The painting showed what looked like a large rowboat coming ashore. There were several men in the rowboat but their faces all looked blank, as if they were in a trance. And sitting right in the middle of the rowboat were two things:

  The first thing was a big open wooden box piled high with gold bricks.

  And the second thing was—

  Kevin’s eyes widened. It’s a— It’s a—

  It was a coffin.

  A creepy, wood-plank coffin.

  Just like the one in the vampire movie he’d been watching with Becky last night.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Well, it was great meeting you, Becky,” that young guy, Wally, was saying just inside the front door. Then he pushed the door open with a long creak. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “Uh, uh,” Becky brilliantly replied, her face all lit up with a big, dopey grin. “I, uh, I will.”

  “See ya.”

  Wally left the lodge, shutting the door behind him.

  Becky turned dreamily. “He’s just so, just so—”

  Kevin smirked. “Just so what?”

  “He’s just so… wonderful…”

  “Who?” Kevin said. “That Wally guy? What’s so wonderful about him?”

  “Oh,” Becky gushed on, “he’s just so handsome and strong and rugged and smart and nice and—”

  “And,” Kevin cut in, “he’s probably twenty years old! You’re only fifteen, Becky! Mom and Dad would go crazy! What is wrong with you? I can’t believe you have a crush on a twenty-year-old guy!”

  “He’s not twenty!” Becky objected. “He’s seventeen. He just seems older because he’s so mature…”

  So mature, Kevin thought, rolling his eyes. Yeah, right. He decided to let the topic drop—trying to convince Becky that older boys weren’t for her was always a lost cause. “Come here a minute,” he said instead, remembering what he wanted to show her. “Look at this picture over here—”

  “I don’t have time to look at some stupid picture,” Becky snapped back. “I’ve got important things to do.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Like deciding what I’m going to wear later on. Wally said he’d be back in this evening to do some work. I want to look my best.”

  Kevin frowned hard. “Okay, fine, but just come here for one second and look at this picture on the wall. It’s a painting of a boat—”

  “Big deal,” Becky said.

  “It’s like a rowboat, with a bunch of guys in it, only the guys have these really weird blank looks on their faces, and right in the middle of the boat there’s a big crate full of gold bricks—”

  “Big deal.”

  “But there’s also a coffin in the boat!” Kevin excitedly went on. “And the coffin looks just like the one in the vampire movie we saw last night!”

  “You have vampires on the brain,” Becky sniped. “I’m going back upstairs. Oh, but you know what?”

  “What?” Kevin said, frowning.

  “Wally even drives. He even has his own car!”

  Great, Kevin thought. He can have his own bus for all I care.

  Becky stomped back up the steps, leaving Kevin alone in the dark, dusty foyer. He looked at the painting some more, squinting, and then he noticed that the painting had a title, written in tiny cursive letters along the bottom.

  The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure.

  Kevin’s scalp tingled. He’d been right…

  “The Count,” he whispered to himself. “As in Count Dracula, the king of the vampires…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Drac–who?” Jimmy asked, peering at the dark painting on the foyer wall. Kevin had made sure to point out the strange picture the minute Jimmy had come back downstairs.

  “Drac-u-la,” Kevin slowly pronounced for his friend. “Like what I was telling you about on our way down in the car. Count Dracula. He’s from some place called Transylvania, and he’s, like, hundreds of years old.”

  “Aw,” Jimmy scoffed, “no one lives that long. How can he be hundreds of years old?”

  “Like I told you, Jimmy. He’s a vampire.”

  “Oh, yeah, someone who comes out of his coffin at night and drinks people’s blood so he can live forever.”

  “They have fangs,” Kevin added. “And they bite people on the neck, and they can never go in sunlight. And if they want to, they can turn into bats, and sometimes they can even change into wolves.”

  “You mean like werewolves, the things people change into whenever there’s a full moon?”

  “No,” Kevin said. “I don’t think they can turn into werewolves, just the regular kind of wolves.”

