Haunting at the Hotel

by Lauren Magaziner

  “Cricket is disgusting,” Eliza says from inside her shirt, where she’d retreated, like a turtle. “Do you think we should talk to her about this?”

  “I guess. But I’m not sure anything we say is going to convince her to throw out her old bananas.”

  “Not about the banana!” Eliza says. “About the bank statements!”

  “Oh, right!” I say. “Let’s wait for her to come back.”

  We wait for her at the concierge desk, and after twenty minutes, she finally shows up.

  “Where have you been?” Frank asks.

  “When the ghosts show up, I leave. They’re not paying me enough to stick around for that,” Cricket says as she slips back into her concierge chair.

  Funny she brought up her pay. “We have something to admit,” I tell her. “We saw your bank deposit slips.”

  The smile slides off her face. Her eyes dart over to some metal mail slots by the door, a mailbox for each employee. Why would she be looking there when the deposit slips are in her desk drawer? “So not only have you been, like, peeking at my desk . . . you’ve also unlocked my drawer’s safe?”

  Eliza and I hang our heads in shame, but Frank nods. “Yup, that’s exactly what we did. By the way . . . TOSS YOUR BANANAS, YOU BANANA.”

  “This is a major violation of my privacy—you had no right to do that!”

  “Can you just tell us where the money is coming from?” Eliza asks.

  “You have no right to ask that!”

  Her eyes dart again to the mail slots.

  “Maybe you should look at us,” I suggest.

  Her green eye and her blue eye swivel back to me, and from the daggers she’s glaring, I know I’m definitely not in her good graces right now.

  “Did you get the money legally?” Eliza asks.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong!” Cricket says. “How dare you . . . you little brat!”

  “Takes one to know one!” Frank says. Then he turns on his heels and walks away toward the kitchen. Either he’s bored or he’s hungry. But as long as he doesn’t stop Eliza and me from doing the real investigative work . . .

  I lean on Cricket’s desk. “You have to admit, it looks a little suspicious.”

  “It looks a little nothing,” she says, “because I don’t know what you’re talking about. What deposit slips?”

  Eliza and I look at each other, confused. “The ones in your drawer! We saw them!” Eliza says.

  “You never saw them. Because they don’t exist.”

  The implication is clear: Cricket is going to destroy the deposit slips.

  I look at Eliza urgently. We have to drive Cricket away from here . . . but how?

  “I can tell what you’re thinking,” Cricket says. “But I’m not leaving my desk all night. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Suddenly the lights flicker, and the expression on Cricket’s face changes. She pulls her sweatshirt up around her ears and cowers in fear. A howl echoes through the lobby. She looks determined to stay but is clearly sick about it.

  Ooooooooooooo!

  She turns totally ashen, almost feverish. Her white skin is clammy with sweat. She looks over at the mail slot again. “I can’t leave. I can’t . . . !”

  “Cricket,” growls the ghost.

  “Eeeeeeeep!” she yelps, and she runs. She’s more afraid of ghosts than I am.

  “‘When the ghosts show up, I leave,’” I say, echoing Cricket’s words. “Lucky a ghost showed up.”

  “At the exact moment we needed it to?” Eliza says skeptically. “Yes . . . very lucky.”

  “Luck is for suckers!” Frank shouts. He leans against the stair railing, a big smile on his face. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  He stands next to the light switch and flicks it on and off rapidly. Then he covers his mouth and lets out a muffled howl. Then he growls, “Cricket!”

  “That was you?”

  “Easy peasy lemon squeezy!”

  “Yes, that was very clever, Frank!” Eliza says, trying to hide the shock in her voice.

  I feel bad . . . I completely underestimated Frank. “Thanks, buddy.”

  “I like playing ghost. Let’s go haunt more people!”

  “That’s literally the opposite of what this case requires,” Eliza says.

  “Cricket might come back at any moment,” I say. “So do we collect the bank deposit slips and save our evidence before Cricket destroys it? Or do we look in the mailboxes?”

  “Huh? The mailboxes?”

  “Didn’t you see? Cricket’s eyes kept drifting over there. She was looking more panicked about the mail slot than about her desk drawer. I wonder if there’s another clue in there.”

  * * *

  TO LOOK IN THE MAILBOXES, CLICK HERE.

  TO COLLECT THE BANK DEPOSIT SLIPS, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WAIT, MR. WINTERS! Before you go, we hear you constantly wander the halls in the middle of the night.”

  Harris frowns. “Who said that?”

  Cricket, but I’m not telling him that. “It doesn’t matter who said it—is it true?”

  His big beard twitches. “I don’t know what you’re doing, or what kind of case you’re trying to make against me. But you have no idea what it’s like to be under this kind of stress and mortal peril for so long, all while trying to keep it together for your wife so that she doesn’t crack under the pressure. So of course I’m up in the middle of the night. I’m up at all hours lately—can’t you see my bloodshot eyes? I can barely sleep a wink.”

  Frank starts winking at Harris repeatedly, to the point where Harris looks concerned. “Is he okay?”

  “Ignore him,” I say. “We all do.”

  “HEY!”

