“Dad,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me again why you call me Snooks.”
He smiles. “When you were born, I remember holding you for the very first time,” he starts, his eyes filling with tears again. “You were the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. I didn’t know if you were as sweet as the frostiest snow cone in the middle of the hottest summer or hot baked cookies straight from the oven. So I called you Snookie, a combination of both.” He wraps his arms around me again.
“I’ll never get tired of hearing that story,” I say into his shoulder.
He squeezes me even tighter and says, “And I’ll never get tired of telling it.”
It’s day eight and we’ve got squat as far as a ghost on film goes.
And we leave in two days.
That being said, we’re fairly doomed as far as the Netflix contract is concerned.
But here we are.
Dad assures me that Big John and The Faz have some new weddings and bat mitzvahs on the calendar and grumpy Mr. Drago has given us an extension on the rent, so we’re going to be okay.
That puts my what-ifs at ease.
For now.
And my jumping beans even let me sleep all night last night, which makes my whole body feel a lot better today. At breakfast Dad decides that me and Mags should take another mental health day after a tough eight days at the Stanley Hotel. He even gives us extra money to spend the day in town.
We call Nyx and he meets me and Mags at Inkwell & Brew, the coffee shop where his sister works. It has this supercool loft that has long shag carpet and an old-fashioned record player and old board games. We spend the day playing Monopoly, Battleship and Clue while we listen to old records from the seventies like KC and the Sunshine Band, the Village People and the Bee Gees, and sip hot chocolates. Hannah, the coffee shop manager, even teaches us some funky dances—one called the Hustle and another one called the Chicken Dance.
Sipping hot chocolates and dancing like a chicken make me forget all about my worries for a while. This makes me wonder why Dr. Finkelman didn’t write that on his prescription Post-it pad.
Before me, Mags and Nyx make our way back to the hotel we stop at Purple Mountain Taffy Company and fill an entire paper sack with different flavors of taffy.
Bing Cherry Vanilla, Birthday Cake, Cotton Candy, Huckleberry and even Strawberry Lemonade.
Nyx eats all the Bing Cherry Vanilla by the time we make it back to the Stanley, which is fine by me. I like the Huckleberry ones best.
“I hope Chef Raphaël doesn’t take it personal if we don’t eat dinner tonight,” Mags says as we make it up the red front steps. “I’m so stuffed full of taffy, my ectoplasm guts might explode if I eat one more bite.”
But by the time we make it into the lobby of the hotel, the last thing anyone is thinking about is dinner because of what we see when we step through the open double doors. Poor Ms. Lettie is sprawled out on the floor at the bottom of the grand staircase. Madame Drusilla is cradling Ms. Lettie’s head in her lap and Chef Raphaël in his tall white hat is sitting on Ms. Lettie’s other side, holding her hand. Ms. Lettie’s face is whiter than a sheet and she’s shaking so badly that her mile-high hair is actually vibrating.
At first I thought maybe Ms. Lettie had swirled her beanstalk hair so tall that it knocked her right over. But it turns out that wasn’t it at all.
“Où est son eau?” Chef Raphaël is shouting toward the dining hall.
“Coming!” Mr. Lozano says, crossing the lobby with a glass of water in his hand that’s dripping all over the carpet as he darts by us.
They all help her sit up.
“Here you go, Ms. Lettie.” Mr. Lozano hands the glass to Chef Raphaël.
“Ma chère, please take a sip of this.”
I rush to Ms. Lettie’s feet, with Mags and Nyx right behind me.
“What happened?” I ask. “Is Ms. Lettie okay?”
“She saw something,” Madame Drusilla tells us.
“What do you mean?” I say. “She’s seen lots of things and she’s never been freaked out by them before.”
“I don’t know,” Madame Drusilla says. “I just heard her scream and came running and found her like this.”
Ms. Lettie points to the grand staircase with a single shaking finger.
“Up there,” she says, taking a gulp of water.
“On the staircase, Lettie?” Mr. Lozano asks her.
She nods while gulping more water, then takes an even shakier breath and says, “The eyes, the eyes. They moved.”
“Whose eyes?” Madame Drusilla says.
“Was it a woman?” Mags asks.
“No,” Ms. Lettie says. “The pictures.”
“You mean the portraits on the wall?” I say. “Are you talking about the Jewel family portraits along the staircase?”
“Yes, the eyes followed me,” she whispers. “They moved.”
That’s when Ubbe Amblebee comes running in with his plunger.
“What happened?” he asks, rushing to Ms. Lettie’s side.
We all gaze up the grand staircase in unison.
“Which one?” Mr. Lozano asks. “Which portrait was it?”
We watch as Ms. Lettie points one more time.
“Honeycutt,” she whispers.
“Honeycutt?” I ask, examining the many golden-framed Jewel portraits lined up on the wall of the staircase, from the baseboard all the way up to the ceiling. “I thought all these paintings were of the Jewel family.”
