“Still it’s weird, though,” said Brian. He started to edge into the closet, pushing the mops to one side.
A whole sentence flashed through Ollie’s brain. Stay out of closets. Without thinking, she jumped forward, grabbed Brian by the hoodie, and hauled him back.
“Hey,” she said. “It might not be safe.”
“It’s just a closet,” said Brian.
Behind them, Coco suddenly cried out in a trembling voice, “Look! Look!”
They all whirled around. A tall black shape stood at the end of the hallway.
Ollie recognized it. She’d seen it in a dream, whispering bad in the dark. It wore a black dress that swept the carpet, and they couldn’t see its face at all, because the dim light shone behind, casting its shadow long over the floor.
It pointed at them. It smiled, a vast, bony smile. They shuddered.
And then it turned and vanished, as quickly as it had come.
They all stared in stunned silence.
“I think,” said Coco in a very small voice, “that I don’t want to look for ghosts anymore.”
“What was that?” demanded Brian.
“Mother Hemlock, maybe,” said Mr. Voland, looking positively delighted. “Unless we are all hallucinating. Shall we continue?” He was staring eagerly down the hallway, like a dog pointing after a bird. “Make sure you write down your impressions for future comparison.”
“Absolutely not,” said Coco, with surprising force. She didn’t move. “I want to go back to the lobby.”
“Me too,” said Ollie, just as strongly. “There’s something wrong.”
5
“NOW,” SAID MR. VOLAND. He looked annoyed. “I am sorry that the first appearance of an unearthly being has alarmed you, but—”
“But, nothing,” said Ollie firmly. “That was scary and it might be dangerous. We’re going back to the lobby.”
“Ghosts, while sometimes sinister, are rarely dangerous,” said Mr. Voland. “What makes you think that one was?”
Ollie glanced down at her watch. Still blank. “Just a hunch,” she said.
Mr. Voland looked like he didn’t believe her. But without letting him say anything else, Ollie turned and headed down the stairs. Her friends followed. “Suit yourselves,” said Mr. Voland, shrugging, and took off by himself down the hallway. Ollie glanced back just in time to see him disappearing into the dimness after the gaunt, grinning ghost. She shivered.
Ollie, Brian, and Coco hurried down the stairs. Brian looked surprised that Ollie had changed her mind. Coco just seemed happy that Ollie had backed her up. “You know,” said Brian as they walked, “that was—freaky, but we did kind of sign up for ghost hunting. Not that I’m complaining, but what made you change your mind, Owl?”
Coco and Brian were the only two people in the whole world who knew what Ollie’s watch could do. In a hurried whisper, Ollie told them about BEWARE. “I thought we just needed to be extra careful,” Ollie explained. “Until we know why it said that.” She added, hesitating, “And—that ghost in the hallway—I recognized her. I saw her in my nightmare last night.” She shot another glance back up the dim stairwell. “I figured that can’t be a good sign.”
“You dreamed about who—Mother Hemlock?” Brian demanded. “If that’s who she was?”
“I think so,” said Ollie. “But last night, I didn’t even know she existed.”
Coco said suddenly, “I had a nightmare on the road last night. About a little girl who kept saying she’d lost her bones. There was a scarecrow in it too.”
“There was a girl in my dream too!” exclaimed Ollie. “She said she’d lost her bones. And she said don’t listen.”
“Don’t listen to what?” asked Coco.
“To the dead voices,” said Ollie. Her lips and hands felt suddenly cold. “Don’t listen to the dead voices.”
They looked at each other.
“But what voices?” Brian broke in, sounding bewildered. “You’ve never dreamed about ghosts before, have you?”
Ollie and Coco shook their heads.
“And earlier,” Brian continued, “Coco said she saw a ghost in the road coming up. But that was someone in a ski jacket. Three different ghosts?”
“I guess,” said Coco, but now she looked doubtful.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence?” said Brian. “Dreaming about a girl and her bones? You guys do hang out a lot. Maybe you would have the same dream.”
