by Skylar Finn
“Let me get this straight,” I whispered to Odette. “You want me to go back to the old wing, even though the ghosts tried to kill me, to look for some unknown room or object that this key unlocks without any additional information? What happens if I don’t make it out alive?”
“Drama queen,” Odette huffed, crossing her arms. “Last time, you went without my advice or protection. This time’s different. They already know you took the key, which means they’ll be expecting you back. You won’t be able to get in without them noticing.”
“You’re really instilling a sense of confidence in me right now.”
“I told you. I’ll have your back. Let’s go.”
“Now?”
“What did you think I woke you up for?” she demanded. “Or would you prefer to wait until the angry ghosts escape from the old wing and rampage through the rest of King and Queens?”
“It’s the middle of the night. I’m wearing pajamas.”
“Change your clothes. I’ll wait.”
A few minutes later, I was dressed in a pair of winter running pants and Riley’s oversized King and Queens sweatshirt. It smelled like French toast, and the front sported a light dusting of powdered sugar, but it was warm and readily available. I snuck past Jazmin, who had fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room. When the door to the suite clicked shut, locking me away from the two people who mattered most in the entire hotel, my heart sank to the bottom of my rib cage.
“Get over it,” muttered Odette. “We have things to do.”
“What, you can read my mind now too? An iota of privacy would be nice.”
“No, I can’t read minds. It’s all over your face.”
“Great. Can we go?”
She made a “right this way” gesture. “Living humans first.”
I rolled my eyes and called for the elevator. The button blinked, and the shafts stayed silent. “Not again. Come on. There’s no way I’m walking down twenty flights of stairs.”
I hammered the button, but nothing happened. Finally, Odette stuck her hand through the control panel. It sank up to the wrist, and when she pulled it free, the elevator shaft whirred to life. The doors opened and welcomed us inside.
“Just so you know,” I said as I followed her into the glass cage. “Ghosts and elevators generally don’t mix. This is where I met your mother.”
Odette gazed at the lobby floor as we rushed down to it. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t see the look on her face if I couldn’t see it straight on. She was wrong.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“It’s all bad memories,” she murmured as we alighted on the ground floor. “That’s what I’m trying to fix.”
I kept quiet as we made our way to the abandoned ballroom. For all the similarities she shared with Riley—age, dead mom, et cetera—I couldn’t talk to Odette the way I did with my other pre-teen charge. She was closed off. Cold. Maybe that sort of emotional blockage came with thirty years of being trapped in a world that wasn’t yours. She deserved to move on. I hoped I could make it happen for her.
“Are you sure about this?” I said, pausing outside the chained doors that led to the old lobby. I peeked through the gap. On the other side, the blackened room was quiet. No ghosts to be seen. “What makes you think you can keep them quiet?”
“I can’t,” she said. “I just said that to get you down here.”
“You did what?” I hissed.
“Too late now.” And with a bump of her hip—or her energy—she shoved me through the gap in the door before disappearing. Her voice whispered, “Quietly, Lucia. Don’t wake them.”
I almost replied with another snarky remark but caught myself just in time, or rather, the familiar prickle reminded me I shouldn’t take any chances. Debris crunched under my shoe. I winced as the sound echoed, but the prickle remained subtle and no fiery ghosts appeared to harass me.
I searched the lobby for anything with a keyhole. There were multiple options—private mail boxes behind the ruined check-in area, a safe once hidden by the thick wallpaper, and a locked drawer in what remained of the front desk—but my mystery key didn’t open any of the above. I was going to have to search the rest of the old wing too. At the thought, a sharp stab pricked the back of my neck like one hell of a mosquito bite.
“Ow!” I rubbed the spot with my palm.
Across the lobby, waiting in the hallway that led to the deeper sectors of the resort, a pair of glowing eyes watched me from the dark. My teeth chattered. My body trembled. Not because of any residual energy, but because I was dead terrified. The eyes didn’t blink. I took one small step to the side. The pupils, hardly visible, tracked the placement of my feet.
