Sinister Sites

by Tracy Lane

  “She’s right,” Frank said in a decidedly more neutral tone. He came closer, leaning down toward the stacks of retro clothing in the third vintage store they had tried that morning. “Try these,” he said, and nudged a pair of purple shorts that would go down to Jake’s knees. They felt soft and slippery, and had little slits in the bottoms with a button on either side.

  “For real?” he asked.

  “For real,” Frank said, and the modern words sounded funny rolling off his tongue. “And this shirt.” He pointed to a crisp white shirt with purple stripes. “And this hat.” He plucked off the shelf a floppy tan hat and twirled it around on his hand; the thing looked like something out of a black-and-white movie.

  Then again, Jake figured, that was kind of the point.

  He sighed, picked up the clothes and snatched the hat away from Frank, and slipped behind the curtain that separated the changing room from the rest of the store. A few minutes later, he shuffled back out, feeling totally ridiculous.

  “Ridiculous,” said Tank.

  “Perfect!” said Frank.

  “But accurate,” added Tank.

  “And appropriate,” said Frank.

  “Isn’t this too fancy?” Jake asked, ignoring them both. “I mean, I’m just a pretend hotel customer, not the owner’s son.”

  Tank shook her head. “In its heyday, this hotel was one of San Francisco’s finest, so it’s pretty appropriate. Good job, Frank,” she said in the opposite direction of where the man was standing.

  Apparently in a humoring mood that morning, Frank vanished and reappeared right in Tank’s line of vision. “You’re welcome,” he said with a courteous little bow.

  “Okay, okay.” Jake waved his hands in defeat and turned back toward the changing room.

  Frank stopped him. “No, Jake. This is the role you play now. This is what you wear. You have to get used to it.”

  Jake stood, clutching the curtain, eyes wide.

  “What?” Tank asked. “What’s he saying?”

  Jake made an irritated noise, shook his head, and tugged the old-fashioned cap down over his hair. “Oh, he’s just telling me how I’m going to be the laughing stock of Mott Street, the kid who walks around in pretty boy bloomers and a newsboy’s cap for the rest of his life.”

  Tank couldn’t contain herself; she burst out laughing and had to lean against a display of vintage women’s hats for support. “Oh, this is awesome,” she said between fits. “How perfect. I can’t wait until your folks get a load of this.”

  “Very funny,” he grumbled , and he dragged Tank to the sales counter by her sleeve.

  “You’re going to wear it out of the store?” asked the teenage girl behind the counter. Jake wasn’t sure if she was impressed or stifling a laugh.

  “I guess so,” he mumbled while reaching for his wallet.

  She was possibly a freshman in college, with pierced everything and tattoos peeking out from beneath the collar of her blouse. “Very brave of you,” she said.

  It was only after she had taken his money and given back the change that she spotted the backpack slung over his shoulder and frowned.

  “What?” he asked.

  She wrinkled her nose and said, “Well, you can’t go full vintage and carry an Iron Man backpack, you know?”

  As Tank snorted and Frank snickered dryly and Jake grew redder and redder, the cashier reached behind the counter and brought out a battered, low-slung messenger bag. It looked almost like something a newspaper delivery boy might wear over his shoulder as he rode his bike around the neighborhood, tossing papers in the neighbors’ bushes.

  “This would complete the look,” she said. “No doubt.”

  “How much?” he asked doubtfully.

  She smiled and handed it over. “For you, factoring in my bravery discount, let’s call it a buck and we’re even.”

  “Really?” He offered a crisp dollar bill from the change she’d just given him. “One buck?”

  She shrugged. “It’s been sitting here for years. Maybe it was waiting for someone like you to buy it.”

  Jake slung it over his shoulder beside his modern backpack and tested its weight. It felt light and snug against his side. “Thanks,” he said on the way out the door, and he almost meant it.

  “She’s right,” Frank said, walking on one side of Jake while Tank walked on the other. “That bag really completes the look.”

  Jake only shrugged. His face was still too warm as he noticed people watching him during their trek along Grove Street, heading toward the Balthazar. Kids his age snickered and whispered to each other, older girls cackled, and even adults took a moment to stare.

