Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter
Page 22
I rush to the door of room 332.
“What’s the password?” I call, and then wedge my ear up against the wood.
Mags looks up from her phone. “Are we still doing that?” she asks.
“It makes things more interesting, don’t you think?” I say.
“I just saw a ghost in the kitchen,” she tells me. “I think things are plenty interesting.”
“What’s the password?” I call through the door again.
“Choose woo-woo over bad juju,” Nyx calls.
“Oh my good God, you’ve got Charlie Brown saying that now too?” Mags asks.
I grin real big at her and pull open the door and Nyx is standing there with his backpack and black skullcap.
“It’s important to have a mantra in life, right?” I ask Nyx.
“Real important,” he agrees, slipping in past me.
“But he already has his own,” she tells me. “He doesn’t need to adopt yours.”
“Yeah, but we made a pact that he’s going to adopt mine as his surefire mantra and I’m going to adopt his for mine. Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.”
“Are double mantras totally weird? Check,” she says.
Nyx shakes his head at her. “So pea soup,” he says.
I laugh while Mags gives him an eyes-to-the-sky roll.
“So, what did you bring for our tunnel excursion?” I ask Nyx.
He unloads his backpack one item at a time.
“First off,” he says, “I agree with you. Since the entity said the word tunnel, we’re better off investigating there instead of the kitchen. Even though that’s where the spirit showed herself.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“I also think that with the quartz enhancing the receptivity of our contact, that will be our best chance at getting something on film. But…”
“But what?” Mags asks.
“Where’s the map?” he asks.
I pull it out of the night table drawer and show it to him.
He unfolds it. “Here.” He points to the second tunnel. “It needs to be this one.”
“The deep dark tunnel that leads to the underbelly of the entire hotel?” I ask.
He nods.
I swallow. “You’re sure it needs to be that tunnel?”
I turn to Mags.
“I’m out,” she says.
I give her a pointer finger. “Don’t be a baby.”
“I’m going to be a baby,” she says.
“Mags, we need you to bobby-pin the lock.”
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll bobby-pin it, but I’m not going in there this time. Not after what I just went through.”
I look at Nyx and he shrugs. “We can do it and she can be the lookout.”
“Fine,” I say. “Will you be the lookout at least?”
“As long as I don’t have to go in,” she says.
I turn back to Nyx. “So, what is all this stuff?”
“My Hail Mary Ghost on Film Kit,” he says.
“You mean, like the Father O’Leary kind of Hail Marys?” I ask him.
“No, like a football kind.”
“What’s the football kind?” she asks.
“It’s like a last-ditch effort at the very last second when there’s no time left on the clock. You gotta just hurl the ball down the field to get the touchdown. Or in this case, to get the ghost. Get it? A Hail Mary Ghost on Film Kit.”
I nod. “It’s definitely time for a football Hail Mary,” I tell him.
HAIL MARY GHOST ON FILM KIT
1 GhostPro Night Vision Camera
1 laptop
1 PX
“With Infrared Illuminator,” Mags reads off the package.
“Better night vision perception,” Nyx tells her.
“Yeah, Mags.” I grin. “You gotta illuminate. Open your mind, why don’t you.”
She snorts. “Oh, like you know,” she says.
“What about this?” I ask, holding up a small box a little bigger than a deck of cards with some buttons, a speaker and a small screen on it. “What’s a PX?”
“It’s this somewhat controversial device ghost hunters use to detect energies and then translate it into language. Like a tool to transcribe the language from the in-between. It has a vocabulary of over two thousand words. A lot of ghost hunters say it’s a joke, but in this case, being a Hail Mary and all, better not rule anything out.”
“Yep,” I agree.
“Definitely,” Mags says.
“What about the Ouija board?” I ask.
“The ghost is already here and has been this whole time,” Nyx says. “We don’t need to conjure her up. We just need to make contact.”
“Sounds good,” I say, putting my hand in the center of our circle. “Everybody bring it in.”
Nyx puts his hand on mine and Mags puts her hand on his.
“Tonight,” I say. “We find a ghost! On three, Operation: Football Hail Mary Ghost!”
* * *
We sneak our way down to the tunnel door, snaking down the stairs in stealthlike fashion to avoid all detection.
Our mission is a success.
Once we make it, Mags expertly bobby-pins the lock. She’s so good now, it doesn’t hardly take any time at all.
When I hear the lock click, she turns to me and says, “We’re in.”
I nod and take one giant breath.
“Our mission to find a ghost and save Totally Rad begins now,” I say to Nyx. “Are you ready?”
“Ready,” Nyx says.
“Good luck and Godspeed,” Mags tells us, and we step inside. First me and then Nyx. He turns on the flashlight so there is a round spot of light straight out in front of me.
