The Thirteenth Mystery

by Michael Dahl

  He fell through the floor, then rolled into something hard. With another thump, the carpet above him tilted back up and the light disappeared.

  Charlie heard a wrenching sound, a scream, and then nothing. He was in darkness.

  True, deep darkness.

  Charlie felt his heart pumping faster. He started breathing harder.

  Then he heard something.

  . . . beep . . . beep . . .

  “Ty, is that you?” he called.

  “Yeah, it’s my stupid beeper,” came Tyler’s familiar voice. “It’s gone off about a million times. If my parents had given me a phone, then maybe I could have called them and gotten out of this hole, but no, I’m not responsible enough. Even though I do all the work around here.”

  The darkness in front of Charlie’s eyes appeared to swirl. A shadow separated from the others. A silhouette.

  “You’ve been on the thirteenth floor the whole time?” asked Charlie.

  “Yeah, and I’m not the only one, brainiac. Brack’s here too. But I think he’s hurt.”

  “You think? Don’t you know?”

  “I can’t see him,” said Ty.

  Charlie’s heart began beating harder again. “There’s no lights in here?!” he said.

  “Well, there aren’t any windows on this floor, but there’s a few lights. But that’s not the problem. He’s locked behind a door and neither of us can open it. So I’ve been looking for a way out for hours!”

  Light burst above them. Charlie could see that he and Ty were sitting in a hall that resembled the others in the hotel.

  The secret rectangular door had re-opened overhead and slanted toward them. Annie and Cozette ran down the carpeted ramp.

  “Tyler!” exclaimed Annie. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “Yeah!” said Ty. “Now we can get out of here.”

  But as soon as the two girls stepped off the ramp, it sprang quickly back into place, and out of reach.

  “Don’t worry,” said Charlie. “I think I know how we can get out of here.”

  “You do?” said Ty. “Then why did you take so long? I’ve been starving!”

  “I waited so long because I just figured it out,” answered Charlie. “It’s not like we haven’t been trying.”

  “We just figured it out,” said Cozette. “I was the one who turned that weirdo lily thing.”

  “Right,” Charlie said. “We. Sorry.”

  “We need to get Brack,” said Ty.

  “I’ve got a phone,” said Cozette. She turned it on and its pale blue light helped guide them through the hallway.

  Tyler looked the way he always did. Spiky black hair, jeans, boots, and a scowl on his face. He stopped in front of a door. “We have a slight problem,” he said.

  “Now what?” asked Annie.

  “The door is locked,” Ty said. “And Brack’s inside.”

  “I have a passkey!” Charlie said. He pulled the keycard out of his pocket.

  Charlie heard a low moan from the other side of the door. “Brack!” he called. “It’s us!” Cozette’s phone light made it bright enough to see the door.

  Charlie looked at the door, and then stopped. “Uh, where’s the slot for the passkey?” The old wooden door had a traditional lock and keyhole.

  “These old doors don’t have the new electronic system,” said Annie. “We need an old-school metal key.”

  “And that’s probably been missing for fifty years,” said Charlie, groaning.

  “Now that you mention it,” said Annie, “there are some old keys hanging behind the desk.”

  “You mean these?” asked Cozette. She held out a small ring of dark metal keys.

  “How did you —?” Annie started.

  “I figured if we were going into the old part of the Hocus Pocus, we might need them,” said Cozette.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” said Ty.

  “Stand aside,” said Cozette. She tried a few of the keys in the lock. Finally, there was a click.

  The door opened, and in the phone’s blue light, they saw a closet door just inside.

  “Brack!” called Ty.

  A groan came from within the closet. Ty twisted a deadbolt knob on the door and opened it. The four companions saw an old man on the floor inside, his thin back against the wall, his wrinkled face stretched in a grimace of pain.

  “Master Hitchcock!” said the man in a tired, raspy voice. “And Master Yu. And Miss Solo.”