  “This is humiliating,” Jake muttered as they finally turned the corner and saw the hotel looming in the distance.

  “But just think of what Atticus will say when he sees you dressed like this,” Tank said, and he wondered if she knew how jealous she sounded. “I wish I could see the look on his face.”

  “Be glad you can’t.” Jake shivered, remembering the menace in Atticus Granger’s voice before Frank had shown up the other day. “Guy gives me the creeps.”

  They had reached the steps of the building, and Tank ambled to a stop. “Can I at least show your folks a picture?” she asked, then turned her tablet around to snap a quick photo of him on the stairs.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “I guess so.”

  Tank grew serious. “You need to be careful,” she chided as she slid her tablet inside the Iron Man backpack Jake had given her after switching out his junk into the old messenger bag. “Your parents would kill me if they knew what you were doing.”

  “I have to do it,” Jake said. “Look at what happened to Dad, and what almost happened to Mom. If I don’t help Frank free these ghosts, worse stuff will happen.”

  “Yeah, I know all that,” she huffed. “I just…Frank? Where’s Frank?”

  “He’s here.” Jake grinned, finding great joy in watching Tank whirl about when the ghost was standing right in front of her.

  “You watch over him, Frank,” Tank said, looking at a potted plant to his right.

  “I will,” said Frank. Of course, she didn’t hear.

  “You hear me?” she thundered, wagging a finger as she turned to walk down the street. “Don’t make me say it twice!”

  Frank laughed lightly as he watched her stomp away. “Nothing personal,” he muttered, as if to himself, “but I’m glad it’s you who can see me, Jake, and not her.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if both of us could see you this time, buddy,” Jake said. He opened the front door of the hotel, and the two of them stepped back in time.

  Inside the Balthazar’s lobby, more ghosts mingled about than usual. Frank slipped in beside him, looking and feeling more real than ever. Jake reached out to touch his jacket and the material felt crisp beneath his hand.

  “Why are you so solid?” he marveled.

  Frank looked down at the fingers on his jacket and shrugged. “I feel the same. Maybe you’re just getting more used to me.”

  “No,” Jake said. A second later, he spotted Atticus Granger as he stood in a corner, haranguing a young maid. “It’s this place, Frank. It’s…alive, I think, and getting more so every day.”

  Jake slid open the flap of his bag and risked a glance at his cell phone. The date on the screen read October 10, less than a week from the date when Granger had set the very lobby in which they stood on fire.

  “Maybe—maybe each day it gets closer to the anniversary of the fire, the ghosts get more real? More agitated?”

  “You’re the expert,” Frank mumbled, obviously distracted. “You tell me.”

  “I’m the expert?” Jake snorted while he followed Frank through the lobby. “You’re the ghost.”

  “Not so loud,” Frank hissed. When he turned to face Jake, his usually smooth face was stormy. “This is a very dangerous place, I can feel it. If it’s dangerous for me, think how dangerous it is for you. Please, like Tank said, be careful. I can only
do so much.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jake said, taking a step back in the face of Frank’s vehemence. “I’m sorry. I forgot myself for a second.”

  “Don’t do it again,” Frank ordered, turning back to the lobby.

  They were near their target now, and as Jake sulked along behind his friend, chagrined, he could hear Atticus hissing, “This is unacceptable, Clara.”

  Jake took a cursory glance around; he noticed that the other guests were going about their business, drinking tea in the small parlor off to the side or examining a squeaky rack full of antique postcards in the gift shop near the front desk.

  Frank, however, stood dark and imposing as Atticus continued to berate the maid. “But Mr. Granger,” she said, worrying the hem of her frilly white apron that rested against the contrast of her stiff black skirt, “Molly Sims called off sick today, and I’ve been covering for her. I couldn’t get to the parlor windowsill until just now.”

  “None of that is my concern,” snapped Atticus. “What does concern me is that—”

  “Excuse me,” said Frank. He kept his voice quiet, but spoke sternly enough to get the two ghosts’ attention.

