CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Terror and dread made Kevin feel light-headed as he stumbled out of the secret room, closed the door behind him, and raced back down the dark corridor. All at once he felt more confused—and more scared—than he probably ever had in his whole life. Nothing made sense now. According to Aunt Carolyn, and according to everything else he understood, vampires didn’t exist. They were just part of a myth.

But…

If vampires don’t exist, he thought, moving down the hall, then what else can explain all the things I’ve found so far?

It was a terrifying question.

Secret panels, secret rooms. Creepy paintings all over the place, paintings of a vampire. Strange people digging in the woods. Shovels and hammers and—

And a box of wooden stakes, he added in thought, and a rag with blood on it…

And on top of all those things, there was always Aunt Carolyn’s story itself, about Count Volkov, a vampire story.

Could it all be just a strange coincidence? No, he felt sure. No way. There are just too many things that all add up to vampires. A coincidence would be impossible.

And all the things he’d discovered so far? They all pointed to one person, didn’t they?

Aunt Carolyn, Kevin realized.

He got to the end of the hidden corridor, rushed out, then carefully pushed the panel closed. He didn’t want to leave any evidence that he’d been down here. What would he do then? What would he say? How could he possibly explain it without being forced to reveal what he’d found?

No, he couldn’t do that—he knew it. He couldn’t tell anybody about any of this. At least not yet, he thought. At least not till Dad gets back from his fishing trip.

And the reason for this was simple.

Kevin was scared.

Very scared.

He double-checked to make sure the secret panel was properly closed, then he headed back to the kitchen. The candle, by now, had burned down most of the way. Kevin blew it out and turned on the kitchen faucet. Then he ran the candle’s wick thoroughly under the water, to be absolutely sure that it was out. The task finished, he hid the stub of the candle in the garbage can beneath the sink.

But for the entire time that he was doing this, his thoughts kept running away with his fears, and then he noticed that his hands were shaking. Yes, Kevin was scared, all right. And he knew why.

Suddenly the pieces started to fit together. They fit together so well, in fact, that Kevin was surprised he hadn’t figured it out sooner.

He turned off the overhead kitchen light, then wandered out to the hearth room. By now, the fire had all but died; only a tiny pile of glowing embers remained, and traces of heat. Outside, the storm still raged, the rain splashing against the windows, and the lightning crackling. But it wasn’t the storm that made Kevin so nervous…

He sat down in the dark, on one of the couches surrounding the fireplace. This whole creepy lodge is just like something out of a vampire movie, he realized, and everything else fits, too.

Bill Bitner’s secret room, the wooden stakes, and all that were bad enough. Not to mention the bloody rag, the shovels, and the weird paintings. It was Aunt Carolyn herself that bothered Kevin the most.

He formed a list in his mind, of all the things that suddenly bothered him about his aunt.

She’s kind of creepy looking to begin with, he thought. Her pale skin, her long black hair, and those long black dresses she always wears. She knows all about the Count Volkov legend, every detail, plus she bought the very same lodge that The Count had built and used to live in, and she has all of The Count’s paintings hanging all over the place…

But there was more, wasn’t there?

She never eats anything. She didn’t eat a thing at dinner, even though she set herself a place at the table, and she didn’t eat any of the popcorn she’d made when she was telling her story about The Count…

And if there was one thing Kevin knew full well:

Vampires don’t eat.

And one more thing, too, the most important hint of all.

She never goes outside, he realized. She never goes out in the daylight. In fact, I’ve never seen her outside, ever in my life. She’s always inside, in the dark. Sure, this morning she stood out on the porch when we pulled up in the station wagon, but the porch is covered, and the sky was so cloudy, there wasn’t much sunlight anywhere. And for most of the day she was…

Kevin’s hands began shaking again.

All day long, we didn’t see her anywhere, he recalled. She disappeared, and that’s when vampires sleep in their coffins—during the day, so they can be awake at night.

Kevin’s eyes went wide with dread as the lightning crackled in the window.

And it was then that he finally admitted to himself what had to be true…

Aunt Carolyn, he realized, is… a vampire…