Vampire Lodge (9 page)

“
Who painted the paintings,
Aunt Carolyn?” he asked.

“
Do you
really
want to know?”

“
Yes!”

Aunt Carolyn smiled that creepy smile
of hers again. From the shadows in which she sat, she pointed
across to the room into the foyer, at the first painting Kevin had
seen this morning.

“
Go look,” she instructed
him. “Look for the artist’s name on the canvas. It’s written in the
lower right corner, in very small letters.”

Confused, Kevin got up from
the couch and walked over to the painting.
The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure,
he read the title again. Then his eyes moved down,
to the lower right-hand corner of the fancy, carved picture
frame.

It was so dark he could barely see at
all; he had to squint as hard as he could, and even then, it took a
momentary flash of lightning for him to actually be able to read
the artist’s signature.

My… gosh,
Kevin thought, bug-eyed.

The signature, in fine, curvy letters,
was this:

Count Volkov

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kevin rushed back to the
hearth room, and, nearly stuttering, said, “You mean
he
painted these
pictures? Count Volkov himself?

“
He certainly did, Kevin,”
Aunt Carolyn replied. “There’s no way you could have seen them all
yet, but Count Volkov painted a lot of the paintings in the lodge.
There are actually several dozen of them, hanging in various
places.”

Kevin felt intrigued by this
information, that The Count himself had painted the very pictures
Kevin had looked at and even touched. But then, Kevin’s thoughts
came to a screeching halt.

Why,
he wondered,
are Count Volkov’s
paintings here? In my aunt’s lodge?

It didn’t make sense!

“
And let me guess your next
question, Kevin,” Aunt Carolyn said, still cloaked by the shadows.
“You want to know why The Count’s paintings are here, in my lodge,
right?”

“
Well, yes,” Kevin
admitted. “I was just thinking that, just this second.”

Aunt Carolyn’s voice lowered to a
strange whisper. “So I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Because this
lodge, this very same building that you’re sitting in right this
moment, used to be owned by Count Volkov.”

“
No!” Kevin
exclaimed.

“
Wow!” Jimmy said, his
mouth still stuffed with popcorn.

“
Kevin’s getting scared,”
Becky rudely interrupted.

“
I am not!” Kevin
retorted.

“
Watch out for the big bad
vampire…
Calve.
”

“
Shut up! And don’t call me
Kevvie!”

“
That’s enough of that,
kids,” Aunt Carolyn went on. “But what I just told you is true.
When The Count arrived in America, it was the beach right off my
bluffs where he landed. And since he had the equivalent of many
millions of dollars in gold bricks, the first thing he needed was a
home. So he paid the local villagers to build the lodge. According
to the legend, the lodge was built over a hundred years ago for the
price of one single gold brick that weighed over twenty
pounds.”

“
That’s a lot of gold,”
Jimmy said, munching more popcorn.

“
It certainly is,” Aunt
Carolyn responded. “Today, a standard gold brick is worth almost
$200,000. And it was worth a lot more back in those
days.”

Kevin’s mind reeled; he was
fascinated, but his fascination had nothing to do with the amount
of money it cost to build the lodge. What fascinated him was
this:
This is Count Volkov’s house,
he thought.
I’m sitting
in The Count’s house right this minute!

“
About twenty years ago,”
Aunt Carolyn went on, “I found out that the lodge was for sale. It
had been vacant for years and years, and it was in very bad
condition at the time. So I was able to buy it for a small amount
of money, then I had it refurbished, and opened it up to campers
and fishermen.”

“
If it was vacant for all
those years,” Jimmy asked, grabbing yet another fistful of popcorn,
“how come nobody else bought it?”

“
No one wanted it,” Aunt
Carolyn told him.

“
But it’s a great place,”
Kevin said. “How come no one wanted to buy it?”

“
Well, because of it’s
history. Who would want to buy a lodge that was once owned by a man
rumored to be a vampire? The lodge was considered bad luck, like a
haunted house, so it sat for all those years without any buyers.
Fortunately, I was able to fix it up pretty well, and until very
recently, the lodge and the surrounding fishing dells and
campgrounds attracted quite a lot of people.”

Kevin’s astonishment held him fast
into his seat. There was still one more question burning in his
mind…

“
What is it, Kevin?” Aunt
Carolyn asked. “You look like you have another question. Am I
right?”

“
Well, uh, yes, Aunt
Carolyn,” Kevin admitted. “I do have another question.”

Aunt Carolyn smiled again, as though
she already knew what Kevin wanted to ask. “Go ahead.”

“
Well, uh, whatever
happened to Count Volkov?”

“
Nobody knows,” Aunt
Carolyn said. “He disappeared, was never seen again. But of course,
there
are
rumors
about what actually happened.”

“
What are they?” Kevin
asked, still brimming with excitement. “What are the
rumors?”

Aunt Carolyn relaxed back in her
armchair. “The rumors are that the townspeople eventually found out
that Count Volkov was a vampire, just like the people back in his
kingdom had, and one day, when The Count was asleep in his coffin,
they all banded together and overpowered Count Volkov’s servants.
Then, still in the safety of daylight, they chained The Count’s
coffin up… and buried it.”

“
Where?” Kevin
asked.

“
They buried it somewhere
on the grounds, Kevin, but no one knows exactly where. And they
never told anyone else where The Count’s grave was, so nobody could
dig him up and unleash him again.”

“
Wow,” Jimmy said, digging
out the last kernels of popcorn out of the bowl. “But what about
all that gold?” Jimmy asked. He looked dejectedly down at the empty
bowl of popcorn. “What happened to all those millions of
dollars?”

