The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  “No need,” Daniel said. “I didn’t eat.”

  “Order something,” Oliver pleaded. “And Lucia, whatever else I can do for you—”

  I squeezed Oliver’s forearm, effectively cutting off his apology. “You’ve done enough for me already. It’s my turn to help you. I haven’t heard from Riley yet. Have you seen her around?”

  Oliver drew his sleeve across his damp forehead. “No, I haven’t seen her all day.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  He shook his head. “She’ll turn up eventually. If the two of you don’t mind, I’m going to turn in for the evening. Please stay. Order whatever you like. It’s the least I can do to make up for Tyler’s behavior.”

  Daniel offered to walk me to my room, but I declined. The thought of navigating the empty hallways of King and Queens alone crawled beneath the sleeves of my dress and settled against my skin like a parasite, working its way inside through osmosis. If I didn’t do it now, that feeling would never dissolve, so I parted from Daniel in the lobby and rode in the glass elevator by myself. The trip to the top floor felt longer in the darkness. The resort’s lamps were dimmed to candlelight levels, romantic if you were returning from dinner pressed against another guest from the lodge, cohorts in passion too absorbed in each other to be bothered by the elevator’s transparency. As I arrived on the top floor, I once again wished Jazmin had stayed. After years of friendship, it was odd and lonely being without her, especially in the foreign luxury of King and Queens. I’d forgotten to call her, too wrapped up in the resort’s drama. Hopefully she made it home okay.

  A lodge employee had come through the room for turndown service. The duvet was folded into a neat triangle, waiting for me to slip between the satin sheets. A single chocolate truffle rested on the pillow. I unwrapped it and stuck the whole thing in my mouth to suck on. As it melted to reveal warm caramel at the center, I unzipped my dress and slipped out of it. It lay like a discarded snake skin over the desk chair. I felt silly for wearing it to dinner. No one was here to admire Madame Lucia’s ethereal fashion sense, and despite what I’d said to Detective Hawkins, I was cold all through dinner until he took pity on me and draped his leather jacket across my lap. The Eagle’s View was drafty at best, and the huge windows turned the restaurant into an igloo. I flopped into bed, wishing the maid had left more than one truffle as the last of the chocolate dissolved against my tongue. I wrapped one end of the duvet around myself, rolled to the other side of the bed to cocoon myself in the decadent cotton, facing the dark bathroom, and screamed.

  A little girl stood in the doorway, silent and staring.

  4

  Riley Watson was small for her age, the top of her head at the level of my waist. Were it not for her physical similarities to Oliver, I would have taken her for a lost spirit wandering around the weird vacuum of King and Queens. She had inherited a decent portion of her father’s genetics. They had the same ashy hair that looked as though it had been leached of any one color, though Riley’s wasn’t streaked through with gray. The father and daughter also shared a long, thin face, but where Oliver’s cheeks were somehow plump with weight and drawn from stress at the same time, Riley’s gave her the appearance of a homeless waif. She’d not yet grown into her lanky limbs. In a year or two, she would shoot up like a weed, surpassing her father and maybe her brother in height. She wore an oversized King and Queens fleece zip-up so large it fell to her knees like a dress. She’d rolled the sleeves up to make effective use of her tiny, muscled hands. In one, she held the bushel of sage I’d “blessed” the room with earlier. In the other was a scrunched-up hat.

  “Hi,” she said. No apology or explanation for how she’d gotten into my room on her own. “You’re Madame Lucia.”

  “Yeah.” I scrambled out of bed to tug my kimono out of the closet and draw it around myself. The kid’s eyes—so light in color they almost appeared clear—tracked the whirl of the fabric as it spun around. “Your dad said you’d find me on your own, but I wasn’t exactly expecting a visit in my suite.”

  “I stole a key from the front desk,” she said without shame. She spoke all in one note, her voice never wavering from the flat tone. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I should have waited outside, but I was too curious.”

