Vampire Lodge

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“It’s—it’s a coffin! Becky shrieked at the top of her lungs when she looked inside. Then she began to shiver, and she ran out of the bedroom and scurried away.

“Wow,” Jimmy murmured, shivering himself.

“This is pretty freaky,” Wally said. “The kid found another secret room, only this one has a coffin in it.”

Finally, astonished, Aunt Carolyn muttered under her breath, “I don’t believe it…”

But all Kevin could think was this: It was a trick, to hide The Count’s coffin. Not at a forked tree in the woods, a forked tree in a painting. And-and—

And… what?

He’s in there, Kevin thought. Count Volkov is in that coffin right now… and he’s still alive!

“We have to open it,” Aunt Carolyn said.

“No!” Kevin bellowed. “The Count is inside!”

Aunt Carolyn ignored him; instead, she turned to Wally. “Wally, do you think you can break that chain?”

“Not without boltcutters,” Wally replied, “or a good saw. But we probably won’t have to break the chain. We can break the lock. Look how old it is. It’s almost rusted through.”

Kevin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They wanted to open Count Volkov’s coffin! “You can’t open it!” he shouted. “If you do that, you’ll let him out!”

But Kevin’s warnings went ignored, and already—ping! ping! ping!—Wally was striking the lock on the coffin’s chains with a hammer from his toolbelt.

“No!” Kevin shouted.

ping!

“No!”

ping!

“You can’t!”

ping—CRACK!

And that’s when the old, rusted lock broke in half.

The chains slid off the top of the coffin and clanked to the floor. Then Wally put his hand on the lid and began to raise it.

Kevin shrieked till he was bug-eyed. “Don’t open it! You’ll let Count Volkov out, and he’ll kill us!”

Very, very slowly, then, the coffin lid raised, its decades-old hinges creaking like nails across slate.

Higher and higher, Wally lifted the lid.

Higher…

Higher—

“Don’t do it!” Kevin screamed a final time.

But Aunt Carolyn leaned over, smiling at him. “Kevin, don’t be silly. There are no such things as vampires. Don’t you see? It was all a trick.”

“What are you talking about?” Kevin wailed.

Aunt Carolyn went on, “Count Volkov isn’t in that coffin.”

“Then what is!”

“It has to be the—” she started but didn’t finish.

“You got to be kidding me!” Wally exclaimed when he’d fully the coffin lid. His long hair hung in front of his face as he stared into the opened coffin.

Then Aunt Carolyn finished, “It has to be the treasure, The Count’s gold bricks…”

Kevin, terrified, expected to see a white, long-nailed hand snap out of the coffin and grab Wally’s throat. But that didn’t happen at all. Wally remained standing there, staring down. Then Aunt Carolyn walked up to the coffin too, and so did Jimmy.

“Wow!” Jimmy said. “Look at that!”

Only then did Kevin step toward the coffin himself. He looked down inside of it, and his jaw dropped.

She was right, he thought.

It wasn’t Count Volkov who lay in the coffin…

The coffin, instead, was full of solid gold bricks.