The Color of the Season

by Julianne MacLean

  He rolled his eyes. “We won’t get arrested, nimrod. It’s not like the cops ever get called out here. Come on, let’s go.”

  Not wanting to appear a coward, I followed Riley to the main entrance, where we got off our bikes and stood them up on their kickstands.

  For a brief moment I hoped that the place would be locked up tighter than a state prison and we’d have to settle for peering in the windows, but all the windows had been boarded up long ago, then ripped off by vandals. The ornate, heavy oak entrance doors were knocked off their hinges, so there was nothing but air to keep us out.

  “Do you think anyone’s here?” I asked.

  “I sure hope not,” Riley replied.

  He entered first, stepping over the fallen door, and I followed him into the main lobby.

  It was difficult to imagine what it might have looked like in its heyday. Now, the wallpaper was faded and torn away; the walls and ceilings were covered in cobwebs and graffiti; and the spindles on the main staircase railing had been kicked out.

  What was most unsettling, however, was the silence of the place. Outside of my own breathing, there were no sounds of humanity, not even the hum of an air conditioner or refrigerator or the faint roar of traffic in the distance. It felt as if we had crossed over into another dimension.

  A pigeon fluttered out of a hole in the wall, flapping its wings wildly and flying out through the main door. Riley and I both jumped as the bird sailed past.

  “Geez! That scared me!” Riley shouted. “Come on. Let’s go check out some of the rooms. I wonder if they still have beds in them.”

  “If they do, they’ll probably be crawling with bugs,” I replied, following him up the stairs. “It smells musty.”

  We reached the second floor and started down the long, narrow corridor where more graffiti covered the walls. As we pushed our way through a few more cobwebs, my heart pounded heavily in my chest. I kept expecting something to jump out at me—something far worse than a pigeon.

  “No wonder they say it’s haunted,” Riley said. “It’s really creepy. I wonder where the shootings happened.” He peered into the first room we came to with an old bed, no mattress.

  “There’s hardly any furniture,” I said. “Everything from the old hotel would be antiques by now, probably worth a lot of money. I wonder if people stole stuff over the years.”

  “That’s probably what happened. Or maybe the owners sold it.”

  We stepped gingerly over the creaky floorboards and checked out each room on either side of the corridor until we came to the end of the hall.

  “This door must have been added later,” Riley said. “It doesn’t look old like everything else.”

  “It’s a fire door,” I explained, pushing the handle to open it. “They probably had to add this stairwell when the rules changed about having proper exits.”

  “Want to go up a level?” Riley asked.

  “Sure.”

  In all honesty, I preferred the modern metal staircase to the rest of the hotel. It made me feel like we were back in a more familiar world.

  The heavy door slammed shut behind us, and I jumped when it echoed loudly. Then I noticed a bad smell and covered my nose with a hand.

  We climbed one flight and reached another door with the number three painted on it. I turned the knob.

  “Shoot,” I said. “This one’s locked. We’ll have to go back down.”

  “Let’s go up first,” Riley said. “Maybe the fourth floor will be open.

  There was only one window at the very top to light the stairwell. The two of us hurried up, taking two steps at a time to reach door number four.

  That, too, was locked.

  A rush of nervousness filled my belly.

  “Are they all locked?” Riley asked with concern, tugging violently at the knob with both hands. He proceeded to kick the door a bunch of times.

  By now I was already on my way back down. “It’s a fire exit,” I said, “so there has to be a way out. That’s the whole point of having them. There should be a push handle on the ground floor.”

  I hurried down. The lower I went, the darker it got. This made me run faster.

  When I reached the ground floor, I didn’t stop. I ran straight into the steel door and shoved myself up against the horizontal exit bar. It refused to open. I tried and tried, but it was no use.

  “What’s going on?” Riley asked when he appeared behind me. “Is this one locked too? I thought you said it would open.”

  “It should,” I ground out, still fighting with it. “I think there must be something wedged up against it on the outside.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but it must be something heavy. Help me push.”

  The two of us thrust our shoulders up against the door for what seemed like an eternity, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Finally, Riley sat down on the steps. “Are we locked in here?”

  I checked under the stairs to see if there was another exit, but all I found was a cement wall. “No, there has to be a way out.”

  I stepped around Riley and climbed back up to the second floor where we had come in. That door was still locked, as were all the others. The window at the top didn’t open at all. It was made of wire mesh, and even if it did open, it was a four-storey drop straight down.

  “What are we going to do?” Riley asked in a panic, meeting me on my way back down.

  I paused with my hand on the railing. “I don’t know, but I think we’re in big trouble.”

  o0o

  For the next few hours, we continued to fight with all the doors and even tried kicking through the walls, but they seemed to be made of cement. Picking the locks wasn’t an option either, because we had nothing on us that would fit into the keyholes.

  By late afternoon, the sun dropped low in the sky and we sat down on the steps, exhausted.

  “My dad’s going to kill me,” Riley said. “He’s going to chew me up and spit me out on the front lawn.”

  “Mine too,” I replied, though I doubted I’d have it as bad as Riley, because his father was worse than an army drill sergeant.

