The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Riley was always a quiet kid.” Oliver stared at the floor counter as he spoke, watching the numbers spin by. “She’s shy and reserved, but she’s smart. She’s a lot like her mother in that way. An observer. She watches everyone and everything, but no one notices her.”

  “Like a little spy,” I noted.

  “Yes, she enjoys collecting secrets from our guests,” he said. “She loves to study human interaction. Once, she stole a psychology textbook from a university student who worked at the resort. She read the whole thing.”

  “How did she react to her mother’s death? How did she find out about it? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  The elevator let out a cheerful ding as we reached the twentieth floor, opening its doors to a long, extravagant corridor lined with lush crimson carpet and golden sconces.

  “Riley was the one who found Thelma’s body,” Oliver said. “What she was doing up there—all alone near the top of the mountain—I have no idea. I don’t know how she managed to get up there without riding the chair lift, but she was the first one to reach Thelma. She put in the emergency call.”

  “That must have been terrible for her.”

  “I thought so too, but when we found her, she was sitting on the bumper of the ambulance totally fine,” Oliver said. “The paramedics said she was in shock, but I’m not sure. She didn’t seem to be affected at all. Here we are. Room twenty-thirteen. After you.”

  I swiped the key card and went inside. Trey had left my luggage in the dark entryway. I almost tripped over the suitcases. When I flipped on the lights, I let out a gasp. It wasn’t a room. It was a suite. The main section boasted a full kitchen and living room, complete with everything I would ever need to make a home-cooked meal or host a Superbowl party. The television was bigger than the window in the apartment I’d been kicked out of two days before. Through a set of double doors, a king-sized bed dressed with the fluffiest pillows and the fattest duvet cover I’d ever seen awaited my afternoon nap. The bathroom was the size of a small throne room. It had a double-headed shower with massaging water effects and a Jacuzzi tub big enough to swim laps in.

  “I put you on the top floor because our nicest rooms are up here,” Oliver said. “You have the biggest balcony and the best view of the mountain.” He crossed the room to throw open the curtains, revealing a snow-covered terrace and the cloudy white heavens. “Will this be all right?”

  “All right?” I said. “Oliver, I’ve never stayed at a place like this in my entire life, and I probably never will again. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” he said. “After all, you’re doing me such a favor by coming all the way out here to see Riley. Do you feel anything?”

  I was too busy pressing my face to the satin pillowcases to realize what he was asking. “Hmm?”

  Oliver struggled to find the right words. “Can you sense any others?”

  “Oh!” For a second, I forgot why I’d ended up at Kings and Queens in the first place, but this was a job, not an all-expenses paid vacation. “Yes, I felt a presence as soon as I walked into the lobby.”

  “You did?”

  I pulled Madame Lucia’s accent out of hiding. “Oh, yes. Your resort is laden with otherworldly forces, but not to worry! Old buildings are often subject to hauntings. So much history, you see? It doesn’t necessarily mean you have evil spirits.” I opened up my suitcase, unpacked a bushel of sage, and brandished it about. “I can cleanse this place for you, especially the rooms where the forces are strongest.”

  Oliver leaned back to avoid me as I swept by with the sage. “You should probably know I don’t believe in ghosts or forces or whatever.”

  “No need!” I replied. “Skeptics are found far and wide. They’ve never stopped us spiritualists before. What matters is the girl. When can I meet her? We should begin working as quickly as possible before the forces within her draw her deeper into their depths.”

  “Riley tends to disappear during the day,” Oliver said. “She knows you’re coming, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until she introduces herself to you. Until then, feel free to get settled, and if you need anything, you can call the front desk or let one of the staff members know. Oh, and before I forget—” He withdrew a billfold from his pocket and counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills. “That’s for you. Explore the town if you like. There are some delightful little shops on the avenue.”

  He left me to it. I unpacked, dumping the contents of my suitcases into the dresser drawers at random. I stuffed the five hundred dollars out of sight behind the coffee pot. I didn’t plan on spending it in town. I needed it for whenever I returned home. I set up my video equipment next, spreading my laptop and everything else across the desk in the corner of the room. As I plugged in the camera battery to charge, something prickled on the back of my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement flicker in the bathroom. I swung around. The bathroom was empty. I was alone. Why was my heart pounding so hard?

