Tonight there are three lighted rooms.
“The first one from the right is Ubbe Amblebee,” I tell the others. “The second is Madame Drusilla, the third is Ms. Lettie and the fourth is Ruby Red.”
“What is your gut feeling telling you?” Nyx asks me.
“My gut says Ruby Red is phony baloney,” I say. “There is definitely something not right about her.”
“What about Ubbe Amblebee and his stupid plunger?” Mags says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “There’s something not right there, either.”
“And Mr. Lozano?” Mags says. “He’s far too paranoid about those key cards.”
“Totally paranoid,” I agree.
“So, basically what you’re saying is that the phony baloney you’re talking about could be anyone or anything,” Nyx says.
Me and Mags look at each other and nod in unison.
“But I feel like we are on the cusp of knowing…something,” I tell him.
“Uh-huh,” he says, turning the dial on top of his binoculars to focus on the employee quarters.
I do the same and so does Mags.
“Hey, look at Madame Drusilla!” I exclaim.
We watch as she stands in front of a vase of pink roses, talking and motioning with her hands like she’s telling her precious flowers something very important.
“What is she doing?” Nyx asks.
“She’s, ah…she’s, ah…,” I start.
“Talking to her roses,” Mags finishes.
“Oh, right. She asks their permission to be cut, right?” Nyx says.
I gasp. “How do you know everything?” I ask.
He just shrugs.
“Ubbe Amblebee is just watching television,” I say. “Nothing big there except that I don’t see his plunger, which is a first. Right?” I ask Mags.
“Definitely,” she says, squinting into her lenses. “Oh, hey…he’s watching an Avengers! I like this movie.”
“Will you focus, please?” I say.
“But it’s Endgame.”
“What is Ms. Lettie doing?” I ask, watching her pace back and forth in front of her door.
“It looks like she’s waiting for something,” Nyx says. “Or someone.”
“I really don’t think there’s anything phony baloney about Ms. Lettie. She’s like a hundred years old,” I say.
“Oh, hey…this is where Gamora beats down the Hulk and makes him cry,” Mags laughs. “I like this part.”
“I don’t think we should rule Ms. Lettie out just yet,” Nyx says. “At least until we know more.”
I nod.
“Wait,” Mags says. “I think someone’s at her door.”
“I’m telling you both, there’s no way Ms. Lettie is involved in anything against the law,” I say.
We watch her turn the knob, and the door opens.
Mags gasps. “It’s Ruby Red,” she says. “And she’s got the suitcase.”
“The one with the leather handle?” I ask, squinting through my Dora the Explorers.
“One and the same,” she says. “I knew there was something up with her and her mile-high hair.”
“What does her hair have to do with it?” I say.
“Everyone knows the higher your hair, the more you have to hide,” Mags tells me.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask.
“It’s a thing,” she insists.
“I don’t think it is,” I say.
“Look!” Nyx says. “I think they’re going to open it.”
We watch as the women talk and Ruby Red places the black suitcase on top of the bed. She fishes a key from her pocket and slips it in the lock of the case.
It opens.
WHAT-IFS
I knew there were pinky toes
hidden somewhere in this hotel.
I close my eyes tight.
One. Two. Three. Four.
“I’m telling you now, if I see dead manager toes in there I’m going to hurl my croque monsieurs all over this viney carpet,” I warn them both.
I feel Nyx lower his binoculars and turn to face me. “Dead manager what?”
“Don’t ask,” Mags tells him without taking her eyes off the window. “It’s a whole Dateline thing.”
“Dateline?” Nyx says. “You mean the television show? That’s random.”
“Not if you know her,” Mags says.
“I don’t get it,” Nyx says.
“Karma, we can’t even see anything, so you’d better just reel it in,” Mags tells me.
I open my eyes and point a stern finger in her direction. “You better reel it out.”
“Still not a saying,” she tells me.
We all watch Ms. Lettie and Ruby Red standing over the suitcase, staring at the contents without saying a single solitary word before Ms. Lettie gives Ruby Red a nod and she closes it back up again. Ruby Red gives the key a twist to lock it back up tight, then slips the key into her pocket.
“Did either of you see anything?” I ask.
“Not me,” Nyx says. “The case wasn’t facing the window.”
“Mags?” I say.
“Huh?”
“Did you see what was in the suitcase?”
“What? Oh, right, um…I was, ah…watching Avengers.”
I groan.
“You want to know what I think?” Nyx asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I bet there is someplace in the hotel that will end up revealing a lot of clues about what’s going on here.”
“Like where?” I ask.
“Is there any place in the hotel that Mr. Lozano is especially sensitive about besides room 217?”
I think about it.
“He’s weird about all the spaces equally, so…not one particular place that is more so than any other,” I say. “What do you think, Mags?”
“Huh?”
I sigh. “Never mind.”