“But then Mr. Voland shows up and tells us that the stories say this place is haunted by a woman and a little girl?” said Coco. “Like the ones in our dreams? That’s a big coincidence.”
Ollie didn’t understand it, but she didn’t think it was a coincidence.
“The ghosts behind the mist weren’t dangerous,” Brian continued. “Why would your watch say BEWARE now?”
“And then go blank,” Coco chimed in. “It never did that before.”
“I don’t know,” said Ollie. “I don’t like it. I need a new way to talk to my mom. I thought—Mr. Voland seemed to know one. But now he’s up there.” Ollie glanced again back up into the dim stairwell.
Brian said, “Mr. Voland is a little weird, Owl. I wouldn’t listen to everything . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence. They had gotten to the bottom of the stairs.
Coco wrapped her arms around herself. “Did it get colder?”
Brian pulled his hoodie up over his head. Ollie did the same. “Colder? It’s freezing.”
It was. In the last ten minutes, the lobby had turned icy cold, as though the front door were standing open to the storm outside. But the door was shut tight.
“Guess the heat’s out,” said Ollie.
“But isn’t it weird that it got this cold this fast?” Coco asked.
“Yup,” said Brian.
They all exchanged glances.
Through the window in the front door, Ollie saw the torrent of falling snow. It looked like a wall. Keeping them there. The lobby fire was still out, but they went over to the hearth anyway.
“I’m going to talk to Mr. Voland when he comes back,” said Ollie decisively. “I’m going to explain about my watch and ask him again how you talk to ghosts. We need to ask my mom what’s going on, the sooner the better.”
Coco nodded. But Brian was frowning. “Owl, why not talk to your dad first? And Coco’s mom. They’re smart. Tell them about the watch and everything. Maybe they can help us figure this place out.”
“My dad doesn’t believe in ghosts,” retorted Ollie. “He’s not going to start believing just because we tell him. We have to figure out what’s going on. And quickly! The last time my watch beeped, we were about to be grabbed and turned into scarecrows! We’ll talk to my mom. She can help us.”
Even though she was scared, Ollie felt a surge of hope and excitement at the thought.
Brian said, “Right. It’s just—weird that you would trust Mr. Voland with the secret of the watch but not your dad.”
“I’ll tell my dad,” said Ollie. “Eventually. We just don’t know enough yet.”
Brian looked unconvinced.
Just then, from the stairway came a soft whistle.
They all whipped around. The stairwell was empty.
Coco said, “Was that—is that Mrs. Wilson’s bird clock?”
Ollie shook her head. “No.”
“How do you know?” asked Brian.
“It only chimes on the hour,” said Ollie. Her stomach felt hollow with fear.
“Then what—” whispered Coco. All three were staring up the stairs. Then they heard a laugh. A child’s soft giggle. It seemed to come from everywhere. An icy wind whipped through the lobby. It felt suddenly to Ollie that every stuffed animal there was staring at them. She could see a lot of teeth.
Brian muttered, “The bear is on its hind legs now. Wasn’t it—?
”
“What’s happening?” whispered Coco. The whistling came again, broke into a thin, tuneless sound. Stopped. There was a silence. The lobby was colder than ever. The giggle became a child’s frightened wail, and the sound of small, hurrying feet.
Suddenly Coco gasped and pointed. The second-floor landing wasn’t empty. A girl stood there. A girl in a long white nightgown. Her face was gray-white; her nose was black. Her eyes were frozen open, huge and unblinking.
They could see the darkness of the hallway behind her. Through her. She raised a hand. Her fingers were black with frostbite. Her lips moved. They didn’t hear anything, but Ollie thought she recognized the words:
Don’t listen.
Then more footsteps came racing up behind her. The girl shot a panicked look over her shoulder and disappeared.
Next second, they saw Mr. Voland, sprinting down the stairs, wild-eyed. He’d lost his glasses. He took the stairs two at a time, skidded to a halt in the center of the lobby, and bent over, elbows on his knees, shivering.
Ollie, Brian, and Coco went and crowded around him. “Mr. Voland,” said Ollie. “Mr. Voland, what happened? Did you see her? The girl?”