It’s only a few steps to get to the second tunnel.
Nyx shines his light inside.
But it’s windy, so the light bounces back off the quartz rock.
“Ready?” I ask, selecting the camera app on my phone.
“If you are,” he says.
I duck and take a step into the second tunnel.
Today it smells even more damp after it rained earlier in the day. There’s a trickle of water coming from somewhere and we hear a dripping sound.
A machine kicks on, causing a loud buzzing noise.
That’s when I remember I’ve been so worried about ghosts that I forgot about my other phobia.
WHAT-IFS
GOOGLE: An average of 6.8 people die
each year from venomous spider bites.
I’d rather see ten linty belly buttons and do algebra problems until the end of time than see even one spider.
They’re the worst.
Another step forward and then another.
The light shines on rock and on the dirt floor where my feet are stepping. Around a bend and then another.
“Are you here?” Nyx calls out into the darkness. “We don’t mean you any harm. We are here to help you.”
The PX box crackles in his hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s picking up energy,” he tells me.
“But no words?”
“Not yet,” he says. “Maybe—”
That’s when we hear something and we both stop in our tracks.
“Did you make that out?” he asks.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Keep listening,” he tells me.
I nod.
Then PX Siri says it again.
PX Siri: Searching.
“She said searching!” I exclaim. “I’m sure of it.”
“You are searching?” Nyx calls out to the entity again. “What are you searching for?”
The box crackles again.
“Keep going
,” Nyx tells me.
My feet feel heavy and my chest hurts.
I squint and strain my eyes, trying to see into the abyss of the tunnel, attempting to make out anything other than the darkness that is engulfing us as we move deeper and deeper beneath the hotel.
Rocks crumble down the side of the wall above us and we stop again.
“Did you hear that?” I ask Nyx. “That can’t be good.”
WHAT-IFS
I wonder if anyone has ever been buried alive by quartz.
“Mr. Lozano said the tunnel was off-limits because it wasn’t safe,” I tell him.
“Do you want to turn back?” Nyx asks me.
I don’t say anything.
“This is your thing, so if you want to turn back, we’ll turn back,” he says. “But you told me this was an emergency.”
“It is.”
“You needed a ghost on film.”
“We do.”
“It’s your call,” he says.
I bite on my lip and turn back toward the abyss.
“Let’s keep going,” I say.
He nods.
I take one careful footstep and then another. Sliding my Converse in case there’s a drop-off into the in-between. Slowly, I make my way around each bend in the tunnel, never able to see farther than a few feet in front of us at one time.
“Are you here with us?” Nyx calls again.
PX Siri: Yes.
I gasp.
“We need you to make yourself visible to us,” Nyx tells her. “Can you do that?”
Electricity soars through the box in Nyx’s hand.
Crackle.
Pop.
Buzz.
“We know you are here with us,” I call out to the entity now. “Please let us see you.”
We make our way around another bend and then Nyx’s flashlight goes out.
“What are you doing?” I demand. “Turn it back on.”
“I didn’t do it,” he tells me.
More rocks fall and scatter, but this time it’s behind us.
I spin around, the camera still filming, and that’s when I see a blur of fog flutter across the lens.
My breath comes fast and my stomach feels sick. I can feel spiders crawling on me, down my shirt and up my arms, even though I can’t see any. Sweat prickles under my arms, below my bottom lip and across my scalp.
Focus.
Breathe.
In and then out. In and then out.
I wait, listening to my own lungs and the trickle of water and the mechanical buzzing.
But all we hear is paranormal silence.
“Hey, what’s this?” Nyx says. “I’m stepping on something.”
WHAT-IFS
Please don’t be spiders.
Please don’t be spiders.
Please don’t be spiders.
All I hear is some shuffling, and then he turns on the light from his phone.
“It’s dried-up old rose petals.”
I suck air.
“She’s here,” I say. “I knew it!”
“M-maybe we’ve got enough,” he says. “Should we turn back?”
I turn to face him.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Nyx scared. I guess everyone has their what-ifs, Dad and Nyx, too. Even Mags has them.
Maybe I’m more normal than I even thought.
“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is,” I tell him, and then I take the satchel of bravery crystals from around my neck and pass them to him.
“Here,” I say. “Maybe you need these more than I do. Because one thing is for sure. We aren’t leaving until we get a ghost.”
Knock…pause…knock, knock, knock…pause…knock…pause…knock, knock.
Mags flings open the unmarked door for us.
“Well?” she demands. “What did you get?”
“We got her voice on the PX and more dried-up rose petals,” I tell her.
She gasps. “Rose petals?” she exclaims.
