Vampire Vacation

by B. A. Frade

  “Let me in!” I called out to him. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “Oh, all right.” He reluctantly opened the door to let me in, teasing, “You should have seen your face—that was classic!”

  “I’ll get you for that one, Mateo,” I warned. “You’d better watch your back.” He didn’t know it, but I didn’t mean in the future. I meant now. When he turned, I smacked him with a snowball right between the shoulder blades. “Ha.” I clapped my hands together, feeling satisfied.

  “We’re even,” he told me, brushing wet snow off his neck. I heard him add in a low whisper, “For now.”

  I laughed. “Do your best,” I challenged. “But be on the lookout. This fancy new lodge might not be scary, but I am!”

  There was never an official truce between Matt and me. When we were downstairs by the spa and hot tub, he pretended he was looking for a pencil, then jumped out of an empty conference room to scare me.

  “Bah, humbug,” I told him. “Not scary.”

  We went upstairs to a small gaming room with a fire in the corner. When he wasn’t looking, I knocked over a rack of pool cues, thinking the noise would scare him. But it didn’t.

  By the time we got back to the main reception area of the lodge, we’d given up. We crashed down onto a very plush, soft couch in front of a large wood-burning fire. The overstuffed pillows made a gassy sound. He laughed while I rolled my eyes at him.

  “I hope the slopes are awesome because this place is kind of boring,” Matt said, resting his head back against the fluffy cushions.

  “You think the Wampir Resort is boring?” a woman sitting nearby asked. She leaned around the high wings of a small velvet chair. I hadn’t noticed her when we came in.

  The lady seemed out of place in her glamorous, high-necked, old-fashioned gown and small veiled hat. She was thin, with long hair and brown eyes—no, yellow eyes. No, they were definitely green. They looked like they kept changing.

  “Come with me,” she said, rising. “I’d like to show you something special.”

  “Uh,” I stalled. As much as I was willing to sneak away, play pranks, and pop out of hidden corners to scare my best friend, I didn’t think going off with a stranger was a smart idea.

  “Have you seen the lodge library?” she asked, moving in closer to us.

  “Library?” Matt asked, curious. “There’s a library in the lodge?”

  We hadn’t seen one on the resort map.

  “Certainly you’ve noticed that there is barely phone reception and no Internet service at the lodge,” she said, looking at me with eyes that now seemed to be violet.

  “Oh, we’ve noticed,” Matt said.

  The woman nodded sympathetically. “It’s quiet here late at night. If you can’t play with your phones, what will you do? Did you bring books to read?”

  She had a good point. Neither one of us had thought to bring books. We had both thought we would be able to just download books to read.

  “Does the library have any scary stories?” Matt asked. “That’s what I like to read. The scarier, the better.”

  “Follow me,” the woman told us. “I’m certain you will find exactly what you need.”

  Since we weren’t leaving the lodge, I figured it was okay to go along.

  The library was a small room off the main lobby. There were two plush reading chairs, a small desk with pens and paper, and a tall shelf of books.

  At the top of the shelf was a sign.

  It read: “Give One/Take One.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked the woman, wondering if she worked at the lodge.

  “If you brought a book from home, you should leave it here and take a new one,” she replied.

  “But I didn’t bring anything,” I said sadly, wishing I had.

  “I didn’t bring anything either,” Matt told her. “I was thinking I’d be using my laptop to watch sports.”

  The woman’s eyes seemed to shift to black as she said, “Don’t worry. Just take what you want. When you reach the end of the story, you can put it back here before you return home.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. “Sounds good.”

  We began to look through the shelves starting at the very top, going down row by row. There were romance novels, cowboy novels, and a lot of mysteries. But no scary stories.

  “This stinks,” Matt said after reaching the bottom shelf. “Nothing looks scary!”

  “I don’t think you’ve looked hard enough,” the woman said from behind us.

  I jumped back a little. She moved so quietly that she surprised me.

  Matt laughed, but I could tell he’d been surprised as well.

  She reached up to the top shelf, in the middle of the row, and pulled out a strange-looking book.

  I swore I had looked in that spot. How had I missed that book? It was an antique leather-bound journal with a small brass clasp. The most fascinating part was that the cover had several strange triangles etched into the leather. They’d been painted gold at some point, but the color had faded with age.

  The woman handed the book to Matt, and as it passed by me, I smelled a sharp metallic odor rising from the leather. Matt opened the book and set it on the small desk so we could both look inside. The pages were made of a thick yellowed paper, with a slight tinge of brown around the edges.

  On the first page were the words:

  Tales from the Scaremaster

  But beneath that title, the rest of the page was blank.

  I flipped a few pages. “They’re all blank.”

  A few pages in, I noticed some light red smears on the paper. I pointed at the stains.

  “It’s definitely blood,” Matt said in a confident voice, as if he were an expert on bloodstains.

  “You’re just trying to scare me,” I told him. “It’s not working.”

  “Since you like scary stories,” the woman advised, “perhaps you could write your own?” Over her shoulder there was a small window that looked out toward the old, run-down Wampir lodge. “There might be something around here that would inspire you….” she hinted, glancing back at me and Matt.