“Wait!” Nyx says. “Someone must have knocked, because Ms. Lettie is running back to the door.”
All three of us focus on Ms. Lettie’s door.
The knob turns.
The door opens.
And Mags sucks air until she actually chokes.
“Jack the busboy,” I whisper. “I knew there was something off about that kid. At least he finally has a shirt on.”
“Oh, like you’re the end-all be-all of first impressions,” Mags says. “Aren’t you the one who thought Ms. Lettie was a purple-haired vampire on the first day?”
Nyx lowers his binoculars and looks at me and says, “What?”
“I eventually changed my mind,” I say. “I mean, first impressions and everything. She’s got a thing about being on film and all.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t wear a cape,” he says.
Mags throws her hands out. “Exactly what I said.”
“Capes aren’t standard issue for vampires anymore,” I tell him.
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw the Dracula show on Netflix,” Mags says.
My head snaps in her direction.
“You saw it?”
She nods, her eyes wide.
“Worse than Poltergeist?”
She nods again.
“What’s worse about it?”
She just twists her invisible key on her lips and throws it to the wind.
“I saw it,” Nyx says. “It wasn’t even scary. But she’s right about the cape. He definitely still wears one.”
“Huh,” I say.
Mags sighs then with her chin in her hand and her elbow on the sill. “I can’t believe my honey bunny is up to phony baloney,” she says.
“That’s probably the most sickeningly sweet thing I’ve ever heard in my lifetime,” Nyx mumbl
es.
“Jack-of-all-trades indeed…even the phony baloney kind,” I say while Mags keeps mumbling on about betrayals of the heart. “Here’s the new plan,” I tell her. “You need to do some secret intel to find out what’s going on.”
“Yep,” Nyx agrees. “That’s definitely the new plan.”
“How do you suppose I do that?” she asks.
“He’s your boyfriend,” Nyx says. “Just get it from him.”
“There’s one problem with that,” I tell him. “He still doesn’t know about the relationship.”
“How does that work?” Nyx asks.
“I was just getting around to telling him,” Mags says. “And now I’ll never realize my dream of kissing him in the walk-in cooler.”
I roll my eyes. “Number one, that’s disgusting, and number two, why are we even having this conversation? He’s tainted. Bad news. Phony baloney. Why would you still want to kiss him?”
“The thing is, I’ve only been kissed that one time by Jeremy Kelly in the school gym during the winter dance, and there was nothing really spectacular about it.”
Nyx groans.
“I mean, you know, everyone talks about fireworks going off and everything,” Mags goes on.
I turn to look at Nyx and think about the pinky carpet shock and how good it felt.
“It was like all my fireworks were duds when his lips touched mine,” Mags says. “And I guess it could’ve been because his lips were like chapped and all scratchy, but I think the kiss would have dudded out either way.”
“Please,” Nyx says. “I can’t listen to any more of this.”
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard the Jeremy Kelly’s dry lips story a million times,” I say with my hand in the air.
“Raise your hand if you didn’t hear this before but still don’t care to listen to another word of it,” Nyx says with his arm high above his head.
“Don’t act like you don’t think about this stuff too,” Mags tells him.
“I don’t,” he says to her. “And I can’t believe I’m actually saying these words, but I wish we’d go back to the whole toilet-as-a-portal debate.”
Nyx is dead-on.
And I mean dead-on.
Again.
He said there was something about the phony baloney that we had yet to discover and that there was probably some place in the hotel that Mr. Lozano was especially weird about.
And he was so right.
I find all this out the very next day while I’m minding my own business, sitting on the floor outside Madame Drusilla’s office door, waiting for her to finish talking to her roses out back. I’m updating my ghost log with the very latest intel when I see Mr. Lozano skulk out from behind an unmarked door across the hall.
But not before he checks to see if the coast is clear.
Looking left and then right.
But…hello…I’m sitting here, so when he sees me he jumps and barks at me. “What are you doing down here?”
“I—I’m just waiting for Madame Drusilla,” I say.
He slams the door behind him and glares at me. Then he pulls an old-fashioned iron key from his pocket, locks the door, rattles the knob and slips the key back into his pocket again.
WHAT-IFS
I think you finally found your
missing manager body parts.
He turns back to me one more time, eyeing me suspiciously.
“You shouldn’t go around sneaking up on people. It’s rude,” he barks again, giving the doorknob one more rattle before stomping down the hall and up the steps to the lobby without another word.
Once he’s gone, I scramble over to the unmarked door and give the knob a good rattle myself.
Locked.
I wedge an ear against it and listen.
Quiet.
I peek under the crack at the bottom.
Dark.
“Mmm,” I say to myself.
I’ve never noticed the door before. Probably because there is no sign on it like all the other doors in the hotel. Every door either has a room number on it or a gold engraved sign that says what’s inside.
Except this one.
