Vampire Vacation

by B. A. Frade

  Chloe let go of Mr. Wampir’s hand and moved to my side. I was glad he let her go and happy she was now within reach so that I could grab her for our escape. “Mr. Wampir is making a haunted house here at the old ski lodge.” She grinned up at me and laughed. “It’s gonna be the best! You were so scared!”

  I turned to Matt, who’d just caught up in time to hear Mr. Wampir’s explanation of everything we’d seen. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “No. Never.” Matt shook his head. “I’ve been to tons of haunted houses. This one takes the prize.”

  Chloe stood proud. “Mr. Wampir told me it was all part of the haunted house and there was nothing to be afraid of. That made me brave.”

  My sister had danced with holograms in a haunted house. She’d been swarmed by bats, which I now thought might be some kind of furry drones. And she had napped in a coffin. We’d come a long way since she’d freaked out about Matt’s body bag in the van on the way here.

  “Thank you,” I told Mr. Wampir. “Thank you for being so kind to Chloe.” As strange as this all was, I meant it.

  “He’s trying the scary stuff out this week,” Chloe said. “Only a few people were invited tonight. We’re so lucky!”

  I glanced around. There were no other non-hologram guests like us, so who else got invitations?

  “Chloe, we gotta go.” We had to get home before our parents. “Say good night, please.”

  “Before you go, would you like to see the grand finale for the ball?” Mr. Wampir asked us. His accent was very thick. I wondered how long he’d been in the country. He seemed younger than the chefs at the Snow Hut had led me to believe. He didn’t look old enough to retire.

  “Sure.” Any fear that Matt had bottled up while we explored the old lodge was gone now that he knew it was all a setup for a haunted house. He was ready to be scared again.

  “It’s terrifying,” Mr. Wampir said with a wink. “You sure?” He looked to Chloe.

  “I can handle it,” she told him, giggling. Of course, she held my hand, crushing my fingers in a death grip.

  “We’re all set,” I said. Then to Chloe, “One big scare and we have to go home. No nightmares, okay?”

  “Promise,” she told me.

  “So here we go.” Mr. Wampir moved away from us and raised his hands. “It is the final night of the old Wampir lodge. Tomorrow the building will be torn down so that a spa could be built for the new lodge.”

  It was quite a dramatic performance. I recalled how the invitation said this was the closing night. That was a nice touch. It added finality to the evening, as if we were the last ones who’d ever see the haunted house. I assumed every night of the “show” would be the “last.”

  “We’ve lived here for more than a hundred years,” he said. The music faded, and the guests stopped dancing. Everyone was looking at Mr. Wampir.

  Inside my jacket, my skin began to feel cold. I looked down to make sure Chloe’s hand was still in mine.

  She didn’t seem scared at all. In fact, both she and Matt were smiling.

  Mr. Wampir held up a black box with a large red button on it. He spoke to all his guests. “I’ve known each of you since the grand opening and have welcomed you into my family.” There was a sadness in his voice. “Tonight we say farewell.” He lowered a dark mask across his eyes, like the blackout ones some people use for sleeping.

  The hologram guests looked at each other, side to side, with expressions of horror.

  I had to admit, this was a very frightening show.

  “Unu. Doi. Trei,” Mr. Wampir counted, in what must have been his native Romanian. On three, he pressed the button, and the chandelier above the room burst with a light as bright as the sun.

  I had to look away, but before I did, I could see the holograms bursting around me. The men and women twinkled and then turned to dust.

  The room faded back to the run-down, decayed space from my dreams, and a cold wind whispered through the cracked windows.

  The chandelier’s burst of light faded, and it took a minute for me to stop seeing spots in my eyes. Matt and Chloe were rubbing their eyes.

  Mr. Wampir removed his eye mask and said softly, “This is how it ends.”

  Chloe began to clap. “That was so scary!” she told him. But there was an expression on Mr. Wampir’s face that made me hold back from applauding. He was frowning, eyebrows drawn together. He looked miserable.

