Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter

by Melissa Savage

  But Mags doesn’t heed evil spirit Crystal Mystic readings, either.

  So here we sit, cross-legged on the floor at midnight with one Ouija board, two flickering candles, and a bag of onion Funyuns she found in the vending machine in the employee break room on the bottom level.

  It turns out that ever since Mr. Lozano was promoted to interim manager after Mr. Plum went AWOL, he isn’t so big on giving Totally Rad or Lights Out! access to everything in the hotel. But lucky for us, Mr. Lozano is a sound sleeper. Especially when he’s sleeping off Chef Raphaël’s dessert éclairs.

  I ate two and I don’t feel the least bit sleepy.

  So, while T. S. Phoenix and Totally Rad Productions are filming in room 422, aka Mr. Plum’s old room, we are conducting a bad-idea séance in Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt’s room.

  It actually looks mostly the same as our room except for the plain white sheets hanging over each piece of furniture to keep the dust off. It looks like a room of sleeping ghosts waiting for their chance to rise up in a Stanley Hotel ghost revolution. Not to mention we practically had to drag Alfred Hitchcock in here against his will, for reasons I’m sure I don’t want to know. Now he’s sitting in front of the window and growling a low growl at the closed curtains. Mags and me are sitting on the floor between the beds. She’s reading the Ouija board instructions and I’m tapping and counting to stay calm.

  WHAT-IFS

  Such a bad idea.

  WHAT-IFS

  You’re headed for the fuzz.

  WHAT-IFS

  The TV people are watching.

  “Those Funyuns reek,” I tell her, pointing at the bag. “And they look like Styrofoam. Even Alfred Hitchcock turned his nose up at them, and he eats everything.”

  She ignores me and chomps another crunchy piece while she reads.

  I gaze down at the new mood ring on my finger.

  Me and Mags each got one out of a gumball machine before we left Fun City.

  Google said the rings change color based on your mood by measuring your body temperature and the energy inside you.

  Mine’s been a muddy brown since I slipped it on my finger.

  “Brown means you’re nervous or anxious,” Mags informed me, and then chucked out a laugh. “That ring’s got you pegged,” she said, holding out her own hand and marveling at her finger. “Mine’s bluer than the sky! That’s happy and calm.”

  “You’re such a show-off,” I said.

  I examine the ring closer.

  Still brown as mud.

  I sigh and put my elbow on my thigh and my chin in my palm.

  Mags lays the instructions down and stares at me. “You know, we really should be doing this in the bathroom, now that I think of it.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because of Bloody Mary.”

  “I don’t think I want to know anything more about that, so you can stop there.”

  She ignores that, too.

  “Bloody Mary is this game,” she says. “Where you go into the bathroom, lock the door and shut off all the lights and then turn toward the mirror and say ‘Bloody Mary’ three times and then this maimed woman is supposed to appear in the mirror. Daisy Chang said they saw her outline in the bathroom at her birthday slumber party two years ago.”

  WHAT-IFS

  Run.

  “See…this is the exact kind of information I didn’t want to know,” I say.

  “Come on, let’s go in the bathroom and do it.” Mags gets up on her knees.

  WHAT-IFS

  Run fast.

  “There is no way I’m doing anything in the bathroom ever again,” I tell her. “I’m here for one ghost and one ghost only. I don’t need a Bloody Mary, too. I’m about two minutes away from running out of this room screaming. Let’s either do it or not do it. But hurry up.”

  “I’m just saying it’s possible the bathroom is some kind of portal to the afterlife or something. Like through the plumbing, maybe.”

  I blink at her. “Television ghosts and toilet plumbing? This is what you bring to the table?”

  “Hey, I’m helping with the research,” she says. “You’re welcome.”

  “Eighties movies and Daisy Chang are your authorities on ghosts?”

  “And YouTube,” she adds. “Plus, you don’t even get it. The point is that Poltergeist is more than a movie…it’s a blueprint.”

  “A blueprint?”

  “Yes, a blueprint. Like a map.”

  “A ghost map?”

  “Right,” she says. “A map by which all paranormal experiences are measured.”

  I blink at her. “Fine, but you told me that blueprint was through a television, not a toilet.”

  “You don’t think spirits have more than one portal to reach the living?” she asks. “Open your mind, why don’t you.”

  “Let me put it to you like this,” I tell her. “There’s no way I’m doing a séance in the bathroom if some bloody woman is going to jump out at us. Final answer.”

  WHAT-IFS

  How will we ever pee in peace again?

  She considers me then, chomping on another Funyun. “You know who you are?” she asks, crunching.

  “Who?”

  “You’re a Shaggy.”

  “Of the Scooby-Doo gang?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “You’re definitely a Shaggy.”

  I put my hands on my hips and snap at her. “No way,” I say. “I’m totally a Velma.”

  “Mmm.” She tilts her head. “I don’t see it.”

  “Velma Dinkley has poop emoji hair just like me, has glasses just like me and is especially studious just like me.”

  Mags considers me again. “Still don’t see it.”

  “Well, at least I’m not a blond Daphne,” I tell her. “That’s you.”

