Haunting at the Hotel

by Lauren Magaziner

  We follow him through a patch of evergreens, so deep into the glen that we can’t see the lodge.

  “There,” he says, pointing into the mouth of a cave. “If you go in there, you’ll see exactly what I was doing. You go first. I’ll follow.”

  So we go in first. In the back of the cave are three hibernating bears, all curled up in each other’s arms. I turn around, but Fernando di Cannoli is nowhere to be seen. He’s ditched us!

  “Lazy bears, will you get up, will you get up, will you get up? Lazy bears, will you get up, will you get up today?” Frank sings, and I put my hand over his mouth.

  One of the bears stirs. Uh-oh.

  “Run!” I mouth.

  “No, climb!” Eliza whispers back.

  We back away slowly and climb the nearest tree. We hide high in the branches, so that the bear doesn’t see us.

  Below, the angry bear roars, pacing between trees. There’s no way we can get down from this branch until the bear goes back into hibernation.

  This is unbearable!

  CASE CLOSED.

  “MULTIPLE SOURCES REPORT that you and January have been fighting lately,” I say to Reese.

  “Is that a question?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Reese bites her lip. “You know . . . motherhood is very difficult. Children don’t always cooperate! They like to think they know what’s best for themselves, but I know what’s best for her. You’re telling me you don’t fight with your parents?” she asks.

  Screaming matches? No way.

  I shake my head no. Eliza does a half shrug.

  “Well, you’re not even teenagers yet. You will.” She swivels in her chair. “January is going to be fine. I’ve hired a special tutor for her, since she wants to learn video editing so badly. But I’m not sending her to public school. The closest one is a forty-five-minute drive from here, and Harris and I do not have the time. Besides . . . she has to be on the premises to learn about the hotel before she takes it over one day.”

  “Have the fights been worse than usual lately?” Eliza asks.

  “Actually, in the past few weeks, the fights have almost stopped. It’s a relief, honestly, since we’ve been screaming in each other’s faces for over a year now.”

  “Is there a reason the fights stopped?”

  “She grew up, I suppose.”

  Eliza and I exchange a look.

  * * *

  TO ASK WHY SHE DIDN’T WANT TO HIRE DETECTIVES, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  TIME TO GO to bed. But first we have to catch Mom up on the things we kinda maybe sorta learned.

  We knock on the door to room 237, and Mom swings it open. “Welcome back,” she says with a grin.

  “Is the room bugged?” I ask.

  “Clean, clear, and ready for private conversations!”

  We file into the room. It’s a standard hotel room, only rustic looking. The walls are wood, and there are wood beams across the ceiling. The two beds have plaid comforters. The armchair in the corner is made of logs, with mountain-print patterned cushions. And the pictures hanging up are all of evergreen trees and moose.

  Frank follows my line of sight, sees the picture, and says, “Mooooooo!”

  “That’s not a cow, Frankie,” Eliza says.

  “I know that. It’s a moose! Don’t mooses moo?”

  “No.”

  “Then they should! We should call cows mooses and mooses cows. That would make a lot more sense!”

  “It’s not mooses, anyway,” Mom says. “The plural of moose is moose.”

  Frank scrunches his face and looks up as he thinks. “Two moose, two mooses, two moosen, two meece . . .” He’s really mulling this one over. “I’m gonna go with meece.”

  “You don’t get to choose grammar,” Eliza whispers, practically twitching in horror. “Grammar is a set of regimented, inflexible rules that you have to follow—”

  “MEECE!” Frank shouts in her face.

  Mom smiles at me and shakes her head. Then she pats the bed, and we all sit down around her. “Don’t keep me in suspense! What did you find?”

  We recap our conversations. I know we’ve only just started asking questions, but it seems like we have so much more to uncover. Like what Cricket’s phone call was about, and why January and Sunny were fighting, and what Fernando di Cannoli is hiding, what the truth is about Byron’s story, and how far Luther is willing to go to get what he wants.

