Vampire Lodge by Edward Lee Page A

once stood upon.
    Count Volkov… the vampire…
    clink!
    There it was again! And then,
again—
    crunch, crunch, crunch,
crunch…
    Kevin leaned out over the balcony’s
heavy wooden railing, and then looked down.
    And he… saw something, didn’t
he?
    Yes, indeed he did. There, at the edge
of the woods behind the lodge, he noticed two faintly glowing
lights…
    Lanterns! he recognized. Lantern
lights!
    And once his eyes had adjusted, he
recognized something else too.
    Two figures!
    He was sure of it. So late
at night, and in the trickling rain, two men were walking along the
edge of the woods behind the lodge, their lanterns pitching slowly
back and forth as their feet— crunch,
crunch, crunch, crunch— crunched on over
fallen leaves and branches, and every so often— clink! —that same metallic sound could
be heard. Each man seemed to be carrying something long and thin,
which Kevin, in the dim lantern light, was then able to
identify.
    Shovels, he thought, peering down. They’re carrying shovels. And every
few steps, the big blades of their shovels clinked together as they walked on
towards the forest.
    And Kevin was able to recognize
something else too, as the trickle of rain continued to fall. In
their bobbing lantern lights, he could make out their faces beyond
a doubt—
    It’s Bill Bitner! he recognized. And
Wally!
    And just one second later, both
figures turned into one of the paths which led into the woods, and
disappeared.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
     
    The next morning, Kevin awoke to see
Jimmy, already fully dressed, looking out the french doors. “Wake
up, Kevin,” he said. “The rain stopped. We can go out to the bluff
and fly our kites.”
    Kevin groaned groggily. He hadn’t
slept well at all, which was no wonder. It had been well past three
a.m. before he’d fallen asleep, and all through the night he kept
waking up from nightmares of Count Volkov: the long thin face, pale
as milk, emerging from the dark. The bald head, the black
hole-punch eyes, and the sharp-pointed fangs showing through The
Count’s twisted vampire grin…
    Kevin would wake up each time in a
shivering sweat, leaning up wide-eyed in bed, his heart
pattering.
    “ Come on,” Jimmy exclaimed.
“Up and at ’em. Let’s get out there and get our kites flying while
we still can. It could start raining again any time.”
    Kevin nodded sleepily. “I’ll be ready
in a few minutes,” he said.
    “ Great, I’ll meet you
downstairs.”
    Kevin dragged himself out
of bed, then showered and dressed. He was so tired he didn’t even
feel like flying kites today, but then he realized if he didn’t,
he’d have to sit around the lodge all day, and that was one thing
he definitely didn’t want to do. The lodge terrified him now, and why shouldn’t it?
With all the things he’d found out last night? And finding out that my aunt is a vampire? he added in thought. Hanging around the lodge was
the last thing he wanted to do.
    Dressed and ready, he grabbed his bat
kite and trudged downstairs. The lodge was dead quiet. Jimmy was
waiting for him in the foyer with his own kite. “Let’s
go.”
    “ Jimmy, Kevin,” Becky’s
voice called out from the dining room. “Where are you guys
going?”
    “ To the bluffs,” Kevin
said, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
    “ To fly our kites,” Jimmy
added.
    Becky smirked from her place at the
table, over a bowl of cereal. “You and your stupid kites. Aren’t
you even going to eat breakfast?”
    “ Naw,” Jimmy answered. “We
want to get going now, before it starts to rain again.”
    “ Oh, and let me tell you
two nitwits something,” Becky chided. “I asked Wally about what you
guys said yesterday.”
    “ What’s that?” Jimmy
asked.
    “ About how you two
doughheads said you saw him mysteriously digging around in the
woods.” Becky frowned at them. “All he was doing was digging for a
broken water pipe. Real mysterious, guys.”
    Water pipe, my eye, Kevin thought. And I
guess Bill Bitner and