Vampire Lodge Read Free

was cool,”
Kevin said.
    The lodge was a great, three-story,
cedar-shingled building with a high, peaked roof. Sheets of
sprawling, green ivy could be seen crawling up the sides of several
old, brick chimneys and fallen leaves of every color lay all around
the lot. The building itself sat back in a small dell, surrounded
by the dense forest.
    “ It looks like a haunted
house, doesn’t it?” Kevin commented, enthused.
    “ Yeah,” Jimmy replied.
“It’s creepy.”
    “ It looks like a dump, is what it looks
like,” Becky threw in her own opinion, smirking.
    “ Becky, don’t call your
aunt’s house a dump,” Mr. Bennell said, turning the steering wheel
around. A small gravel court wound around the front of the lodge,
and that’s where Kevin’s father parked the station wagon. They all
got out of the car, while the two adults opened the tailgate and
began taking out their pieces of luggage.
    Kevin stood in the middle of the
court, looking up. Despite the bright morning sun, the lodge sat in
darkness, shaded by all the high, heavily branched trees. Bright
red and yellow leaves were falling right this minute, like giant,
slow snowflakes. The windows of the lodge seemed small and
odd.
    And very dark.
    “ You’re right, Jimmy
whispered. “It looks just like a haunted house. I’ll bet it’s got
ghosts and everything.”
    Then, very slowly, a long, high
creaking sound could be heard that sent a prickly chill up Kevin’s
back, and that’s when he noticed the large wooden front door
opening very, very slowly.
    creeeeeeeeeeeeak—
    Kevin knew it was his imagination, but
for a moment it almost seemed as if the door were opening all by
itself.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    “ Hey, everybody! It’s so
great to see you!” announced the thin, slinky figure that, moments
later, stepped out of the lodge’s front entrance. The entrance,
framed by big blocks of rock, looked like an oblong black hole, and
it made Kevin think of the coffin he’d seen in the vampire movie
last night—it was the same shape, an odd oblong shape.
    “ Is that your Aunt
Carolyn?” Jimmy whispered.
    “ Yeah, that’s her,” Kevin
answered. “She is a little weird looking, but you’ll like
her.”
    Weird looking, that was a fact! Aunt
Carolyn reminded Kevin of some sleek kind of vine. She was curvy
and very thin, with long, shiny black hair hanging nearly to her
waist. She was wearing—as she always did—a long black dress like an
evening gown, that was very tight. And her face—
    “ Jeeze,” Jimmy commented.
“Look at her face.”
    — her face was almost
snow-white, with dark, penetrating eyes, and thin, pale
lips.
    Almost like a woman
vampire, Kevin couldn’t help but think.
Instead, he said, “Yeah, well, Aunt Carolyn doesn’t get much of a
chance to be out in the sun. The trees here block out all the
sunlight, and she spends most of her time inside the lodge, taking
care of guests and stuff.”
    “ Oh,” Jimmy said, but he
didn’t seemed terribly convinced of this. Instead, he just looked
at Kevin’s aunt like she was some sort of strange piece of
furniture.
    “ Hi, Carolyn,” Kevin’s
father greeted, and walked up the front stone steps to kiss his
sister on the cheek. After that, all the proper introductions were
made. “Oh, you’re just getting so big! ” Carolyn exclaimed of Kevin, and
then pinched him on the cheek. Kevin liked his Aunt Carolyn a lot,
but if there was one thing he didn’t like, it was the way she
always pinched him on the cheek and told him how big he was
getting. This constant comment always made him feel like a little
kid.
    “ Well, come in, come in!”
Aunt Carolyn said. “I’m so glad you could come.”
    “ Come on, guys,” Kevin’s
father instructed. “Let’s grab our suitcases and bring them into
the lodge.”
    “ Oh, don’t worry about your
luggage,” Aunt Carolyn gushed. “Bill and Wally will bring them
in.”
    Bill and Wally? Kevin thought. He’d been to his aunt’s lodge a
bunch of