  “And with all that time wandering the halls in the middle of the night,” I say, “you haven’t seen anything suspicious?”

  “I wish I could be of more help,” he says with a shrug. He checks his watch. “I really do have to run. With everything on Reese’s plate right now, I have to pick up the slack. . . .”

  * * *

  TO ASK WHAT IS ON REESE’S PLATE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I POINT THE arrow west.

  The wall slides open, revealing a cold, dark, web-filled hallway.

  “Cool!” Frank says, hopping into the hall. “Let’s do that again!”

  “The only thing worse than the Dead Room,” Eliza whispers, “is an extended Dead Room.”

  A cold breeze blows our way, and we all shiver. Is this where the thing that grabbed January went? Could we be getting close to a lair?

  “January?” I call. My voice echoes back to me repeatedly. January, January, January . . .

  “Let me go first,” Mom says, stepping in front of Frank. “If we meet trouble, I want you all to run back.”

  It’s not like we’d be very safe, trapped inside a locked Dead Room. But I decide not to mention that to Mom. I still want to help her on the next case . . . if we survive this one.

  We inch forward.

  Ahead, all the way down the hall, something is glowing. A ghost?

  Something drops onto my head. “Ahhhh!”

  “What?” Eliza shouts.

  “Spider! In my hair!”

  “Jealous.” Frank pouts as Eliza frantically smacks my head to get the spider out.

  “Shhhhhh!” Mom says. “Quiet.” She’s squinting at the glowing figure at the end of the hallway, which is flickering. “I don’t like that,” she says, stepping forward anyway. We have to—there’s no way we’re going to sit and wait around in the Dead Room!

  I can’t see Mom’s face in the dark, but I know her well enough to know something’s off. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I thought we were finding a way out,” she says. “But with that glowing ghost in the distance, I wonder if the ghost wanted us to open the wall in the Dead Room.”

  “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter,” I say. “We don’t hav
e a choice. We can’t just sit around in the Dead Room, so we have to keep going.”

  We walk forward, and the ghost flickers out. That should make me feel good, but it makes me feel a lot worse.

  “HELP ME!”

  “That’s January!” I whisper. “Let’s go!”

  I lead the charge, twisting through the passageway. It’s narrow—and gets even narrower the more I walk. There are support beams everywhere. Some are so low Mom has to duck under them, which makes me think we must be somewhere within the walls of the lodge.

  At last I turn a corner, duck under two beams, hop over a third, and there is January, tied to a beam.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” she cries. “Help me!”

  I move forward to untie her, but Eliza puts her hand on my arm. “Wait! Where is the ghost?”

  “What?”

  “Ask her where the ghost is!”

  What is Eliza doing? Free January first—ask questions later! Who knows how long it will be before the ghost comes back?

  * * *

  TO UNTIE JANUARY, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK JANUARY WHERE THE GHOST WENT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I DIG INTO Frank’s pocket, grab a snowball, and pelt it across the cave. It’s a direct hit with its face—that’s definitely going to smart. I throw another, and Frank throws a third. My second misses, but Frank’s connects.

  “CHAAAAARGE!” Frank yells, leaping across the cave and tackling the ghost around the middle.

  Bam! The ghost goes down. The mask slides off and flies across the cave. At first I only see her back. She has long black hair. Which is weird, because I am pretty sure Sunny has chin-length hair.

  Then she turns around, a ferocious expression on her young face.

  Eliza gasps. “January?”

  She crawls toward us.

  “You’re the ghost?” I say. “But . . . but it’s your mom’s hotel! I don’t understand!”

  Frank hugs January’s legs so tight that she can’t move out of his grip. She just thrashes back and forth like a fish on a line.

  “Let me go!” January snaps.

  “NO!” Frank says. “NOT UNTIL YOU SAY THE MAGIC WORD.”

  Not again with Frank’s magic word nonsense!

  “Please,” says January, annoyed.

  “Nope! Try again!”

  “Abracadabra!”

  “Nice try!”

  “I hate you!”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I hate you times infinity!” Frank says. “No, I hate you times infinity plus one!”

  I can’t believe Frank is doing this shtick to someone who isn’t his sister. But even more, I can’t believe January is the ghost. “But January—you were helping us!”

  “Helping you down the wrong trail,” she says between gritted teeth. “Helping you look away from me. Can you get off?” she shouts, giving Frank another kick.

  “No!” Frank says. His favorite word.

  “HELP!” she cries, looking to the mouth of the cave.

  A ghost is standing in the mouth of the cave—in shadow, but I can definitely detect clawed hands and a bloodstained dress.

  What’s going on? I thought January was the ghost!

  “Did I forget to mention my partner?” January says.

  The second ghost pulls off the mask. Now that I know she’s related, I can’t help but see the family resemblance. I feel so stupid for missing it before.

  “Sunny Park and January Winters,” Mom says with a low whistle. “What a team!”

  “So whose idea was it?” I say.

  They look at each other and frown. I don’t peg either one of them as the evil-villain-who-loves-to-monologue-about-their-diabolical-plan type . . . but I have to try.

  “Come on,” I plead. “We deserve to know!”

  “It was my idea,” Sunny says.