  “Get a grip, Lucia,” I muttered. “It’s just your mind playing games.”

  I jumped as someone rapped on the door.

  “Coming!” I called. I freed myself from the mess of cables on the desk, leapt over my empty suitcases, and pressed my eye to the peephole. There was no one there. I pulled the door open and stuck my head out into the hallway.

  The corridor was empty. No one was visible in either direction.

  3

  The knock sounded so real, but it must have been the vacancy of the lodge toying with my mind. The top floor, devoid of other guests, felt miles above the lobby, where at least the employees stood in as proof of life. I unpacked the rest of my things as quickly as possible. The desire for a nap burned out of me as the silence of the top floor settled in. Up here, all I could hear was the wailing wind and, off in the distance, the steady chug of White Oak’s chair lift as it rounded the mountain. I thought of Jazmin, who was a good hour and a half into her drive home by now, and wished she’d been able to stay. She could fill the massive suite with her sensibility and reason in a heartbeat.

  When I left the room, the thick carpet did nothing to absorb the sound of the door slamming. A hollow echo reached through the hallway, as if the top floor was a void that didn’t adhere to the standard rules of audio science. I felt a little better in the elevator, perhaps because the glass windows opened up to the rest of the resort. Two or three employees, the size of mice from this height, milled about in the lobby below. When I reached the first floor, Trey met me at the elevator.

  “Can I get you anything, Miss Star?” he asked. “Some hot chocolate or coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “Is the service at King and Queens always this attentive or are you just really bored?”

  “A little bit of both.” He gazed into the restaurant and sighed longingly at the view of the mountain. Glimmering golden specks reflected off the white snow. “I’m mostly trying to keep my mind off the weather.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “It looks nice outside.”

  “It’s perfect,” Trey agreed. “But I’m stuck inside, and there’s no work to be done. I’ve organized the key cards twice already, and I cleaned the front desk’s keyboard. I’ve never cleaned a keyboard in my life. Did you know that canned compressed air is actually a thing? You can literally buy air.”

  “I don’t see the use for a concierge when there aren’t any guests around,” I said. “Oliver won’t let you off your shift early?”

  Trey’s laugh was dry and cold, far too cynical for someone his age, but he quickly canned it. “Mr. Watson isn’t the type of manager to give his employees the day off so they can go snowboarding. Plus, I busted my board last week in some deep drifts, so I’d have to rent one, and I can’t afford to buy water at King and Queens, so I definitely wouldn’t be able to swing equipment rental.” He realized he was rambling. “Anyway, you should check out the slopes. It’s not often Mr. Watson gives all-inclusive passes away. It’s almost as good a
s winning the lottery.”

  “It’s wasted on me,” I said. “I don’t ski.”

  “You want lessons?” he offered. “I’ll teach you. It would get me out of the lobby, and then Mr. Watson would have to lend me a board since it’s for work purposes.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “But I promise to come rescue you if I change my mind.”

  Trey’s face fell, but he did his best to hide it. “A’ight, Miss Star. You should have a walk outside anyway. It’s too nice not to, and there are some tight hiking paths through the forest. If you take Winder’s Trail, it leads you up to a great bird-watching platform. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Who cares about some dumb birds?’ Trust me, it’s worth it. A bunch of eagles and hawks come to nest around here, although it’s not really nesting season, and I guess most of them have flown south. The view’s still pretty great though—”

  “Thanks, Trey,” I said. The poor kid would go on for hours if I let him. Cabin fever was definitely a thing at King and Queens. “I’m going to go check it out right now.”

  He reached over the lobby desk for a tri-fold pamphlet. “Here’s a map of the trails. It can be confusing up there, so be careful, and there aren’t many people out to ask for directions. There are signs though. I don’t know why we print so many of these. It’s wasteful. Bad for the environment, don’t you think?”