  She shrugs. “What’s wrong with Daphne?”

  “The only things she cares about are how short her skirts are, if her hair is perfect and how close she’s standing to Fred. You just know he and she have something going on when no one’s looking. Kissing in the Mystery Machine van when the others are risking their very lives hunting for paranormal entities.”

  “I’d rather kiss Jack the busboy,” Mags tells me. “He’s like fifty thousand times cuter.”

  I roll my eyes. “Can we please just do this already? This room gives me the creeps.”

  “Okay, this is what we do, see all these?” she says, pointing to each one of the signs on the game board on the floor in between us.

  I nod.

  “These are all ways the spirits can commune with us.”

  WHAT-IFS

  You’re doomed.

  “There is a sun in one corner and a moon in the other,” she goes on. “A yes and a no, the full alphabet, numbers zero through nine and the words good bye.”

  I see HASBRO in the center of the board and tell my jumping beans that if Hasbro makes Candy Land, Yahtzee and Hungry Hungry Hippos, how bad can it be?

  WHAT-IFS

  Dooooomed.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  “The spirits will guide this spirit indicator,” Mags says, placing her fingertips on a heart-shaped plastic piece in the center of the board.

  It has a single round window in the middle of the heart.

  “Put the tips of your fingers on the edge of this pointer dealy thing,” she tells me. “It’s the message indicator. But barely touch it so that the spirits can move it from under our fingertips. Get it? Then the spirit drags the message indicator over the letters it wishes, to spell out a word to answer us. Or it can choose the yes or no at the top, see? Or even the numbers if the spirit has a need for it.” She points.

  “Wait…what if Mr. Honeycutt is a bad speller like Jordy Meeks?”

  She stares at me in the dim light of the candl
es.

  “Being a bad speller isn’t Jordy Meeks’s problem,” she informs me. “It’s his addiction to Minecraft.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t study.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  “I guess,” I tell her. “You go first.”

  “You go first,” she says. “This is your job, not mine.”

  “The séance was your stupid idea,” I remind her. “I wanted to heed Nyx’s warning.”

  “Fine.” She takes a deep breath. “We need to close our eyes.”

  “No thank you,” I tell her.

  Sigh. “Can you please not make this one of your things right now?” she asks. “I’m trying to conduct a serious séance here. And anyway, that’s how they do it.”

  “That’s how who does it?”

  “The YouTube people.”

  “Wait, what if we’re snatched by the TV fuzz while our eyes are closed?”

  She blinks at me.

  “Well?” I demand.

  “I’m not going to lie,” she says. “It could happen.”

  “Oh, man,” I mumble. “I want to go on record here and say that Father O’Leary will keep us in confession a month straight for sure. Maybe even longer. I really think this might be a penance-for-life kind of thing.”

  “We don’t have to tell him everything.”

  “Mmm,” I say, shaking my head. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Will you just close your eyes already,” she demands.

  “Fine,” I grumble. “But if we get sucked into the in-between, never to be seen again, it’ll be all your fault.”

  I close my eyes while Mags takes a deep breath in and blows it out again, leaving me in a cloud of Funyuns.

  “The YouTube people say we have to say Ouija three times to open the board to the spirits. On three,” she tells me. “One, two, three.”

  “Ouija. Ouija. Ouija,” we call out to the darkness.

  “Attention, all paranormal entities,” Mags says. “Including the undead, ghosts and the eternally departed. We are here to conjure up the spirit of Mr. Honeycutt.”

  I open one eye and giggle.

  She opens both eyes and glares. “What?” she demands.

  “Conjure?”

  “If you know a better way to call Mr. Honeycutt forward? Be my guest.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Conjure away.”

  We close our eyes again.

  “Like I said, we are here to speak to a Mr. Honeycutt. Ozgood Honeycutt of Cheboygan, Michigan, who died here on May twenty-seventh, 1909, to be exact. If you’re here, Mr. Honeycutt, please make yourself known. We would like to commune with your spirit.”

  Paranormal silence.

  We wait some more.

  Nothing.

  I open one eye. “Nothing’s happening,” I whisper.

  “Shhh,” Mags hisses. “Can’t you stop blabbing for two minutes?”

  “No offense, but this may just be the slowest ghost download ever.”

  “We aren’t downloading Mr. Honeycutt,” she says. “The board isn’t even Wi-Fi compatible.”

  “Still, we kind of are,” I tell her. “If you think about it. Except instead of using the Wi-Fi, it’s like a supernatural download. SNi-Fi.” I giggle. “Get it? Supernatural Wi-Fi? SNi-Fi? Come on, that’s funny.”

  She gives me her eyes-to-the-sky roll. “Are you going to take this seriously or not?”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m just nervous.”

  “You think I’m not? But if you don’t close your eyes and keep quiet, we’re going to be here all night.”

  I close my eyes again.

  “We are here to commune with Mr. Honeycutt. We don’t mean you any harm, sir, we just want to know if you’re really still here at the Stanley Hotel searching for your bride—”

  “Oh, and also,” I interrupt, pulling my phone out of my pocket and holding it in the air for all the ghosts who may have been conjured to see. “If you wouldn’t mind…we could really use a selfie for our ghost-hunting documentary.”