“Let me go,” I whispered. It was more prayer than request as I edged away from the front desk and toward the chained door. “Please let me get out of here.”
The door shut itself before I could slip under the chain, almost catching my pinky finger in the process. I yanked at the handle. The chain links clinked feebly against each other, but the door didn’t budge. I was trapped.
The floating eyes, level with my own line of sight, did not advance. However, they didn’t fall back either. They seemed to be waiting for me to come to a decision.
“What do you want from me?” My voice couldn’t be classified as a whisper. The words were silent on my lips. Despite this, the eyes blinked. Finally, a reaction. Then, for the second time during my stay at King and Queens, a presence approached me from behind, one that left such a chill I dared not turn around and face it. Like it did before, it breathed a request into my ear, spreading goosebumps across every inch of my body.
“Follow it.”
Anything to get away from the terrifying aura at my back. I took a step toward the glowing eyes. They moved an equal distance into the corridor. Another step. And another one. Each one took me deeper into the old wing, but the presence seemed satisfied with my progress. It remained in place, and the closer I got to the eyes, the less I felt its hair-raising breath on the back of my neck.
The disembodied eyes always remained several feet from me, the area around them shrouded in complete darkness. Even when we went into the library, where a floodlight outside the window illuminated the dusty shelves and ruined books, the cloud of darkness remained. It was like looking into a void, a window into the vacuum of space, its presence not meant for interpretation by the human brain. The eyes were twin moons, colorless and blurry, as if I looked at them through an unfocused telescope. They led me to the desk in the library. It was a massive oak beauty with a green felt top and intricate details hand-carved into the legs. It smelled faintly of cigar smoke and something else I couldn’t place. Though the eyes paused beside the desk and waited expectantly, there was no place to fit the key.
“What now?” I mouthed.
They lowered, as if the person whose body they belonged to was kneeling. Slowly, I squatted and followed the apparent direction of their gaze to the floor beneath the desk.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
There was a door. Not a regular door. A trap door in the middle of the floor. At one point, it looked as though the library’s olive green carpet might have covered up the secret entrance. There was no keyhole though, just a rusty bolt that secured the door shut. I expected to have to fight to get it open, but it slid out of place without issue. Someone had been here recently. I flipped up the heavy door, revealing a dark tunnel with a rickety ladder that led into the murky gloom.
“Don’t tell me,” I said to the eyes. I don’t know what I was expecting as a reply, considering the absence of a mouth, but the eyes glanced downward, into the tunnel. “Of course.”
With a hesitant foot, I lowered myself into the tunnel. It was a tight fit. The rough walls scratched against Riley’s sweatshirt. A few feet down, the ladder was covered in green and brown muck, mold and dirt from lack of proper ventilation. I wiped the slime off on my pants, vowing to buy Riley a new sweatshirt after my excursi
on. I had a feeling she wouldn’t want this one back. As I descended, I looked up at the circle of moonlight above me. The eyes remained in the library.
“You better not trap me down here,” I said to them.
They blinked twice. Was that a yes or a no?
I lost count of the ladder rungs, but the tunnel eventually widened, and my sneakers hit a slippery floor. I was in an underground hallway lined with crumbling brickwork. It appeared to be the basement of the old hotel, though half of it had caved in. Damage from the fire, I guessed. Three doors were available. The rest of the hallway was blocked by rubble. The first two doors labeled “laundry” and “boiler” were commonplace enough. The third, however, did not bear a plaque to identity its purpose. There was padlock affixed to it, attaching the door to its frame. I slipped the silver key out of my pocket, took hold of the padlock with a trembling hand, and fit the key into it. It popped open.
“Please don’t be dead bodies,” I muttered, pulling the lock free of the door and flipping the hinge to the other side. “Please don’t be dead bodies.”
The room was dark. I searched the wall for a light switch, found one, and flipped it up. A single bulb, hanging from a string in the middle of the ceiling, flickered on.
