by Michael Dahl
“He looks cute,” said Cozette.
“Hitchcock?!” said Ty.
Cozette’s face flushed deep red. “No! The messenger guy.”
Charlie’s face felt hot. He quickly tried changing the subject by pointing at the statue of a tall male holding a bow. A quiver of arrows hung at his back, and a small sun beamed from his brow. “That’s Apollo. He’s supposed to be the god of the sun and beauty and —”
“Who’s this creepy guy?” asked Ty.
Charlie and Cozette walked over to the statue Ty was facing. In the small space with all the statues’ bodies jammed together, it was hard to see them all at once.
“I’m not sure,” said Charlie. “But I think he’s Hades. The god of the underworld.”
Cozette shivered. “You mean, like dead people and stuff? I’m getting out of here.”
Ty turned to her. “I thought you wanted to help us guard this place.”
“You guys guard it. I have work to do,” said Cozette. “Besides, these statues aren’t going anywhere. They weigh a ton.”
To prove her wrong, Ty bent his knees, grasped Hades, and tried straightening up. He strained and grunted, and did manage to shift the statue from its base slightly.
“See? No sweat,” said Tyler, wiping his forehead.
“Like I said, they weigh a ton,” replied Cozette.
“Wait a minute, Cozette,” said Charlie. “So, Ty, what exactly is your plan? What do you want us to do?”
Tyler stared at Charlie as if he had just arrived on the planet. “Stand. Guard. Over. The. Statues,” he said. “And catch that creep Theopolis when he comes in to steal them.”
“Stay up here?” said Cozette.
“We’ll take turns,” said Ty. “You wimps go do your work, or read more books, or talk about your favorite gods. And I’ll stay up here, with the door locked. Then you come back in an hour, and Charlie takes over. Bring plenty to eat. See if you can get my dad to make a pizza.”
Tyler hurried him out of the room. A moment later, Cozette was also rushed into the hall, the door closing behind her. She turned, as if to re-enter, but the doorknob jiggled uselessly in her hand.
Cozette sighed. “Let’s go back to the elevators and . . .” She hesitated. Charlie guessed she was thinking about how close they were to David Dragonstone’s room.
“Did you hear something?” asked Cozette. “Like a thump or something?”
Charlie tried the knob, but the door was locked. The two of them pounded on the door. “Let us in!” shouted Charlie.
Not a sound came from the room of statues.
Cozette handed Charlie her set of keys while she used her phone to call for help.
“The key’s not working, Cozette,” said Charlie.
“Tyler must have turned the deadbolt,” said Cozette. “I don’t see a keyhole for that.”
“I hope someone comes soon,” Charlie said.
Annie and Rocky were the first to arrive.Rocky Brown was a teenage boy with long blond hair who also worked at the front desk. Charlie quickly explained what happened.
“Stand back,” said Rocky. He rammed into the door with his shoulder. It wouldn’t give.
“That only works on TV,” said Cozette.
“I just need a little more momentum,” said Rocky. “Now, look out. I don’t want you guys to get hurt.” He took several steps back, drew in a deep breath, and then ran toward the door. His shoulder slammed into the wood like a linebacker tackling a tight end. The frame shattered and splinters flew into the hall. “I broke my shoulder!” Rocky screamed.
Charlie and Cozette beamed their flashlights into the darkness.
“Tyler!” cried Annie.
Just inside the room, on the floor, lay the motionless body of Tyler Yu.
“Could someone call a doctor?” asked Rocky. He sat out in the hall, holding his left shoulder.
Then, things became even more confusing. Over Rocky’s groans and Annie’s cries, Charlie heard more people arriving. Walter and Miranda Yu shoved their way to the door. Brack hobbled in on a cane. Theopolis and David Dragonstone, obviously alerted by the noises drifting up to their rooms through the open ramp, joined the crowd. Charlie heard some of the hotel’s residents as well, ex-magicians and performers like Mr. Madagascar, Dottie Drake, and the reclusive juggler Mr. Thursday, who had just moved into the hotel the week before.
Charlie found himself in the room, kneeling over Tyler, although he didn’t remember how he got there. And as he glanced up, he saw more and more onlookers stepping through the broken doorframe and entering the dark room that had been unused for fifty years.
“Oh my dear, is that Tyler?”
“Is he alive?”
“What are all these statues doing here?”
“What is this place?”
“He’s breathing. He’s breathing!”
“I think I’m going to faint. Do you think the floor is clean enough?” That was Dottie Drake, at one time a famous magician’s assistant. Her silver hair was swept up in a tall pile and she clutched her throat in terror. “Oh, that poor boy,” she said. “The poor boy. I really do feel faint.”
“Everyone move back!” yelled Miranda Yu. Even in an emergency she looked cool and professional. “And no fainting!” she said. “We don’t have time for that. Someone call a doctor. The rest of you, wait outside.”
Out in the hall, the scene reminded Charlie of a dentist’s waiting room.
Except for the crying.
Annie was weeping softly as Dottie Drake hugged her. And Rocky was weeping rather loudly.
Charlie stared at Theopolis, but the magician would not meet his gaze.
