Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  “The old wing? You mean near the resort’s second restaurant?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know. I never go over there.”

  “You don’t? Where’s your room?”

  “Tenth floor,” she answered. “It’s the only corner suite in the entire resort with extra windows and a reading nook. It also has the added benefit of being far away from Tyler’s room.”

  I zipped my jacket up to my chin. “For future reference, where does he stay?”

  “Down here,” she said. “His room is right next to the gym. I’ve never seen him lift a weight in his life, but I guess that weird skinny muscle comes from somewhere. Are you ready to go? Have you got the stuff?”

  I patted my pockets. All I had was my smallest digital camera. “What stuff?”

  “The séance stuff,” she clarified. “You didn’t bring anything?”

  “Whoa, since when are we holding a séance?”

  Riley huffed like a tiny frustrated bull. “Are you kidding me? I told you I wanted to go out there and ask the ghost to leave me alone. How are we supposed to do that without holding a séance?”

  “A séance is to call earthbound spirits to you,” I reminded her. “If this chick’s already out and about, she shouldn’t have any trouble finding us. Here, take this.”

  The amethyst stone from earlier was still in my pocket. I plunked it into Riley’s palm. She weighed it in her hand and stared at it.

  “What is it?”

  “Amethyst,” I said. “It provides protection.”

  She lifted the gem to her nose to inspect it. “Is it real?”

  “Yes.” Probably not. I’d gotten it at the same flea market as my questionably-priced crystal ball. “Can we go now? I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible.”

  Riley tucked the rock into the chest pocket of her ski jacket. “Fine. Come on. And don’t drag your feet. Dad has the floors waxed every night. If he sees scuff marks, he’ll know someone was out.”

  “We’ll just blame it on Tyler.”

  Her face lit up. “Great idea!”

  The cold bit into me like a feral cat as soon as we left the lobby, sinking its frigid teeth into every pore. I opened a packet of hand warmers and slipped one into each glove then gave Riley a pair too. She put them in her boots instead. The moon stained the world silver. Every foot of snow shimmered like metal dusted from a blacksmith’s honing blade. The chair lift was quiet, a still picture of a silent beast with many legs as it slouched up the mountain.

  “Guess we didn’t think this through enough,” I said of the unmoving lift. “How are we supposed to get up the mountain?”

  Riley dangled a single key from her index finger. “I borrowed a snowmobile.”

  The vehicle was hidden amongst the dead roses in the butterfly garden. How Riley had managed to get it there without anyone spotting her was a mystery. For all I knew, the kid had magic powers.

  “Borrowed?” I asked.

  “Yes. It belongs to the resort. The resort belongs to my father. As logic would follow, I am perfectly within my bounds to take this snowmobile out for a jaunt whenever I want.”

  “Uh-huh.” I circled the vehicle. It was bigger than I imagined, painted matte black with bright yellow stripes like a hornet. No wonder Riley picked this one. It matched her garish ski outfit. “There’s only one problem, Riley. I can’t drive this thing.”

  She straddled the seat, slid the key into place, and gripped the handlebars as the engine turned over. “Who said anything about you driving? Get on.”

  “No way. You don’t even have a learner’s permit.”

  Riley tugged me toward the snowmobile until I had to swing a leg over or risk the skis taking out my shins. “Would you relax? I’ve been doing this for years. My mom used to let me steer all the time.”

  “How safe.”

  Riley flipped a switch, reared the handle, and the snowmobile shot forward, spinning a wave of snow up behind it. Nearly upseated, I wrapped both arms around Riley’s pygmy torso.

  “Lean into it!” she shouted over the sound of the wind as we careened up the mountain.

  I followed her lead, ducking as low as possible to avoid resistance. When she leaned in either direction, I followed. After a few minutes, I got the hang of shifting our weight back and forth depending on the angle of the snowmobile, and we proceeded up the mountain at a breakneck pace. Riley, bless her heart, actually seemed to know what she was doing, but the farther we progressed, the more I dwelled on my conversation with Daniel from earlier. Was there a difference between my trip with Riley and the one she took the morning of her mother’s death? Were we really up here to track down a ghost or did she have something more macabre planned for me? Her determined fingers handled the massive snowmobile with apparent ease. Between the two of us, she had the advantage of navigating through the snow. I was relying on a twelve-year-old to keep both of us safe, but what if Riley’s intention had never been to keep me safe? Too busy thinking about it, I forgot to lean in around a turn, and the snowmobile jerked across the snow.

  “You okay back there?” Riley called over her shoulder. The fluffy white ball atop her beanie fluttered in the wind like a rabbit’s tail. The hat itself was a deep maroon instead of Riley’s usual neon garb. It wasn’t her style at all, and it highlighted the innocence of her young face.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just keep going. Are we close?”

  “Getting there.”

  A few minutes later, Riley coaxed the snowmobile to a smooth stop. I stumbled off with wobbly legs and a tight core. Apparently, snowmobiling was a full body workout. Riley laughed as I shook out my shaky muscles.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I should’ve warned you.”

  “It’s fine. Where are we?”

  She pointed to a nearby sign that marked the run for intermediate and advanced skiers. “Winder’s run. It was my mother’s favorite because it’s so twisty and fun. It’s mine too.”