“
Nobody knows that either,
Jimmy,” Aunt Carolyn said. “The way the rumor goes is that The
Count had it buried somewhere on his own, and he wrote down the
location of where it was buried in his secret diary. But no one
ever found out where the diary was because The Count never told
anyone. All that money is probably buried somewhere on the property
too, just like The Count’s coffin, but with all these hundreds of
acres of forest, it’s not likely that it will ever be
found.”

Okay,
Kevin thought,
that crate of gold
bricks is buried somewhere around here.
This part he easily understood: buried treasure. There were
lots of stories about buried treasure. What bothered him, however,
was not the part about the buried gold bricks…

The Count’s coffin is
buried somewhere around here too… with him still in it!

And since vampires were immortal, that
could only mean one thing:

Count Volkov is still
alive…

Kevin felt captivated. What a great,
scary story! It was the best vampire story he’d ever heard, and
much better than the movies he’d seen so many times on tv. And he
wanted to know more about The Count, he wanted to hear more of the
story, but—

“
Well, kids,” Aunt Carolyn
said, and stood up from her armchair. “That’s the local vampire
legend. And I’m afraid it’s time for you all to get to bed. It’s
past eleven now.”

“
That was a great story,”
Jimmy said. “And thanks for the popcorn.”

“
You’re quite welcome,
Jimmy,” Aunt Carolyn replied.

“
I thought it was silly,”
Becky complained and smirked. “You don’t really believe in
vampires, do you?”

Aunt Carolyn chuckled. “Of course not.
The story of Count Volkov is just old local folklore, just a
legend.” She rubbed her hands together. “Okay, off to bed now, all
of you. It’s late and you must be very tired.”

Kevin got up from the couch. He felt
strange, but he didn’t feel tired. He guessed it was just the
creepy story about The Count, but there was no real reason for him
to be bothered about that because, just as Aunt Carolyn had said,
the story was just folklore, a legend. And vampires weren’t
real…

“
Goodnight, kids,” Aunt
Carolyn said. “See you all in the morning.”

The rest of them said goodnight and
headed up the wide, carpeted stairs. But Kevin was last in line,
and before he could even make it to the first step, Aunt Carolyn
stopped him and said, “Oh, and Kevin?”

Kevin turned at the bottom of the
steps. “Yes?”

“
It’s true, the story about
Count Volkov is only a legend, but there’s one thing you should
think about.”

“
What’s that, Aunt
Carolyn?” Kevin asked.

Aunt Carolyn’s long black dress made
her look like a shadow in the foyer. Her white face seemed to grin
at him in the dark, and then she said:

“
All legends, in some way,
are based on truth.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

More thunder faintly shook
the house as Kevin walked up the staircase, his hand sliding along
the polished wood banister. The narrow window at the end of the
second-floor hallway filled with brief wires of bright-white light
each time the lightning cracked outside. Jimmy was already asleep
by the time Kevin himself got into bed. It was a high bed with
pointed oak posters. More lightning filled the curtain gap over the
French doors, momentarily lighting up the room like quick
flashbulbs on a camera, and sheets of rain could be heard blowing
against the glass. Each time the lightning flashed again, Kevin
could see the two paintings on the bedroom walls. But he’d already
looked at these paintings this morning; they were just paintings of
a forest, one winter scene and one fall scene—nothing like the
strange and eerie paintings he’d seen downstairs of Count Volkov’s
arrival to America. He made a mental note to himself, to look all
around the lodge tomorrow and check all the other paintings.
Find out how many more paintings were done by
Count Volkov himself,
he thought. Of
course, he understood that Count Volkov wasn’t really a
vampire—that was just a legend—but who was he really?

Probably just some rich
guy who came to America in the late 1800’s,
he deduced.
He probably just looked
weird, so people started the legend about him being a
vampire.

More lightning cracked. Kevin
flinched.

No, The Count wasn’t
really a vampire,
he told himself
again.
Vampires don’t exist. They’re just
part of a legend. Aunt Carolyn said so…

Still one more louder bolt of
lightning cracked outside.

But Aunt Carolyn had something else
too, hadn’t she?

All legends, in some way,
are based on truth…

Suddenly, his aunt’s final words of
the night seemed very haunting. And how could anybody really know
for sure?

Maybe there really are
vampires,
Kevin considered. Of course, this
was an easy thing to consider in the middle of the night during a
rain storm with thunder and lightning booming outside, and in a
lodge that was once owned by a guy named
Count
Volkov!

Just go to sleep,
he told himself. He wanted to get his mind off the
topic. He had to admit—

He was a little bit afraid.

But the harder he tried to
fall asleep, the more awake he felt. It was almost as if part of
his mind didn’t
want
him to go to sleep. It was almost as if…

There was something he’d forgotten to
do.

But what?

When the next crack of lightning lit
up the room, he noticed the paintings again. And that reminded him
of the paintings downstairs, the ones supposedly painted by The
Count…

Then he remembered the sinister title,
in small, painted letters along the bottom:

The Count Comes
Ashore.

The painting of The Count’s treasure
and coffin being carried across the beach by his servants. The
painting he’d seen in the dark hall behind the kitchen…

Hanging on the door to
Bill Bitner’s secret passageway
! Kevin
remembered all at once.

Yes, the secret place he’d found
tonight after dinner. He’d been so caught up in Aunt Carolyn’s
story that he’d forgotten all about it!

The secret door that Bill
came out of this morning…