It wasn’t dead bodies. It was someone’s office. The place was papered with yellowing newspaper articles, old pictures, and handwritten notes. A small desk was stationed in the middle of the little room, leaning at an angle. From the looks of its scorched legs, it had been pilfered from what was left of the old wing. A single chair kept it company. There was no rhyme or reason to the contents in the room. The clippings were scattered and pinned to the walls, across the floor, and all over the desk. Paper crunched and rustled under my shoes as I approached the desk and examined its contents. The articles and photos all encompassed the same event: the tragic 1988 fire of King and Queens.
Crimson Basin’s King and Queens Ski Lodge and Resort was once considered a prime destination for skiers and snowboarders from all over the world. With its top-of-the-line accommodations, roomy suites, panoramic views, and remote access to some of the best ski runs in the world, King and Queens was the ultimate skier’s paradise, but no more. Ever since the fire two weeks ago that killed forty-nine people, King and Queens has been in a state of flux. This reporter visited the tragic scene, interviewed the board of trustees responsible for the resort’s future, and investigated the untold story behind the biggest tragedy in Vermont’s recent history. Read ahead to find out more.
I skimmed the article. Some of it, I already knew. The fire had taken out the majority of King and Queens’s original structure. Oliver, eight years old at the time, was the only survivor. His parents and sister didn’t make it out. Since the youngest Watson wasn’t of eligible age to run an entire hotel, a board of trustees took it over. Oliver was sent off to live with an unknown relative, one that didn’t have anything to do with the hotel business. By the time he was old enough to accept his inheritance, he had become a reckless playboy. A few articles documented Oliver’s multiple arrests. He’d gotten into all sorts of trouble prior to taking responsibility for King and Queens—he’d even stolen a yacht from a marina in Monte Carlo and crashed it—but his excessive funds bailed him out every time. Considering Oliver’s frazzled personality these days, it was hard to imagine him as the blond billionaire playboy with a penchant for destruction. Nevertheless, the faded photos were impossible to deny. Oliver’s sharp nose gave him away. He was undeniably attractive back then, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist chiseled out from years of skiing. It was no wonder Thelma fell for him so quickly. From the looks of it, Oliver and Tyler had more in common than I thought. Tyler, with all of his terrible behavior, was the spitting image of his father in attitude, not in looks. Riley had that portion covered on her own.
A surprising amount of articles focused on Oliver. The newspapers and tabloids had been obsessed with the little boy who had survived the fire. Apparently, he shouldn’t have. The blaze was so intense that it took the Crimson Basin fire department several hours to extinguish everything. I picked up another article that looked promising. It was an obituary of sorts that focused on the Watson family.
Richard Watson, owner and operator of King and Queens Ski Lodge and Resort, has passed away in a fire at his own establishment. He was forty-two. Richard was known for his incredible charity work and, of course, the resort itself. His wife and daughter, Stella and Odette respectively, also died in the fire. The Watson family is survived by its youngest member, eight-year-old Oliver, who sustained life-threatening injuries in the accident.
Stella and Odette. The ghosts who haunted the resort. Stella was Oliver’s mother, and Odette was his sister. How the hell had I missed that? There was an entire photo album sitting in my suite full of the evidence. It had pictures of Stella and Odette and the rest of the Watson family, but I never made the connection. How did Riley not recognize her own aunt roaming the hallways as a spirit? I remembered we’d talked about this before. Oliver kept Riley in the dark about the fire, claiming she was too young to hear about the tragedy, but I never thought that he would keep the history of his family from her too. Was it too painful for him to speak about the people he lost so long ago?
Odette and Riley had the same hard gaze, but Odette bore more of a resemblance to Tyler than anyone else in the Watson family. How had I not seen it? The black hair and sapphire eyes? There was enough of a difference in their face shapes to distract me from the similarities, as if Tyler’s genetics had been watered down over the years. My brain worked through their family tree like a weird puzzle. Oliver was closer to the haunting of his hotel than I thought. It was no wonder Riley was the focus of Odette’s goal. They were family. That was why Odette had led me down here. She wanted me to know who she was.
