CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

No Aunt Carolyn, Kevin thought. And not even a bed in her own bedroom.

And that could only mean one thing.

She doesn’t have a bed. She doesn’t need one, because she’s a vampire. Vampire’s don’t sleep in beds, they never do. They sleep in coffins…

Which supported what he had suspected all along.

Aunt Carolyn really is a vampire. There’s no doubt…

But something else came to his mind just then, something just as frightening:

If Aunt Carolyn isn’t here, he wondered, trembling, then where is she?

The first impulse told him to scoot back to his own bedroom right now, pretend he hadn’t seen anything. He’d play dumb till Sunday morning when his father got back, and then could just get in the car and go home, and Kevin could forget all about this evil place.

But that wasn’t like him, was it? Kevin’s curiosity was just too strong; it wouldn’t let go. Like right now, for instance. He knew Aunt Carolyn was up and about somewhere—as most vampires would be at this hour—and he knew that the safest thing to do would be to go back to bed. But one thing he’d noticed while peeking into his aunt’s bedroom, during that last flash of lightning, were the two paintings on the wall, and next thing he knew—

I really shouldn’t be doing this, he warned himself.

—he was tiptoeing into the room!

Because he had to see those two paintings. He’d seen most of the others in the lodge, the scenes painted by Count Volkov himself, and it only stood to reason that the best of the paintings would be here, in his aunt’s room.

But, again, the biggest problem was light. The room was so dark that once he entered he found that he’d have to wait for another flash of lightning to light his way. It took him several minutes this way to get across the room to where the paintings hung. The first thing he noticed was that one of the paintings was larger than any of the other paintings he’d seen in the lodge, maybe even twice as large, with a thick fancy-carved frame. When the lightning cracked, Kevin’s eyes darted immediately to the bottom of the painting, to see what the title was:

Count Volkov, it read. A Self-Portrait.

And painted in the corner, sure enough, was The Count’s signature, proving that he was the artist.

Then the lightning cracked again, and Kevin’s eyes flicked quickly upward to look at the painting itself, and—

His jaw dropped.

—and in the brief flash of lightning, the painting of The Count looked right back at him…

It was the scariest painting he’d ever seen in his life. In dark, creepy colors, there he was—The Count. The painting looked so real, it almost seemed as though Count Volkov were standing before him in the flesh.

The Count’s face was long and thin—and so pale it was white. He was bald, and the collar of his great black cape was turned up, connected by a big brass button with a fancy V embossed on it. V, Kevin thought. For Volkov. And hanging just under the button, from a chain about The Count’s neck, was a pendant of gold, a pendant of a hideous vampire bat with outstretched wings…

Kevin’s stomach quivered as he examined the painting more thoroughly, and when the lightning flashed again, he took closer note of The Count’s face:

The whites of Count Volkov’s eyes were bloodshot, with pupils so black they looked like holes. The mouth, turned up into a sinister smile, was opened just enough that Kevin could see the two long needlelike fangs…

Kevin turned away. Count Volkov’s self-portrait was more frightening than any of the vampires he’d seen in the movies. It was so chilling, in fact, that he forced himself to turn away, because he knew that if he looked at it any longer, he’d have nightmares of The Count’s fangs and terrible white face for a long time to come.

Get out of here, he told himself, shivering.

But he couldn’t leave yet, could he? There was still one more painting he needed to look at…

The second painting was smaller, more like the others that hung in the lodge, and with a similarly carved, antique frame. Kevin waited for another lightning flash, and when it came, he read the second painting’s title:

The Count, Standing on the Balcony of his Room.

And another lightning flash—

All the breath seemed to seize in Kevin’s chest once he got a full glimpse of the second painting. It was a painting of the back of the lodge, at night, with a full, yellow moon hanging just over the peak of the lodge’s roof, and there, on a second-floor balcony, at the far corner of the lodge, Count Volkov stood in his great black cape, looking out into the night…

Suddenly, all Kevin could do was stare at the picture. The depiction of The Count was frightening enough—yes—but that wasn’t what scared Kevin the most—

In his mind, he recited the painting’s chilling title: The Count, Standing on the Balcony of his Room.

And then he thought further: His room. The Count’s room. The second-floor balcony at the far end of the lodge…

Then he realized:

Count Volkov’s room, and Kevin’s room, were the same.