  “How are you, Brack?” asked Charlie.

  “Body and soul still together, young man,” said Brack, pushing himself into a better position. “And this charming young woman must be Miss Bailey.”

  Cozette stared. “You know who I am?” she said. “I’ve only worked here a few weeks.”

  “We need to get you out of here,” said Ty.

  “Carefully,” said Brack. “I think I may have sprained an ankle.”

  “Who did this to you?” said Charlie.

  “I have an idea,” said Brack. “But I don’t have any evidence, of course. It was dark when I woke up here. The last thing I remember was sitting in my house.”

  “With Theopolis!” said Charlie.

  Brack blinked, surprised. “Why, yes. At least, that’s who he turned out to be. He was wearing a disguise.”

  “A red beard,” said Annie.

  “Somebody better explain what’s been going on,” said Ty. “And I mean now.”

  “First things first,” said Brack. He lifted a shaking hand and pointed. “I believe there’s a men’s room in that direction. I could hear the pipes through the wall.”

  Ty gently hoisted Brack to his feet and hunkered under one of the older man’s shoulders. Charlie and Annie supported him on the other side. Cozette raised her phone and a door loomed out of the darkness. While Ty helped Brack walk inside, the other three turned and gasped.

  A hand reached out toward them. Icy white fingers. Annie screamed. Charlie couldn’t speak. Ty stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Cozette pointed. The clutching white fingers hadn’t moved. They could see the hand was attached to a bare white arm that led to a naked shoulder.

  “Look out!” said Ty. As Cozette’s light traveled up the mysterious white shape, Ty saw another figure close behind.

  Neither of the white shadows moved. “Who are you?” Ty demanded.

  The four companions jumped as something moved behind them. It was Brack, who had opened the bathroom door and was grasping the side of the doorway for balance. “I’m afraid he can’t answer you,” he said. “None of them can.”

  Cozette lifted her light. They saw more and more figures crowded in front of them.

  All pale, all frozen in place, all silent.

  “Statues,” said Charlie.

  Brack nodded. “They are the great secret of the thirteenth floor,” he said. “A secret I thought was a rumor until I saw them just now with my own eyes.”

  “Who are they?” asked Ty.

  “The Twelve,” said Brack.

  Charlie looked closer at the blurry, bluish shapes in the cellphone’s gleam. One of them brandished a sword. Another held a spear with three sharp prongs. A female figure wore an old-fashioned helmet and carried a shield.

  I’ve seen them before, thought Charlie. He had a memory that held onto images like a computer hard drive. “Acute visual memory,” his teachers called it. Other people might call it a photographic memory.

  Once Charlie saw a picture or a movie or a show, he never forgot it. For example, the photo he had seen in an old book at the library of some statues. The same statues he’d seen on a show on the History Channel.

  “The Twelve Olympians,” said Charlie.

  “You mean, like athletes?”
asked Annie,

  Ty rolled his eyes. “Like the Greek gods,” he said. “Clash of the Titans, The Immortals, Percy Jackson.”

  “You read?” said Cozette in a quiet voice.

  Ty ignored her. “That must be Ares,” he said, pointing at the statue with the sword.

  “And there’s Poseidon and Athena,” said Charlie. He saw a statue of a beautiful woman with long hair, holding a stone apple in her cold marble hand. “That one is Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty.”

  “Yeah,” said Ty. “Some dude gave her that apple because she was the prettiest.”

  “The Twelve,” said Brack. “These statues were a gift to the hotel many, many years ago. They were the handiwork of a famous Spanish sculptor, Ernesto Endriago.”

  “One guy made them?” asked Cozette.

  “One very talented guy, yes,” said Brack. “He sent them to the hotel as a gift. He came from a long line of magicians — he was the only sculptor, and a disappointment to his father. But these magnificent statues were delivered here and then forgotten. I knew they had been sent, but never saw them. It was a very busy time. Deliverymen must have put them on this floor by mistake.”

