Vampire Lodge by Edward Lee

suddenly Kevin
could think of nothing to say in the way of an answer.
    Aunt Carolyn’s angry face
glared down in the lantern light— a long,
thin, pale face, Kevin noticed. Like Count Volkov’s face, like a vampire’s face! But then, just as suddenly, that same anger
drifted off, and at once, Aunt Carolyn’s voice softened. “Oh, I’m
sorry,” she said consolingly. “You poor thing. Of course, you
must’ve been frightened by the storm, is that it?”
    “ Uh, yes,” Kevin stammered
back. “The storm, it woke me up and, uh, I got scared.”
    “ Well, you needn’t worry,
because I was just downstairs listening to the weather report on
the radio, and they said the storm will be over soon. So there’s
nothing to worry about, see?”
    “ Uh, yes,” Kevin
bumbled.
    “ It’s very late,” Aunt
Carolyn went on. “You get back to bed now. Hopefully, the weather
will be good enough tomorrow for you and Jimmy to fly your
kites.”
    “ Uh, yeah, Aunt Carolyn,
that would be great,” Kevin managed to say. “Well, I’m going back
to bed now. Goodnight.”
    “ Goodnight,
Kevin.”
    Boy, did I luck out
there, Kevin thought, walking down the
darkened hall toward his bedroom. She
thought I was scared of the storm. What a
joke! After all the things he’d seen tonight, and all the things
he’d discovered, a lightning storm was the last thing he’d be
scared of!
    When he got back to his bedroom, Jimmy
was still fast sleep. Kevin got into his own bed and lay back under
the heavy covers, his mind still spinning with thoughts…
    Yes, Aunt Carolyn was definitely a
vampire, she had to be. Up at this hour, still in her long black
dress. Never eating anything and never going out into the sun. And
no bed in her bedroom. There could be no doubt—
    She’s a vampire, all
right, he realized. But what am I going to do about it?
    What could he do?
    Well… nothing, he concluded, at least not until their fathers got
back from fishing. And what had her excuse been, for being up so
late herself?
    Listening to the weather
report on the radio, he remembered. What a bunch of
malarkey!
    Kevin felt exhausted and he
tried to fall asleep but again the fact returned to his mind, and
so did his fearful recollection of the second painting he’d seen in
his aunt’s room. Count Volkov used to live
in this same room , he thought. This used to be a vampire’s room. How can I expect to
fall asleep, knowing that Count Volkov himself used to think and
walk and breathe in this same room?
    He lay there in bed,
staring at the ceiling. But then he noticed something. I guess Aunt Carolyn was right after all. The
lightning and thunder has stopped. Sure
enough, it had, and it seemed like the rain was letting up
too.
    And this sudden absence of the storm’s
steady sounds left the bedroom suddenly, and eerily,
silent—
    clink! he heard.
    Then—
    crunch, crunch, crunch,
crunch…
    Kevin leaned up in bed. What were
those sounds? The clink had sounded somehow like metal, and the
steady crunching noise sounded just like—
    People walking, he realized.
    And something else: The sounds seemed
to be coming from the french doors which led to the balcony, which
could only mean:
    The sounds are coming
from… outside, he thought.
    But who on earth would be walking
around outside this late at night?
    He listened some
more. Maybe it was just my
imagination, he considered when the sounds
disappeared. But just when he was about to forget about
them—
    clink!
    crunch, crunch, crunch,
crunch…
    — he heard them
again!
    Quietly, he climbed out of bed and
approached the two closed french doors. Then he quickly opened them
and slipped out onto the wet balcony. The rain was only trickling
now, and the wind had vanished. He glanced down at the grassy area
between the forest and the back of the lodge, and was astounded at
the heavy silence. And, once more, that creepy feeling returned to
his belly, the idea that he was now standing on the same balcony
that Count Volkov had