by Skylar Finn
“What’s with the fishing wire?” she asked, adding cream to her coffee as she set up her note-taking accessories. Highlighters, pens of different colored inks, and tiny sticky notes to mark certain pages in her massive textbook. “We don’t really do ice fishing around here. At least, not as far as I know.”
I shoved the reels under the table and out of sight. “It’s for my YouTube channel.”
“Oh, right. Madame Lucia. Sometimes, I forget that’s you.”
“The others don’t.”
Anytime I passed Imani in the lobby, the teenager bombarded me with questions. When was Madame Lucia’s next episode coming out? Was I going to feature Riley and King and Queens on the show? Could she be the next caller?
“I don’t spend as much time on the Internet as the others do,” Karli said. “Between classes and work, I don’t have time. Oh, crap—”
“What?”
She hastily slammed her textbook shut and shoved it toward my side of the table like it didn’t belong to her. “Mr. Watson’s here. Cover for me, will you?”
Unsure how I was supposed to pass off a biology textbook as my own, I slid it off the table and into the bag with the fishing reels as Karli returned to the bar. Oliver made his way over to my table.
“Two coffees?” he said, eyeing both mine and Karli’s cups. “Aren’t we ambitious?”
“More like exhausted.” I took a sip of Karli’s mocha to prove it was mine, but it was laden with artificially flavored syrup. I hid a grimace. “Hmm, delicious. What’s up, Oliver?”
He took Karli’s recently vacated chair and scooted closer to me. I discreetly switched desktops on my laptop. Though I had permission to film in King and Queens, I wasn’t so sure how Oliver would feel about me using Riley as the centerpiece of the Parlour’s next episode.
“We haven’t talked about Riley in a couple days,” he said. “How’s it going with her? Are you making any progress? I noticed she’s not around this morning.”
“You know Riley,” I said. “She doesn’t do anything unless it’s on her terms. I tend to wait until she’s ready to work, and then she finds me.”
Oliver signaled Karli to bring him his usual cup of Irish breakfast tea. “She gave you the slip, didn’t she?”
Yes.
“No, of course not,” I said.
He chuckled as Karli poured hot water for him. “Don’t worry. I guessed this would happen. Riley’s very independent. She likes to solve all of her problems by herself. I think that’s why she wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor. I thought she might be more willing to talk to you, but—”
“We are talking,” I insisted. “And it’s evident that Riley is indeed able to communicate with the spirits here at King and Queens.”
Oliver dunked two tea bags in and out of his mug. “Really? Would you mind elaborating? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand your line of work.”
“This lodge is home to many restless spirits,” I said, dropping into a paler version of Madame Lucia’s accent on instinct. “It just so happens that Riley is the only one with an ability like mine to sense them. Tell me, has anything strange ever happened in the lodge? Something that might have trapped a number of spirits here?”
He stirred his tea, tried a sip, and added a dollop of honey. “Nothing I can think of.”
“Hmm.” I feigned a pensive mood. “Oliver, I get the sense that Riley is overwhelmed by all of the spirits here, but she seems free of them on the slopes. Perhaps if you’d like to know more about what she’s thinking and feeling, it might be prudent for the two of you to traverse the mountain together.”
“Together?” He tapped his spoon against the saucer. The rattle of metal on porcelain grated on my nerves. “No, no. Riley and I haven’t been skiing in years. She only skis—skied—with her mother.”
“All the more reason,” I said. “Riley’s normal routine was upset by your wife’s untimely passing. She might respond in a positive manner if you return her to a regular schedule, and spending time with her will reinforce the idea that she still has a parent who loves and cares for her.”
Oliver swept his patchy hair from one side of his head to the other. “You’re right, aren’t you? I’ve been ignoring my children.”
“No, no.” I patted his hand. “You’re all dealing with this as best as you can. However, none of you have consulted the others. Now’s the time to do that. It’s been a few weeks since the incident. Reconnect with your children. Take today off and go skiing with Riley. I’m sure she’d love it.”