  She handed me a pen from the desk. “You could start now.” She said, her voice low and even. It was a bit hypnotic, like a magician I’d once seen at a fair.

  I had the strangest feeling that the woman wasn’t going to let us leave the library until we’d written something. Not like she was locking us in, but rather, she wanted us to write so badly she’d stay with us until we did.

  Matt told me, “You start the story, and I’ll jump in when I have an idea.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. Not wanting to let the woman down, since she was the one who’d discovered the journal, I leaned over the page and wrote:

  Once upon a time, Mateo Ortiz

  and Zoe Lancaster were looking

  for adventure in the Wampir Ski

  Resort and Lodge.

  “Wait!” Matt suddenly pointed at the page. “Look!”

  Under my writing, there were new words. I hadn’t written them. And neither had Matt.

  It said:

  Looking for a scare,

  are you? The Scaremaster won’t

  disappoint you. You shouldn’t

  have started this story.

  Now I get to finish it!

  Chapter Three

  “You wrote that.” I turned to Matt. “How did you do that? Some new trick you learned? Was she in on it?” As much as I didn’t want to admit that I was spooked, I was. How had he done that?

  “I didn’t….” Matt turned around. “She…” The woman who’d shown us the book was gone. Matt looked totally shocked. He wasn’t that good of an actor.

  “It had to be her,” Matt insisted. “She’s the one who wanted us to write in it so badly!”

  “Where’d she go?” I looked out the library door. “We gotta find her and ask her how she did that.” We ran into the main lobby area. She wasn’t in the chair where we’d first seen her. She wasn’t at the reception desk.
She wasn’t anywhere!

  “Did we imagine her?” I asked Matt, who was awkwardly holding the strange journal in front of him. He seemed both a little afraid to put it down and scared to hold it too close.

  “Imagine who?” a voice cut in. It was Chloe. “Whatcha got, Matt?”

  He looked down at his hands as if surprised to discover he still held the journal. “A book,” he said simply.

  “Can I read it?” Chloe asked. Her hair was in high pigtails that bobbed as she skipped closer to Matt and the journal.

  “No way,” Matt said quickly. I knew he didn’t mean to sound so harsh; it was just that we didn’t know anything about the journal yet. We needed more time to check it out. Time without Chloe looking over our shoulders.

  If I tried to hide the book, it would just make my sister curious. I didn’t want that, so I gave her just enough information to stop her from asking any more questions.

  “It’s a book of terrifying stories,” I told her, prying the book from Matt’s tight grip. I flashed her the first page in way to disguise that the book was basically blank. “See?” I used my arm to block as much of the page as I could. I only wanted her to see the title.

  “‘Tales from the Scaremaster,’” Chloe read slowly. “That doesn’t seem that scary.”

  “Oh no?” I said, raising an eyebrow and teasing her. “This book has the scariest stories ever told.” I raised that eyebrow even higher and whispered, “And the best part… they’re all true.”

  “Really?” Chloe looked up at me. “No way. You’re kidding, right?” Even though she was wearing her coat, she gave a little shiver.

  I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know yet,” I told her. “We just got it from the library.” I pointed in the direction of the bookshelves. “Maybe after dinner you can go find something to read too.” We’d seen kids’ books on the bottom shelf.

  “Nah,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “I’ve got my comic books.” My sister loved superheroes. Her comic collection could have filled Matt’s body bag/duffel and more. I wasn’t a huge fan of comics. But if the Scaremaster’s journal ended up being a bust, we could check out what she brought.

  Mom and Dad and Matt’s parents came to join us. They’d been over at the activities desk arranging the next day on the slopes.

  “You ready?” Matt’s dad asked us.

  I quickly took off my coat and slid the journal under it. I wrapped the jacket around the book and said, “Yep. Now we are.” I gave Matt a wink, and we went in to dinner.

  My grilled salmon was good, but I didn’t take the time to enjoy it. Matt kept kicking me under the table. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was asking me whether I was done yet.

  The instant he swallowed his last bite of pasta, Matt stood. He stretched and yawned. “I’m beat. Ready to hit the couch.” He tugged at my arm. “Zoe will walk back with me, okay?”

  My dad gave me an odd look. “I thought you wanted cake,” he said. “It’s German chocolate, your favorite.”

  That was my favorite, and I did want dessert.

  Coming to stand behind my chair, Matt snatched up my jacket. I could tell he was being careful not to reveal the book that was wrapped up inside it. “She can have cake another night,” he said. “Come on, Zo. Time to go.”

  “I—” I knew Matt wanted time to check out the book before everyone else came to the cabin. I wanted time too, but I also wanted cake!

  “Oh, all right,” I gave in. “The prince needs his beauty sleep, I suppose.” If he kneed the back of my seat one more time, I was going to turn around and stab him with my fork.

  I asked Mom and Dad, “Do you mind if I walk him back?”