  “This is where you felt the ghost?”

  “Yeah. What do we do now?”

  I stamped my feet as the cold threatened to seep into my bones. “Now we wait. If she wants to talk to you again, she’ll show up.”

  Riley reclined on the seat of the snowmobile like it was a therapist’s couch, cradling her head in her hands as she stared up at the starry sky. “It’s boring being psychic.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered. I attempted to clear a patch of snow from beneath a tree, but it was too deep to bother with. Instead, I lifted myself to the lowest, thickest branch and sat in the fork in the trunk. The tree’s bark warmed up after a few minutes as I shared my body heat with it. I thought of Sam Gribley, the teenager from that book My Side of the Mountain who decided to leave home and live in a hollowed-out tree in the middle of the Catskills Mountains. When I read it in middle school, I was skeptical that anyone under the age of eighteen would have the endurance to make it in the wilderness alone, but after meeting Riley, I was beginning to change my tune. If King and Queens disappeared without reason, she would be the one to keep us both alive.

  I tracked the constellations and the moon’s path across the sky as minute after minute crept by. After an hour, I opened another packet of warmers and shoved them down the front of my shirt. Riley took a thermos from her backpack, took a sip of the steaming liquid inside, then offered it to me. It was thick, homemade hot chocolate, sweet enough to strangle an oompa loompa, but it did the trick. Its warmth coated my throat and trickled into my stomach. I returned the thermos to Riley and took out my camera to shoot a few angles of our place on the mountain.

  “Do you ever go anywhere without a camera?” Riley asked.

  “Not if there’s good content available.”

  “Can I see?”

  I passed the camera down to her. The red light on the front blinked as she filmed me up in the tree.

  “You look like a bear,” she said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “A sm
all one. Is it weird?”

  “Is what weird?”

  She played with the zoom toggle, focusing on a spot of darkness at the tops of the trees. “Trying to catch all of your spiritual encounters on camera. Don’t you get tired of living through a lens? Isn’t it better to experience things firsthand rather than through a screen?”

  “Spoken like a true philistine,” I teased. “And no, I don’t get tired of it. The way I see it, mediumship is an art. As an artist, I’m inclined to share my work with the world.”

  “Hmm.”

  “So what gives, kid?” I asked. “We’ve been sitting here for two and a half hours, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of your ghost.”

  “Maybe you’re not concentrating hard enough.”

  “Or maybe she’s not coming.” I rubbed my hands together, enjoying the whisk of the gloves’ polyester lining. “If she sensed my presence, she might have gotten scared off.”

  Riley discreetly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that must be it.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I suppose.”

  “How often do you ride the snowmobile up the mountain by yourself?

  She aimed the camera at the sky. It would be hell to go through and organize all of her footage later. “Why? Are you going to tell my dad?”

  “No,” I said. “I was wondering if that was why you were the first one to find your mother. It sounds like both of you made a habit of venturing out in the morning before anyone else was awake.”

  Riley’s silence was answer enough.

  “Did you ever go together?” I asked her. “You and your mom?”

  “We used to,” she said, tucking the camera into her chest. “She would wake me up before dawn and bribe the controls guy to turn on the chair lift early for us. Then we’d ski the fresh powder before anyone else. It was my favorite part of the day.”

  “But the two of you stopped doing that? How come?”

  “My dad got weird,” she replied. “When they started arguing every day, Mom stopped waking me up to go with her. I guess she wanted to be alone, so I didn’t ask to come. Do you believe in love?”

  “Uh.” The sudden shift in topic threw me off. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Like true love?”

  “Not like the fairytales,” I said. “Everyone romanticizes true love, but it’s not like that. It’s not some sweeping grandeur that makes everything in your life sparkle and shine. To me, true love means doing your absolute best for the most important people in your life while they do the same for you. It’s not always fifty-fifty. Some days, you can only give twenty-five percent of your love, and the other person has to pick up the slack. But then it’s only fair for you to return the favor when someone can only give you twenty-five percent for the day. It should all equal out in the end. And I don’t think true love only happens with romance. It should be a part of all of your relationships.”

  “Like mothers and daughters?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And friends and cousins and siblings.”

  “I hate Tyler,” she replied, unvarnished. “Dad’s okay sometimes, but it’s not the same. Mom and I were different. Is it okay not to truly love my dad?”

  The question tugged at my heartstrings because this was not a lesson any child should have to learn but so many often did anyway, and at a much younger age than Riley. I got the idea of it around eight or nine, but I didn’t fully understand the concept of obligatory love until much later.

  “Yeah, it’s okay,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “Sometimes, parents aren’t our best source for love because they never learned to give their kids what they really need. To be fair though, most of them try their best, and we have to recognize that. Your dad’s doing his best to take care of you. That’s why he called me in the first place.”

  “I guess,” Riley said. “So you don’t love your parents either?”

  “My dad’s dead,” I told her. “I loved him a lot. My mom—like your dad—tries. Sometimes I forget that, and it’s easy to get mad at her for the things she says or does, but I love her too. It’s just a more distant love.”