  “Your dad said you watch people.”

  “My dad says a lot of stuff.”

  “Should I believe all of it?”

  “Probably not,” Riley replied. “But I did watch you all day. It’s how I get to know people. May I?” She gestured to the wardrobe. Unsure of what she was asking, I nodded. She proceeded to go through all of my things, plucking clothes and crystals and camera accessories from my collection of belongings. As she examined them, she asked, “What are we doing here?”

  “I thought you already knew. Your dad—”

  “Stop talking about my dad. Please,” she added afterward as if realizing how brusque her request was. “And I didn’t mean it like that. I meant what are we doing here on this plane of existence? We’re conscious vapor housed in skin and bones, and when we die, we float around like mist. What’s the point of existing at all? Can I have this?” She held up my Blondie T-shirt.

  “Do you even know who Blondie is?” I asked her.

  “No, it’s just a cool shirt.”

  “If I say no, are you going to swipe it later anyway?”

  “It depends on if I like you or not,” Riley said.

  “So if you don’t like me, the shirt goes bye-bye.”

  “No, if I don’t like you, I don’t want your crap.” She folded the shirt into the smallest square possible so only Debbie Harry’s eyes were visible. “If I do like you, this shirt will remind me of you.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. You can keep the shirt for as long as I’m here, but you have to tell me the truth about everything that’s happening to you in this resort.”

  She chewed on her lip, pondering the offer. “But I can keep the shirt?”

  “Until I leave. It’s my favorite,” I added. “My best friend gave it to me.”

  “Oh, that’s what I feel.”

  I let the comment slide, unsure if I wanted to know what she meant by it anyway. “Do we have a deal?”

  She reached over her head and pulled the fleece sweater off with one hand. Then she wormed her way into my T-shirt. Though it was a women’s small, it swamped her. She stuck out her hand. “Deal.”

  Her nimble fingers were popsicles, and she squeezed my hand so hard, I heard my knuckles crack. Rough calluses decorated her palm, as if she spent hours a day out on the slopes with her skiing poles. When we parted, she examined her new outfit in the floor-length mirror before leaping onto the bed to jump up and down. She brushed the ceiling with every upward bounce. The textured plaster, which looked as though it hadn’t been renovated since the resort was built, rained down like stucco snow.

  “So what are we doing here?” she asked again. “You should know, right? Why else would you bother talking to dead people?”

  While she pirouetted like a ballerina, I collected Madame Lucia’s aura from where Riley had scattered it about the room with her eerie, straightforward presence. I wrapped the kimono tighter, inhaling the woodsy scent its fibers had gathered from all the incense I burned in the apartment.

  “The living world is not one to be questioned,” I proclaimed. “Why examine what we will never be able to understand? Existence, essence, life, or death. No, we must rely on what little openings we have into the spirit world in order to—”

  “I think that’s crap,” Riley said, kicking a pillow off the bed with such force it flew across the room and thwacked against the door to the balcony. “Questions are the key to life. If we didn’t ask questions, if curiosity didn’t exist, we wouldn’t know half the stuff we know now. I think it’s the lack of questions that’s the problem. People don’t ask enough nowadays. They’re content with ignorance.”

  Just like that, she snuffed out Madame Lucia’s spark agai
n. I deflated and tied the kimono waistband around me like a bathrobe, feeling significantly less powerful as I did so.

  “You’re twelve,” I reminded her. “What’s with all the philosophy and psychology stuff? When I was twelve, I was learning how to ride a two-wheeler.”

  “I got the two-wheeler thing down at five,” she said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “What are we doing here?” I sank into a fluffy armchair in the corner of the room, crossing one leg over the other, since Riley didn’t show any intention of vacating the bed. “I don’t know. No one knows. That’s what I was trying to tell you. Some questions don’t have answers, so there’s no point in asking them.”

  “But you talk to dead people,” she said again. “Can’t you ask them what happens after we die?”