  “We still have a long way to go,” I grumble as Eliza finishes recapping the last piece of our conversation with Byron Bookbinder.

  “Patience, hijo. We arrived in the evening, so tomorrow we’ll have a nice full day of investigation. And besides . . . there may even be a haunting before the night is over.” She winks at me. “Now, Carlos and Eliza, you take this room. Frank, you’re coming with me to the room next door. If you need something, kids, knock on the wall.”

  “Sleepover!” I say to Eliza, and we high-five.

  “Awww,” Frank says, frowning at my mom. “I wanna be part of the sleepover! I want Eliza! Or Carlos!”

  Mom pretends to look hurt. “But whoever stays with me gets a chocolate bar.”

  “I WANT CHOCOLATE—I mean, Detecto-Mom!”

  They leave, and then it’s just Eliza and me. We brush our teeth, then bury ourselves in bed—she takes the bed next to the mountain-view window. I take the bed near the bathroom and door.

  “I thought for sure the rooms would be split by family. You and your mom, me and Frank,” Eliza says.

  “Frank’s a handful. He probably needs the most adult supervision.” I yawn. It has been a long day of travel.

  A silence stretches between us. It could be ten seconds or thirty, or a minute or five—one of those moments when you think you’ve fallen asleep, then someone says something to wake you up.

  “Carlos?” Eliza says softly. “It just got really cold in here, don’t you think?”

  I try to answer her, but I’m too tired to lift my head.

  * * *

  Night One

  * * *

  “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  I pop out of bed.

  “Eliza, did you hear that?”

  I click on the light. The clock on the wall reads 3:26 a.m. Eliza is awake, the covers pulled up just under her eyes.

  “Eliza!” I shake her leg. “I thought you weren’t scared of ghosts.”

  “I’m not,” she whispers unconvincingly.

  Thud. Thud-thud. Thump.

  A loud banging noise. But it doesn’t sound like footsteps.

  “Eliza! Let’s go!”

  She grabs her backpack full of supplies and tools, and I open the door. In the next room, Mom and Frank’s door is ajar. My heart drops to my stomach—why would their door be open? I slowly inch into their room. “Mom? Frank?”

  “Back here!” Mom says, waving from the corner chair. She’s putting on her slip-on shoes. Frank is yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Let’s go!” she says, ushering Frank and me into the hallway, where Eliza is waiting.

  Thump. Thud-thud.

  That sound again—like someone’s banging on the walls from the inside. The hallway lights flicker. We’re pitched into darkness.

  Mom grabs my arm, and I jump.

  “Look!” Frank says. “The footprint brick road!”

  I can’t see if he’s pointing, but I know what he’s looking at: glowing footprints stamped all across the carpet. They lead to the stairs. They’re the only thing that’s illuminated in this darkness.

  “Ghost ectoplasm,” I whisper.

  “What? Carlos, no, I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for the footprints,” Eliza says. “Here—everyone take flashlights.” She passes them out, and we each grab one.

  We start down the hallway. Following the trail of footsteps, wherever they lead.

  “Ooooooooooooooooooo!”

  I jump. The sound seems to be coming from all around us. It’s loud and wailing.

  We walk down the woode
n staircase to the foyer. The front doors are ajar, which could explain why it feels like it’s zero degrees in the lobby. Shadows dance on the walls.

  Thud. Thump. Thud-thud-thud.

  That noise! It’s definitely coming from the fire den.

  Screeeeeeeeeeee.

  Suddenly one long, loud screech—like metal scraping on metal—echoes to our right, also from the fire den.

  But the glowing footprints lead right out the front door of the hotel, into the snow. Into the cold and the darkness.

  I don’t know what’s more terrifying: the hair-raising noises to our right, or the glowing footsteps straight ahead. I wish we could be in two places at once, but we can’t. . . .

  So do we follow the sound, or do we follow the sight?

  * * *

  TO FOLLOW THE NOISES IN THE WALLS, CLICK HERE.

