“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.