  “We were going to stay in the lodge for a while,” Mom said. “There’s going to be a folk music band and cocoa by the big fireplace.”

  That was actually good news. It meant Matt and I had longer to investigate the Scaremaster’s tales.

  “Bummer to miss the band,” I said, trying to sound as disappointed as possible. “Maybe they’ll come again later this week,” I said, holding up my crossed fingers.

  My mom, psychic as she is, laughed. “You two have fun. Don’t get in trouble.” She meant that last bit.

  “We won’t,” I told her. “I promise.”

  How much trouble could we get into? We were going to check out a book that wrote stories by itself. What could possibly go wrong?

  We sat together on Matt’s bed, which was now still a couch. The book was between us, half on my lap, half on Matt’s.

  “How do you think it works?” I asked, twirling a pen between my fingers.

  “It’s possessed,” Matt said, adding, “Duh.”

  It was like we’d been preparing for this book our whole lives. All that scaring each other. All those pranks and tricks and jokes. They had led us to this. We’d found a book that was meant to scare us!

  “Possessed? That sounds awesome,” I told Matt, hoping with all my heart that he was right. “What do we do? How do we know for sure?”

  Matt looked at the pen in my hand. “Write something.”

  I’d already written a start to a story, but I didn’t want my own tale. If this book was really possessed, I wanted to hear a Scaremaster scary story. I mean, that’s what he promised, right?

  It was still there, written on the page like a contract:

  Looking for a scare, are

  you? The Scaremaster won’t

  disappoint you.

  I trembled, not with fear but rather with excitement, as I wrote:

  We’re looking for a scare.

  For a long moment, nothing happened. I held my breath. Beside me, Matt’s leg was twitching.

  “You’re shaking the book,” I said, not looking away from the page. Thinking I saw a little ink dot on one of those red blood-looking stains, I bent over the journal for a closer look. “Is that handwriting?”

  “I don’t think so,” Matt said, putting his face near mine as we started at the page together. “I think it’s a smudge. It looks like—”

  When actual writing appeared, we both jumped and we bumped heads.

  “Ack!” Matt said, pulling back so fast, his hand accidentally knocked the book off the couch.

  “Ouch!” I shouted, grabbing my head with two hands. “You’ve got a hard head,” I told Matt, rubbing the sore spot. “That’s gonna bruise.”

  “I know,” he said with a small smile. “Lucky, right? Never had a concussion.”

  “Bragger,” I said. Concussions were common in soccer, when a player hit the ball with her head like I did. I was really careful, though, and took healing seriously.

  Careful not to bump him again, I reached past Matt to grab the book from under the coffee table. I set it back between us.

  “Read it,” Matt said. “Use your spooky voice, Zoe.”

  I did have a good spooky voice. In a low, breathy tone, I read, “‘Fact or fiction?’”

  “It’s a question,” I told Matt, raising my eyes from the page. “What does he mean?”

  “I’ve got this,” Matt said, pulling the Scaremaster’s journal toward him. “He’s going to tell us a story. Do you want one that’s true, based in fact? Or would you rather he make something up?”

  I could not believe we were sitting in a cabin at the Wampir Resort talking to a possessed book! Even if it turned out to be someone’s joke, it was a good one. I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

  “What’s scarier?” I asked Matt. “I think we should go with the one that will frighten us more.”

  “Ask the Scaremaster,” Matt told me, turning the book toward me. “It’s his story.”

  I wrote:

  You promised to scare us.

  We’ll take the scarier one.

  I’ll tell you the story of the

  Wampir Resort.

  Instinctively Matt and I both glanced through the big window in the direction of the old lodge. It was dark outside. There was a glow from the moonlight on the packed snow, and we could see a d
usting of fresh snowflakes drifting down. We couldn’t see the old lodge in the blackness, but there was a distinct light coming from where it would have been. A flickering yellow pinpoint, like a flashlight or candle, was shining through a window on the third floor.

  I leaned into Matt. “This is really happening,” I whispered, feeling the goose bumps on his arm pressed against the goose bumps on my own.

  “So cool,” he said, tapping the journal with a finger. “Zoe, say okay. Tell him we want to hear the story.”

  “Do you think this story will be fact or fiction?” I asked Matt, giving one last glance toward the old lodge. Now it was completely dark. Whatever or whoever we’d seen was gone.

  Matt shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. As long as it’s scary.”

  I wrote:

  Scare us.

  The Scaremaster replied:

  Oh, I will….

  Chapter Four

  Tales from the Scaremaster

  Night at Wampir Resort

  December 28, 1882

  Count Frederic Wampir held the creamy white invitation in his hand. At the top of the stationery was his family crest, two red dots above a scrawled letter W. The W was emblazoned in gold, of course. He’d had the gold leaf from his own treasury crushed to dust. It was expensive to put the crest on each and every invitation with fine lines of the precious metal, but it was worth the cost. Because tonight was the most important night of Count Frederic’s life.

  He had handwritten the invitations himself.

  Please join me this evening for a

  special celebration.

  The grand opening of the

  Wampir Ski Resort and Lodge