  TO FOLLOW THE GLOWING FOOTPRINTS, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU know about the hauntings in the Sugarcrest Park Lodge?” I ask Luther.

  “Besides the fact that they’re fake?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Luther laughs, but it isn’t humorous. “Obviously, it’s a publicity stunt gone terribly wrong. Karma is a—”

  “But wait,” I say. “Why would Reese haunt her own hotel? She said things were going very well for the lodge before the hauntings started.”

  “And,” Eliza adds, “why would she keep haunting her hotel, if it’s driving all her customers away?”

  Luther frowns. He may be a good businessman, but he’s not a good detective.

  “Maybe it’s a ploy or a distraction. Maybe she needs everyone to look one way while she searches for something. Who knows? All I know is that there are a few wicked people in that house. Live ones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Luther ignores the question. Instead, he picks up his phone and speed dials a number. “Hello, Miss McCoy—it’s Luther Covington. Three detectives from the Sugarcrest case have lost their way and ended up down here. I need you to come collect them. Now.” A long pause. “Perfect.”

  He hangs up the phone, and his lips curl in a wolfish smirk. “Cricket is sending your mother to fetch you. Seeing as our time together has come to an end, I wanted to offer you a little . . . ah . . . reward for your services.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but Eliza frowns. “What are you asking us to do?” she says grimly, as Frank lets out a little snore from Eliza’s lap. I think he’s really fallen asleep!

  “All you have to do is nudge Reese Winters in the right direction. You have her ear. She trusts you. Just tell her the hotel is too haunted to save. Encourage her to sell. When I buy the property, I’ll give you three a nice cut of the money. I’ll pay you more than they’re paying you to solve the case.”

  There’s a quiet, tense pause.

  “That’s unethical!” Eliza finally says, disgusted.

  “Yeah! We can’t do that—she hired us to find the ghost. We promised we would!”

  “Don’t be naive, children. I’m offering you a big incentive, for a small service.”

  “You’re asking us to lie!” I can feel my cheeks getting red. I glare into Luther’s cold, dark eyes.

  He laughs humorlessly. “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve lied . . . oh, wait, I do. And I’m rich. Welcome to the real world, kids.”

  Mom runs into the lobby of the Super Hotel Express, relieved to see us. She escorts us right into the car, and we begin the drive up the mountain to the Sugarcrest. It’s a slow drive, because the snow is coming down so thick we can barely see out the front windshield.

  Meanwhile, I can’t stop thinking about what a corrupt, dishonest person Luther is. I can’t believe he thought he could bribe us into quitting the case.

  Eliza looks deep in thought, staring out her window. And Frank is in the middle seat, fast asleep on Eliza’s shoulder.

  “You kids are quiet,” Mom says, looking into the rearview mirror. “Especially Frank. I didn’t know it was possible for him to be this silent.”

  “He’s sleeping,” Eliza says.

  “Mom, where were you? You were right behind us—then you were gone!”

  She puts on her brights, then seems to think better of it. The glare from the snow is blinding. “I was actually right behind you. But as I crossed the lobby, someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me back. It was so fast, I couldn’t even scream.”

  “Who was it?” Eliza asks.

  “Was it a ghost?” I say.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not unless ghosts are solid.”

  “They can solidify,” I say. “That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

  Eliza shoots me a skeptical look, and I roll my eyes back at her. I can’t believe how ridiculous she’s still being about ghosts!

  “Ghost or not,” Mom says, “it had a terrifying face. It didn’t have any features at all . . . just a white face with empty sockets for eyes. It really was a split-second glance, though—I was wrestling it off me. The second I saw its face, it ran.”

  “Ran where?”

  “Into the lobby, but that’s the funny thing, niños—it vanished from the lobby by the time I ran after it, seconds later. It was too quick a disappearance for it to have climbed the stairs or ran into the fire den.”

  “See?” I say to Eliza. “Ghost!”

  “Or,” Eliza retorts, “a secret passageway in the hotel.”