Mr. Voland dragged in a deep breath and stood up. He was as pale as the snowstorm outside. He stared up the stairwell. Then, slowly, he lifted his hand, pulled down his sleeve. There were white marks on his arm. Like early frostbite.
“What girl? No. I found her,” he said grimly. “Mother Hemlock. I think we’re in trouble.”
6
MR. VOLAND DIDN’T have time to say any more. Mrs. Wilson came bustling in, her arms full of firewood. “Goodness,” she said brightly. “Look at you three just standing in the lobby. Tired of ghost hunting already?”
They all stared at her, and none of them said anything. Mrs. Wilson dropped her armful of sticks next to the cold fireplace. She knelt down in front of it. “Well, here goes nothing,” she said. She pulled out a book of matches, struck one, and lit the tinder. A little curl of smoke came up. It flared and went dead.
“Allow me,” said Mr. Voland. He knelt beside Mrs. Wilson. Coco noticed that his hands were shaking.
What had he seen upstairs? Coco wondered.
He did manage to light the tinder again, despite the shakes. He blew on it. Coco had seen Ollie’s dad expertly start a lot of fires. She could see that Mr. Voland knew what he was doing. This time the tinder caught, and after a minute, the smaller sticks. Soon Mr. Voland had a small fire going. He stood up, dusting off his knees. He still looked afraid.
Coco sighed with relief herself. The fire felt like a little victory against the shadows, against the intense cold, against—whatever was upstairs. She felt grateful Mr. Voland was there, even if he was a little strange. She reached out and warmed her hands.
“Thank you, Don,” said Mrs. Wilson stiffly. “Do you mind keeping the fire going for a bit? I have a lot to do.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Mr. Voland. “Of course I will.”
Mrs. Wilson hurried off.
“Why are we in trouble?” Ollie asked Mr. Voland. He was staring into the fireplace, watching the slow dance of the flames.
“Mr. Voland, what happened upstairs?” Coco asked.
Mr. Voland shrugged and answered them both, never taking his eyes off the fire. “Most ghosts—they just sort of exist. They’re not people. More like the memory of a person. A piece of the past, stuck in the present. But sometimes—occasionally—they are more. Those ghosts don’t just exist, they act. They want something. That’s when they’re dangerous, when they want something.”
“Does Mother Hemlock want something?” Coco asked.
“Yes.”
“What does she want?” Brian asked.
“I think,” said Mr. Voland, with a glance at the staircase, “that she wants to keep us here.”
“Why?” they all asked together.
“It will be dark in a few hours. Ghosts are stronger in the dark.”
Coco shrank closer to her friends. The scarecrows in the world behind the mist had hunted in the dark.
“Okay then,” said Ollie, saying what they were all thinking. “But what does she want to do? When she’s stronger in the dark?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Mr. Voland smiled down at them, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “I fear the answer might be—unpleasant.”
“But you said ghosts weren’t dangerous,” said Brian.
“The majority are not,” said Mr. Voland crisply. “But the small remainder—can be. We should keep the fire going, if we can. They do not like firelight.”
He wouldn’t say anything else. He knelt and busied himself with the fire. After a minute, Ollie, Brian, and Coco went around to the dining room. The morning light had gone from the windows there. It was after noon, and the room looked cold and gray; shadows gathered in the corners, untouched by the tiny fire. The big dark mirror glimmered opposite the fireplace.
Brian said sharply, “What’s that?” He was staring at the mirror. Coco and Ollie looked, but Coco didn’t see anything. Just the dining room and their three tense faces.
“I don’t see anything,” said Ollie. “Brian, what was it?”
Brian shook his head, still staring at the mirror. He looked shaken. “I thought I saw her. In the mirror. The girl in the nightgown. She’s gone now.”
Coco looked through the big dining room window. At that time of year, she knew, it would start to get dark in only a few hours. The snow poured down outside.
Despite Mr. Voland’s care, the fire was small and sullen. It sputtered. “What’s wrong with the fire?” Coco asked. Ollie had a woodstove at home and knew a lot about fires.
