by Isobel Bird
“I’ve never been so cold in my life,” said Sasha, shaking the snow from her jacket and stamping her feet to remove the ice from her boots.
“That storm is not natural,” agreed Kate, pulling her hood back and breathing into her hands to warm them.
Cooper looked around the boathouse. “Does that fireplace work?” she asked Lucy.
Lucy nodded. “It should,” she said.
“Good,” Cooper replied, going over to the hearth. She picked up some old newspaper that was sitting in a pile nearby, then turned to Lucy. “Matches?” she asked.
Lucy walked to a small cupboard hanging on the wall and opened it. She pulled out some matches and brought them to Cooper. “There’s a little firewood there,” she said, nodding toward a small stack of logs against the wall. “We had a cookout down here during the summer. That was left over.”
Cooper bunched up some newspapers and laid them in the fireplace. Then she took a few of the smaller logs and placed them on top of the balled-up paper. Taking a match from the box, she struck it and held the flame to the paper. It crackled and burned, and moments later the logs began to smoke, then caught fire. As soon as they were lit, the others gathered around, their hands held out to the tiny flames.
“Who knew you were such a Girl Scout,” Kate said to Cooper as the logs burned more brightly.
“No Scouts for me,” said Cooper. “I just like to play with matches.”
The fire began crackling in earnest, and soon the small room was filled with light and warmth. Now that they could see, the girls looked around. The boathouse was filled with all kinds of things that could be used on the pond—a rowboat, life vests, and fishing equipment. A battered couch sat against one wall, and various odds and ends were scattered around the floor.
“How are we going to contact Alice?” asked Kate as they sat in front of the fire.
“You said that you’ve only ever been able to get her to materialize on the dock, right?” Cooper asked Lucy.
“Right,” Lucy answered, nodding.
“Then that’s where we should try,” Cooper said.
“You mean go back out into that?” Sasha said. She looked longingly at the fire. “Why can’t we just try it in here?”
“Because we need it to work, and we need it to work now,” Kate said. “If Lucy has always seen Alice’s ghost on the dock, that’s where we’re most likely to get her to show up.”
“Kate’s right,” said Annie. “Cooper initially had the strongest response from Elizabeth Sanger when she went back to the house where she was killed. Our best bet is to try to reach Alice where Lucy has always reached her.”
Sasha sighed. “Okay,” she said, zipping up her coat again. “But if I get chapped lips because of this I am going to be really pissed.”
“It’s going to be hard to talk when we get out there,” Cooper said as they prepared to leave the boathouse. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We need to create a safe space for Alice to appear. We’ll hold hands in a circle. Then each of us should imagine ourselves filled with light.”
“Which will be so easy standing in a snowstorm,” Annie quipped.
“Once we have our circle established, Lucy, you should call to Alice,” Cooper continued. “You know her best, and she’ll trust you. Invite her into the circle.”
“And if she doesn’t come?” Lucy asked.
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” Cooper said.
Once more they opened a door and stepped into the teeth of winter. This time their walk was a short one, but it was made even more dangerous by the fact that they were walking on a narrow dock. On either side of them were the frozen waters of the pond. In places the wind swept back the snow, revealing the black ice, and it gleamed dully.
The girls walked to the end of the dock and formed a circle. Facing one another, they held hands, squeezing one another’s fingers tightly. As the storm raged around them they stood silently, each one imagining herself filling with bright light that spilled out and joined with the light of the others to form a ring of shining whiteness. They kept their eyes open, watching one another and trying to ignore the cold that tried to bite through their coats and the wind that tried to pull their hands apart.
“Now!” Cooper yelled above the din of the storm. “Lucy, call Alice now!”
Lucy looked at the others, then called out, “Alice! Please, come to us. We need your help. Please, if you can hear me, I need to talk to you. Mary has come through. We need your help to stop her.”
She stopped speaking and waited, looking at the others as they too waited to see whether or not Alice would appear to them. The snow continued to fall hard and fast, and the dock trembled beneath the force of the wind. But nothing happened.
“Alice!” Lucy cried out again. “Please! Appear to us!”
“There!” Annie said suddenly. She dropped Kate’s and Sasha’s hands and pointed.
At the end of the dock they could see something moving in the snow. At first it just seemed like a shadow. But as it drew closer they saw that it was a figure. It walked toward them slowly, the face still obscured by the snow and the darkness.
“Alice?” Lucy called out hopefully. “Alice? Is it you?”
The figure was hooded. It stopped several feet away from them and its hands reached up to pull back the hood. “No,” said a voice. “It’s not Alice.”
The girls were horrified to see Nora standing on the dock in front of them. She stared at them with an expression of cold rage, her features twisted into a sneer.
“Nora,” Lucy said.
“I prefer Mary,” Nora said in a voice not her own. “I think it suits me better, don’t you?”
“I still like Nora,” said Lucy nervously.
Nora laughed. “Do you?” she said, taking a step closer and causing Lucy to stumble back a little. “I suppose you would. Not that it really matters.”
“What do you want?” Lucy asked. “Why are you here?”