  “We’ll keep our eyes and ears open for either one,” Mom says, trying to defuse our fight. “Anyway, I searched around the hotel, then I ventured out into the snow. I walkie-talkied you—”

  “We forgot it,” I say.

  “It’s my fault,” Eliza adds. “I left it on the nightstand.”

  “Well, that can’t happen again.” She frowns. “I don’t like how someone lured you out of the hotel, then locked you out. I thought getting grabbed from behind was scary, but . . . what the culprit did to you? That’s truly dangerous! You could have frozen out there.”

  “Culprit? So you don’t think it was a ghost, Mom?”

  “The noises? Maybe. But the glowing footprints?” She snorts skeptically. “When have you heard of a ghost wearing shoes?”

  She has a point there. And even if a ghost did wear shoes, it definitely wouldn’t need to stomp on the carpet. It could float. And if the shoe prints don’t belong to the ghost, we have our next direction.

  “Whose shoe was it?” I say.

  “There we go,” Mom says, proudly beaming.

  We get out of the car, and Mom has to carry Frank up the walkway into the lodge. The front doors are unlocked now, and it seems like there’s no longer a haunting happening. All traces of the glowing footprints are gone, and no banging noises plague the halls.

  To be honest, the normalcy of the hotel after all the commotion is unsettling in itself.

  Cricket’s sitting at the counter—no, sleeping at the counter.

  As we walk up the stairs, Mom turns to me with a sour expression. “I’m really upset that you left the premises without alerting me,” she says. “We’ll talk about your punishment in the room.”

  Punishment? What? My stomach drops like a stone. Mom was so relieved at the Super Hotel Express, and so calm in the car—and now that we’re back in the Sugarcrest, now she wants to punish us?

  “Mom, you don’t understand,” I say, trailing behind her on the steps. “We didn’t mean to leave. It was an acci—”

  “Quiet!” she snaps. “I don’t want to hear it. You constantly disobey me, and I’m sick and tired of it.”

  I shrink into my jacket. I feel like I could cry. Eliza squeezes my hand.

  I march back to room 237 in silence, and all four of us go into the same room for Mom’s I’m-disappointed-in-you lecture. She shuts the door behind her with extreme force. Did my mom—the most calm and even-keeled person ever—just slam the door? Her back is to us; she pauses at the door. She must be angrier than I’ve ever seen her in m
y life.

  Then she turns around with a big grin.

  “Great job! I think they bought it.”

  Okay, now I’m confused.

  “Bought what?” I say. “Aren’t you going to yell at me?”

  “Me? Yell?”

  Now I’m really really confused. “But on the stairs, you snapped.”

  Mom laughs. “It’s called acting, Carlos. I don’t know who was around, but we can’t be too careful. I don’t want anyone to know the nature of our working relationship. If they realize we’re equal partners . . . let’s just say, I would rather the ghost come after me than you.”

  “A little late for that,” I joke.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she replies seriously.

  * * *

  Day Two

  * * *

  OUR ALARM GOES off at three in the afternoon. If I had it my way, we’d sleep all day to make up for being awake nearly all night. But we have lots to do.

  Right now, I think Eliza and Mom are right: the glowing footprints were a trap to lure us out of the house. But . . . why? Did we stumble upon something important yesterday when talking to suspects? Or is someone trying to use our disappearance to scare Mom away from the case? Or is the ghost a vengeful spirit that has nothing to do with the people in the house?

  All these questions and more, to be investigated today.

  Eliza braids her hair in the mirror. “So,” she says, pausing to yawn, “whose footprints did we see?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It was big—clearly a man’s shoe. Of the people who live in the Sugarcrest, we have three options: Harris Winters, Fernando di Cannoli, or Byron Bookbinder.”

  Mom comes into our room with her key. She looks a bit tired, but it’s amazing what a long nap can do for Frank. He is talking so fast, he’s practically buzzing.

  “What do we do, where do we go—let’s go crawl! Sneak! Do you think ghosts can be sucked up in vacuums? Do you think ghosts taste like whipped cream? Do you think—”