It doesn’t even have a Scotch-taped sign on it like the one hanging on the dead elevator. And the whole no-sign thing totally tweaks my phony baloney radar.
“You’re alone today, I see,” Madame Drusilla says, coming up behind me.
“Oh,” I say, getting up from the floor and brushing the dust off my palms. “Yeah. Mags is trying to find Jack the busboy.”
“What are you doing there?” Madame Drusilla wants to know.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” I tell her. “I have some more questions for you.”
“Well, you are welcome to come on in,” she says, unlocking her door and sending a waft of burnt strawberries in my direction.
I follow behind her.
“Madame Drusilla,” I say, pinching my nose with one hand and pointing to the unmarked door with the other. “What’s that door to?”
“Oh, that’s just the underground tunnel system,” she tells me, matter-of-fact.
My mouth falls open. “The tunnel system?” I say. “What does that even mean?”
She carefully places a bouquet of freshly cut roses into a vase of water.
“Back when the Stanley was built,” she says, “they dug a tunnel system underneath the hotel for employees to go between the different buildings in the wintertime.”
“Are you serious?” I ask.
“Quite.”
“So, you’re telling me there are tunnels beneath the entire hotel?” I ask.
“Indeed,” she says. “All four buildings, in fact. They are carved out of the quartz rock that is the rock of the mountain the hotel sits upon. Some believe it is the quartz rock that causes the hotel to have the paranormal activity. Quartz can be very powerful indeed.”
“So, the tunnels are all made of quartz rock? The same rock that enhances higher spiritual receptiveness?” I ask.
“That’s right,” she says. “But it’s also where all the wiring, plumbing and electrical equipment is kept. It’s very dark and crudely carved, with dirt floors and rock walls. Not finished and lovely like the rest of the hotel. So, definitely not for guests.”
“Have you ever been inside there?”
“Of course,” she tells me. “But it’s not as stable as it used to be. It’s been deemed strictly off-limits for safety purposes.”
“Off-limits to who?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Everyone.”
“Then why isn’t there a tunnel at your own risk sign like with the elevator?” I ask.
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Lozano that one,” she says. “He’s Keys and Signage.”
“So, you’re saying that is why the door is locked?” I eye her suspiciously. “For safety?”
She turns to look at me and then motions for me to come closer. When I do, she holds out her hand for mine.
“You will come across many locked doors in your life, my dear,” she tells me, holding my hand tight. “You need to decide which of those doors hold the answers to your journey and not let them stop you in your quest to know.”
I blink a few blinks at her and then finally say, “Know what?”
“Know what you need to know, when you need to know it.”
I blink at her again.
“I don’t have any more money,” I tell her.
She smiles. “That one is on the house.”
“Well, thanks, I guess, even though I’m not really sure what you mean.”
“Oh!” she says with her finger in the air. “Do tell your friend Mags that her journey is blocked with thoughts of doubt and torment and I can help her to clear her channels for a meeeeeere…twenty-five dollars a session.”
“That’s a bargain,” I say. “Because those channels are fogged up something awful.”
She nods with a wise smile of agreement.
“I think her channels might actually take a few sessions,” I warn her.
“Agreed,” she says, putting her flower bouquet on the round table and examining it with her head tilted to the left and then right. “Are those straight?”
“Huh?” I say. “Oh, yeah, they look fine. So, would it cost the same for me? You know, to clear up my channels. And I think there’s something wrong with my gut, too.”
She laughs. “You don’t need your channels cleared, my dear,” she tells me. “You’re already clear. You just need to learn to trust what you see and what you feel.”
“But look at this.” I hold out my hand to show her my ring. “Me and Mags got mood rings at Fun City and mine is always stinky brown. Brown means anxious and scared. Mags’s ring has been bright blue since she slipped it on her finger, like she doesn’t have a care in the world.”
“That’s because you are a sensitive and you haven’t figured that out yet, my dear.”
I point to my front and say, “Me?”
She nods.
“A sensitive? You mean, like you and Tally Phoenix?”
“Everyone has the capability. But only a few choose to learn how to tune in to it. You are tuning as we speak and trying to find what to do with your special energies. When you do, your ring will change color too.”
“So…Mags has already tuned in?”
She laughs again. “That one doesn’t even know where the tuner is.”
I click my tongue. “It’s her whole tortured-soul thing, right?” I say.
She bobs her head. “Exactly.”
“I actually came here to ask you about the dress we found in our wardrobe,” I tell her. “We think it’s Mrs. Honeycutt’s dress and she left it for us through her energies as a sign…you know, that she’s here from the beyond. But I’m wondering if you can tell us if we’re right. My Crystal Mystic seems to be…out of order.”
She takes a deep breath in and closes her eyes.
I watch her breathing in and out and in and out for a long while until she opens up her eyes again while she talks to the ceiling.
“Thank you,” she says under her breath. “Thank you, yes.”
Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Page 16