  “Wow,” said Annie. “So, we’re like the first people to see them since Ernesto!”

  “Where were they supposed to go?” asked Charlie.

  “Endriago designed them to be installed on the roof,” said Brack. “The twelve gods of Greek mythology gazing down on humans from on high. Just as they once did from Mount Olympus.”

  “Awesome,” said Tyler.

  “Awesome indeed, but it wasn’t a good idea,” said Brack. “They’re far too valuable to be exposed to the elements.”

  “Um, how valuable?” said Charlie.

  “Endriago was killed in the Second World War,” Brack said. “These are the last — and the greatest — works from his hand. They must be priceless.”

  Charlie wondered how much a single statue would cost. A million? A hundred million? That would pay for the hotel a thousand times over. Brack would be able to pay for the whole thing, and Theopolis would be out of his life forever.

  Charlie was too busy thinking about dollar signs to notice the shadowy figure moving beyond the circle of light cast from Cozette’s phone. It moved from the statue of Apollo to Hermes, and then hid behind Hades, the lord of the dead. Then it smiled.

  Tyler sighed. “I’m starving here, people. And we need a doctor to look at Brack’s ankle.”

  Cozette turned to Charlie. “You said you knew a way out of here.”

  “Right,” said Charlie. “Let’s go back to the hall we first landed in.”

  It took longer to retrace their steps with the injured Brack, but soon they were back in the hallway.

  “See?” said Charlie, pointing to the floor. “I knew it was there.” In the glow of the phone they saw a familiar shape on the carpet.

  “Aladdin’s magic carpet,” said Annie. “Or at least it looks like it.”

  “Just like the rectangle above us, on the fourteenth floor,” said Charlie.

  “You mean it was right there all the time?” said Ty.

  Charlie began running his hands along the wall, searching for another hidden switch. “I figured they’d be right on top of each other,” he said. “Ah, here it is.” His left hand touched a bumpy shape protruding from the wallpaper.

  Another flower. This one was a sunflower. “Stand back,” he yelled. Then he twisted the plaster flower just as Cozette had twisted the lily.

  Something banged against the floor. Gears rattled and walls shook as the floor began to sag. Light shot up from below as the rectangle in the carpet slanted downward to reveal a lit hallway on the twelfth floor.

  Carefully, they helped Brack down the ramp. As soon as they all stepped into the lower hallway, the ramp snapped up like the end of a teeter-totter.

  “This is the hallway with the glass door,” said Ty. “This is where I went up. After you took off for the elevators, the ramp came down again.”

  “So why didn’t you just come back the same way?” asked Annie.

  “I didn’t know how it worked,” said Ty.

  “Well, that’s how David Dragonstone got into the hallway without you seeing him enter it,” said Charlie. “Remember how you said you saw the black curtains dropping down over the glass door? That’s what clued me in to this secret ramp. The black curtains used in the magic trick moved from side to side, on a frame, like regular curtains. When you said you saw them drop down, from the far end of the hall where you were standing, I knew you must have seen something else dropping down.”

  “After you left the hall, I took one last look around,” said Ty. “And then, for no reason, the ceiling began to open up, and the ramp came down. That’s when I went up to the thirteenth floor and got stuck. Hey, how many of those ramps are there?” he asked Brack.

  “I don’t know,” said Brack. “I hired architects and builders who were magicians, you know. The hotel has magic built into the very walls. Even I don’t know all of the Abracadabra’s secrets.”

  They led Brack to the elevators on the twelfth floor and descended to the main floor lobby.

  “Ty!” shouted his mother as soon as they stepped into the lobby. Miranda Yu rushed over, her arms outspread. She gave Ty a hug, but he shrugged it off.

  Mrs. Yu’s expression grew stern and she folded her arms. “Tyler Yu. Why have you been ignoring your beeper for the past twenty-four hours?” she demanded.