“I’d love what?” Riley bounded up the stairs into the lounge, dressed in her atrocious ski outfit once again. Snowflakes dotted her beanie but melted rapidly into the fabric.
“Have you been outside?” Oliver asked, all parental disapproval. “I thought I told you to let me know before you do that.”
“I just went for a walk around the garden,” Riley said, dusting snow off her shoulders. Ice splattered to the floor and seeped into the lounge’s carpet. “That’s all.”
Oliver glanced through the Eagle’s View massive windows. It wasn’t snowing nearly enough to warrant Riley’s chilly appearance. “Uh-huh. If that’s the case, you won’t mind accompanying me for a ski then, right?”
“You want to ski with me?”
“Yeah, I thought it might be nice to have a ride with my daughter. What do you think?”
She shuffled from foot to foot. “I don’t have to work with Lucia today? No offense, Lucia.”
“None taken,” I said. “I think your dad wants to spend some time with you on his own. What do you say?”
Riley looked at Oliver, who waited patiently for her answer, and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I need a new pair of gloves though.” She held up her hands to show us how chapped and red they were. “I lost mine somewhere.”
“Here.” I reached into my bag and handed her a pair of old but effective purple gloves. “I couldn’t find mine this morning either, but these were hanging around in my room. I guess another guest left them. They’re a little too small for me, but they should fit you just fine.”
Riley pulled them on and flexed her hands. It was a perfect fit. “That’ll work. You ready to go, Dad?”
Oliver jostled the table as he stood, spilling our tea and coffee over the lips of their mugs. “Yeah. Yes. Well, no. I should change. Do you want to—should we—?”
“I’ll meet you at the chairlift in ten minutes,” Riley offered.
“Great,” he said, relieved she’d taken over. “I’ll be right back.”
As he headed up the elevator to his suite, Riley said to me, “What’s gotten into him? He never wants to spend time with me. He’s always obsessing about the resort.”
“Maybe he’s changing his tune,” I suggested. “Business is slow, and your dad’s hurting too. Give him a chance.”
“It’s weird,” she said, watching the glass elevator ascend. “Did you put him up to this?”
“I might have encouraged it.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Riley, I’m trying to help.”
She sat in the chair right next to mine, so close that melted snow dripped onto my pants and chilled me through the fabric. “I’m not a puppet. Just because we both hear voices doesn’t mean we’re the same. All it means is everyone else thinks we’re crazy. Both of us. Not just me. My father doesn’t trust or respect you. Don’t get it in your head that he does.”
The creepiest thing about King and Queens was Riley Watson. Just when I started to think she was a normal kid, she went and said something like that. Something too mature and insightful for a twelve-year-old. Something with an air about the words, like she knew more than anyone else did. And there was that stare again, clear as the snow falling outside, fixed and unblinking as if she were gaining access to your mind through eye contact.
“You should go,” I said. “Your dad won’t be long.”
She didn’t say anything, just got up and left.
King and Queens was
so massive that there were parts of it I had yet to explore, so I armed myself with my camera and headed into the reaches of the resort farthest from the lobby and main entrance. Everything was dark. None of the sconces or overhead lights were lit. With no guests to occupy any of the rooms, there was no point in wasting energy. I filmed the long, empty hallways. They were ghostly enough on their own, but as I progressed, the quality of the resort’s interior gradually diminished. The carpet was worn bare along the main paths, paint and wallpaper peeled from the top and bottom of the chair rail, and the musty scent of disuse pervaded my nostrils to make camp there. It was as if the front of King and Queens was regularly restored and renovated to keep its regal image aglow, but no money was left to rehabilitate the remainder of the resort. I arrived at the other restaurant Oliver had mentioned the first day. Chairs were stacked upside down on the tables. A layer of dust decorated the table linens and the wine glasses hung above the bar. The copper pots and pans in the kitchen were lined with green oxidation tarnish. No one had dined here for a very long time. Through a double egress door off the other side of the kitchen was a huge, ornate ballroom with a filigree ceiling, gold columns akin to the Parthenon, and chandeliers draped with crimson banners. My footsteps echoed as I crossed the dance floor, panning the camera from one side of the massive room to the other. Then I turned the lens on myself.