  “Mother,” he said, talking to someone behind us. “It’s over.”

  Matt and I turned, and I knew then that the show hadn’t ended.

  A red velvet chair now sat on a raised platform at the back of the room.

  That wasn’t where the chair had been in my dream, but the chair itself was the same. And the woman, she was also the same. She was young, maybe thirty years old, with dark hair, wearing the same red dress I’d imagined. It had a high lace neck, and she was wearing long white gloves.

  “It’s over,” Mr. Wampir said again, the sorrow causing his voice to crack.

  She nodded and said, “It’s time to move on, my child.”

  He didn’t say anything; rather, he looked back at the piles of dust from the holograms that were now swirling around the dance floor as the wind picked up.

  The woman looked to me and said, “Let us walk you out.” She unlocked the large ballroom doors, which made me wonder what trick she’d used to get in there. Matt and Chloe were looking at each other like this was the best night of their lives.

  The bellman stood at the broken, termite-eaten front door to the old lodge, holding Matt’s coat. He handed Matt the jacket, and while Matt put it on, Mr. Wampir joined his mother on the front steps.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Wampir,” Chloe said, giving the man a final hug before we left.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Matt said, still smiling. “This really was the best haunted house I’ve ever seen.”

  I shook hands with Mr. Wampir, then went to shake hands with his mother. As she reached out, it crossed my mind to wonder how it was possible that Mr. Wampir was older than his mom. I passed it off as another clever trick for the haunted house. Of course, if they were playing at being vampires, it made sense. Vampires stop aging at the time they are bitten. So Mr. Wampir would be older, since the story said he’d run away from home. If he was the real Wampir, the woman must be an actress.

  They’d paid so much attention to details: There was the whole Wampir play on the word “vampire.” And the coffins. And the bats. And the blood from the Snow Hut steak, which I now imagined must have been used in another part of the haunted house. We hadn’t seen it all. Plus, who knew—maybe the Scaremaster’s book was all part of the setup too.

  I had to admit, they’d done a terrific job. Maybe we could do another run-through before we left town?

  I’d ask Matt and Chloe if they wanted to before we asked. I was certain they’d say yes.

  I reached out to grasp Mrs. Wampir’s hand in mine. It was cold and bony, and when I looked, the skin on her knuckles reflected that of an old woman.

  We held hands in silence for a long moment, until she pulled back.

  In an accent thicker than Mr. Wampir’s and the bellman’s combined, she said, “Gud-bye.” Then, as we walked down the steps toward our cabin, she called out, “It vas nice to see you again, Zoe.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We got home before our parents. Chloe was in bed when they arrived. We’d made her promise never to tell anyone about what happened tonight. From the way she agreed, I felt pretty sure that from now on, she’d be one of the best secret keepers in the world.

  “How was your night?” Mom asked me as she, my dad, and Matt’s parents entered the cabin and took off their boots and coats. We were sitting on the couch, flipping through some of Chloe’s comic books.

  “Boring,” I said with a yawn.

  “We were too tired to do much of anything.” Matt leaned back into the couch. The Scaremaster’s journal was hidden behind the cushion. “How was dinn
er?”

  “Good,” Matt’s mom said. “We’re also exhausted.” She hung her coat on a hook by the door. “You two ready for another big day of skiing and snowboarding tomorrow?”

  “Yes!” we said at the same time.

  I was excited about skiing again, but first, I needed to sleep without nightmares.

  “Hey, Mom,” I started. “Would you mind if Matt and I ran over to the lodge? I read on the resort schedule that they are serving s’mores in the lobby tonight.”

  “Old lodge or new lodge?” Mom asked. As far as she knew, we hadn’t gone to explore the old lodge yet.

  “New, of course,” I told her.

  Mom consulted with the other parents, and they agreed. “You did a good job with Chloe. She’s safe and sound in bed, so you can go. But just for an hour, okay?”