  “You were jealous that Reese got to run your parents’ hotel,” I say. “So you invented this ghost for revenge on your sister.”

  “But why would you go along with this, January?” Eliza says.

  “I hate this place. I don’t want to own it today, tomorrow, someday, any day. I would give it to Aunt Sunny if I could. I want to move away from here . . . go to regular school.”

  “So you got together and invented a ghost. But . . . how?”

  “I found a speaker outside, remember?” Mom says. “So they were pumping scary sound effects into the hotel. And they were using props, like green jelly. Neon glow-stick liquid for the footprints.”

  “The footprints!” I say with a groan. “That must have been your dad’s shoes, January.”

  “You didn’t really think the ghost was a man just because of the shoes, right? Anyone can have access to men’s shoes!”

  “The jelly—you stole it from the kitchen and added food coloring,” I say. “You knew we were in the kitchen because we enlisted your help to keep Fernando away. Would have been pretty easy for you to sneak back in by yourself and lock us in the freezer.”

  “But,” Eliza says, “you left a clue inside the freezer that helped us get out.”

  “I mean, I knew it was in there,” January says. “I’m not mad you got out—I just needed to scare you away from the property.”

  “The sounds in the walls, the howling, the ghost that disappeared after I saw its face,” Mom says. “That was all done from inside the walls, wasn’t it? There must be a secret passage, just like Eliza said.”

  “Enough of this,” Sunny says. “Can you wriggle out of this child’s grip, January?”

  “No,” she says, trying once more to throw Frank off her.

  “Then I’m sorry, but—” Sunny slams her hand on the wall and hits a button. In front of Sunny, the top of the cave opens up. Giant icicles come flying down, like prison bars, trapping us inside the cave.

  “You can’t just leave me!” January says.

  “Oh yes, I can,” Sunny says, turning and running.

  “Hey! HEY!” January shouts. Then she turns furiously to us. “I can’t believe she left me!”

  Mom is wearing her best disappointed face—the one that always makes me crumble. Only, thank goodness, it’s not directed at me. “January, with these haunting stunts, you got your mom’s attention, but this is no way to earn her trust or respect,” Mom says. “Surely you know that . . .”

  “Shame! Shame!” Frank says, still squeezing her feet, acting like the world’s best parasite.

  January looks away.

  Meanwhile Eliza has walked over to the other side of the cave to examine the icicle prison bars. She tries to pull one up out of the ground, but the point has dug in too deep. It’s wedged tight. “Is this the only exit?” she asks January.

  “Yeah. We’re stuck.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Frank says, getting off January and marching over to the row of icicles.

  Frank leans over, puts his mouth right on one, and begins to suck.

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson after licking that pole?” I ask.

  “Nope!” Frank says cheerily. “I never learn anything!” Then he puts his mouth back on the ice. At least his tongue isn’t getting stuck again.

  Mom frowns. “There’s no way—”

  But Eliza copies him with the icicle right next to it.

  “Mom, did you know Frank can eat a freezy pop in seven seconds without getting a brain freeze? We’ve timed him.”

  “I . . . I didn’t know that,” she says, watching Frank lick the icicle.

  It takes a few minutes, but he finally breaks through. Then he moves to a spot lower to the ground. Soon enough there’s a hole just big enough for a kid-sized person to crawl through.

  I look back at Mom.

  “There’s no time! Go!”

  “But Mom—”

  “Don’t worry about me. January is going to stay with me . . . and we’ll be talking about responsibility and respect.”

  January looks like she’d rather die than hear a mom lecture, but she doesn’t argue.

  �
��GO!”

  We crawl through the hole. “I’ll be back for you, Mom!” I say, and we slip out of the cave and into the blizzard.

  There are footprints on the ground to follow, and I start to run after them while Frank hops into a nearby bush.

  “Batmobile!” he shouts. He pulls the bush aside to reveal a snowmobile. It looks like it’s been here for a while, since there are no snowmobile tracks on the ground. I bet Sunny didn’t even know it was here, or she would have used it herself.

  How does Frank always find things like this? It’s like he has a talent for knowing just where a clue or useful item will be.

  “Frank, we can’t take this,” Eliza says. “We’re not old enough to drive!”

  “Ohhhhh, jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg, Batmobile lost its wheel, and Joker got away!”

  I look at the snowmobile. It would be a lot faster to follow Sunny in this. Since she has such a long head start on us.

  Eliza seems to know what I’m thinking, because she shakes her head no. “Carlos, we can’t! It’s dangerous!”

  * * *

  TO TAKE THE SNOWMOBILE, CLICK HERE.

  TO FOLLOW ON FOOT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE HAVE TO fess up to the broken window. That’s the responsible thing to do.

  We wait in the snow while Reese, Harris, and January come running around the house. It takes them a while to get to us.

  But when they do finally come toward us, I try to wear my most apologetic face.

  “What happened out here?” Reese says. “Did you see who broke this window?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  Reese frowns. “This was an antique window.”

  “It was an accident,” I repeat.

  “Even so, we’re going to have to take this out of whatever earnings you’d be making. Which means . . . you actually owe us a few thousand dollars.”

  “But it was an accident!” I say.