“The Jewels put one portrait of the Honeycutts up there as well,” Mr. Lozano tells us. “As a tribute.”
“There’s an actual picture of the Honeycutts?” I ask, scanning the frames. “Where?”
Mr. Lozano points to the smallest portrait on the wall.
“The only one without an elaborate golden frame,” he tells me.
Me, Mags and Nyx scurry up the steps to examine the picture. It’s high up on the wall, so Nyx gives me a ten-finger hoist so I can get a better look, holding myself straight by placing my palms flat against the wall.
And I realize this is the first time my worries didn’t stop me once.
I’m Research for Totally Rad.
Me.
A real-life James Bond 007, but even better on account of the girl-style part.
My name is Moon. Karma Moon.
“What are you doing there?” Ubbe Amblebee calls out to me. “Stop that. You get down from there this instant.”
“Mr. Honeycutt’s eyes are gone!” I exclaim.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Ubbe Amblebee stands up now, waving his plunger. “I said get down.”
“What do you mean gone?” Mr. Lozano demands.
I turn to face everyone below me.
They are all watching.
Waiting.
“The eyes are actually cut out,” I tell them, poking my fingers through the holes on the canvas. “See? Gone.”
That’s when Mr. Amblebee blows a gasket and storms out the front double doors mumbling something about meddlesome kids, which is the exact same thing every single villain says when they are finally nabbed as the culprit in every single episode of Scooby-Doo.
And I know Mags is thinking the very same thing because when I look down at her and she looks back at me, we don’t have to even say the words out loud.
Best-friend telepathy: Phony baloney supreme.
* * *
After Mr. Lozano and the others get Ms. Lettie on the couch in front of one of the fireplaces in the lobby, Dad, Big John, The Faz and Lights Out! get the equipment ready to interview Ms. Lettie on-camera.
I guess when actual eyes follow you from a portrait on the grand staircase, you don’t care as much if the camera lens steals your soul.
Since everyone is
distracted, me, Mags and Nyx take the opportunity to sneak down to the lower level when we think no one will notice.
“What are we doing?” Mags whispers behind me.
“Shush,” I tell her. “Someone or something has been watching everything and everybody all along.”
“So?” she says.
“So we are going to get to the bottom of this once and for all,” I tell her.
“Don’t you think we should leave this to the night crew?” she says. “They were going to have a sit-down with Mr. Lozano to get access to the tunnel.”
“You heard them,” I say. “If Mr. Lozano refuses, that’s it. Done. Finito. No ghost and no Netflix contract.”
She sighs and drags her feet behind me.
“This is it,” I tell Nyx, waving a hand in front of the unmarked door to the tunnel. “You were right. You said there was some place in the hotel that Mr. Lozano was particularly weird about, and this is it. The door to the tunnel system that runs underneath all the buildings. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.”
“Hey…yeah,” Mags says then, giving him a suspicious eyeballing. “What’s up with that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he wants to know.
“Oh, nothing,” she says. “Just something ony-phay aloney-bay, Arlie-Chay Rown-Bay.”
PIG LATIN TRANSLATION: PHONY BALONEY, CHARLIE BROWN.
I give her a smack while Nyx rattles the doorknob.
“Locked,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s some detective work you’ve got going there,” Mags tells him.
“Mr. Lozano keeps it locked up tight,” I tell Nyx, pulling the folded map out of my back pocket to show him.
“So how’d you get in?” he asks, looking over the map. “There’s no key card access.”
“Mr. Lozano is the only one I know who has a key, and I saw him put it in his pocket,” I tell him. “So we had to resort to more creative methods of access.”
“Oh, man.” He rolls his eyes. “This again?”
“I picked the lock with a bobby pin so we could get in there and look around,” Mags tells him.
“Ahhh…I believe law enforcement personnel might refer to that as breaking and entering,” Nyx says.
Mags gives me a smack and says, “See? I told you so.”
“First of all, there was no breaking,” I tell him. “Just entering. And second, it’s our only option.”
Nyx waves a hand in front of the door and steps to the side.
“Be my guest,” he tells her.
“But be quicker about it this time,” I say. “We’ve only got a short window of opportunity here.”
Since this is officially Mags’s second unauthorized unlocking, the process goes much faster and we’re inside the door in a matter of minutes. We prop the door open this time with a big rock we found on the back patio and enter.
I reach around and flip on the why-bother bulb first and then me and Nyx shine a path with our phone lights on the dirt floor.
“Mags,” I say. “You film it.”
She nods.
“Ready?” I ask them.
We stand there staring into the dark abyss beyond where our light reaches.
My heart is racing and my fingers tapping while I try to count my worries away.
One. Two. Three. Four.
WHAT-IFS
Still here.
I breathe in and out and think about something. Anything. Just to keep my what-ifs from taking over.
Chicken dancing.
Pinkies touching.