I collected a few of the articles that explained the truth about who died in the fire. Riley needed to see them for herself. As I turned to leave, a pile of books in the corner of the room caught my eye. They were the only things stacked neatly as opposed to the rest of the disarray. I glanced into the hallway, checking to see if the disembodied eyes bothered to monitor my progress. It was empty, so I knelt by the books in the corner and picked up the topmost one. It was a leather-bound journal. Half of the pages were full of scribbled entries. The other were blank, as if someone came down here regularly to jot down their daily life. I opened it to the first page.
I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson. I am Oliver Watson.
The declaration was written over and over again. The handwriting varied. Sometimes, it was neat and concise. Other times, it was indecipherable, as if Oliver had been in a varied state of mind during that time. I checked the other journals. Every single one of them was covered, front to back, with the same phrase. Each journal was dated too, starting in 1990 and going all the way to present day. This was not the work of a sane man. Oliver needed help. Before Tyler’s death, I wouldn’t have believed Oliver came to the old wing and filled out these journals on a regular basis. He seemed normal enough. Prior to Thelma’s ski lift accident, King and Queens attracted enough visitors to keep it afloat. Oliver had not yet failed his family’s legacy, but it was starting to get to him. The person who kept these journals was underneath Oliver’s customer service persona, and he was starting to come out more often.
A shrill ring made me jump out of my skin. My phone. I’d forgotten to silence it before descending into the basement of the old King and Queens. I wrenched it out of my pocket, wrestling with the confines of my jeans, and swiped to answer the call so that the stupid thing would shut up.
“Jazmin, I’m fine.” I muttered before she could say hello. “I can’t talk right now. I just hit major King and Queens gold. Would you believe Odette is Oliver’s—?”
“Lucia, is Riley with you?”
The question stopped me dead in my tracks. “What? No, why?”<
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“She’s missing,” Jazmin said, her voice cracking with stress. “I woke up in the living room and both of you were gone. I figured you took her out for some weird psychic medium purposes, but if she’s not with you and she’s not with me—”
“She’s in trouble.”
I knew it in my heart as soon as I said it, and the other ghosts weren’t happy about it. Newspaper clippings tore themselves off the walls and the floors to form a swirling vortex of the past. The corners of the pages nicked my skin and pulled my hair as I fought my way to the door. I covered my face with my hands and made a run for it. Just as I cleared the office and stumbled into the hallway, the papers burst into flames. I screamed as the flaming tornado followed me to the ladder tunnel.
“Lucia!” Jazmin yelled through the phone. “What’s going on? What’s that sound?”
I couldn’t answer, too busy clambering up the ladder as fast as I could. The metal rungs were red hot, burning the skin off the palm of my hands.
“It’s not real,” I shouted at myself over the roar of the fire as it licked my heels from below. “Odette said it’s not real.”
The blisters on my palms and the heat climbing up my legs begged to differ. I heaved myself out of the manhole, pulled my legs free, and slammed the trap door shut just as the flames reached the top of the tunnel. I had two seconds to catch my breath before the entire library went up in smoke.
With another yelp, I scrambled to my feet and ran from the room. The spirits had awakened, and they were determined to take me to death with them. Hazy figures appeared from the smoke, mouths agape as they screamed. But they weren’t screaming at me. These were the yells of terror that the guests of King and Queens let out while they burned alive thirty years ago, calling for their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and lovers as they died. Screams of pain and pleading. Prayers and confessions. Tears poured down my cheeks as I ran wildly through the old wing, crashing into burning debris every step of the way. My own prayers dropped from my lips without conscious thought. In the corner of the corridor, right before the lobby, was an emergency fire extinguisher that I didn’t remember seeing earlier. I yanked it off the wall, pulled the pin, and shot a stream of white foam to clear the path ahead of me. It worked, putting out the blaze directly in front of me and silencing whatever spirits controlled that portion of the burn. With a stoic stride, I kept going, coating the flaming red lobby in globs of the stuff, until I reached the chained door. Like before, when I slipped through the gap into the ballroom and looked back, the old wing was just as it was when I had arrived. Even the fire extinguisher had vanished. I ran from the ballroom, wiping my eyes on Riley’s dirty, singed sweatshirt. Riley. Where was she?