  I saluted him with the pamphlet and left the lobby before he lassoed me into a discussion about King and Queens’s lack of progress in the sustainability department. Now that the sun had risen higher in the sky, it was less cold outside than I expected it to be. I zipped my parka all the way up to the high collar anyway and tucked my chin inside the fleece. My lips were the first things to go in cold weather. If I didn’t take precautionary measures, they would be chapped and bleeding by the end of the day.

  No one had cleared the sidewalks around the resort that morning, but a few sets of footprints guided me around to the lodge’s rental store, café, and outdoor seating area. The deep snow crept up the side of my boots and melted through my jeans. Wistfully, I thought of my snow pants crammed into the dresser drawer in room twenty-thirteen on the top floor. Next time, I’d make sure to wear them.

  The steady whir of moving mechanics drew my attention to the ski lift. The sleek metal contraption with its hypnotizing rhythmic rotation was oddly pleasing to the eye. There was no one on it and no one in line, so the operator—a young man about Trey’s age with golden-blond hair like a lion’s mane—sat lazily behind the controls booth. He had a book, Aristotle’s Poetics, perched against the booth’s glass window with its binding broken, but it went unread, as he was ensconced in a discussion with Detective Hawkins. When I walked by, the kid perked up, and he cut the detective off mid-sentence.

  “Miss Star, right?” he said as Detective Hawkins rolled his eyes but said nothing. “I’m Liam. Would you like to head up? The ski lift was cleared for safety. It’s ready to go.”

  I wondered how many times I’d have to explain my lack of coordination for skiing or any other sport offered on the mountain. “That’s okay, Liam. I’m just having a look around for now.”

  In truth, curiosity about Oliver’s wife, Thelma, drew me to the lift. The cables and chairs grew smaller as they trundled up the mountain and disappeared into the clouds and snow. How far up did Thelma make it before the structure she trusted her entire life to dumped her to the ground and crushed her? Then there was Riley. We hadn’t met yet, but I already nursed a comprehensive understanding of her situation. I shuddered at the thought of her finding her mother trapped beneath the metal chair as she bled out in the snow. No wonder the kid was having trouble.

  Detective Hawkins hemmed, a forced politeness to his tone as he said, “Sorry, ma’am, but if you’re not riding the lift, could you move along? Mr. Lavi was answering a few confidential questions for me.”

  “I thought you left,” I said to him. Unlike Oliver, Hawkins soared over me like a raptor in flight above its prey. “And I sure hope Mr. Lavi agreed to answering those questions for you.”

  “I didn’t,” Liam said.

  “He’s an adult,” Hawkins said. “He doesn’t have to consent to an impromptu interview if he doesn’t want to.”

  “That’s not the impression you gave me ten minutes ago,” Liam replied grumpily. “You said you’d take me down to the station.”

  “I’m covering all my bases,” Hawkins said. “You were the last one to see Mrs. Watson alive, and you were in charge of operating the ski lift during her accident.”

  “I already told you I didn’t notice anything wrong with the lift before Thelma—Mrs. Watson—went up,” Liam said, fists trembling. “I called the police when I did because her chair came back without a freaking chair.”

  I patted Liam’s arm through his thick red ski jacket. The resort’s logo—a large royal crown flanked by two small, dainty ones—was embroidered on either sleeve. “Take a break, Detective Hawkins,” I said. “It’s cold out here, and you’re distracting Liam from his job, and his book, I believe.”

  “Who are you again?” Hawkins said, narrowing his eyes at me. “I don’t believe we’ve officially met.”

  I ushered Liam into the controls booth while Hawkins was distracted. He mouthed a grateful “thank you” and returned to Poetics. Linking my arm through Hawkins’s, I drew the detective away from the chair lift.

  “Madame Lucia Star,” I said. “If you’d bothered to apologize after bumping into me earlier, we would already be acquainted.”

  To his credit, he locked his arm around mine and guided me over the snow-laden sidewalks as we headed to the nearby garden for a stroll. “I was hasty, I’ll admit. ‘Madame?’”

  “I’m a psychic,” I declared. “A spiritualist, if you will. Mr. Watson hired me to investigate the paranormal forces surrounding his daughter after her mother’s death.”