“It’s acting like the wood is wet,” said Ollie. She went over to check the woodpile. “It’s not, though.” Another weird thing. Too many weird things, Coco thought. More than anything, she wanted to go home. But they couldn’t, even if they wanted to. They were stuck.
Trapped, she thought, with an anxious glance at the staircase. We’re trapped.
When the front door clattered open, they all jumped. Coco’s mom and Ollie’s dad came in, brushing snow from their hats and coats. Mr. Adler’s beard was all frosted up, and they both had snow in their eyelashes.
“Lordy!” said Mr. Adler. “It’s definitely snowing!” He stamped more snow off his boots, looked around. “And it’s not much warmer in here than outside,” he added. “Sue, is the heat not working either? How’s the fire doing?”
Mrs. Wilson trudged back into the dining room. “Don just got the fire going again,” she said, with a slightly friendlier nod at Mr. Voland. “Sam’s trying to fix the heat. But . . .”
“Uh-huh. We couldn’t fix the generators either,” said Mr. Adler. “It was the strangest thing.”
“What do you mean, strange?” Coco asked.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with the generators,” put in Coco’s mom. She peeled off her ski jacket and shook the snow from her hair and coat. “At least, nothing that I could find. Except for not working, of course.” She kicked snow off her own boots and went to the fire to warm her hands beside Coco. “How’s it going, hon?” she asked.
“Okay,” said Coco in a small voice. She debated telling her mother about what had happened in the upstairs hall. She decided not to. Her mom would just get annoyed at Mr. Voland for scaring them. She wouldn’t actually believe they’d seen a ghost.
Mrs. Wilson said, “Well, I’ll admit the heating has got the same problem. It seems fine, everything looks good, the propane tanks are full. It’s just not heating. We need to get an expert out, but . . .”
“But no one is getting through today,” Ollie’s dad finished. “Not until the storm ends.” They all turned and looked out the dining room window. The storm didn’t look like it planned to end anytime soon. Even with a small fire going, the lobby and dining room wer
e still freezing. Coco wished she could go back upstairs for her ski jacket. But now she was scared of the long dark hallway, the rattling closet door, the black-dressed figure at the end of the hall, of Mr. Voland’s voice: she wants to keep us here.
All the adults, Coco noticed, looked worried too.
She pulled out her phone. Twenty percent battery. She wished she’d grabbed her charging cable from the room. Too distracted by rattling closets. Coco sat down on the hearth beside the fireplace. Mount Hemlock, she typed into the search bar, ghost.
Maybe the internet knew something. Didn’t it always?
She had to wait a long time for the page to load. The signal wasn’t great, and there was no Wi-Fi with the power out. Coco thought longingly of doing homework at the Egg, with cinnamon rolls and fast internet.
Surprisingly, the first hit Coco saw wasn’t even about the orphanage at all. Instead it was an article about a boy who’d gone missing five years ago.
MISSING on Mount Hemlock: Gabriel Bouvier, the article’s headline read.
Coco clicked and read:
Mount Hemlock has long been closed to would-be skiers, standing as it does on the grounds of Sacred Heart Orphanage. But since the orphanage has been boarded up for decades, that has not stopped local youths from hiking in, hoping to climb the famously empty mountain and ski down.
Now that adventurous pursuit may have claimed a victim.
Coco kept reading. She saw a picture of an older boy in a blue ski jacket—the article said he was seventeen—with freckles and red hair, and a big smile.
Gabriel Bouvier disappeared while skiing alone in the vicinity of Mount Hemlock and Sacred Heart Orphanage. An extensive search is under way.
Curious, Coco went to a later article. And another.
They never found him, she realized.
“What are you reading, Coco?” Ollie asked.
Coco looked up and handed Ollie her phone. “Funny,” she said. “I googled Mount Hemlock to see if I could find anything about ghosts. But if you google Mount Hemlock ghost, the first story is about someone named Gabriel Bouvier.”
Dead Voices Page 6