  Brack raised his hands. “I’m afraid that was all my fault, Mrs. Yu. Tyler was busy rescuing me.”

  Once the magician explained how Tyler had been trying to help him, and how he had hurt his ankle during his abduction, Miranda Yu’s anger drained away. She ordered Brack to wait in the lobby while she phoned a doctor.

  Brack settled into a plump, overstuffed chair. Meanwhile, Cozette peppered Annie with dozens of questions about David Dragonstone and whether they could go back upstairs for his autograph. A flash of lightning blazed through the vast lobby. It flickered on a forest of columns and a jungle of potted plants.

  “I thought that storm was over,” said Charlie.

  “We all make mistakes,” came a booming voice from the center of the room. “I heard the wonderful news of your return, old friend,” said Theopolis, bowing toward the seated Brack.

  “We just got here,” said Charlie. “How could you have heard anything?”

  Theopolis slowly shook his head. “Still doubting my mystical abilities, I see,” he said. “Well, Brack, I’m so glad you haven’t left us. For good, I mean. Oh, I was so worried.”

  “Did you really think I would leave this place?” asked Brack with a grim smile.

  “Never,” said Theopolis. “I know how much this stuffy old fleabag means to you. In fact, I know exactly how much.”

  Yeah. Down to the penny, I bet, thought Charlie.

  “And now that you’re back,” said Theopolis, “you must attend one of David Dragonstone’s performances. It would mean so much to the young man to have one of magic’s oldest practitioners in the audience.”

  “I have heard all about Dragonstone’s tricks from my young friends,” said Brack.

  “Well,” said Theopolis, giving Charlie a sour smile. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Ah well, you’re here, these brats are here, and everything is back to normal. Charming. I must talk to my partner about his next show. We’re planning something really big.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Brack.

  Theopolis swirled his cape and strode toward the elevators. “How can Brack just sit there and not say anything to that weasel?” said Ty. “He didn’t even ask that creep for an apology for locking him in that room.”

  Charlie straightened his shirt. “Like Brack said, he doesn’t have any evidence against Theopolis,” he said. “I mean, Brack didn’t exactly se
e who trapped him on the thirteenth floor.”

  “Then we’re gonna find evidence,” said Ty. “Yeah, that’s it. I know how to catch him red-handed.” Ty looked down at Charlie. “Come on, Hitchcock. We’re going back to the thirteenth floor.”

  “What?” squawked Charlie.

  “The Twelve,” said Ty. “Those statues. You heard Brack say they were priceless. I’ll bet that’s what Theopolis is up to. He’s gonna steal them and make millions. But we’re gonna sit in that room and grab him as soon as he makes his move.”

  This time they brought flashlights. Annie had to help Mrs. Yu in the office with some paperwork, so Charlie, Ty, and Cozette returned to the fourteenth floor, to the hallway outside Dragonstone and Theopolis’s bedrooms.

  After fiddling with the plaster lily a few dozen times, they were able to keep the ramp stuck in a diagonal position.

  Once they stepped down to the thirteenth floor, they did the same with the sunflower and the second ramp.

  Now both ramps were stuck in the “down” position, and light flooded into the old, hidden hallway from above and below.

  “The door’s over there, around the corner,” said Ty. “Room 1308.”

  Their flashlights were able to pick out more details of the fantastic statues.

  “Who’s the lady in the helmet?” asked Cozette.

  Charlie joined her. “That’s Athena. Also called Minerva. The goddess of wisdom.”

  “Why would a smart woman need a helmet and a shield?” asked Cozette.

  “Because she was smart,” said Ty. “There were a lot of crazy, scary dudes back in the Greek days.”

  “And who’s this with the wings on his feet?” Cozette asked.

  “He’s one of my favorites,” said Charlie. “He’s Hermes, the messenger of the gods. The wings helped him travel back and forth between Mount Olympus and Earth.”

  “Hitchcock has a favorite Greek god?” Tyler said, smirking. “Nerd alert.”