“Ms. Lettie told me Mrs. Honeycutt was blond,” I say, turning to Mags.
Mags shrugs. “Another mystery,” she says. “Just like the dag gum hooligans.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “Nyx says that in the early 1900s the kids all stayed on the fourth floor while their parents stayed on the lower floors. So I guess it’s possible they could be spirits of the children who stayed here at the time and not just local kids causing trouble.”
“That’s a possibility,” T. S. Phoenix says, sitting down on the edge of the desk. “First, tell me more about this tunnel system.”
I nod. “Madame Drusilla says the hotel sits on quartz rock, which is what the mountain is made of, and so the tunnel walls are made of that too.”
“Mmm,” T. S. Phoenix says. “That’s a common misconception.”
“What is?” Dad asks.
“That the stone on which the Stanley Hotel is built, which is mainly quartz and magnetite, is the main reason for the paranormal activity,” T. S. Phoenix says. “But the entire Rocky Mountain area is made up of the same mineralogical content. Which means that the hotel is no different than the Shell station in town. There has to be another reason.”
“Madame Drusilla said quartz is powerful enough to enhance higher spiritual receptiveness,” I say. “She used quartz and other crystals to zhoosh up our tarot card reading.”
“Quartz is known for its power for many things, including receptiveness to spiritual energies,” Tally tells us, still grasping the sleeve of the dress like she’s holding the hand of Mrs. Honeycutt to reassure her that we’re here to help her. “It clears the mind and also works as a magnifier for the powers of all other crystals when used together, adding to their effectiveness.”
I point to the satchel around my neck. “I could totally feel my bravery crystals were working extra hard the minute I got here,” I say.
She nods.
“But I agree with T.S., it has to be more than that, because all of Estes Park is sitting on the same mountain and the Stanley Hotel is the only highly active spot in the area,” she says.
“Definitely,” T.S. agrees. “So, why is this place susceptible to residual hauntings more than any other place in the Rocky Mountain National Park?”
“Dr. Phoenix,” I ask. “What’s a residual haunting?”
“That’s when the haunting has to do with reenacting a memory in a specific place, such as what is thought to be happening with Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt,” he says. “They are not here to interact, they are here to replay the events of the time, maybe hoping for an alternate outcome.”
“But what about the typewriter message?” Mags asks.
He nods. “Then there’s intellectual haunting, which is when a spirit is aware of us and is attempting to make contact on this plane of existence.”
My mouth goes dry. “I don’t know if I really want to know the answer to this question,” I say. “But are there any other kinds of hauntings?”
He nods. “Evil spirits,” he says.
I look at Mags and mumble, “I knew I didn’t want to know the answer to that.”
“Then why’d you ask?” she says.
I shrug.
“Evil spirits can appear like a poltergeist…at first…but their primary goal is to use their energies to cause destruction to something or someone.”
That can’t be good for my what-ifs.
No one says anything for a real long time.
“First things first,” T. S. Phoenix finally says. “We have to gain access to that tunnel.”
“Agreed,” Dad says.
“Tally?” T. S. Phoenix asks.
She nods. “Absolutely.”
“After dinner tonight,” T.S. goes on. “We’ll call an all-staff meeting in the dining hall and get to the bottom of why the information about this tunnel has been withheld until now.”
“But what if Mr. Lozano flat-out refuses?” I ask. “Like he did with room 217.”
“Well…I guess if he’s insistent…there’s nothing we can do,” T.S. says, packing his Geiger counter into a black leather bag.
Big John locks eyes with me, giving me one single nod, and I know exactly what needs to happen.
“For now,” Dad says, “we need to get some sleep or we won’t be good for anything tonight, and we’ve got some very important work to do.”
* * *
After everyone leaves, I turn to Mags.
“Don’t say it,” she says. “Don’t even think it.”
“Too late,” I tell her. “You know what we need to do.”
“No I don’t,” she says.
“Part two of our covert operation, where only one party is in the know,” I say. “Come on, we have work to do.”
“Didn’t you hear Dr. Phoenix?” she asks. “Evil spirits? No way I’m going in that tunnel now.”
“No way?” I ask.
“No way, nohow.” She folds her arms across her chest and sticks her chin in the air like a big fat exclamation point.
“Even if it means my dad doesn’t get a ghost on film?”
She shrugs, her chin still in the air.
“He can do more bat mitzvahs,” she says.
“Even if it means you’re mucking up your own karma by not heeding the signs that the woo-woo is pointing us in this direction?”
Chin still in the air.
“I don’t heed,” she says.
“Even if it means I will have to move out of apartment 4B and leave Immaculate Heart of Mary K–8, leaving you to fend for yourself through the rest of your middle school years…alone?”
Silence.
She’s still standing there, her chin still high. Then her foot starts tapping on the viney carpet and she finally lets all the air out of her lungs in an exasperated sigh, throwing her hands out.