  Jimmy seemed impressed at first, but he hesitated a little. “That’s pretty cool but… vampires can’t be for real. I mean, you don’t believe that this Count Dracula really exists, do you?”

  “Well, no,” Kevin answered. “Of course not. Vampires are just make-believe, and so are werewolves and zombies and the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy, all that kind of monster stuff. Somebody in Hollywood invented them so they could make movies about ’em.”

  Jimmy looked back at the painting. “I wonder who painted this?”

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said.

  “And why would your Aunt want a painting of a vampire’s coffin in her lodge?”

  Hmm, Kevin thought. That’s a good question. As a matter of fact, that’s a real good question. “You’re right. It seems like a pretty weird thing for an adult to have hanging in a place like this.”

  Jimmy nodded. “And adults can be pretty weird sometimes.”

  “You’re right about that,” Kevin agreed. “We 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 coins.

  “Yeah, before he went into that room, it looked like he walked right out of the wall.”

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  “No way!” Jimmy objected. “You heard him. He told us to get out of here.”

  “So what? He’s gone; he went into that other room.”

  “Yeah, and he’s probably standing on the other side of the door listening, figuring we’ll snoop around some more. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What? I can’t believe this.” Kevin challenged. “You’re chicken?”

  “I’m not chicken,” Jimmy came right back, “and I’m not stupid either. That guy gives me the creeps. And what if he tells our dads that we were snooping around?”

  Kevin opened his mouth to say something more, but then he thought about it and decided not to.

  Jimmy had a good point.

  Dad’s a cool guy, he reminded himself. But he wouldn’t be too happy if he got back from his fishing trip and heard that Jimmy and I were causing trouble.

  “Look,” Jimmy said. “You can do what you want, but I’m getting out of here.”

  “Me too,” Kevin agreed.

  They walked back out the way they came, down the dark hallway, through the kitchen, then back out into the foyer. And in their journey, they again didn’t catch a glimpse of Aunt Carolyn anywhere.

  “I know what we can do,” Jimmy suggested.

  “What’s that?”

  “We can put together our kites!”

  “Good idea,” Kevin agreed. “Let’s do it.” He had to admit, there was nothing better to do, and things were getting pretty boring around here real fast. Aunt Carolyn didn’t even have a television in the lodge. No shows, no movies, no nothing. The pits, Kevin thought. At least if they assembled their kites now, they might be able to get out onto the bluffs today.

  They tracked back through the foyer toward the stairwell. Kevin was looking forward to getting his kite together—it was a vampire bat kite—but just as he approached the bottom of the big stairwell, something made him come to a halt and pause for a moment.

  His head turned.

  His eyes glided across the paneled wall—

  —back to the creepy painting.

  The painting hung there right in front of his face.

  It seemed to stare back at him just as much as he stared at it…

  The rowboat, the box of gold bricks, and—

  The Count Arrives with his Servants and Treasure.

  —and the coffin…

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jimmy had bought the “Wind-Box Deluxe”, a box kite, which was a box-shape made out of thin wooden poles with red plastic sheets wrapped around the box. Kevin’s was a standard wing-type kite: “The Vampire Bat.” It had a simple t-shaped wooden frame onto which a black plastic sheet was attached. It took them both about a half hour to get the kites fully assembled and ready to go. Kevin was proud of his finished kite; once he had attached the plastic to the frame, the kite looked just like a giant black bat, complete with big red eyes and a mouth with fangs.

  “You ready?” Jimmy asked.

  “Sure am,” Kevin said. “Let’s go.”

  They put on their fall coats and headed downstairs. Kevin thought it best to let his Aunt Carolyn know that they’d be on the bluffs for a few hours, but once they got back downstairs, they still couldn’t find her anywhere.

  “Where is she?” Kevin questioned aloud. “I haven’t seen her since our dads left.”

  “Look,” Jimmy suggested, “we don’t want to waste any more time trying to find her. Let’s just go.”

  “Well,” Kevin hesitated. “We really should let her know where we’re going first.”

