Haunting at the Hotel

by Lauren Magaziner

“What?”

  “The ghost is coming—”

  “No, I heard you!”

  “Then why did you say what?” Frank says from behind me.

  Reese mutters to herself as she paces back and forth across the fire den. And I’m starting to think we shouldn’t have said anything. She is clearly freaked out and losing her grip. “What do I do? What do I do?” Reese whispers. “Where do I go? What do I do? WHAT DO I DO? Run, of course . . . I have to run right now!”

  Without a pause, she sprints out the front doors of the hotel, into the dark night, waist-deep in snow. And that’s the last we ever hear from Reese Winters.

  CASE CLOSED.

  JANUARY CAUGHT US snooping through the mail—maybe if we tell her what we know, we can convince her not to tell anyone.

  I nod at Eliza. “It’s okay. Tell her.”

  Eliza pulls the letter out from behind her back. “We got this letter from Cricket’s box.”

  January’s eyes go wide. “What does it say?”

  “We don’t know,” I say. “We haven’t read it yet.”

  “So you’re investigating Cricket?”

  “No,” I say, while Eliza says, “Yes.”

  “Yes, no, maybe so!” Frank adds.

  There’s an awkward pause.

  “We’re investigating everyone,” I clarify.

  “So what have you found—about everyone?” she asks. “Have you found anything about me? My parents? Sunny? Fernando? Mr. Covington? Mr. Bookbinder? Tell me what you’ve got!” January demands.

  She’s halfway between eager and aggressive. Is she worried about what we’ve found? Is she trying to protect someone else’s secret? Does she have one of her own? Or—having just spent six weeks living in a haunted house—is she just curious to get to the answer?

  I don’t respond to her questions. I counter with one of my own. “Why are you awake right now?” I ask her.

  “Same reason everyone’s up. The ghost, yeah?”

  “But why weren’t you down in the fire den with everyone else?”

  “How am I supposed to know where everyone else is?” January says. “I was in my room, trying and failing to go back to sleep. But when Mom and Dad didn’t come back to bed, I left to go find them. Is that a crime now?”

  “YES! ARREST HER!” Frank shouts as he points at January.

  “Now show me the letter,” she demands.

  “Sorry, January,” I say. “This information is classified.”

  “If you tell me what’s in it,” she says, “I promise not to tell my parents exactly how you seem to gather information. Otherwise . . . well, I can’t guarantee that my loose lips won’t sink your ship.”

  Oooh, January is good.

  “Or,” Eliza says, folding her arms, “we can tell your parents that we found you here, rifling through the mail.”

  “But that’s a lie.”

  “I have two witnesses to back up my story.” Eliza gestures to Frank and me. “What do you have?”

  January looks mad. “My parents will believe anything I say.”

  “Why don’t we test out that theory?” Eliza says, and January hesitates. Eliza has called her bluff. January may be good, but Eliza is even better.

  January steps aside to let us by. But when we’re halfway up the stairs, she calls out to us. “Be careful.”

  And I’m not sure if that was a warning . . . or a threat.

  When I get back to the room, I lock the door behind us.

  “So,” I say. “How much do you want to bet she’ll tell Harris and Reese, even though she promised us she wouldn’t?”

  “A hundred dollars,” Eliza says.

  “A hundred dollars,” Frank says, “AND ONE PENNY.”

  I sigh. “We’ll probably be in a lot of trouble really soon, then.”

  Eliza nods. “And so will your mom.”

  “Mom? Why?”

  “Because I’m sure Reese and Harris will yell at her for not supervising us.”

  I pull the walkie-talkie out of my pocket. Mom hasn’t been answering all night, and I’m starting to worry that a ghost really did take her. What possibly could have separated us? Why wouldn’t she be answering her walkie-talkie? I don’t even know where to begin to look for her.

  “Come in, Mom. Over!”

  Silence.

  A dread fills my chest.

  Eliza puts her arm around my shoulders. “Your mom is a brilliant professional investigator,” Eliza says. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “What if she’s not?”

  “She is,” Eliza says.

  “Ghosts are angry and vengeful. If she was taken by one—” I see Eliza opening her mouth. “And don’t you dare say ghosts don’t exist!” I snap.

  Eliza closes her mouth, looking at me with concern and shock.

  I crawl under the covers, just miserable. Mom has been so worried about the dangers for Eliza, Frank, and me—but why have I never realized the dangers for her? Being a detective is a risky job, and she always investigates a case alone. For the first time ever, I’m scared for her.

  Eliza and Frank get ready for bed. Frank falls asleep in his big sister’s arms, and Eliza nods off soon after.

  I don’t sleep, though. For hours, I stare into the dark, thinking about Mom.

  * * *

  Day Two

  * * *

  I DON’T REMEMBER when I drifted off. But I wake up in a pool of sweat. Our room is so steamy, so foggy—I can barely breathe.

  “Eliza!” I gasp. “Frank!”

  She wakes up with a jolt, and Frank yelps.

  There’s a sound like running water. And our bathroom door is shut, even though I distinctly remember leaving the bathroom door open last night.

