Haunting at the Hotel

by Lauren Magaziner

  Besides, when he isn’t being a huge pest, Frank is pretty fun.

  “I’ll take Frank,” I say.

  “WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!” Frank shouts in Eliza’s face.

  Eliza looks wounded.

  “You’re the smartest person I know,” I tell her, trying to soften the blow I just delivered. “Eliza, if you and Mom get stuck in the Dead Room, I’m counting on Mom’s experience and your logic to get you two out.”

  She nods seriously and starts gathering up the flashlights. She tries to hand me one, but I shake my head.

  “No, you keep it. Frank and I aren’t going anywhere dark. You’ll need all four flashlights . . . just in case.”

  Mom puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Carlos.”

  It’s a bad sign when I don’t know who she’s reassuring—me, or herself.

  I nod once, and then Mom and Eliza leave the room. Now it’s just Frank and me. “Okay, Frank, who should we investigate? Remember our suspects?”

  “No.”

  “Reese didn’t want to hire detectives, even though her whole hotel business was being ruined by ghosts. Don’t you want to talk to her?”

  “No.”

  I sigh, frustrated. “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to have a snowball fight!”

  Maybe keeping Frank on task is going to be harder than I thought. I better decide for us.

  * * *

  TO TALK TO REESE, CLICK HERE.

  TO HAVE A SNOWBALL FIGHT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “THANK YOU, MR. Bookbinder, that’s all we need for now.”

  Byron, honestly, looks relieved to see the back of us.

  “Yes, you three best be off,” he says. He looks back at us intensely, his eyes magnified behind his glasses. “The ghosts don’t emerge until the whole lodge is still. Quiet like death.”

  My stomach swoops.

  “The sun is down, so the time is nearly upon us. The faster you go to bed, the faster you’ll meet them.” He grins, and the hair on my neck stands up.

  * * *

  GO TO SLEEP ON CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “SORRY, JANUARY,” I say. “We have to keep our work a secret.”

  “I know something you don’t know!” Frank taunts.

  January huffs, and her eyebrows converge into an angry V on her forehead. “MOM! DAD!” she shouts.

  “Run!” I head for the stairs, but Frank scuffs his foot on the floor like a bull about to head-butt a red cloth.

  “CHAAAAARGE!” he cries, running into January and tackling her around the middle. They both fall backward, and January shrieks.

  “Go, go, go!” I shout as I hop up the stairs. Eliza runs after me, and Frank gets to his feet, narrowly avoiding January’s fingers clawing at him.

  “You’ll pay for this!” she says. “I’m going to tell on you!”

  But we keep running, and we don’t stop until we get to my room. We collapse on the bed, panting.

  “How much trouble do you think we’ll be in with Reese and Harris?” I ask.

  “WHO CARES!” Frank says. “I wanna do that again!” Then he hops toward his sister and tackles her.

  “Frank! Get off me!”

  Frank pops up and starts jumping on the bed; Eliza looks furious.

  Knock. Knock.

  We all freeze. The room is so silent that I can practically hear my heart beating.

  “Mom?” I say.

  But when I go to open the door, no one is there.

  “Probably someone playing a prank,” Eliza says.

  “When are you going to admit that this place is haunted?” I say. “Ghosts exist, Eliza, and they’re here! How else do you explain Mom’s disappearance?”

  She presses her lips together. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation why—”

  “Why my mom would vanish into thin air on the first night of the case? Yeah, the logical explanation is a ghost. Just admit it already! You can be wrong every once in a while, Eliza—it won’t kill you!”

  She looks like I slapped her in the face. “Carlos, I . . .”

  But whatever she’s going to say, whatever words of false comfort she’s going to give, I don’t want to hear it. Until I find Mom again, nothing will loosen the tightness I feel in my chest. I bury my face under the pillow and stay there until I fall asleep.

  * * *

  Day Two

  * * *

  CRASH.

  It’s a sound to make us all jerk out of bed.

  “What is it?” Eliza says, clutching the covers.

  “It came from the bathroom.” I roll out of bed and almost forget I was upset with Eliza last night. But our safety—and protecting my friends from a ghost that Eliza doesn’t even believe in—is more important than any residual anger I feel. I edge closer to the bathroom door, which is just a little bit ajar. Then I kick the door until it swings wide open. Broken mirror shards are all over the floor, and I pull Frank back before he hops into danger.

  “Be careful, Frank!” Eliza says. “You could cut your feet!”

  Frank ignores his sister. He leans forward, picks up a shard off the floor, and stares into it. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” Frank says. “What’s that? It’s ME? You are too kind!”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Mirrors don’t just spontaneously combust,” Eliza says, scanning the room for who knows what.

  “Ghost,” I whisper.

  She shakes her head and points at something on the wall by the tub. It’s a mechanical device that looks almost like a slingshot. “I’m sure this thing was on a timer,” she says. “When it went off, it threw something hard at the mirror, with incredible force. Probably that,” she says, pointing at a small metal ball on the ground by the toilet.

