Free Vampire Lodge by Edward Lee Page B

upstairs asleep, he reasoned. No one will be able to
see the light.
    Kevin used his time wisely. He
searched all the kitchen cabinets and counter drawers quickly and
efficiently. There were quite a few of them, and this took several
minutes. But unfortunately—
    A, darn it!
    He didn’t find a single flashlight
anywhere.
    Without a flashlight, there
was no way he could expect to investigate Bill’s secret
passageway. I’ll never find out what’s
going on around here! he exclaimed to
himself, frustrated. He looked through a few more drawers and
cabinets, found nothing, but then—
    All right!
    It wasn’t a flashlight he’d found, but
it was the next best thing. There, lying in the last drawer, was a
box of long, white candles, and right next to the candles was a
large box of blue-tip safety matches.
    He took up one candle and removed the
box of matches. Then, very carefully, he struck one of the matches
across the flint striker on the box, cautious to make sure the box
was closed when he did so, and then he lit the candle.
    Now he was ready to get on with
it!
    He walked to the end of the kitchen,
past the long butcher-block counter, and stepped into the back
hallway.
    It was like stepping from a
world of light into a world of grim, silent, eerie darkness.
Suddenly Kevin found himself standing in the middle of what seemed
a corridor of faint, shifting shadows, the shadows of course being
thrown by the single candle in his hand. Again, the darkness made
the hallway seem a lot longer; it seemed to stretch on for a
hundred yards, but he knew this was only his imagination working on
him. Get on with it! he ordered himself. What are you? A
chicken?
    And if there was one thing Kevin swore
he would never be, it was a chicken. So he walked on down the dark
hallway, with bizarre, ghostly shadows roving about him from the
candle. The shadows, above him and on both sides, looked like weird
butterflies flittering about…
    Butterflies—
    Or bats! he thought.
    But that was silly. He was just
getting scared.
    Instead, he let his imagination get
behind him, and he proceeded down the corridor. Each wooden panel
on the wall had one of the dark paintings hanging on it, and Kevin
inspected each one as he passed, holding the candle close to the
canvas.
    His eyes widened, and a breath caught
in his chest.
    Each painting showed a different
depiction of The Count’s arrival to the shores of America. His
coffin and crate of gold bricks being carried across the beach,
through the woods, up hills and dales. Then another painting showed
the lodge being built. And another painting showed the lodge fully
erected, and it looked just like the lodge today.
    And one more thing:
    All of these paintings bore the same
artist’s signature in the lower right-hand corner:
    Count Volkov, Kevin read.
    The Count had painted all of these
pictures. So Kevin was right:
    The Count is more than
just a legend, he realized. He was a real person, who really came here over a
hundred years ago, and he really had this lodge built, and it must
have cost a lot of money, so maybe The Count really did have a
crate full of gold bricks that he’d brought with him from
Europe…
    And if all of that was true, then
maybe the rest was also true.
    Maybe it was true what
Aunt Carolyn said earlier, he
considered. About how all legends are
based in truth. Maybe Count Volkov really was a vampire too. And
maybe his crate of gold bricks really is buried somewhere around
here, and maybe his coffin is too. With The Count still in it, just
like Aunt Carolyn said!
    Eventually Kevin came to
the end of the hallway, to the wall-panel on which hung the
painting entitled The Count Comes
Ashore.
    This is it, Kevin thought to himself. He knew there was no way
he could be mistaken. This was the exact same place he’d discovered
earlier.
    He steeled himself. His hand, very
slowly, raised up in the candle-lit dark, and then he pushed
against the panel.
    And, just as he’d remembered, the
panel