Nora laughed. “You know why I’m here,” she said. “I have unfinished business in this place, and I need you to help me complete it.”
“I don’t know where the diary page is,” stammered Lucy. “I don’t.”
“I know you don’t,” Nora replied. “And neither does Alice, so calling her isn’t going to help you. Not that it matters. Soon you’ll be joining her anyway.”
Lucy looked over at Sasha, Kate, Cooper, and Annie, who were standing at the side of the dock.
“Don’t look to your friends for help,” Nora said, advancing slowly. “They can’t do anything either. You know that.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Sasha. “How about this?”
She ran forward and slammed into Nora as hard as she could. For a moment it looked as if Nora would fall down from the blow. But the next thing that happened was that Sasha went flying through the air backward. Her friends watched in horror as she arced through the snowy air and over the edge of a dock, landing with a thud on the ice, where she lay, not moving.
“Sasha!” Annie called.
Sasha groaned.
“We have to get her off the ice,” Annie said.
She started to lower herself from the dock onto the frozen pond, but as her foot touched the surface there was a creaking sound. A line appeared on the ice, extending out from Annie’s foot toward Sasha.
“Get back!” Cooper yelled, grabbing Annie’s arm.
Annie scrambled back onto the dock, watching in horror as the ice continued to crack. The dark line raced toward Sasha like a thread spinning out uncontrollably. Sasha was trying to sit up, pushing herself with her hands, but she kept slipping.
“Come on, Sasha,” cried Kate. “Move!”
Sasha looked at them as if she couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Then she looked down. The crack had reached her, and now it was spreading out, forming a web of thin lines beneath her. Too late, she realized what was happening. She started to scramble, her feet and hands slipping on the snowy ice. She screamed in ter
ror.
And then the ice shattered. With a horrifying crunching sound, Sasha fell through into the pond. Her friends looked on, helpless, as she sank beneath the ice. Her hands flailed at the water, but she was quickly dragged under.
“We have to get her!” Kate said, jumping from the dock with Cooper and Annie and gingerly approaching the hole Sasha had made.
Nora was still standing there, smiling. “One down,” she said. Then she turned to Lucy. “And one more to go.”
She stepped toward Lucy, her hand outstretched. Lucy began to babble in fear, holding up her hands to protect herself against whatever was coming. Kate and Annie looked on while Cooper half submerged herself in the freezing water of the hole in the pond, desperately fishing for Sasha. They knew that they could do nothing more for Lucy and concentrated on trying to find some way to save Sasha, who had not reappeared in the hole in the ice.
Suddenly there was a flash of light. Nora stopped, startled, and shielded her eyes. Then the light dimmed, and another figure was standing on the dock between Nora and Lucy. It was a girl.
“Hello, sister,” she said.
“Alice!” Lucy cried out.
Nora laughed. “You came after all,” she said. “But I have no need of you. It’s the living girl I need.”
“You cannot have her,” said Alice quietly.
“Can’t I?” Nora said tauntingly. “I have already taken one life tonight. What will prevent me from taking another?” She glanced at the pond, where the water visible through the hole in the ice was deadly still.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, sister,” answered Alice.
The sound of churning water filled the air, and suddenly Sasha’s head broke through the surface. She gasped in great mouthfuls of air, the darkness around her clouding with the force of her frantic breathing. Cooper grabbed her, and Kate and Annie hauled them up.
“What?” cried Nora, clearly enraged. “No, I won’t allow this.” She glared at Alice.
“Get her into the boathouse,” Alice said to Kate, Annie, and Cooper.
Nodding, the three girls lifted Sasha to her feet. She was shaking with cold, but she was able to stumble along with their help as they pushed her through the snowstorm to the boathouse.
“What about Lucy?” Annie cried as they went.
“Alice will take care of her,” Cooper said. “We have to get Sasha inside before she freezes.”
They reached the door and opened it. Carrying Sasha inside, they brought her to the fireplace and immediately began to remove her wet clothes. Cooper pulled her own jacket off and wrapped her friend in it as soon as she was out of the wet things.
“So cold,” Sasha said. “I’m so cold.”
“I know,” Cooper said, hugging her tightly. “Just sit here by the fire.”
“Here,” Kate said. “I found this.” She brought over a big blanket and put it around Sasha’s shivering body. Cooper, Kate, and Annie sat close to their friend, rubbing her and keeping her warm as the fire dried her and she warmed up.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Cooper asked after a few minutes.
“I was sinking,” said Sasha. “It was so cold I couldn’t feel anything. I knew I was going to drown. Then someone grabbed me and started pulling me back up. That’s all I remember. Where’s Lucy?” Sasha suddenly asked.
The others looked at one another, their faces grim in the firelight.
“We’re not sure,” Cooper said. “We left her out there when we carried you in here.”
Sasha groaned. “You have to help her,” she said.
Before anyone could answer, the door blew open and Lucy came into the boathouse. She shut the door behind her.
“Is she okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Annie. “What about you? What happened out there?”
“I don’t really know,” Lucy said. “It all happened so quickly. Nora came at me and Alice made this bright light appear. Nora turned and ran. Then Alice gave me this.” She held up a key.