  “Yeah, but this slingshot thing wasn’t in the bathroom last night. I would have noticed it for sure when I was brushing my teeth.”

  “Which means . . . ,” Eliza says quietly, giving me a dark look.

  She doesn’t finish her sentence, but I know exactly what she’s thinking. Someone—or something—was in our room while we were sleeping. Planting the device, setting it up to go off.

  “But how would someone be able to get into our room, unless they had a . . .” She stares off into space.

  “Unless they had a what?”

  “EARTH TO ELIZA!” Frank shouts in her ear.

  “A master key!” she says. “The only people who would be able to get in here would be ones with a master key. Definitely Sunny . . . and probably Reese and Harris.”

  I look down as I stare at the glass shards. And that’s when I notice red lines on some of the mirror shards.

  “Um . . . Eliza? Do you think that’s a message for us?”

  She tiptoes into the bathroom, extra carefully, and begins to sort through the pieces. At last she stands back and examines her work. The mirror looks almost like a jigsaw puzzle now, with just a few pieces missing. The message is visible enough . . . only I don’t understand what exactly it’s supposed to say. I step beside Eliza and look at the mirror.

  “What do you think?” she asks me.

  “It looks unfinished,” I say.

  “SO FINISH IT!” Frank calls from the doorway.

  * * *

  FIND THE TIME YOU MUST LEAVE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 1:03, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 1:08, CLICK HERE.

  OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I PUSH PAST Frank to open the bedroom door. Before we get Harris even angrier.

  I only open it a small sliver—I don’t want anyone to see the nightmare happening in the bathroom. Even so, the steam rolls out into the hall.

  “Someone taking a shower?” Harris says.

  “Something like that. How can we help you?” Then suddenly I notice Sunny, lurking quietly behind Harris. “You!” I shout, pointing at her. “You have the
master key to everyone’s room.” It hits me like an avalanche that Sunny could have sneaked into our rooms, set up this “haunting,” and then left.

  Sunny turns whiter than an eggshell.

  “That’s what we came to talk to you about,” Harris says bashfully. “Sunny’s key was stolen last night.”

  Eliza and I look at each other.

  “Stolen!” I say.

  Sunny nods. “I always keep the master key in the same place—on a hook in my room. When I left my room in the middle of the night because of the banging in the walls, the key was there. When I came back, it was gone.”

  “Did you lock your room?” I say.

  “Absolutely,” Sunny says. “I am very paranoid about that. I always lock my room.”

  I look at Harris, whose beard twitches. He looks both angry and worried—but I can’t tell, from his expression, whether or not he knows we snooped through the mail yesterday. “We’re going to have to call a locksmith,” he finally says. “This is what happens when you run a lodge with skeleton keys, instead of a hotel with swipe cards.”

  “But how long will it take the locksmith to get here?” Eliza asks quietly. “The snowstorm was raging last night. Are the roads drivable?”

  Harris clears his throat uncomfortably. “No,” he says. “They’re not. We’re . . . um . . . locked in here.”

  His words seem to echo around in my brain. Locked in—locked in?

  I wonder if the ghost knew about the snowstorm when it asked us to leave at three forty-five. Not that it matters: I’m not taking one step out of this lodge until I find my mom.

  “And there’s more,” he says, like he’s about to kick us while we’re down. “The phones aren’t working. None of them.”

  “So,” I say, “to get this straight: we are all trapped in the lodge together, with no means of communication, no way of getting out, and the ghost or whatever might have the key to every room?”

  Harris winces. “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

  “It sounds bad any way you say it,” Eliza says.

  Harris looks to the door next to ours. “I was actually hoping to catch a word with your mother. . . .”

  “She’s following a lead,” I say. “We’ll let her know when she comes back.”

  He nods, and Sunny follows him, tail between her legs. I actually feel bad for her—I’m sure the locksmith and key replacements are going to come out of her paycheck, since the master key was her responsibility.

  But the big question is . . . who took the key? And why? Just to torment us? Or for something else too?

  “Well,” Eliza says, “this is bad news all around.” She slips a sweater on over her pajamas, then does some sort of magical maneuver to somehow take her pajamas off under her sweater. “We have to get moving.”

  Frank takes that as his cue to run around the hotel room. He flits from one side of the room to the other, jumping between the beds, shouting, “LAVA!” as he avoids the floor.

  “Carlos, we picked up two important clues last night, and we haven’t looked at either of them!”

  “What clues?”

  Eliza reaches into her backpack and pulls out two letters.

  The first is the letter we stole at the beginning of the night: the one addressed to Byron with the words FORMAL WARNING on the envelope. I nearly forgot about the letter we took from Byron’s briefcase when we nicked his EMF reader. Wow, we had a really long night last night.

  The second is the letter we stole at the end of the night. The one we took from Cricket’s mailbox.

  “Which one are you more interested in?” Eliza says, holding both letters out to me, one on each palm. “Which envelope should we open first?”