  Frank stares intensely at the bathroom door. “Concentration.” He claps twice. “Sixty-four.” Clap, clap. “Do not open—the bathroom door. If you do—you will die. Concentration, sixty-five.”

  His hand-game chant definitely gives me a queasy feeling.

  Especially when he punches me from behind and says, “Knife in your back, let the blood drip down!”

  “Frank!” Eliza says. “That’s enough. We’re not playing Concentration!”

  “Light as a feather, stiff as a board?” he says.

  “No.”

  “Then what are we playing?”

  “We’re not playing at all,” I say. “This is very serious.”

  “Oh,” Frank says. “Then let me find my VERY SERIOUS FACE.” He frowns deeply and furrows his eyebrows.

  He clearly doesn’t understand the gravity of our situation. A ghost might be facing us on the other side of the door. Or worse.

  I take a deep breath to steel my courage. Then I turn the doorknob to the bathroom. Steam floods out. Eliza tries to fan it with her hands, so it won’t set off the fire alarm. Inside the bathroom, we find the source of the steam: all the faucets are on, and boiling-hot water is gushing out of the sink and tub.

  But it’s the mirror that catches my eye. In the steam, someone’s drawn four stick figures, one big one, two small ones, and one even smaller one. They all have Xs for eyes and tongues sticking out. Dead stick figures. Fun.

  Eliza points into the steamy mirror and gasps. “Turn around!”

  A message in red lipstick is on the tile in the shower. The lipstick is dripping from the steam, which makes it look even creepier.

  “Shut off the sink!” I shout as I touch the bathtub faucet. “YOWCH! It’s burning hot!”

  “Be careful!” Eliza shouts, too late to be helpful.

  How long has the faucet been running, that it’s so hot? Were we all so tired we slept right through the sound of running water? I use a towel to twist the metal handle until the water stops.

  Our four stick figures start to drip and fade away in the mirror, but the red message in the shower still remains. We have to figure it out.

  * * *

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 3:25, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 3:45, CL
ICK HERE.

  OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I HAVE TO untie January . . . I can’t just let her sit here, trapped!

  I wrench my arm away from Eliza’s grip and go over to January.

  I untie her arms, and she rubs her wrists. “Rope burn,” she mumbles. “Come on, we have to get out of here before that ghost materializes again! Follow me!”

  “Aye aye, captain!” Frank says.

  She hops over the low beam and ducks under the higher ones, and we follow her, weaving through tight spaces. We’re not headed back to the Dead Room—I don’t know where we’re headed.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Mom asks January.

  January gives her a noncommittal shrug. And we trudge forward.

  “Did you know this existed?” Eliza whispers. “Passages in the walls—that’s a very interesting architectural feature!”

  “No,” January says. “I had no idea! I’m going to have to tell my mom about this.”

  We turn right, then left, then right again. January is seriously booking it. I don’t blame her for wanting to get out of here as speedily as possible.

  Man, it’s quiet. Must be the insulation in the walls, because I can barely hear our footsteps anymore.

  “We have to get out of here quickly,” January says. “This way!”

  “January, for someone who has never been inside the walls before, you really seem to know your way around.”

  January stops cold. “Are you accusing me of something?” Her voice is sharp.

  I turn around. No one is behind me. What the heck! “Where’s Mom? Eliza! Frank!” I haven’t been looking over my shoulder—I was hurrying to keep up with January. When was the last time I heard them? Frank . . . not since we untied January. I haven’t heard Mom since she asked January if she knew where she was going. Eliza . . . not since she made the comment about architecture. No wonder it seemed too quiet as we were walking!

  I look at January. She is grinning.

  * * *

  TO ACCUSE JANUARY OF BEING THE GHOST, CLICK HERE.

  TO RUN AWAY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “ELIZA, CAN YOU help me with this magic circle thing?”

  “Sure!” she says cheerfully. She is always cheerful when it comes to puzzles. Particularly math ones. “Well, first things first, we can only use the numbers one through seven once. We know seven isn’t in the middle—”

  “We know that?”

  “Absolutely,” Eliza says. “If all the numbers add up to the same sum, the number that goes in the middle is probably going to be close to your middle number, so that the numbers around it can fluctuate around it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Here,” Eliza says.

  “Okay, why did you do that, Eliza?” I ask her. Math is not my strength (just like understanding suspects isn’t Eliza’s strength), but I’m determined to understand this problem.

  “I put seven and one on the same line, and six and two on the same line,” Eliza says, “because we’re going to have to add up along the line. What’s seven plus one?”

  “A thousand,” Frank says.

  “Eight.”

  “And what’s six plus two?”

  “A thousand!” Frank says again.

  “Eight!” I say.

  “Excellent,” Eliza says.

  “So is the sum we’re trying to get to the number eight?”

  “Not quite,” Eliza says. “We still have to fill in that middle number before we know the true magic sum. But first let’s finish the outside of the snowflake. We have already used one, two, six, and seven. Which means we have three, four, and five left to use.”