“I’ve never seen this part of the resort,” I said to my future audience. “The way Oliver talked about it made it sound like it was still in use before his wife died, but this place looks like no one’s set foot here in about forty years. And this style” —I swung the camera around to showcase the antique vibe— “is so outdated. King and Queens was built in the late 1930s. Other parts of the resort were renovated to keep it relevant, but the ballroom hasn’t been touched. Look at these lightbulbs.” I clambered onto a dusty chair to unscrew a dead bulb from one of the sconces. “It’s made of heavy-duty glass. Check out the filament.” I held the bulb closer to the lens so the viewers could see the tangle of metal inside. It looked right out of Thomas Edison’s laboratory. “These haven’t been replaced in years. They don’t even make bulbs like this anymore.” I hopped off the chair, adding the lightbulb to the bag with the fishing wire. “I can’t figure out why Oliver would lie about this part of the resort. The logical guess is that the Watsons ran out of money to maintain it, and he was too embarrassed to admit that. But what if there’s a supernatural reason for it instead? It feels different in here than the rest of the lodge. Colder. Maybe the heater isn’t on in here, maybe not.”
It was much colder in the old ballroom, but I doubted it was due to supernatural forces. I walked as I pandered to the camera, making sure the shot included the backdrop of the resort behind me. Across the room, three pairs of double doors lined the ballroom’s front walls. They were meant to open all at once to display the ballroom’s decadence to whoever waited for entry on the other side. I pushed on the first set. It opened about three inches before a chain on the other side rattled tight, preventing me from getting through. I tried the next door. It too was chained off from the opposite side.
“Check this out,” I said to my viewers, zooming in on the rusted chains. “This part of the hotel is blocked off. Definitely creepy.”
I checked the last set of doors. With a good heave of my shoulder, the chains gave way, allowing the door to open a foot and a half. I knelt, slipped the camera through first with the lens pointing toward me, and squeezed through the gap. The chain jangled as I forced myself through the tiny opening. The lock caught on the collar of my sweater, tearing a hole in it as I pulled free. Once on the other side, the door drifted shut with an echoing bang.
“Whoa,” I said, for once not for the camera at all.
I stood in a second lobby, one that matched the ballroom’s antique style rather than the refurbished cleanliness of King and Queen’s main entrance except for one thing. It was demolished. The walls were charred and black. The front desk lay in broken, burnt pieces as if an explosion had launched it across the room. Ash coated the floor and the walls, painting everything gray and black. Debris—plaster, fallen pillars, scorched beams—was piled up in the corners, as if the fire department had come through as an afterthought to clear the main paths of rubble. A stone archway framed a single corridor leading away from the lobby. Though the stones were chipped and seared, it was the only piece of construction that had survived the destruction. Something was etched into the stone, but the words were unreadable through the ash. Once I remembered it was there, I picked the camera off the floor and filmed the blackened lobby.
“I think I figured out why Oliver lied,” I said. “Looks like King and Queens had a huge fire. It’s dark in here, so I’m not sure if you can see everything, but this place is absolutely wrecked. Also, this is a second lobby. There are the main doors, the front desk—or what’s left of it—and an old-school elevator shaft. God bless whoever tried to ride that down to get out. Wow. It’s not too safe in here, but I’m going to go a little farther in for you guys. I definitely feel something spiritually.”
It might not have been spirits, but there was an explicit charge to the air of the resort’s old wing, most likely due to the abandonment of this section of the building. I picked across the lobby and crossed beneath the stone archway to peek into the rooms off the main corridor.