“Yep,” I say. “She was definitely there, but I didn’t see her. Nyx’s flashlight just went out. Like that.” I snap my fingers. “We were in there in total darkness until he pulled out his phone.”
“You just know she interrupted the electrical current in the tunnel with her energies,” Mags says.
“Totally,” I agree.
“Remember, just because we didn’t see anything with our eyes doesn’t mean that the camera didn’t pick up an image,” Nyx tells us. “Let’s review the video.”
“But why did Mags see her with her own eyes in the kitchen and we didn’t?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know everything there is to know about ghosts,” he says. “All I can say is that sometimes you see them, sometimes you hear them and sometimes you just sense them. But still, the camera eye can pick up things we don’t always see with ours.”
Nyx sits down in the middle of the downstairs hall in front of the unmarked door and we crouch down to get a look over his shoulders. He plugs the camera into his laptop with a short, skinny cord and taps the keys on the keyboard until an image of the tunnel comes up.
“The screen is all green,” I say.
“That’s the night vision scope,” he tells me. “So even though we couldn’t see into the darkness, the camera could.”
He pushes the triangle-shaped Play button in the middle of the screen.
We watch what we just recorded inside the tunnel. It looks a whole lot different than it did with my eyes. Now I can see what I could only hear inside the abyss.
Rocks tumbling down the walls in front of me.
Water trickling from cracks in the quartz.
Spiderwebs woven across the ceiling.
Rusted pipes and loose wires hanging.
And then…a dress.
An ancient dress, just like the one in our closet.
“That’s her!” I exclaim. “That’s her!”
Mags grabs my hand and squeezes it tight.
We all watch as the image whisks by the camera and back again, and behind it…hundreds of orbs of light.
Thousands.
“You didn’t see any of this?” Mags asks.
“No,” I breathe. “We felt it, though. Didn’t we?” I ask Nyx.
“Definitely,” he says without taking his eyes off the screen.
“What is that?”
“In Poltergeist,” Nyx says, “they showed the orbs as people all stuck in the in-between for some reason or other.”
“Why are they stuck?” I ask.
“Just like I said on the first day,” Mags says. “Some don’t know they are dead. Some have unfinished business. And some are just afraid of the unknown.”
“It’s sad,” I say, staring at the screen.
“Yeah,” Mags agrees.
“To be stuck in your very own prison because you’re afraid of what might happen, instead of seeing the surprise of the gift you haven’t opened yet,” I say, watching the bobbing lights.
Mags turns to look at me.
“That sounds like a good mantra,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You did it, Karma Moon!” she exclaims. “You got a ghost on film just like you said you would!”
I feel my shoulders push back as I stand tall again. The aura light that Tally talked about wraps its arms around me.
“Dad is going to wig out,” I tell her.
“Totally,” she agrees.
“Totally Rad Productions is on the map,” I say. “It happened just like the fortune cookie said it would.”
Mags’s hand shoots up high in the air at that very moment and she says, “Raise your hand if your very best friend in the whole wide world is more Velma than anyone else on the planet!”
It all started with the moo goo gai pan.
On that very fateful day last winter, while we just sat there, eating takeout leftovers like it was any other Tuesday afternoon.
And then the old-fashioned yellow phone rang and changed our lives forever.
Just like the cookie knew it would.
FORTUNE COOKIE
A heavy burden will be lifted with a single phone call.
And that cookie was dead-on too.
Just like I knew it would be.
Even if it happened with a football Hail Mary big break.
In the end, it all happened just the way it was supposed to. Even though I worried the whole time that it wouldn’t.
I let my fears make my wolf too big.
But I’m working on that.
Especially because after all that worrying for nothing, Dad’s big break is happening right now, just like the cookie said it would.
And I’m still not sure if I am tuned in the way Tally and Madame Drusilla say I am, but I’m paying a lot more attention to my gut these days just in case.
Tonight, only six short months after me and Nyx captured an actual ghost on film, we are having an official private showing of our docuseries in apartment 4B.
Brought to you by Netflix.
Dad even ordered a red mat for the front door outside our apartment to make it an official red carpet premiere.
A PARANORMAL DISTURBANCE
AT THE STANLEY HOTEL
Not to brag or anything, but the title was totally my idea.
Dad wanted to call it A Ghost at the Stanley, but I convinced him to change it.
And when I saw it on the computer screen while Big John was editing and adding the scary music, all I can say is…nailed it.
All the A-listers and bigwigs are gathered for the big event in our living room right this minute. Bigwigs being T. S. Phoenix; Tally; Mags; Mr. and Mrs. Bogdonavich; Big John and his girlfriend, Gloria; The Faz and The Fazette; and grumpy Mr. Drago—and Dad even flew Nyx out to surprise me.