Dad smiling.
I breathe in and then out, taking each step forward.
“There is a door at the end of the hall, past the big safe,” I whisper to Nyx, pointing to the drawing. “And a dark tunnel at the top of the T that leads to the underbelly of the rest of the hotel.”
He nods, folds the map back up and says, “Lead the way.”
I swallow and take one step forward and then another. Thinking about all the eyes that may be hiding in the blackness outside the reach of the light leading our way.
WHAT-IFS
A hotel manager serial killer.
WHAT-IFS
An evil canary rises up from the dead.
WHAT-IFS
Jell-O straight from the in-between.
“There,” I whisper to Nyx. “See that door at the end?”
“Yeah,” he whispers back. “There’s light coming from underneath it. Where does that door lead?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But last time I peeked underneath it and it almost seemed like someone was living here.”
“It’s probably just another employee dorm room,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Everyone has a room inside the employee quarters except Jack the busboy.”
“He lives in town with his mom,” Mags says.
“And Mr. Plum, of course,” I say. “He stayed up on the fourth floor above us.”
We step closer toward the door until we’re right outside it.
Nyx wedges an ear against the wood.
“I hear a television or something,” he says.
“A television?” I gulp and look at Mags.
WHAT-IFS
The television fuzz is here to snatch your soul.
I finger the satchel of bravery crystals around my neck.
Nyx presses his nose against the door.
“It stinks,” he says.
“Strawberries, right?” Mags whispers.
“No.” He sniffs again.
“Toilet plumbing?” I ask.
“No,” he says, giving it one more sniff. “BO.”
“Ew,” Mags says. “Ernie Porter has mad BO at Immaculate Heart of Mary K–8 and on the days we have gym class I can’t even stand next to the kid.”
I turn to face her.
“Will you focus, please?” I say. “I don’t want to hear another dry lip story.”
“You couldn’t make me kiss Ernie Porter for any money, so I wouldn’t know if he has dry lips or not,” she says. “His armpits smell like Peter Piper Pizza.”
Nyx’s leather military boot is tapping the floor.
“Are you done?” he asks us. “Because if I have to listen to one more kissing story between the two of you, I’m tendering my resignation to this whole operation.”
I turn to Mags. “Yeah,” I tell her. “You need to reel it in.”
“Yeah well, you need to reel it out,” she says.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“Are we doing this?” Nyx demands.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Someone needs to look under the door,” he says.
“I will,” I offer. “I did it last time.”
He nods and takes my phone while I get down on my hands and knees, pressing my cheek to the dirt floor.
“What do you see?” he whispers down to me.
“Same thing as before,” I whisper back. “Crumpled bags of Funyuns, a stack of newspapers, empty cans of soda and…ew…hairy legs.”
Mags sucks air. “What?” she breathes.
“Hairy legs,” I say again. “Do ghosts have hairy legs?”
“Not in the blueprint,” Mags tells me.
“What about at the eleven-minute, fifty-second mark of The Shining?”
“Nope,” she says. “No hairy legs there, either.”
I swallow. “Dracula?”
She shakes her head.
“What else do you see?” Nyx asks me.
“Um…I see…I see…polka dots.”
“Who’s out there?” a voice booms from behind the door.
I suck air and scramble to my feet.
WHAT-IFS
Run.
Maybe Nyx’s theory about the wolf making things worse than they really are makes sense sometimes, but I think my what-ifs make sense too.
Because right now they are dead-on.
WHAT-IFS
Run fast.
Maybe Nyx was the one who flung open the door at the end of the first tunnel. And maybe it was Mags who got it all on film.
But it was me who figured out there was phony baloney to begin with.
Even if I was wrong about Ms. Lettie being a tiny, purple-haired vampire, I was right about everything else.
There was way more going on at the Stanley Hotel than ghostly mayhem.
Polka-dot boxers and matching socks, to be exact.
“Mr. Plum!” I exclaim in the doorway of the tiny room at the end of the tunnel. “What are you doing in here?”
He’s standing in front of us with one of the candelabras from the dining hall held out in front of him.
“I’ll tell you exactly what he’s doing here,” a voice from the abyss calls out from the second tunnel.
Nyx spins around and flashes light into the darkness behind us. Its light bobs and weaves at first until it finds the culprit.
Ruby Red.
“I knew it! I knew you were part of the phony baloney this whole entire time. And just so you know, we know about the suitcase, too, so don’t even.”
I watch as she steps into the light. Except she’s not wearing her gray-and-white housekeeper uniform this time either, just jeans and a blazer. And hanging from a chain around her neck is something silver and shiny and gleaming in the light.
I gasp.
A badge.
A real live badge.
“Wait…what are you doing with that?” I ask her, pointing at the silver shield.
“I’m Detective Ruby Red with the Estes Park Police Department,” she tells us. “And, Mr. Plum, you’re under arrest.”
Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Page 20