  “A selfie, yeah, that’s good,” Mags tells me. “And we also have to say…I mean, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but…you’re dead…deceased…expiiiiired.”

  More paranormal silence.

  Rain starts to prick at the window.

  A clock under another white sheet ticks and tocks.

  A toilet somewhere on the floor above us flushes, and water rushes through pipes inside the walls.

  Alfred Hitchcock rolls another slow growl in the direction of the curtains.

  “Ow,” I say, opening my eyes again.

  “What now?” Mags asks.

  “What are you poking me for?” I say.

  I watch her eyes widen. “I didn’t poke you.”

  “Ha, ha, that’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”

  “I swear to you,” she says. “I didn’t poke you.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t poke me?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she tells me.

  My mouth falls open and she covers hers with her fingers.

  That’s when a breeze blows through the room. The same kind of cool breeze that makes chicken skin pop up on your arms on the first cool day of fall when the crispness of the air makes the leaves turn colors and collect into piles on the sidewalk.

  “Please tell me the window’s open,” I say.

  “It’s him,” Mags tells me. “Mr. Honeycutt, if you are present, please let us know by answering on the Ouija board….”

  At that exact moment, the message indicator underneath our fingers budges and I lurch back and jump up from my spot on the floor.

  “Y-you moved it,” I say, pointing an accusing finger in her direction.

  “Maybe you moved it,” she accuses me back.

  “You’re making all this up,” I say.

  “I told you I didn’t move it, didn’t I?” she says.

  “You’re just trying to scare me, like with the drawers in the wardrobe. And it’s not one bit funny.”

  “I promise you I’m not,” she says.

  “Swear?”

  She swallows and nods. “Swear.”

  She makes an imaginary cross over her heart.

  And then in a gust, both candles are blown out, surrounding us with blackness and filling the air with the smell of smoke.

  “M-maybe Mr. Honeycutt thinks it’s his birthday,” Mags whispers, her voice shaking.

  “Mags,” I say. “What do the YouTube people say about breezes blowing inside a building?”

  “You probably don’t want to know.”

  “Mags?” I demand. “What. Do. They. Say?”

  “They’re, uh…” She clears her throat. “You know, just, ah…disembodied spirits.”

  “I’m out,” I say, lunging toward the door.

  That’s when Alfred Hitchcock starts barking whole-body barks from where he’s standing guard at the velvet curtains.

  “What is he barking at?” I ask her.

  “He’s your dog.”

  Mags reaches for the light on the night table between the beds and I point a shaking finger toward the curtains, drawn tight over the windows. “I-is that a-a-a shadow?” I stutter.

  But before Mags can even turn her head to look, a piercing alarm screeches through the silence.

  This time it’s the fire alarm.

  “That’s it!” she exclaims. “Mr. Honeycutt’s ghostly shenanigans. We did it.”

  “How do you know?” I ask her.

  “Noisy ghost,” she informs me. “He’s making sure we know he’s here. Mr. Honeycutt, is that you?”

  One. Two. Three. Four.


  The alarm keeps screeching through the halls.

  Alfred Hitchcock keeps barking at the curtains.

  I keep tapping.

  Onetwothreefour.

  “Karma,” Mags whispers, and points to the board. “Look!”

  The message indicator is pointed to the word YES.

  We wide-eye each other again until suddenly the door to the hall slams open against the wall of room 217 with a bang.

  We both scream and Alfred Hitchcock pees a little.

  A hulking male human form stands before us in the darkened doorway, the hall lighting it from behind.

  And then a voice.

  His voice.

  Mr. Ozgood Honeycutt straight from the in-between speaks.

  “How did you get in here?” the entity demands of us.

  As sure as I’m standing here, the ghost of Mr. Ozgood Honeycutt we downloaded on the SNi-Fi is standing before us in the dark. Ready to snatch our souls to the in-between through the television fuzz or toilet plumbing portal.

  Never to be seen again.

  I wonder if Mom will wear that stupid eye-patch bikini to my funeral, too.

  He raises a razor-sharp sword high above his head, ready to put an end to our very lives and maybe even cut our body parts into unrecognizable pieces to hide in the wardrobe, where no one will ever find us.

  I swallow hard, letting my quivering fingers find the leather sack of bravery crystals hanging from my neck.

  But I get zip.

  No vibration. No wave. No bravery power surge of any kind.

  I grab Mags’s hand and feel her fingers tighten around mine.

  “M-Mr. Honeycutt,” I say. “Y-y-you have died, sir, and we are here to help you find the light.”

  So, yeah, if you want to get all technical about it, it isn’t Mr. Honeycutt who busts in on our séance.

  And it isn’t Dad, either.

  Just one angry Ubbe Amblebee.

  But this is the most embarrassing part of it all—he isn’t actually swinging a razor-sharp sword to put an end to our very lives.

  It’s his disgusting plunger.

  I know, I know, totally embarrassing.