a
lie, was it? After all, they
had
been walking around outside, and it
had
started raining. So
it wasn’t really a lie at all.

And where had Aunt Carolyn been
anyway, for all the time that had passed after their fathers had
left the lodge to go on their fishing hike?

All of a sudden, it seemed to Kevin
that there were several really strange things going on around
here.

“
Well, it’s too bad about
the rain,” Aunt Carolyn said. “But it does seem to rain a lot
around here this time of year. You could have gone out to the
bluffs for some kite-flying.”

Kevin didn’t say anything.

“
But I think,” Aunt Carolyn
went on, “it might be a good idea for the two of you to go back up
to your room and get changed into some dry clothes. Dinner will be
ready in less than an hour.”

“
Okay, Aunt
Carolyn.”

“
And tell your sister,
too.”

Kevin nodded, then he and Jimmy headed
up the wide, winding stairs to their room.

“
I still want to know what
that Wally guy was doing digging holes in the woods,” Jimmy
said.

“
Yeah,” Kevin agreed.
“Right in front of that forked tree, and while it was still
raining!” What could he possibly have been digging for? What could
be so important that he’d be digging
holes
in the
rain?

They changed into dry jeans and
flannel shirts, then combed out their wet hair. By then, the storm
had started up again; Kevin could hear the thunder slowly rumbling
outside, and then heavy rain began to patter against the roof. It
wasn’t the thunder or the rain that bothered Kevin the most—it was
the lightning, and the way it would crack and boom in the sky
without any notice.

Kevin knocked on his sister’s closed
bedroom door. “Hey, Becky!”

“
Yes, Kevvie?” she asked
from the other side.

I HATE it when she calls
me that!
“Dinner will be ready
soon.”

“
I’ll be down in a little
while,” her snide voice replied. “I still need a little more time
to get ready.”

“
Get ready?” Kevin
questioned. “What do you mean?”

“
Just mind your own
business, you little twerp!”

Kevin and Jimmy headed for the stairs.
“What does she have to get ready for?” Jimmy asked.

But Kevin thought he already knew.
“I’ll bet she’s in there putting on her best clothes, in case that
Wally guy comes back around.”

“
Jeeze, girls are
weird.”

“
Tell me about it,” Kevin
said. “You ought to have one for a sister.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Aunt Carolyn, holding the curtains
open a few inches, was glancing out one of the front bay windows
when they boys came downstairs. “My,” she said, “your fathers
certainly picked a terrible day to go camping and fishing. I hope
they decide to come back to the lodge.”

“
They probably won’t, Aunt
Carolyn,” Kevin said. “They’re die-hard campers. And, besides, they
brought ponchos and rubber boots and lots of other kinds of rain
gear.”

“
Well, it doesn’t make much
sense to me,” Carolyn went on. Her white hand released the heavy
drapes, which fell back into place just as another spike of
lightning crackled across the sky. “They could catch terrible colds
in weather like this.”

“
I wouldn’t worry about
it,” Kevin said.

She turned then, with a strange look
on her face. Kevin couldn’t believe how pale she was, and her black
clothes and long black hair made her look even more pale. “Is your
sister coming down?” she asked.

“
She’ll be down soon,”
Kevin said. “I think she’s up there getting all dressed
up.”

“
I can’t imagine
why.”

“
She’s got a crush on that
Wally guy,” Jimmy said.

“
Oh, I see,” Aunt Carolyn
coyly remarked. “Well, he seems to be a nice enough young
man.”

A nice enough young
man?
Kevin thought in objection.
He’s creepy, just like Bill.

A few minutes later, they were all
seated in the big, gloomy dining room. In the high windows, they
could see the lightning flashing. Eventually, Becky came down,
dressed ridiculously in one of her very best dresses, and her blond
hair pulled back in a ponytail with a bow on it. Kevin and Jimmy
smiled at each other.

“
He’s not here,” Kevin
said.

“
Who?” Becky smirked her
reply.

“
Wally, your Prince
Charming.”

“
Oh, you’re so stupid,”
Becky moaned, and sat down.

“
And he won’t be here any
time soon, either,” Jimmy said. “He’ll probably get washed away in
the rain. We just saw him in the woods, digging holes.”

“
Digging
holes?
” Becky
said.

“
That’s right,” Kevin added
on. “In the middle of the woods, in the rain.”

“
Why would Wally be digging
holes in the woods?” Becky countered from her place at the table.
“I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life. You two are just
making it up, like you do everything else.”

“
It’s true,” Jimmy said.
“We saw him out there about an hour ago.”

“
You did not!” Becky
exclaimed.

“
We did too,” Kevin
said.

“
What’s this about digging
holes?” Aunt Carolyn suddenly remarked, appearing from the kitchen.
She set down steaming dinner plates before each other them: t-bone
steaks, baked potatoes, buttered lima beans.

Becky smirked. “Kevin and Jimmy said
they saw Wally digging in the woods a little while ago.”

“
Not just digging,” Kevin
corrected. “He was digging a big oblong hole. Coffin
shaped.”

“
There you go with your
stupid vampires again,” Becky scoffed.

“
Hey, I didn’t say anything
about vampires,” Kevin came right back. “All I said was that the
hole was shaped like a coffin, and it was your big lover boy Wally
who was digging the hole.”

“
Kevin, shut
up!”

“
Now, kids,” Aunt Carolyn
interrupted. “The dinner table is no place to argue.”

But Becky grumbled on, “All Kevin ever
talks about is stupid vampires, I’m sick of listening to
him.”

Aunt Carolyn looked up very slowly and
smiled. “So Kevin’s interested in vampires?”

“
Well, sort of,” Kevin
admitted. “I think they’re pretty cool.”

Aunt Carolyn’s smile seemed to hover
before her face. “Well, then, tonight, before you go to bed, remind
me to tell you about the local legend.”

“
What local legend?” Kevin
asked over his steak.

“
The local
vampire
legend,” Aunt
Carolyn said.