  “Busy day tomorrow,” my dad added. “I signed you up for another full-day lesson!”

  “Oh, great,” I said. I was going to guarantee that I’d enjoy it.

  When our parents went to their rooms, Matt said, “I’m not hungry, are you?”

  “S’mores was just an excuse,” I told him. “We’re going to return the Scaremaster’s journal to the library.”

  Matt looked at me long and hard. “You don’t want any more scary stories?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Nope.” I added, “Though I’d be willing to take another trip to the haunted lodge, if you want.”

  “Cool,” Matt said. “Maybe we can offer Mr. Wampir some suggestions to make it even scarier.”

  “I don’t know what I’d add,” I said, putting on my jacket. “It was scary enough. I’m actually relieved it was a setup for a haunted lodge attraction, and not a real haunted lodge.”

  “Real frights would have been awesome!” Matt said, getting his coat.

  “You nearly died from the fake ones.” I laughed. “Seriously, I thought you might have been scared to death when the bats attacked.”

  “I wasn’t really scared,” Matt protested. We were walking to the lodge now. “But you should have seen your face when Mrs. Wampir said, ‘Gud-bye.’” He imitated the way she’d said it.

  I’d almost forgotten about that. “I can’t actually figure that part out,” I told him. “She said, ‘Nice to see you again, Zoe.’”

  “That’s when your face went pale,” Matt said. “I thought you were going to faint. What happened?”

  “I’d seen her in my dream,” I said, reminding him about the woman who had insisted she was my mother.

  “You must have seen her somewhere else too.” Matt opened the lodge door, and this time we went in without messing around. “Was she at dinner in the dining room? Or skiing the slopes?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t remember. I think only in my dream.”

  Matt turned the Scaremaster’s book around in his hand and ran his fingers over the leather. “Another mystery,” he said. “But if everything else in the story can be explained, I’m sure there’s a reason she recognized you.”

  It felt like a missing puzzle piece. “Let’s just get rid of the book. Then we can go back to scaring each other.”

  “I like that,” Matt said with an evil grin. “In fact, I already have some ideas.”

  We went into the lodge’s lobby. There was a door on the library room. It was shut. I pulled the handle. “Locked,” I reported.

  “Was there a door there before?” Matt asked me.

  I hadn’t seen one, but I might have forgotten.

  We headed to the front desk. The man at the counter was hunched over, sorting mail into piles. There was no one else around.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Can you open the door to the library?”

  Matt explained, “We borrowed a book and would like to put it back.”

  The man slowly set aside the mail and even more slowly turned toward us.

  “Library?” he asked, pushing up his thick glasses to see us better. “There’s no library at the lodge.”

  “Sure there is,” Matt told him. He pointed at the locked door. “It’s over there.”

  The man shook his head. He was the oldest man I had ever met. His back was hunched with age, and his eyes clouded. I was pretty sure he took those yellowed teeth out at night. He waved a wrinkled hand toward the library door.

  “That’s a storage room,” he told us. “Do you need a broom?” He gave a little chuckle at his own joke.

  I held up the Scaremaster’s journal. “We need to put this back.”

  “I’ve lived at the lodge my whole life,” the man said. “There’s never been a library.” He considered it for a long moment, then said, “It’s a good idea. I should make one.”

  Matt moved in closer to the registration desk. “You say you’ve lived here your whole life?”

  “My parents built this lodge,” he said in a proud voice. “I’m Joseph Wampir.”

  “Are you related to Frederic Wampir?” I asked him.

  The cloud in Joseph’s eyes seemed to fade when he said, “How do you know about my Uncle Frederic?”

  “We met him,” I said.

  “Impossible,” he said flatly.

  Things were starting to get weird again. A part of me wanted to throw the Scaremaster’s book in the trash and run back to the cabin. The other part wanted to know what was going on.