  Riley turned the camera on herself. “I think that’s how I am with Dad. Do you have any true loves?”

  “My best friend,” I admitted. “She gets it. She gets everything.”

  “I don’t have a best friend.”

  “Don’t worry, you will.”

  “The kids at school think I’m weird.” She rolled over to lay on her stomach. “They don’t want to talk about stuff like this.”

  “You’re advanced for your age,” I reminded her. “That scares people.”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “That also scares people.”

  “Why though?” she asked.

  “Got me beat. Actually, no,” I added. “I do know why. It’s because most people prefer ignorance to enlightenment. It’s easier to focus on your own happiness when you’re unaware of everyone else’s unhappiness.”

  “So they’re selfish.”

  “It’s the human condition.”

  The camera beeped and turned off, its battery dead. Riley put it in her backpack for safekeeping as I adjusted my seat on the tree. A nub in the bark dug into my back, and the hand warmers were starting to lose their edge as the cold started to set in again.

  “Hey, Riley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Detective Hawkins found your bracelet in the snow under the ski lift yesterday.”

  She swung around to look up at me. “The one with the ski charm?”

  “Yeah. Here.” I dug it out of my pocket and handed it down to her. “That’s it, right?”

  Riley held it reverently in her gloved hands. “I thought I’d lost it. My mom gave it to me.”

  “I had to convince him not to keep it as evidence,” I said.

  She pressed the bracelet to her heart. “Why would he keep it—oh.”

  As understanding flashed across her face, I knew Daniel’s hunch was wrong about her. I knew before too, instinctively, but her hurt expression solidified my opinion of her. Yes, she was strange and inquisitive for her age, but that didn’t make her a maladjusted child with a sick lust for murder.

  “I didn’t want to ask—”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “He told you to ask, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Carefully, she put the bracelet in the same pocket that carried the amethyst stone. “Can I show you something? It’s not far.”

  “Okay.”

  She slid off the snowmobile as I dropped out of the tree and took my hand to lead me away from the ski run. The snow was so deep that we had to lift our boots to knee level to clear each step, but Riley was persistent. A few minutes later, we stopped beneath a towering oak tree, and Riley pointed up. Above us, a treehouse teetered in the wind.

  “Is that where you hold meetings with your associates?” I asked.

  “My dad and I built it two years ago to watch a bald eagle nest in the next tree over.” She brushed snow from the two-by-fours nailed into the trunk of the tree and clambered up. “I don’t think he knows I still use it. Are you coming?”

  I regarded the weather-beaten way up. “Do I have to?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, twenty feet above. “I check to make sure all the nails are holding every time I come up here. Move it, wimp.”

  I grabbed hold of the first plank of wood and started up. The tree was easy to climb. The two-by-fours were conveniently placed where there were no nearby branches to further your ascent. Nevertheless, by the time I pulled myself into the treehouse at the top—the entrance of which was in the floor of the questionable building—I was sweating from the effort. Riley took my hand and helped me up. It was warmer in the tiny, enclosed space, but the wind whistled by so loudly, the entire treehouse shook and shivered. One wall, facing east, was half open to the elements, serving as a little balcony to the outside world. In the next tree over, the rem
nants of an eagle’s nest waited for the birds to return to it in the spring. Beyond that, the treehouse had a perfect view of the ski lift. Down below, most of the ski runs were visible.

  “Earlier, you asked me how often I took the snowmobile out for a joyride,” Riley said, gazing at the lift. “I did it every single day Mom got up to ski by herself. It was a safety precaution. You shouldn’t go skiing by yourself, but Mom did it regularly. I thought if I was up here too, watching over her, I could get to her with the snowmobile if she fell or got lost, but I never expected something to go wrong with the ski lift.” She stopped, sniffled, and started again. “I saw it happen. The whole thing. She was alive when I got to her, but she was pinned underneath the chair. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t get her out. It’s my fault—”

  I tugged her close and wrapped my arms around her as she buried her face in the front of my jacket and completely let herself go. For the first time since I’d met her, she felt like a little kid instead of a miniature adult, small and irresponsible with a fragile hold on her emotions. She shook with each fresh wave of sobs but cried silently. We sank to the floor of the treehouse, where she clambered into my lap like a four-year-old and hugged me until her grip faltered. I combed her hair with my fingers and held her until she was ready to let go.

  “It was not your fault,” I muttered into the fake fur lining of her coat’s hood. “Do you understand me? You didn’t make the ski lift fall. Your mother’s death was not your fault. Say it.”

  “It w-wasn’t my fault.”

  “That’s right,” I said. My voice cracked and my throat closed up as I willed myself not to cry. “It wasn’t your fault, Riley.”

  We sat there long enough for my legs to go stiff under Riley’s weight, but I refused to be the first one to pull away. Slowly, she stopped shaking and pulled out of our hug.

  “You’re not a real psychic, are you?” she asked, framing her hands on my shoulders.

  “I—what? Of course I am.”

  “It’s okay,” she sniffed. “I knew the truth before you got to the resort.”

  “You did?”

  She crawled out of my lap and stretched. “It was pretty obvious. And that last episode of Madame Lucia’s Parlour gave it away too.”