  “So if we’re doing your opposites thing,” I say, “where you put the highest number with the lowest number, second highest with the second lowest, now we need the third highest with the third lowest, right?”

  Eliza beams. “I can’t believe you say you’re bad at math!”

  “If three and five are the remaining circles on the outside of the snowflake, that means there’s only one number left for the middle. And then?”

  “We add up each line, and we know the true sum. One plus seven plus the middle number, two plus six plus the middle number, and three plus five plus the middle number—they should all be the same sum.”

  * * *

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 11, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 12, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  ONE HUNDRED. ALL this work for such an easy number.

  “That’s a t-terrible code!” Eliza says. “Combinations like one two three or one one one or one hundred are the first things people guess! V-very unsafe.”

  The lock to the shed clicks open. Inside, it’s full of gear. Cross-country skis, downhill skis, snowshoes, sleds. There’s a desk where guests of the lodge would sign in and sign out whatever they were borrowing.

  We crouch down by the desk and try to warm up. It’s actually cold inside the shed. But at least we’re safe from the wind.

  “When we ran out of the hotel,” Eliza says, her voice a little higher than usual, “we left the front door open behind us, didn’t we?”

  “We did.”

  “Then this was a setup!” she says. “Someone lured us out here with footprints that stop in the middle of nowhere, all in an attempt to lock us outside.”

  “Someone? Don’t you think maybe it was the ghost?” I ask Eliza, and she rolls her eyes at me. “Fine, but my theory makes a lot more sense than yours.”

  “What makes you say that?” she says.

  “We barely got to investigate yesterday. Why would anyone try to freeze us to death? We definitely haven’t found any incriminating information yet. Or have we?”

  “Maybe it’s more about driving us out of the lodge. Maybe they want us to get scared and leave.”

  “I’m not scared of anything!” Frank cries. He roars like a lion and then jumps onto the desk. “’Specially not ghosts!”

  “It was very suspicious about Luther, wasn’t it?” Eliza says as I stand up and examine the downhill skis. “Why was he lurking around a rival hotel in the middle of the night?”

  I grab a pair of skis off the wall. From a cubby, I take ski boots.

  “What are you doing, Carlos?”

  I grin. “You don’t think Reese or Harris will mind if we borrow this, do you?”

  “And where are you going with those skis?”

  “We are going to Luther’s property. He’s got some explaining to do.”

  “YAY!” Frank says. “Adventure!”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, we have safe shelter here to wait out the night. Besides, have you ever skied before?” Eliza says, her eyebrows raised.

  “Of course not,” I say.

  “Me neither!” says Frank.

  “But Eliza, we’re just going downhill. How hard can it be?”

  * * *

  TO STAY IN THE SHELTER AND WAIT OUT THE NIGHT, CLICK HERE.

  TO SKI DOWN TO LUTHER’S PROPERTY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU think of the Winters family?” I ask Sunny.

  She stiffens. Her lips are in such a tight line, they practically disappear. I can’t tell if she secretly hates the Winters family, or if she’s just a miserable person. Finally she sniffs and says, “I think my opinion doesn’t matter here.”

  “What do you mean?” Eliza says. “Of course it matters.”

  “I do my job, I do it well, and my feelings are irrelevant.”

  Eliza will not let this go. “But if you hate your employer, and suddenly there is a reported ghost haunting at this hotel, then your feelings are relevant. They give you a potential motive.”

  “Plus, you should always share your feelings,” Frank says. “Sharing is caring!”

  Sunny’s nostrils flare. Clearly this line of questioning isn’t giving us any answers. I have to try something else. . . .

  “How long
have you been working here?”

  “Four years.”

  “And where did you work before here?”

  Sunny sighs tiredly. “I really have to finish my work. I have a lot of beds to turn down, laundry to do, and towels to fold.”

  “Really?” Eliza says. “In a vacant hotel?”

  Sunny crosses her arms. “I . . . we . . . well . . . we don’t want the beds to get dusty!”

  Beds to get dusty? If the sheets are already clean, why would she rewash them? Is this an order from the Winters family, or is this suspicious behavior?

  “If I don’t get back to my work, I’ll get in trouble!” Sunny says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She looks around the corner, like she’s afraid Reese and Harris are going to tell her off at any moment.

  I can tell we’ve lost her. Time to cut her loose and circle back again later.

  * * *

  TO END THE CONVERSATION, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WE HAVE TO find Sunny,” I say. “I just know it in my bones.”

  We leave the kitchen, go down the hall, and find ourselves in the hotel’s lobby. Cricket isn’t at her post, and the door is open to the fire den, which is empty too.

  “Sunny?” I shout. “Where are you?”

  My voice echoes around the lobby.

  “Let’s go to her room.”

  She’s not there. We jiggle the doorknob. Locked.

  “Is this what you do?” Reese says sharply from the other side of the hallway. “Just try to break into rooms when no one is around?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us Sunny is your sister?” I say. I don’t mean to say it—it just comes out.

  “Who told you?” Reese says quietly.

  “It doesn’t matter!” I say, as Eliza says, “Fernando.” She winces. “Oops.”