  Hawkins laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Laughing in the face of the spirits is often a defense mechanism for nonbelievers,” I informed him. “I imagine you’ve encountered otherworldly energies in the past, but you’re prone to credit them to other things.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a few encounters,” he said. “And you know what I credit them to? Science. Cold, hard fact. There’s an explanation for everything, Madame Lucia, and it sure as hell ain’t ghosts.”

  I tugged him beneath a trellis. Dead vines snaked around the lattice work, dotted with browned and dried roses. Flashes of color decorated the snow as winter-blooming flowers craned toward the sunlight. In a month or two, when the snow wasn’t so deep, the garden would be the perfect venue for an outdoor wedding. Detective Hawkins glared up at the trellis and took an extra-large step to pass under it as quickly as possible.

  “Scratch any cynic, and you will find a disappointed idealist,” I said. “What happened to your idealism, Detective Hawkins?”

  “My ex-wife got it in the divorce,” he replied. “Before you ask, I’ve also already lost the little boy in me. And George Carlin? Are all spiritualists fans of stand-up comedy?”

  “I find humor to be an excellent method of connecting with the departed,” I said. “After all, what is there to do but laugh in the face of death? Don’t you find the concept laughable?”

  “Yes, your profession is laughable.”

  I pretended to trip over a cobblestone and yanked Detective Hawkins into a deep snow bank. His leg sank, drenching his jeans up to the knee. He plucked himself free and shook off the snow like a wet dog.

  “Jesus, I hate the cold,” he muttered.

  “I meant that death is laughable,” I said in a frosty tone. “We all spend too much time fearing the inevitable end of everything, but if everyone shut up and looked around and appreciated the things we have now, maybe this ridiculous world wouldn’t be so horrible.”

  Detective Hawkins grinned. It was lopsided, like he’d also lost half of his smile in his divorce. “Do I detect a hint of cynicism in your opinion, Madame Lucia?”
r />   “Don’t call me that.”

  “I thought that was your name.”

  “It is, but you say it as a joke,” I said. “My clients respect my title, and I’m asking you to do the same.”

  He bowed his head, taking gentle hold of my gloved hand to help me beyond the garden path as we returned to the café area. “You’re right. My apologies. It’s not my place to judge you.”

  “No, it isn’t.” But he’d ridiculed me nonetheless, and I didn’t respond well to ridicule. “You should be careful.”

  He eyed Liam as we passed the ski lift, distracted from our conversation. “Why’s that?”

  “Angry spirits take to angry people.” I detached myself from his arm and drifted toward the café. The frigid afternoon warranted a hot coffee and a warm pastry. “You may not notice it at first, but there are signs. Like the bead of sweat on your temple or the unwarranted chill across the back of your neck in a warm room. It’s the stab of fear or rage that sweeps over you unprecedented. You’ll wonder where it came from, why it washed across you when your mind was somewhere else entirely. Perhaps you’ll understand it the next time it happens to you, but I doubt it. Cynics never do.” I fixed him with a knowing smile. “They just laugh.”

  In the moment before I turned my back on him, I caught a glimpse of his expression. It wasn’t, as I expected, one of skepticism. He didn’t roll his eyes or purse his lips. He stood in the middle of the snow, his dark clothing and hair stark against the brilliant landscape, lips parted as if poised to reply, the corners of his fiercely focused eyes crinkling like fine parchment. He was as still as a full-length portrait, and the picture of him almost knocked me off balance. I hopped over my own feet to get them under me, and when I pushed through the café door, I breathed an unwarranted sigh of relief for the separation between me and Detective Hawkins.

  The café was empty of customers except for a table in the far corner by the door that connected to the rental shop. By the looks of it, the two girls and one boy who sat there also worked at King and Queens. They wore snow pants and boots, and their official King and Queens ski jackets were draped over their chairs. The café barista sat at their table too, and the four of them bent their heads together in quiet discussion. When I entered, they all went quiet and looked up in tandem, as if they were controlled by the same godlike puppet master from above.