  Atticus wheeled on them, face fiery and nostrils flared, only to look up and see Frank staring down at him. He immediately straightened up. “May I help you, sir?”

  “We spoke the other day about getting a room here?” said Frank, his tone surprisingly even. “Do you recall?”

  “Not at all, sir,” Atticus lied with a juvenile edge to his tone, as if it might hurt Frank’s feelings to be forgotten.

  Jake inched forward and felt the front desk clerk’s eyes explore his new set of clothes. With a disapproving glance, he looked back to Frank. “I’m sure I would have remembered you and your…son here. Did someone else speak with you, perhaps?”

  Frank’s jaw clenched tight. “Perhaps I should come back after you’re through berating your employee here,” he said, and nodded to Clara with the stiff brim of his fedora.

  Clara blinked rapidly and did a strange little curtsy. Atticus noticed this and bristled. “Not at all,” he said, turning his back on Clara and flailing his fingers in her general direction in a dismissive wave. “Now, how can I help you, sir?”

  Frank ignored him and inclined a concerned gesture to Clara as if the two were strangers. “Miss?” he asked. The other ghostly guests were beginning to look their way. “Are you all right?”

  She paused, looked alarmed, and nodded briefly – her stiff housekeeping bonnet wobbling – before she turned and disappeared behind a service entrance door.

  Frank focused back on Atticus and glared. “I’m not sure I should stay somewhere where the help is mistreated.”

  Atticus raised his chin. “Some help,” he said smoothly, “need strict treatment.”

  “Not where I come from,” Frank said, puffing himself up another full inch. “Is there a manager I can speak to? Someone who might help me understand why their clerk airs his dirty laundry in front of the guests?”

  At the word “manager,” Jake watched all the fight go out of Atticus Granger’s eyes. He deflated like a week-old party balloon. “Why, that—that won’t be necessary,” he stammered, retreating behind his front desk. “Now, let’s see what we can do about assigning you a room.”

  Despite his newfound smile, Granger gave off heavy waves of cold, angry venom. Jake could feel it in the mist that coated him suddenly, without warning.

  His throat dry, he leaned close to Frank and asked, “What’s that you were saying about being careful?”

  Chapter 13

  “I’m going to get a sinus infection from this room,” Jake griped. He watched the mold creeping up the walls, the torn curtains, singed and yellowed and flapping in the breeze of the open window, and he could wondered if he should have been wearing a mask.

  “Quit complaining,” Frank mused as he stood with Clara in the doorway of the room. “The Balthazar is the finest hotel in all of San Francisco,” he said, nodding suggestively toward the maid. Jake wrinkled his brow, but then he realized what Frank meant: Clara might have been familiar with Jake, but not his era. She saw only a young boy from the 1920s standing in a spotless, well-kept room.

  “Yes sir,” he said, doffing his cap politely and bowing slightly to Clara, whose gentle smile almost made him blush.

  Frank grinned and said to Clara, “He’s a precocious lad, my…nephew…but I promised my brother I’d take good care of him until his ship comes into port next month. So, here we are.”

  Jake nodded, impressed. He’d forgotten they needed a cover story as to why Frank and Jake were getting a room together, and had been racking his brain all day to come up with one. Here Frank had whipped up one on the spot.

  “It’s very sweet of you to look after the boy,” Clara noted. “I’ll be sure to take good care of you both while you’re staying with us here at the Balthazar.”

  She did a little bow and was preparing to leave when Frank took off his hat, bowed as well, and said, “As a matter of fact, and I hate to put you out so soon, but could you perhaps find us a bucket and some twine?”

  Clara’s face screwed up in slight confusion. To cover up the sudden sound of yapping from the street below, Jake interjected, “It’s for a game we like to play. To pass the time, you know?”

  “Of course,” Clara said, and then she smiled at Jake so sincerely that, around her, the decrepit old room suddenly grew warm, and he caught a fleeting vision of how vibrant it must have looked once upon a time, in early October 1921: a maroon settee in the corner made of crushed velvet with a black throw pillow, black and red wallpaper and gilt-framed mirrors on the walls, two beds with frilly lace comforters, and a small writing desk with its stiff-backed chair in the corner.