  Jazmin was right. Riley wasn’t the run-of-the-mill preteen glued to the screen of a smartphone as she obsessed over whatever boy band was most relevant at the time. She was focused and practical, and when the subject turned in her favor, she spoke with eloquence most adults would envy. If the universe’s claw machine plucked her out of King and Queens and set her down at a podium in front of an upper-level university class, she wouldn’t freeze or blush or run off. She’d tell the professor that she had it handled and lead an entire hour-long discussion on existentialism.

  “I talk to dead people because their sitters ask me to,” I explained. “A sitter’s what we call the living entity who wishes to get in contact with the dead.”

  “I know. Confidence, candidness, and caution,” she recited. “I watch your show.”

  I tapped my fingers against the arm of the chair. “Religiously?”

  “Every week.”

  “Including yesterday’s episode?”

  Riley took one last massive bounce before jutting her legs straight out and landing on her butt at the edge of the bed. “Yup. Who was that guy shouting at the end?”

  “My landlord.”

  “He seems mean.” That, apparently, was all she had to say on the matter.

  “He’s not nice,” I agreed.

  Riley wandered into the living room, picked the camera up from the desk, and switched it on. “Am I going to be on your show?” she asked, squinting through the viewfinder instead of using the big display on the back. “That would be cool.”

  “If you want to.”

  She focused the lens on me and looked over the top of the camera. “You look different through here.”

  “How so?”

  “You look sad. Watch.” Without warning, she snapped a picture of me. The flash drew colorful, lingering spots in my vision as Riley turned the camera around to show me the picture. “Look.”

  There I was, slumped against the bedroom doorway, barefoot in Madame Lucia’s trademark kimono. The lighting was terrible, and the flash washed out the vibrant colors of the robe. A glare reflected off my eyes, and the halo of light from the bedroom backlit the photo with an eerie silver glow.

  “You didn’t warn me.” I tried to delete the photo from the touchscreen, but Riley tugged the camera out of my grasp.

  “Don’t trash it,” she said. “It’s a good reminder.”

  “Of what?”

  “Not to lie to yourself.”

  I snatched the camera from her and flipped it around so she was the object in the lens. “Oh, yeah? Let’s see how you like it.” The flash went off again, and I lowered the camera to check Riley’s photo.

  “Let me see,” she said, yanking me down to her height.

  The girl in the picture stared right into the lens, perfectly centered in the frame. Rounded shoulders dwarfed by the Blondie shirt, limp colorless hair, and those clear, unblinking eyes. She didn’t smile or convey any emotion whatsoever.

  “I look fine,” Riley declared.

  “Enough photos.” I switched the camera from photography to video mode and turned it on Riley once again. “Want to get started?”

  For the first time since she appeared in my room, she got nervous. She pulled the neck of the T-shirt up over her mouth and chin like a mask then put her black beanie low on her forehead so only her eyes were visible. So small and beady, she reminded me of a mischievous raccoon pilfering lost gold from a dumpster.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “We can do it tomorrow,” I offered, “but you have to promise to show up. Blondie shirt, remember?”

  “No, no.” She sat in the desk chair, tucked her knees up to her chest, and pulled the shirt over her entire body. I winced as the fabric stretched taut over her bony knees. “We should start now. I’m ready.”

  I sat on the couch across from the desk, steadied the camera, and pressed record. “Let’s start easy,” I said, not bothering with Madame Lucia’s accent. In the last ten minutes, I’d decided to take Jazmin’s advice and turn over a new leaf. If I could give my audience something authentic, they might forgive me for Madame Lucia’s shortcomings. “What’s your name?”

  “Riley Watson,” she declared.

  “Riley, where are we right now?”

  “On the top floor of King and Queens Ski Lodge and Resort.”

  “And what are we doing here?”

  She tipped an invisible hat to acknowledge the repetition of her own question. “I think it’s better to ask what you’re doing here. Shouldn’t we both be in the shot?”