“Fine, okay?” she says. “But if my soul becomes possessed by a demonic spirit posing as a noisy shenanigans ghost and Father O’Leary has to perform an actual exorcism on me, it’s going to be all your fault.”
“Deal,” I say.
We seal it with our fist bump, fanned fingers and a shimmy-shimmy to the floor.
Since there is only one key to the tunnel door that I know of and that key is stuffed inside the pocket of Mr. Lozano’s pants, Mags and me have to figure out another way to get in.
It’s Mags’s idea to use a bobby pin.
It may not be very James Bond 007, but it’s better than nothing.
“Hurry up!” I whisper that same afternoon. “If we get caught this time it’s over. Done. Finito. We’ll surely be jailed in our rooms for the final four days.”
“Don’t rush me,” she whispers back. “This is my first official breaking and entering. Father O’Leary is going to ban us from Immaculate Heart of Mary K–8 for good after this one for sure.”
She stops wiggling the bobby pin and turns to look at me.
“I think this one…we keep to ourselves,” she says.
I think about that. “Deal,” I say. “Now hurry it up.”
“Don’t rush me.”
She wiggles and wiggles and wiggles some more and still nothing happens. Then, just when I’m ready to give up the whole operation, we hear it.
Click.
I gasp. “Was that it?” I ask. “Did you get it?”
She grins big at me. “I got it.”
“That was James Bond 007 girl-style,” I tell her.
“Girl-style,” she agrees, and then we seal it with our fist bump, fanned fingers and a shimmy-shimmy to the floor.
“Here we go,” I say, reaching out and turning the knob.
It creaks in protest.
I peek through the crack with Mags’s cheek wedged against mine.
“It’s pitch black in there,” she says. “And it smells.
”
“Like what?” I say.
WHAT-IFS
Dead managers with a hint of pinky toe.
“Mold.” She sneezes. “And a-hundred-year-old dust.”
“Shh,” I hiss.
“I can’t help if I’m allergic to ancient dust,” Mags says, rubbing her nose.
“Feel around the corner to see if there’s a light switch,” I tell her.
“You feel around the corner,” she says.
“I felt the dress,” I inform her. “It’s your turn to feel something.”
“You’re the one who wants to be Velma Dinkley, not me.”
“Don’t be a baby,” I tell her.
She blows a blast of air out of her mouth. “Fine,” she says.
I pull the door open wider, allowing the light from the hall to shine in, while Mags sticks her hand inside, feeling for a light switch on the wall beyond the door.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“I’m not going in there with it pitch dark like that,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says, pulling out her phone. “Let’s use the flashlights on our phones. Take yours out too so we’ll have both the lights to shine in there.”
We get out our phone flashlights and shine them toward the blackness and peer inside once again.
“There.” I point. “A light switch. Right there.”
Mags reaches in and flips the switch up.
One tiny dim bulb lights a small circle on the dirt floor just below it.
“That’s a why-bother bulb if I’ve ever seen one,” I say.
“Why-bother bulb big-time,” she agrees.
I shine my phone light as far as it will reach inside the door.
There is one small tunnel leading to another heavy wooden door at the very end of it. And another tunnel connected at the center of the small tunnel like a T. That tunnel looks like it leads deep into the underbelly of the hotel.
“I smell something else,” I say.
“One guess. We’re standing next to Madame Drusilla’s office,” Mags mumbles. “It’s probably singed strawberry residue.”
“No…” I sniff again. “It’s not strawberries. It’s…like…”
Sniff.
Sniff.
Sniff.
“Like…” I gasp. “Fancy perfume.”
That’s when Mags takes two giant steps backward.
“I changed my mind,” she tells me, shaking her head back and forth. “I’m not doing it.”
I grab her hand and pull her forward.
“You have to,” I tell her. “I need my best friend.”
She blows more air out.
“What if I do your algebra homework for a whole month?” she asks.
Tempting.
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“Okay, okay, how about I let you put my furry beanbag chair in your room for the rest of the school year?”
I just cross my arms this time and I don’t say a single word.
She thinks harder.
“Okay, here it is,” she says. “I will give you my glitter phone case. Just give it to you. No backsies.”
“Mags,” I say. “I’m calling true blue here. There is nothing that can take the place of that.”
“Not even a glitter phone case?”
“Nope.”
“And my Joe Jonas poster?”
I shake my head. “You know I like Nick better.”
“Fine,” she grumbles.
“I’ll go first,” I tell her. “But just make sure you have your camera ready. And even if you can’t see anything with your eyes, it doesn’t mean the camera lens won’t pick up an image or even an orb of light. So just keep snapping. We need a ghost on film. And we need it today.”
She takes a breath. “Fine,” she says.
“Just keep clicking,” I say. “Whatever happens…click like you’ve never clicked before.”