  “You didn’t meet Freddy,” Mr. Wampir told us. “That’s ridiculous. He was dead before my parents came to the mountain. We came to take over the ski resort and build this lodge.”

  “Why didn’t you use the old lodge?” Matt asked. It was one of the thousand questions now floating in my head.

  Old Man Wampir shook his head and looked at us as if we’d come out of a spaceship. “You can read, right?”

  “Of course,” I reminded him. “We were looking for the library.”

  “Right.” He shook his head, as if just remembering we’d said that.

  He reached under the registration desk and brought out an old scrapbook. He blew dust off the cover. “This has photos and newspaper stories from the very beginning of the Wampir Resort and Lodge.” He pushed the book toward us.

  Matt reached forward and opened to the first page. There was a photo of the old lodge, looking beautiful and ready for business.

  “Opening day,” Mr. Wampir said. He pushed Matt’s hand aside and turned to the next page. “Such a tragedy.”

  There was an article from a newspaper.

  DISAPPEARANCES REPORTED AT WAMPIR SKI RESORT AND LODGE.

  “A hundred people,” Mr. Wampir said, running his finger down the newsprint. “Maybe more.”

  “A hundred people disappeared?” I said, my voice came out small and confused.

  “The staff, the chefs, the musicians, and all the guests,” he said, shaking his head and sighing heavily. “They’d gathered in the ballroom for an opening night dinner and dance party. They were never heard from again.”

  “Who wrote the article?” I asked, something from the Scaremaster’s story was coming into my memory. “There was a reporter there with her husband, right?”

  Old Man Wampir looked at me sideways. “How would you know that?”

  “She heard a story,” Matt put in quickly. He asked, “Is the reporter the one who wrote this article?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Wampir closed the scrapbook and set it back under the counter. “She’d gone outside for a breath of fresh air, and when she returned, all the doors were locked. By the time the police arrived at the lodge, the rooms were empty. The entire resort was empty. The reporter never saw her husband again.”

  “Does anyone know what happened?” I asked, hopeful that there was a reason.

  “No,” Mr. Wampir said. “My father was Count Frederic’s brother. We came right away and closed the lodge. My father decided to start fresh and began construction on this new lodge. It’s been recently renovated.” He handed us a glossy brochure. The picture on the cover showed the resort as it was today.

  “What about the old lodge?” I asked. “No o
ne ever went in there again?”

  “Not after that night. My father locked it tight and closed it to the public,” he said. “I worry about the building. I have always been concerned that nosy kids”—he looked directly at us—“would go to explore the house and get hurt.” He paused, then said, “Or scared.” As if being scared was worse than getting hurt.

  It sounded like he’d made the place completely off-limits. I considered that we’d been invited there, and that it had been really easy for us to get inside. Too easy, maybe?

  Mr. Wampir went on. “Tomorrow morning the bulldozers are coming. The house is going to be taken down.”

  “But what about the haunted lodge attraction?” Matt asked. He was gripping the Scaremaster’s book.

  “Haunted lodge? That’s ridiculous. We’re a four-star resort!” He seemed offended at the very idea. Mr. Wampir put another brochure on the counter. “We’re creating the Wampir World Spa. Before long, we’ll be a five-star resort,” he added proudly.

  “Spa,” I echoed. I’d already known that was what was going on the site, because Frederic Wampir, or whomever we’d seen in the house, had announced that at the party.

  It really was the last dance party at the old lodge. And we’d been there. When Frederic Wampir turned on the chandelier, I’d noticed it was as bright as the sun, and now I knew why. Sunlight killed vampires by turning them to dust. All those guests, the staff, the waiters, and even the band—they weren’t really gone a hundred years ago. They’d been drained of their blood and trapped in the lodge. I knew from all the scary stories I’d read that they were called thralls. Thralls were slaves to their masters, blood-tied to the vampires.

  They were gone now. I’d watched them all blow away.