“Looks like a gentleman’s club in here,” I said. “Lots of broken whiskey bottles, leather chairs, cigar boxes—” I picked up a surviving cigar and put it between my teeth for the camera. “What a waste. Let’s keep going. Oh, here’s a library or an office of some sort.” Mountains of burned pages and fallen bookshelves filled the edges of this room. A single desk in the direct center of the destruction had pulled through, though the green felt on its surface was burned off. As I focused the camera on it, a tickle crept across the back of my neck. “Rest in peace, little desk.”
Most of the other doorways in the corridors led to guest rooms, each in more disarray than the last. There were signs of hurried exits, like shoes scattered near the doors and scuff marks along the carpet. Blackened handprints patterned parts of the wallpaper that hadn’t been completely destroyed in the fire. At the end of the corridor, an emergency staircase led to the upper levels. I set my foot on the bottom step, and my boot crashed clean through the scorched wood.
“Not going up there.” I angled the camera up the staircase for dramatic effect. The gloomy level above was hardly visible, but I loved the mysterious effect of the dust flecks floating across the dark screen. “I would if I could though. Let’s see what else we can find.”
After checking out the rest of the rooms, I decided it wouldn’t be an episode of Madame Lucia’s Parlour without some good old-fashioned ghost shenanigans, so I paused the camera and went back to the library to set up a few tricks. I rigged a couple lines of fishing wire to a tattered book, a half-melted globe, and the remnants of a desk chair. Then I arranged a few candles on the desk in a semi-circle, set up the camera, and pressed record.
“I got the most vibes in this room, especially around this desk,” I announced. Madame Lucia’s accent tried to creep in automatically, but I beat it down. This was the time to try something new. The show was still a sham, but maybe the new setting would encourage viewers to return to my channel. “So I figured we might as well try to call some spirits in here to see if they can explain what happened to this section of the resort. We’re going to cleanse the room first though. Here we go.”
I lit a bushel of sage—one Riley hadn’t gotten her hands on yet—and smudged the room.
“Sage or sandalwood helps to clear bad energy from a room,” I explained. Previously, Madame Lucia was all theatrics and no explanation, but I wasn’t ignorant of mediumship as an art form. I’d actually done a lot of research to make Madame Lucia as believable as possible. “Candles act as a magnet for earthbound spirits,” I went on, lighting the pillars one by one. “White or pink, for love, is best. Don’t stray from those colo
rs. Doing so could result in calling upon something demonic.”
I took more items from my bag and placed them on the desk. “Amethyst for protection, salt and olive oil to charge the candles, and a bell” —I shook the small bell to produce a high peal— “for the spirits to use should they care to join us. All of these things help to produce vibrations for our séance. The more vibrations, the more likely we are to be visited by a spirit. Now that we’re ready, we can start with a chant or prayer to open a pathway to communications.”
I cleared my throat. “North, south, east, and west. I call upon thee who does not rest. Earth, air, wind, and fire. I call to hear the final choir—”
The door to the library slammed shut.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins. The fishing wire lay unmoving on the floor. Not one line was hooked up to the door.
“Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”
Silence. Then:
“Get out!”
The words were delivered via a gut-wrenching, ear-splitting scream, each syllable elongated into a wail of indescribable pain. Worse still, the order repeated itself, one hoarse yell after the other, until the entire library shook with the voices of the dead.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”
I blew out the candles, scooped up the camera, and raced for the closed door, unconcerned with the props I’d left on the desk. When I yanked the door open and stumbled into the hallway, I screamed. Figures cloaked in black waited at the end of the hallway near the emergency staircase. I ran from them, toward the old lobby, but as I reached the archway, old stones cascaded from above and a burnt wooden beam fell into my path. Covering my head with my arms, I vaulted over the beam, but my boot got caught on the lip of it. As I went sprawling, the cloaked figures advanced from behind. With another yell, I scrambled across the floor of the lobby, slipped through the chained door to the ballroom, and ran smack into Tyler Watson’s chest.