  “She already knows where we’re going, Kevin. She knows we brought our kites, and she knows we’ll be flying them. It’s no big deal. We’re not babies. We’ll be careful, we know what we’re doing.”

  Kevin thought about it. “Yeah, I guess it’s all right.” And, anyway, how could they tell Aunt Carolyn where they were going? She wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  By now it was mid-afternoon. Fallen leaves blew in swirls out in front of the lodge. “This is going to be great,” Kevin observed. “The wind’s really picking up.”

  “So where are these bluffs?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not far. Right through this trail.”

  Toting their new kites, then, Kevin and Jimmy set out down the narrow, tree-lined trail. Autumn leaves continued to fall as they made their way. Acorns and branches crunched under their feet. “Look!” Jimmy shouted, pointing. “What’s that?”

  Kevin peered into the dense trees to his left. Two eyes glittered at him, inside of a red face.

  “It’s a fox,” Kevin said, as the animal scampered away. “There’re lots of squirrels around too, collecting acorns and nuts for the winter.”

  They both glanced upward then, and above them, racing back and forth over the high branches, were dozens of squirrels, mostly brown, but several black ones, and they even saw one rare white squirrel. Starlings and other birds also roosted high in the trees, preparing to fly south for the winter.

  “This place sure is a lot different from the city,” Jimmy commented. “The woods and the animals and the birds. It’s incredible.”

  “I know,” Kevin agreed. “Why do you think I like coming here? The only thing I’m worried about is what my dad was saying on the way up, about Aunt Carolyn going ‘bust.’“

  “That means she might have to close the lodge down, huh?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, what happens then?”

  Kevin thought about this. It only made sense. “I guess if she doesn’t have enough money to run the lodge and the campgrounds, she’ll have to sell the place, something like that.”

  “That’d be a bummer.”

  “Yeah, but maybe it won’t happen,” Kevin said. Then he wanted to change the subject because he didn’t like to think about the idea that Aunt Carolyn might have to close down the lodge or sell it to someone else. “Just wait till we get out onto the bluffs,” he said. “This is absolutely the best kite-flying weather I’ve ever seen. A whole lot of wind but not too

  hard. If it’s too hard, our strings could snap, or we might not be able to control the kites, and we’ll lose them in the trees or crash them.”

  Eventually, the trail opened up into a huge, flat grassy field. Suddenly Kevin and Jimmy were standing right out in the open. There was a mild salty smell in the air, from the ocean, and they could hear the waves breaking time and time again just over the cliff.

  “Wow!” was all Jimmy could say.

  The view over the horizon was spectacular. Clouds, some white, some dark-gray, churned above them. And beyond that, they could see the deep-green ocean rising and falling, every so often topped by swirling squiggles of white foam that grew and then disappeared, only to be replaced by more of the same white, foamy squiggles. The great, churning ocean seemed like it went on forever. And a steady salt-scented wind rushed against their faces.

  “And it’s a safe place, too,” Kevin commented, pointing a finger across the bluff.

  Along the edge of the cliff, there was a long, high fence which led all the way down the coast for well over a mile, or maybe more. The fence was made of metal wire attached to steel posts.

  “So there’s no way we can accidentally fall off the cliff while we’re flying our kites,” Kevin pointed out. “That fence would catch us.”

  “Did your aunt put the fence up?” Jimmy asked, dropping his big spool of string and tying one end to the tail end of his shiny-red box kite.

  “Yeah, a long time ago when she first bought the lodge,” Kevin told him. “It probably cost a lot of money to put up, but she wants to make sure no one has any accidents while they’re staying here. Take a look.”

  Jimmy followed Kevin out to the edge of the bluff. They put their hands on the sturdy metal fence rail, leaned over, and looked down.

  “Gosh,” Jimmy said. “That makes me really dizzy just looking down.”

  “I know,” Kevin said. “It’s pretty scary. But it’s a good thing my aunt had this fence put up.”

  They looked down. The rocky cliff descended over huge, chunky rocks and led straight down to the sea. Waves crashed against the stone cliff, shooting giant puffs of white foamy water.