Vampire Lodge Read Online Free PDF Page A

can ask her about it later.”
    “ Good idea.”
    They wandered around downstairs for a
little while, looking at all the other paintings. But most of them
were just landscapes and beaches and paintings of bowls of fruit,
stuff like that. They didn’t see any more vampire
paintings.
    And they didn’t see Aunt
Carolyn anywhere. I wonder where she
went, Kevin thought. It wasn’t like she
could be busy with other guests because there weren’t any guests. And she wasn’t
fixing lunch either—the big country kitchen was empty.
    “ This place sure is big,”
Jimmy observed.
    “ Yeah, I know.”
    “ And dark.”
    This too was true. All of
the windows in the lodge seemed to be oddly narrow, and they were
all covered over by heavy curtains. It’s
almost as if Aunt Carolyn likes it to be dark in here, Kevin considered. Like
she’s keeping all the curtains closed on purpose.
    “ I think your sister’s got
a crush on that Wally guy,” Jimmy remarked as they wandered down
another hall off from the kitchen.
    “ You can say that again,”
Kevin said, and smirked. “She’s got a crush on a new guy every
week.”
    “ But what do you think of
this Wally guy?”
    “ I don’t know. He’s nicer
than Bill Bitner, that’s for sure,” Kevin commented.
    “ Anybody’s nicer than Bill Bitner.”
    “ Yeah, but Wally… I don’t
know. I don’t trust him,” Kevin remarked. “He looks like bad news
to me, like a hood or something.”
    “ Then you better tell your
sister to stay away from him.”
    Kevin laughed sharply. “Becky? Are you
kidding? She never listens to me. You know Becky—she knows more
about anything than anybody, and everybody else is
stupid.”
    Then—
    click!
    Both stopped and turned.
They’d definitely heard a sound—a loud and sharp click! Like a—
    Like a door
opening, Kevin realized.
    But… where was the door?
    They peered down the dark
corridor that came off the pantry from the kitchen. The low,
wood-paneled walls made the corridor look even darker, but Kevin
couldn’t see any doors. It’s just a
hallway with a bunch of shelves, he saw.
The only door was at the very end, and that couldn’t have been the
one that opened because if it had, Kevin and Jimmy would have seen
it.
    And then—
    Light, Kevin saw. An eerie, wavering swell of light was slowly moving
into the hall. And then—
    A figure appeared.
    Both Kevin and Jimmy stiffened up in a
quick fear. Kevin recognized the figure at once at once.
    Bill, he thought. Bill Bitner, the
handyman…
    And what was scariest of all was
this:
    It didn’t look like Bill had come out
of any door—
    A chill traced up Kevin’s
back.
    This is impossible, he thought.
    It looked instead like Bill Bitner had
walked right out of a solid wall…

CHAPTER NINE
     
    “ Hey, you boys!”
    Bill Bitner’s shout made Kevin and
Jimmy’s feet jump an inch off the floor. Bill looked at them with
an angry glare. He raised an old, glowing lantern—the light they’d
seen—up higher so he could see them. “You got no business back
here! What’re you two up to?”
    “ We’re, uh, we’re just
looking around, Mr. Bitner,” Kevin said with a hitch in his
voice.
    “ Well go look around
somewhere else,” Bill shot back. And it was then that Kevin noticed
something else.
    Bill had something long and thin in
his hand, and he was sort of holding it behind him, almost as if he
didn’t want the boys to see what it was.
    But the glimpse Kevin had caught was
enough.
    It’s a shovel, Kevin realized. He’s
holding a shovel…
    “ Now go on and get out of
here, the both of you,” Bill ordered them. “Neither of you got any
business snooping around back here.”
    “ We weren’t snooping, Mr.
Bitner,” Jimmy said. “We—”
    “ Just go on and get out
here!” Bill Bitner repeated. Then he went to the door at the very
end of the hall, opened it, went in, then—
    Slam!
    — slammed the door shut
behind him.
    “ Did you see that?” Kevin
asked, his eyes wide as