“I got it, I got it,” she says. “Just go, I’ll be right behind you.”
I take one step inside and then another, aiming the light from my phone out in front of me.
I breathe.
Then tap.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Behind me, I hear Mags clicking photos on her phone.
My foot slides forward.
One and then the other.
There are no walls, just cavernous rock where walls should be and a dirt floor beneath our feet. There are low beams lining the ceiling above us, interwoven with wires and pipes. As we step in deeper, it’s cold and dark and damp and mad creepy.
“What’s that?” I shine a light in the direction of a large square object next to the door near the end of tunnel number one.
“It looks like a safe,” she says, aiming her phone and taking another picture. “It’s massive. What does a hotel need a safe that big for? Especially a hotel with no guests,” she adds.
I take a step closer to the safe and then pull on the handle.
“It’s locked.”
“Umm…it’s a safe?” she says. “That’s its whole job, to be locked.”
“Do all businesses have safes that big?” I ask. “I mean, is that a thing?”
“I think it’s a thing,” she says.
“Totally Rad Productions doesn’t have a safe like this,” I tell her.
“What would Totally Rad Productions need a safe for?”
I think about the empty rent envelope in the kitchen drawer. “Good point.”
We move past the second tunnel as we head toward the heavy wooden door at the end of the first one.
“That tunnel looks like it goes on forever.” I point a thumb at it as we go by.
She nods. “Just so you know, there’s no way I’m going in there. No way, nohow.”
I slide my feet one by one across the dirt floor toward the second door. I can hear Mags’s feet dragging behind mine. There is a dim light shining from beneath the door when we finally reach it. I wedge my ear against the wood and listen.
Silence.
I try the knob.
Locked.
“I’m going to get on the ground and peek underneath,” I tell her. “Hold my phone and shine the light.”
Mags takes my phone now too and shines the light toward the floor. When my cheek touches the dirt floor, I squint through the crack.
“What do you see?” she whispers.
“Um…there are piles of clothes…a sleeping bag…a candlestick from the dining hall…onion Funyun wrappers and…what is that? I can’t see—”
That’s when the door where we entered the tunnel slams shut.
Mags lets out a scream and I scramble to my feet.
Although it’s only a short distance, I run at full speed with Mags on my heels. It feels like it’s miles and the door is getting farther and farther away.
When I make it to the door, I rattle the knob.
It doesn’t budge.
We’re trapped.
My heart is beating so hard, I can feel it pounding in every inch of me. My mouth goes dry and I can feel the sweats starting.
It’s a full-on panic attack.
I know because I’ve had two before this.
Once the day after Mom left us and once in school when we had our first active-shooter drill. And both times, this is exactly how it started, and both times, I thought it was the end of everything. At least that’s what my what-ifs told me.
WHAT-IFS
This time is the end for sure.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I pound on the door with my fists as hard as I can, not even caring one whit if we get in trouble with Mr. Lozano or anyone else, either.
Bang.Bang.Bang.
“Let us out! Let us out!” I
shout through the thick wooden door.
Mags is banging now too. Maybe she’s having a panic attack of her own.
I try to remember what Nyx said about wolf fear and how most things you worry about don’t happen anyway. But this is happening and it’s happening right this second.
My what-ifs are out of control.
WHAT-IFS
The undead are here to snatch me to
the television fuzz.
WHAT-IFS
Evil phantasms and a living hotel
will be the end of us all.
WHAT-IFS
Bloody Mary is here to extract my soul.
Bangbangbang.
“Let us out!” I shout through the door.
“Hello!” Mags hollers. “We’re in here! Hello!”
“I can’t breathe.” I huff air out of my lungs and back in again. “I can’t breathe!”
“But that’s all you’re doing,” she tells me.
That’s when the door lock clicks again, the knob turns and Mags and I fall into the hallway next to Madame Drusilla’s office.
“Oh…well,” says Ruby Red in her gray-and-white uniform with her squeaky-wheeled cart. “Sorry, I thought someone had accidentally left the door open.”
“You almost locked us in,” I huff out, bending at the waist and trying to catch my breath.
She shrugs, places her hands on the cart and gives it a shove with her hip to get it going.
“I’m sure someone would have found you…eventually,” she calls over her shoulder. “And you should know that the use of the tunnels under the Stanley Hotel is strictly prohibited.”
“Yeah, well…maybe you should hang a sign on it saying so,” I call after her.
“Mr. Lozano is Keys and Signage” is all she says.
We watch her as she leaves.
“Oh, man,” Mags whispers to me, still on her hands and knees on the floor. “I thought we were goners for sure. I mean, really and truly.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
“Lucky she heard us,” she says.
“It was more than luck,” I say, wiping the sweat off my forehead without once taking my eyes off Ruby Red as she stops to dust a marble head statue of Mr. Jewel.
Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Page 18
