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…