  The he blinked and it was gone; in place of the elegance laid a nasty carpet and sagging wallpaper and stuffing poking out of the old settee.

  Jake was startled out of his brief reverie by the sound of Clara hustling off down the hall, her soft black skirt making little swishing noises against her stockings.

  The minute she was gone, Frank turned to face Jake and retorted, “We can’t keep that dog in here!” He pushed the door mostly shut and flashed to the window in a burst of cold, white mist. “Get rid of him.”

  “You get rid of him,” Jake hissed. He heard Marley yelping and peeked out the window to see the pup nuzzling and nipping at Tank’s ankles. It was gray outside, and misty; a light sprinkle spotted Tank’s yellow jacket.

  “Hurry up!” she called below the open window as she knelt to quiet Marley. “Your dog is freaking out down here.”

  “He’s not my dog!” Frank and Jake shouted simultaneously.

  Tank covered Marley’s big ears and glared up at Jake. Marley, however, didn’t seem to mind, and he slipped from Tank’s grasp and yipped up at Jake standing on the hotel’s third floor.

  “Who’s that?”

  Jake and Frank both jumped at the sound of Clara’s voice from behind. They turned to see her staring at them with a small metal pail and a long length of twine in her hands.

  “What? Who?” Jake blurted.

  Clara batted the air with her hand and wrinkled her nose. “The little dog downstairs with the strong stench,” she said. “Is it yours?”

  Jake and Frank looked at each other, at a loss. Before either of them could answer, Clara set the pail and twine on the desk near the window and said conspiratorially, “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  Jake nodded helplessly, and Frank soon followed suit.

  “You know,” she whispered with a swift glance toward the door, “Mr. Granger doesn’t allow pets in the hotel, but Mrs. Ashcroft on the sixth floor, she keeps her cat in the closet and pays me an extra dollar a week to clean out its litterbox.”

  “I’ll walk him every day,” promised Jake.

  “I’ll make sure he walks him every day,” said Frank.

  “Be sure you do,” she said before retreating back toward the open door.

  F
rank pursued her. “Wait, where are you going? Don’t you want to meet Marley?”

  “Is that his name?” She sighed. “Oh, I’d love to, but Mr. Granger checks up on me every hour, and I’ve already tarried so long…”

  Her voice sounded urgent, and Jake and Frank shared a look of concern across the room. “Okay, okay,” said Frank, raising his hands in defeat. “But can we meet later?”

  Clara blushed, which was really just a wispy flash of color in her pale cheeks, before nodding politely and slipping from the room. “I’ll see what I can do,” Jake heard her promise as Frank stood in the doorway, watching her walk down the hall.

  When at last he turned to Jake and shut the door behind him, Frank frowned. “I wish I had been here,” he muttered. He sank down onto the corner of the nearest bed, which creaked softly beneath his weight. “Before all this happened. I would have set a few of my pals on one Atticus Granger and made sure Clara or anyone else was never afraid of him again.”

  “I wish you were too,” Jake said, absentmindedly tying one end of the twine around the bucket’s tin handle. “I wish we really were here back in 1921. We’d be able to save all these people…” His voice trailed off, heavy with emotion. “But we aren’t.”

  He tied a third – then a fourth – knot to make the twine secure. “We’re here now, though,” he said, setting the bucket on the sill, “and what we couldn’t do back in 1921 we can do now.”

  Frank watched as Jake began to lower the bucket out the window and down to the ground floor.

  “We can set them free,” Jake finished with a grunt. He waited as Tank gently lifted Marley and set the German Shepherd puppy into the bucket. “Let them leave this place and go, I don’t know, wherever they were meant to go when they died.”

  Frank sighed and stood, ambling up behind Jake, who was struggling with the bucket. Marley was heavier than he looked and wouldn’t sit still.

  “Calm down,” Jake whispered. “You don’t want to fall out, do you?”

  “Careful!” Tank hissed from the ground, her face flushed red. “You almost dumped him out.”