  * * *

  TO READ THE LETTER TO BYRON, CLICK HERE.

  TO READ THE LETTER TO CRICKET, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I THINK I’VE got this magic circle in the bag. The sum of each line is twelve, and once I put in all the numbers correctly . . .

  . . . There’s a clicking sound, and the top of mailboxes tilts open. I’m in.

  The only mailbox with any mail inside is Cricket’s. Just a single letter. This must be what we’re looking for.

  “Let’s read—”

  Eliza freezes as footsteps creak on the stairs. Painfully. Slowly. We turn around . . .

  January Winters is standing on the steps with her arms crossed. No ghost, thank goodness! I let out a sigh of relief, but the relief turns sour when I realize January’s expression is angry. “What are you doing over there?”

  “None of your beeswax!” Frank shouts.

  January’s eyes narrow on Eliza. She approaches us, and even though she’s only one person against our three, I feel very much backed into a corner. “What’s that you’re hiding behind your back?”

  “Nothing,” Eliza lies, turning pink in the process.

  “Tell me what you’re hiding, or I’ll call my parents here right now!”

  * * *

  TO TELL JANUARY WHAT YOU’RE HIDING, CLICK HERE.

  TO KEEP THE LETTER A SECRET, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “SPY ON THE inside?” I say. “What does that mean?”

  Eliza groans. “Of course, of course! I get it now. To set up all those ghost hauntings inside Reese’s apartment, you needed someone in the Winters family—someone who lived in the suite—to do some of the legwork. So did you enlist Harris’s help? Or January’s?”

  “You are a clever one. I like this little trick you three have going here. You make people think that Cat Serrano is the only detective on the case. I admit she was the target I went after. But you kids are industrious. I didn’t start paying attention to you until it was far too late.”

  “So you’re going to kill us?” Mom says, very calmly. She looks almost bored at the thought. “Rather unoriginal.”

  “I’m not going to kill you. No need to get my hands dirty. You’ll die of dehydration . . . eventually. I doubt anyone will ever find you, but if they do, it will look like an accident. You got yourself stuck. Oopsie!” she says cheerfully. “In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a rather pressing event to orchestrate: the haunting to end all hauntings.” There’s a long pause, and then she says, “These are my last words to you. You should have left the hotel while you could. I imagine that will be your last regret.”

  Her words echo around the lair.

  * * *

  CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I THINK I’VE figured out the walkie-talkie message:

  CHASE THEM TO LIBRARY IN FIFTEEN MINUTES

  DON’T LET THEM FIND KEY UNDER PIANO LID

  “What key?”

  “Okay, Frank, if you don’t get your shoes on—”

  “I’ll wear my socks then!”

  “Stop fighting!” I shout. “What key aren’t we supposed to fi—”

  The lights flicker. The door rattles on its hinges. Someone is trying to get into our room.

  Frank throws off his covers and quickly puts on his shoes, and Eliza leans up against the wall, hiding from sight of the door. The overhead light flashes again.

  Then the door stops shaking. The doorknob turns . . . slowly. And just as the door opens, the lights go off. Even though I can’t see, I know—I know—someone has slipped into our room.

  “Eliza?”

  “Carlos!”

  “Frank!” Frank says.

  Suddenly something brushes my ankle.

  I know by now that someone is behind the ghost—but all the same, my blood runs cold. And my dread only gets worse when I feel something sticky and hot on the back of my neck. It is breathing on me.

  “Eliza,” I say, forcing my voice to sound as calm as possible, despite the thing behind me, despite the hot breath on my neck. “Stand up. Frank—take her hand. Slowly head to the door. . . .”

  I can hear the rustling of the bed and footsteps.

  “Carlos, do you want your flashli—”

  “Don’t tur
n on the flashlight, Eliza!” But it’s too late. She clicks it on, and right behind me is a monster. A bloody face—a raw red mouth from ear to ear, with sharp fangs and an unnerving grin. And even though I know it’s costume makeup, even though I know it’s not real—that there’s somebody we know beneath the paint—I can’t help but shriek. And so does Eliza. And Frank.

  “RUUUUUUUUNNNNN!” I roar.

  We sprint out of the room. I trip on the hallway carpet, and Eliza turns to help me up, screaming as the monster comes out of the room. The beast is behind us, snarling and snapping at our heels. It chases us to the stairs—

  Chase them to library.

  Of course! That’s the message we decoded. That’s where the culprits want us to go, but we don’t have to obey! What if I ran somewhere else? What if, instead, I ran out of the hotel? Would it follow us out into the snow?

  On the one hand, it might be smart to get as far away from the ghost as possible. They clearly planned a haunting for us in the library that we don’t want to fall into. On the other hand, maybe we should get that key—maybe it will help us find Mom.

  * * *

  TO RUN OUTSIDE, CLICK HERE.

  TO RUN TO THE LIBRARY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “QUICK!” I SAY, dashing into the fire den. Burning fireplaces illuminate the room. Does the fire run all night?