I know he has something to do with this, thought Charlie. But I need evidence. How did he do it? How did he get into a locked room with Ty, when Cozette and I were standing right outside the door? And — more importantly — how did he get back out?
Wait!
Charlie stood up. He grabbed his flashlight and headed back inside the room. Mrs. Yu was sitting on the floor, gently rubbing Tyler’s back. Her head snapped up. “Outside, Charlie,” she ordered.
“But I have to look at something —”
“Out,” she repeated.
Charlie had learned early on not to mess with the Yus. They all meant business, each in their own way. He stood for a moment, gripping his flashlight, not saying a word. He simply looked at Tyler’s motionless body.
He had never seen the boy so quiet, so vulnerable. It was like looking at a fallen soldier. Above Ty’s body stood the statue of Ares with his outstretched sword.
Then Charlie turned and walked out, just as the ambulance team was hurrying in with their bags and a stretcher.
Once Tyler and Rocky had been taken away on stretchers by the EMTs, the hallway emptied quickly.
A half hour later, the last ones remaining were Charlie, Brack, and Mr. Yu, who frowned, examining the splintered door frame.
“I can’t leave it like this,” he muttered. “What a terrible accident.”
“I don’t believe it was an accident at all,” said Brack. “Do you still have your flashlight, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded. He didn’t need to hear another word from the old magician. He turned on his light and stepped into the room. Back and forth, he swung the flashlight’s beam.
It was a single open room, a large hotel room with only ancient gods and spiderwebs for guests. He saw the statues. He saw the door to the bathroom that Brack and Tyler had both used. He saw a few pieces of old furniture. He saw an open space that was probably supposed to have been a closet but never had a door attached to it. The one thing that Charlie did not see in the glare of his flashlight: another door or window.
“Do you see what’s missing?” whispered Brack.
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “No way out.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Brack. “Something else.”
Charlie swung the light some more. What else was not there that should have been? Did Brack mean — no, it was impossible.
Charlie used the flashlight as a spotlight on each of the Twelve. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Hermes, Apollo, Athena, Hades, Artemis, Demeter, Hephestus, and . . .
Where was the beautiful woman holding the apple? He counted them a second time.
“Aphrodite is missing,” Charlie said. “But, Brack, how could that be? I saw Aphrodite when we first came in to get you.”
“I saw her too, Charlie,” he replied. “But someone got to her.”
Charlie shut his eyes. He tried to think back. When he first entered the room, he had seen all of the Twelve, even if he saw a few only out of the corner of his eye. He could count them all.
And then he pictured the second time he came back, with Ty and Cozette. He remembered how crowded it had felt, walking through the forest of frozen figures in the stuffy room. But, yes, he had counted then, too.
There had been twelve gods and goddesses of stone. He was sure of it. They sometimes seemed to twitch and blink in the moving beams of light from the flashlights and Cozette’s phone. The muscles in their fingers flexed, the veins in their necks pulsed. But there had been the Twelve.
Where was the goddess of beauty? She couldn’t walk out on her carved, stone feet.
Or could she? Maybe that sculptor, Ernesto Endriago, was a magician after all. Maybe he possessed some genius skill for building stone figures that moved on their own.
But that still didn’t solve the bigger mystery. How did Ty’s attacker — and the statue — leave the room if it was locked from the inside? And while Charlie and Cozette stood guard outside?
“My stupid ankle!” cried Brack. “If only I hadn’t hurt it, this wouldn’t have happened! The statue would still be here.”
“You don’t think it was alive too, do you?” whispered Charlie. But Brack didn’t answer. He just stared at the statues.
Mr. Yu was standing outside by the broken door frame. Charlie could hear him on his phone trying to get a carpenter and a locksmith to the hotel as quickly as possible.
Then he heard him talking to his wife, telling her that he would soon join her at the hospital.
“You don’t, do you?” repeated Charlie. “Think it was alive?”
A stone cold shiver ran down Charlie’s spine. The air in the dark room grew darker. He thought the statues were shuffling closer.
Don’t blink, thought Charlie. Keep an eye on them.
Brack smiled. “Magic can always be explained,” he said. “You’ve proven that before, Master Hitchcock, time and again. And this can be explained too. I know that you’ll solve this mystery, just as you have the others.”
I’m not so sure about that, thought Charlie. He looked into Brack’s eyes, and the feeling that the statues crowded in on him faded away. But his doubts remained. There was only one thing he was sure about. He couldn’t let his friends down.
How does a human get into a locked room? Charlie asked himself. With a key. A light went on in Charlie’s brain.
Key!
He needed to ask Cozette about her rings of keys, and why they didn’t work when he tried unlocking the door to help Tyler.
Charlie imagined Tyler, lying in a hospital room. The last time he had seen Tyler, the other boy was trying to lift the Hades statue. And he did, sort of. It was heavy, but not impossible to lift. If you had help.
“Brack,” said Charlie. “How did those statues get here in the first place? I mean, they’re heavy.”
Brack paused, both hands gripping the top of his cane. “Well, I’m sure Endriago had them shipped here from Spain.”
Charlie shook his head. “I mean, here. This floor. Those statues are heavy.”