  Every morning before Riley and Leah left for school, their beds had to be made with hospital corners and without creases. If they were ever caught leaving a dirty dish anywhere in the house, or not hanging up their jackets when they came in the door, they had to do extra chores for a week. There were more rules about grades and Riley had a hard time with that because he wasn’t as book smart as Leah.

  “I guess it’s a good thing you told Leah where we were going,” I said. “At least somebody knows where we are.”

  “But she’ll get in trouble too,” he said, “just for keeping it secret all day.”

  “Maybe your dad won’t come home tonight and he won’t even know,” I suggested.

  “How’s that supposed to work?” Riley asked. “The minute I don’t show up for supper, Mom’s going to start calling people.”

  “At least somebody will come and get us,” I said. “Even if we get grounded for a year, it would be better than spending the night in here.”

  Little did we know, Riley’s mom was still throwing up at supper time, so my mom had to take her to the clinic—which meant no one was home at either of our houses to even notice we were gone.

  By the time the sun went down, we were huddled together on the fourth-floor landing, surrounded by pitch black, waiting for someone to find us. At the time, I told myself there were no such things as ghosts, but now, after everything I’ve been through, I’m not sure I was right.

  Chapter Ten

  I had no idea what time it was when my eyes flew open in the darkness.

  “What was that?” I asked with fright, sitting up from my fetal position on the landing.

  “What was what?” Riley asked.

  “You didn’t see it? A flash of light? It moved across the ceiling.”

  “Are you sure?” he replied.

  “I don’t know.” Was I dreaming t
his?

  We both scurried on our backsides into the corner under the window.

  “Do you hear anything?” Though I spoke in a whisper, the sound of my voice seemed to echo up and down the stairwell.

  “No. Do you?” Riley replied.

  I shook my head and hugged my knees to my chest. “It’s so dark in here. This must be what it’s like to be blind. I wish we knew what time it was.”

  I wanted to know how long it would be before the sun would come up. If we could just survive until then…

  Then whoosh! Another flash of light swept across the ceiling.

  “There! See?”

  “Maybe it’s lightning,” Riley whispered shakily. “Maybe we’ll hear thunder in a second.”

  I counted out loud—one second for every mile—but reached twenty and there was nothing. Just silence when I stopped counting.

  Riley grabbed hold of my arm. “What are we going to do?”

  “Just sit here and be really quiet,” I replied. “The light can’t hurt us.”

  “But what if it’s more than just a light?” he asked. “What if it’s a ghost and he wants to murder us?”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I assured him, trying hard to believe it myself, which was no easy task through my blinding terror.

  “Then why’d you come out here with me?” Riley asked. “If you didn’t believe in ghosts?” He sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

  “I don’t know. I just thought it would be a cool thing to do.”

  Suddenly, there was a voice in the distance. It was crying out for help.

  “What’s that?” Riley clutched my hand and squeezed it so hard, he cut off the blood supply to my fingers. There was an unexpected, loud crashing sound and we both screamed our lungs out as light filled the stairwell.

  “Riley James? Josh Wallace?” someone shouted.

  We both fell silent at the sound of our names. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. The beam of light traveled jerkily up the wall.

  Slowly coming to realize that it was not a ghost, but a flesh-and-blood human being moving toward us, I leaped to my feet. “We’re here!” I squinted and shaded my eyes against an intense spotlight.

  “Hello boys,” the woman said good-naturedly. Immediately I realized she was a female police officer. “Your parents have been pretty worried about you.”

  All the breath sailed out of my lungs. We were saved!

  Bending forward, I fought to hold back the urge to vomit, while Riley sprang to his feet and dashed straight into the policewoman’s arms.

  o0o

  “You really saved our bacon,” I said to Leah after we got out of the cop car in front of Riley’s house. It was almost midnight and both our mothers had squeezed the daylights out of us and wept tears of joy.

  Leah folded her arms. “You might not think so later when my dad gets home. He was in the middle of a surgery when they told him you two were missing. My mom’s been a nervous wreck ever since we got home from the doctor.”

  We both looked over at Mrs. James, who was still talking to the police officer.

  “How is she?” I asked, thinking of how sick she’d been all day.

  “Turns out she didn’t have the stomach flu after all,” Leah replied. “She’s pregnant.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

  Leah moved closer and lowered her voice. “I heard her talking to the nurses. She’s afraid to tell Dad because they were supposed to be all done having kids. They only planned to have two.”

  “So it was an accident?” I whispered.

  Leah nodded. “Dad’s not going to like that. Not one little bit.”

  Again, I glanced over at Mrs. James, who’d always been such a great mom to all of us on the street. I couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t be happy about having another baby.

  The cops got into their car and drove off. As soon as they disappeared around the corner, a shiny black car entered the neighbourhood and pulled into the driveway. It was Leah’s father.

  “Oh great,” she said with a sigh. “You should probably go home, Josh.”

  I felt like a deer caught in the headlights as Dr. James got out and slammed the car door. He strode purposefully across the lawn and smacked Riley hard across the face.