  I hesitated. Other than the kimono and my braid, which was loose and wild after traipsing around the resort all day, I bore none of Madame Lucia’s signature looks. No false lashes or eyeshadow, or lip liner. Just a little mascara, tinted lip moisturizer, and pink cheeks from the sun and the wind. If I was rebooting Madame Lucia’s Parlour for the Dead and Departed, the process started now. With a deep breath, I set the camera on the arm of the sofa, checked that the frame was level, then joined Riley at the desk. She vacated the chair for me to sit on and perched on the desk instead, swinging her slippered feet to and fro. I found it difficult to look directly into the camera, a first for me. It was usually so easy to pander to the lens, but without Madame Lucia’s visage to hide behind, I was vulnerable and scared.

  “Madame Lucia is here to fix me,” Riley announced to the camera.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “But we are here to talk about what’s been happening to you ever since your mom died. Can you explain some of that?”

  Riley kicked her feet against my chair, each thump more forceful than the last. “I hear voices. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

  “You heard them before your mom passed away?”

  “Yup,” she said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t notice them before. They were always in the background, quiet, like a fly buzzing around. Annoying, but not scary. I couldn’t understand them or anything.”

  “Something changed?”

  “They started talking to me,” Riley murmured. She picked up the bushel of sage she’d been playing with earlier, crumbling the dried leaves between her fingertips. “Right after they took Mom, I went inside the resort and heard them.”

  “Who are they?” I urged. “What did they say?”

  Dried sage drifted to the carpet as she dismantled the bushel. “I don’t know who they are, but the things they say—” A shudder shook its way out of her body, starting at her core and working to the top of her head. “It’s awful. And it’s getting worse.”

  I dislodged the sage from her tireless fingers. “What are they saying, Riley?”

  Her round eyes widened like miniature twin replicas of my crystal ball at home. “They tell me to do things,” she whispered. “Dangerous things. They threaten to make bad things happen.”

  The hair on my arms rose. “What kinds of things?”

  “To go into the old lodge.” We sat close enough that it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t looking at me as she spoke. Instead, she stared at a spot over my shoulder. “Where it all started.”

  Please blink. How did she go so long without her eyes drying out?

  “Where’s the
old lodge?”

  “Here.”

  “Okay,” I said, lost. “What got started there?”

  “They talk all at the same time,” Riley said. “I can’t always understand them.”

  I patted her knee in an attempt to comfort her, but she jumped at my touch. “Let’s go back,” I tried. “My number one goal is to keep you safe. Do you remember any of the other bad things they told you to do?”

  Riley finally blinked, and it was as if her soul returned to her body after a short vacation. She focused her gaze on mine. “They tell me to hurt my brother—”

  She whipped her head around and stared into the kitchen. The desk lamp didn’t reach much farther than our set-up in the corner of the suite, so the cabinets and counters in the kitchen were dark. All I could see was a decorative vase—white with hand-painted violets—on the top shelf above the sink, visible because of its light color.

  “Riley, what’s wrong?”

  Slowly, Riley rotated to face me. “They’re visiting you tonight.”

  The camera beeped, a warning to change the memory card, and I got up so hastily I knocked one of Riley’s knees against the other. When I turned the camera off, the absence of the red recording light shook Riley out of her reverie. She hopped off the desk, shaking her arms and legs loose after holding them so tightly against herself for such a long time.

  “I should go, shouldn’t I?” she said.

  “Probably.” I wanted her to leave, but I didn’t want to say that. “It’s late.”

  She patted the top of the camera like it was a puppy who had learned to sit. “Are we going to talk tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s why I’m here, remember?”

  “Okay.” She took her time getting to the door, first tucking the dismantled sage bundle into the pocket of her fleece before pulling it on over my shirt. The glow of the sconces in the hallway crept into the suite as she let herself out, but she paused in the doorway. “They’re not all bad,” she said. “The voices, I mean.”