“Most of the heavy objects, like furniture for the guests rooms, were hauled up on the freight elevator at the rear of the hotel,” Brack explained.
Charlie knew that the hotel’s elevators didn’t stop at the thirteenth floor.
But he wasn’t so sure about the freight elevators. He hadn’t seen them or used them before. That reminded him of the blueprints he’d found while looking for clues. They showed every part of the hotel. Charlie slipped his backpack off his shoulder and dug inside.
“Recognize these?,” he said proudly to Brack, pulling out the big roll of paper.
“My blueprints!” the old man exclaimed.
“I found them in the magicians’ dressing room backstage,” said Charlie. He had discovered them the day before while searching for clues to Brack’s disappearance.
Charlie pulled out the huge sheet that showed the 3D version of the entire Abracadabra Hotel. Each floor of the hotel was outlined in faint white lines against a blue background. Every hall, every room could be seen.
“Here’s where we are now,” Charlie said, pointing to the page.
“And here are the freight elevators in back,” said Brack, indicating a tall vertical tube at the back of the hotel.
Charlie cried out, “Yes! The freight elevators do stop at this floor!” Without waiting for his friend, he ran down the dark halls, shooting his flashlight’s beam ahead of him.
After several minutes of searching, however, he ran his fingers through his rust-colored hair in frustration. “Where are they?”
Brack slowly padded around the corner on his cane. Charlie turned to him. “They’re not here,” Charlie said. “According to the blueprint, they should be —” He trained his flashlight on a wide panel of sunflower wallpaper. “— right there!”
Brack tilted his head. “I hear something rumbling,” he said.
Charlie put his ear to the wall. “The elevator?”
The boy scanned the flowers on the wallpaper. Maybe there was a plaster knob like the two that controlled the ramps to the thirteenth floor.
“Yes, yes!” said Charlie. He found a sunflower whose dark brown head, inside its yellow petals, was sunk at least a quarter of an inch deeper into the wall. A button.
Charlie pressed the button and the flower immediately lit up. “Cool!” he cried. Within a minute a panel, covered in wallpaper, slid soundlessly up and into the ceiling, revealing the freight elevator.
“And look there!” said Charlie. He aimed his flashlight at a far corner of the elevator. The light picked out an orange metal trolley. Thick canvas straps lay at its wheels.
“That would be really useful for moving a statue,” said Charlie.
They entered the elevator and Charlie pushed the button for the first floor. With a rumble, the door slid shut. There was no light inside the elevator, so Charlie kept the flashlight on. He did not want to be trapped in the dark again. When the elevator finally jerked to a stop, the back wall opened up, revealing the alley behind the hotel.
The loading docks, thought Charlie.
The storm was gone. Overhead, they could see gray clouds moving in the narrow stretch of sky between old brick buildings. A cool breeze blew into Charlie’s face.
A truck delivering bread was backed up to another door alongside them. “This has to be where the crook took the Aphrodite statue,” said Charlie. “This is how he got it downstairs. Now we just have to figure out how he got it out of that room, while Tyler was locked inside!”
Charlie saw a frown of pain flash across Brack’s face.
“I think some rest and recuperation is needed,” Brack whispered to Charlie.
The boy helped the limping magician back to his house on the roof. Charlie made him lie down on his sofa in the sitting room. Then he waited with his friend while two hours passed across the face of the grandfather clock.
“Hand me that phone,” said Brack. “I’m going to see what’s holding up that doctor. And you have been wasting far too much time wit
h me.” He waved the boy out of the house. “Go! Go investigate!”
Charlie grinned and went looking for Annie at the front desk. Annie smiled when she saw him. “Two words,” said Charlie. “Surveillance. Camera.”
“You sound just like Tyler,” said Annie, leading him into the security room behind. “He’s better, by the way. Mrs. Yu called and said he has a slight concussion. And why do you need to see the surveillance camera?”
“I need to see the tapes from today,” Charlie said. “By the way, where’s Cozette?”
“She said she had a family emergency.”
“Oh,” said Charlie. “I was going to ask her about those old keys.”
“She still has them,” said Annie. “At least, I don’t see them here at the desk.”
She still has them? thought Charlie. Weird.
“Which tapes do you need to see?” asked Annie.
“The ones from the loading docks.”
“Something happened back there, too?” said Annie.
Charlie explained how he and Brack had discovered that the freight elevator stopped at the thirteenth floor.
It took Annie a while to find the right tapes. Charlie thought he’d go crazy while she typed commands into the computer.
Finally, Annie found the right files and played them back on one of the screens. She asked, “What are you looking for?”
“That!” said Charlie.
The computer screen showed a perfect view of the loading dock next to the freight elevator. A man, dressed all in black, with a black ski mask, was struggling with a heavy object strapped to a trolley, draped in black.
“Who is it?” asked Annie. They both stared closer at the screen.
Charlie frowned. “I can’t tell.”
They watched the shadowy figure lug the shrouded statue into the back of an SUV. Then the man — they assumed it was a man — closed the loading dock doors, locked the SUV, and walked back into the hotel.
“Now where’s he going?” said Annie.
“To get another statue?” said Charlie.