  “Ow!” Riley cried, holding his cheek with a hand while Mrs. James covered her mouth.

  “Get in the house!” Dr. James shouted. “Right now!”

  Everyone fell silent.

  When Dr. James reached the steps, he turned and pointed a finger at me. “As for you, Josh Wallace, I don’t want you coming around here anymore. Do you understand me? You’re nothing but trouble. Stay away from my kids. Leah! Get in the house! Now!”

  Leah ran inside and Dr. James followed her in.

  My mother slowly approached Mrs. James and touched her shoulder. “Everything will be all right,” she gently whispered. “Maybe wait a few days before you tell him your happy news.”

  “Happy news?” She shook her head. “I don’t think he’s going to see it that way. Maybe I won’t tell him at all.”

  My mother considered that for a moment. “A baby’s not something you can keep secret forever, Margie.”

  Mrs. James shot her a desperate look. “Isn’t it?” She turned and strode to the door.

  We watched until she disappeared, then my mom gathered me into her arms. “Don’t worry, Josh. You’ll still be able to play with Riley and Leah again. Their father’s just angry because he was worried. He’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. He looked pretty serious.”

  As we turned to walk home under the hazy glow of the neighborhood streetlights, I took hold of my mother’s hand. “What did she mean about keeping the baby a secret from Dr. James? How could she do that?”

  My mother hesitated before answering the question. “She’ll come around. She’ll find the right time to tell him and everything will be fine.”

  Though my mom didn’t explain what, exactly, Mrs. James was contemplating, I was old enough to have learned a few things and I was pretty sure I understood what she meant.

  “I hope she has the baby,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the showy brick house at the end of the street. “I’ll be sad if she doesn’t.”

  We went inside our modest little bungalow, where Mom sat me down at the kitchen table. She asked if I was hungry. Naturally I said yes.

  “How about a grilled cheese sandwich? I promise, nothing tastes better than a grilled cheese when you’ve had a rough day.”

  “Okay.”

  While my mom stood at the stove with a spatula, watching over the cast iron frying pan, I told her all about the old Clipper Lake Hotel and how we got locked in the stairwell.

  A short while later, when I bit into that crispy, buttery grilled sandwich, I was never so happy to be home…and to be a member of this family, and no other.

  Meanwhile, down the street, major decisions were being made—decisions that were about to affect the course of all our lives.

  Chapter Eleven

  For a full week after what came to be known as The Great Haunted Stairwell Incident, I didn’t see a trace of Riley or Leah in the neighborhood or at school. I called their home many times, but no one answered.

  I could never tell if Mrs. James was at home because she always parked her car in the garage and the only window was covered by a blind with the louvers down.

  I did notice Dr. James’s car pass by on the street a few times, very late at night, which wasn’t unusual. He often came home late from surgeries at the hospital.

  My mom also tried calling Mrs. James, but no one ever picked up the phone. Eventually she grew worried enough to march down the street herself and ring the doorbell. The housekeeper answered and told her that Mrs. James had taken the children away to stay with their grandparents in Arizona for the week. Mom then proceeded to sweetly wrestle the Arizona number out of the unsuspecting housekeeper. She came straight home and dialed the number, just to ma
ke sure everyone was all right.

  o0o

  “It’s not fair,” I said to Mom when I came home from school that day and heard the news. “He’s my best friend.”

  “I know it’s difficult,” she replied, “but they’re not moving to the moon. Only to Boston. It’s less than an hour away.”

  “It’s not because of me, is it?” I asked. “Because you heard what Dr. James said—that he didn’t want me coming around anymore. Is this my fault? Am I the reason they’re moving?”

  “Of course not,” Mom replied with compassion, stroking my hair away from my forehead. “He was wrong to say that to you. He was just frightened and upset and he wanted someone to blame.”

  “It wasn’t even my idea to take our bikes to the hotel,” I said irritably. “It was Riley’s.”

  “I know.” She poured me a glass of milk and brought me a peanut butter cookie, which I ate in silence while she peeled carrots at the counter.

  “Will they come home before they move?” I asked. “Will we ever see them again?”

  “I’m not sure, honey,” she replied. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  o0o

  As it turned out, Mrs. James and her children never set foot in our neighborhood again. Mom nevertheless made an effort to keep in touch with Mrs. James, and I was allowed to talk to Riley and Leah on the phone a few times over the summer while they were staying with their grandparents in Arizona.

  Riley always asked if I would ever go back to the Clipper Lake Hotel. He wanted me to find out what was wedged up against the door of the fire exit. He said it still bothered him that we’d been locked inside. He confessed he was having nightmares about it.

  He asked if I was having nightmares, too.

  I said no—because I didn’t believe in ghosts. I explained to him that the light we saw move across the ceiling of the stairwell was the beam from the police officer’s flashlight. They had been walking around outside the hotel, shining lights along the windows.

  But the part about not believing in ghosts…?

  Well, maybe I did believe, because I’d woken up in a state of panic more than once that summer, drenched in sweat, my chest heaving when I thought there was some unearthly presence standing over my bed, watching me in the darkness.