“What is it for?” asked Annie.
“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “Alice faded away before she could tell me. I think driving Nora off wore her out.”
“We’ll have to figure out what that opens once we get Sasha back to the hotel,” Cooper said. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
“I’m worried about my sister, or whoever she is. How much longer can she last out in the blizzard?” asked a worried Lucy, of no one in particular.
“There’s no way we can help her from here,” said Kate.
“If we get back to the hotel, though…”
“I think I can make it,” Sasha said. “Are my clothes dry?”
“Not even close,” said Kate, feeling the damp things that had been laid out by the fire.
“Here,” Annie said. “You can wear my snow pants. I have jeans on underneath anyway.”
“And you can wear my sweater,” said Kate.
“And I know there’s a pair of boots around here somewhere,” Lucy said. “They’re probably too big, but we can stuff newspapers in them.”
Piece by piece they got Sasha dressed as well as they could. She kept Cooper’s jacket, and Cooper found another blanket to wrap around herself.
“We’re going to have to move fast,” Cooper said as they prepared to leave. “None of us can afford to be out in this for long—especially Sasha. Are we ready?”
“Ready,” the others said in unison.
Cooper threw open the door and they headed out into the storm. Once again the wind was against them, but they struggled through it and up the path to the gardens. When they reached the top of the hill, however, all that met them was blackness. The lights of the hotel were nowhere to be seen. It was as if the entire building had been swallowed up by the snow.
“Oh no,” Lucy said as the five of them huddled together. “The power is out.”
CHAPTER 16
The hotel was eerily silent when the girls finally reached the unlatched door they’d come through earlier in the evening and made their way back inside. With no electricity, the only light came from candles that had been lit throughout the hotel. Even these illuminated only portions of the hallways, and they found themselves walking through shadowy corridors as they made their way toward the girls’ room.
The lobby was a little livelier, as many of the guests had chosen to congregate there to wait out the storm. A fire had been started in the enormous fireplace, and people were sipping cups of cocoa and hot apple cider while they talked. Someone was playing a guitar, and a group of people were singing. Although normally they would have enjoyed the activities, the girls hurried through, not wanting to answer any possible questions about where they’d been and why they were wearing coats. After handing Kate her coat, Annie split off and grabbed a tray containing mugs of cocoa and brought it upstairs with her.
Back in the room, they shed their cold, wet clothing and pulled on their warmest things. Sasha in particular couldn’t seem to get warm until she’d put on long underwear, sweatpants, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and two pairs of socks. Even then she sat beneath the covers on the bed, sipping her cocoa with the blankets pulled up to her chin. Cooper once again made a fire, this one in the room’s small fireplace, and soon enough they were actually feeling cheerful, if still rattled.
“So, who rescued me in the pond?” Sasha asked after a long period during which the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the sipping of cocoa.
“I think we have a third ghost. Porter Wills, the gardener who drowned in the pond,” said Lucy quietly.
“Yes,” said Cooper simply.
“Cool,” Sasha said. “That’s not something that happens every day.”
“You’re taking it much better than I did when it happened to me,” remarked Annie, thinking about the time Elizabeth Sanger’s ghost saved her from a bullet.
“Give me time,” Sasha replied. “I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be totally freaked out. Right now, part of my brain is still frozen.”
“We might not have a tomorrow if this keeps up,” Lucy said dejectedly. “Mary’s power seems to be getting stronger.”
“We have to figure out what that key is to,” said Cooper. “That’s the key to all of this—pardon the pun.”
Lucy pulled the key from her pocket and handed it to Cooper. Cooper turned it over and over in her hand, examining it from every possible angle.
“It’s not a room key, I can tell you that much,” Lucy said. “It’s too small.”
“Maybe it’s to a box,” suggested Annie. “Maybe Alice hid something in a box that we can use against Mary.”
“It’s too big for that,” Cooper said.
“Too small for a door, too big for a box,” said Kate. “This is like Alice trying to find the key to get into the garden in Wonderland. It has to go to something.”
They sat, thinking, for a long time. Occasionally one or the other of them would throw out a suggestion for what the key might be for, but always there was some reason why it wasn’t right. They were getting discouraged and frustrated. They knew that Mary was out there somewhere, working on whatever plan she had to complete her return to the real world, and that made them even more anxious.
“Time is running out,” Kate said after no one had made any suggestions for a long time.
Punctuating her remark, somewhere down the hall a clock began to chime the hour. Its deep voice reverberated through the silence of the room.
“That thing has been driving me nuts,” Cooper said. “Every time it does that I wake up.”
“Just be glad the really big one isn’t working,” Lucy said.
“Really big one?” repeated Cooper.
Lucy nodded. “The one in the lobby. It was built at the same time as the hotel. Only it hasn’t worked in years because the key to open it was—”
She paused and looked at the key that was still in Cooper’s hand.
“Lost,” she finished.
Cooper held up the key. “Maybe we just found it,” she said.
“A key to a clock?” said Annie. “Why would that help us fight Mary?”
“Maybe it won’t,” Cooper said. “But we’re going to find out.”
