Haunting at the Hotel

by Lauren Magaziner

  “Is he broken?” January asks her parents. “He’s repeating himself.”

  “You can’t punish Las Pistas Detective Agency over an accident!” I say.

  Reese smiles kindly. “It’s not a punishment. This is taking responsibility for your actions. Welcome to adulthood.”

  “I take it back!” I say quickly. Mom’s business can’t afford to take a hit like this.

  But it’s Frank who answers me. “NO TAKEBACKSIES!” he says, pelting me with another snowball.

  CASE CLOSED.

  I CLEAN THE steam off the bathroom mirror until we can read the message fully in the reflection:

  desert the spirit and run far away

  get out while you can in the light of day.

  be gone from this place by three forty-five,

  be gone from here if you want to survive.

  this is your warning, for if you do stay,

  then i’m the hunter, and you are my prey.

  Frank tents his hands, palm facing palm.

  “Not that kind of pray, Frank. The other kind.” I gulp. “We’re supposed to be hunting the ghost. Not the other way around!”

  “Clearly we’ve touched a nerve,” Eliza says. “But which nerve?”

  “This one!” Frank says, poking her in the arm.

  “What about Mom?” I ask. “We can’t leave here without her!” My stomach twists. Where could she be? Is she in danger? And then a thought so terrible comes into my head, I can barely even think it . . . but what if Mom already was the prey for the ghost?

  “Don’t worry, Carlos,” Eliza says. “Your mom is a professional.”

  “Professional detective,” I say. “Not ghostbuster.”

  “We’ll find her soon,” Eliza says.

  I look at the letter. I feel as helpless as I’ve ever felt. I wanted so hard to prove to Mom that I deserve to be here. But do I deserve to be here if I can’t find Mom?

  “Threats and danger follow us around, don’t they?” Eliza says with a frown. “Why can’t we ever have a nice, quiet case where we solve the mystery with no problems whatsoev—”

  Knock, knock!

  Eliza and I freeze.

  “Who is it?” Frank says in a singsongy voice.

  Please be Mom, please be Mom!

  “It’s me, Harris Winters.”

  “Mmmm . . . sorry, we’re not home right now. Please leave a message after the beep. BEEEEEEEEP!”

  “Open up!”

  “What’s the magic word?” Frank demands.

  “Please,” Harris says reluctantly.

  “Nope! Try again. You only have nine hundred ninety-nine tries left before I tell you the answer!”

  Harris growls in frustration, and I should probably open the door, especially since he’s one of the people running the hotel. Then again, we don’t know who left this mirror message or why. What if he’s the one behind this threat? Maybe it’s not safe to open the door for him.

  Or even if he didn’t write this message, maybe January told Harris that we were snooping through the mailbox last night. It’s possible that he could be angry or argumentative.

  * * *

  TO OPEN THE DOOR, CLICK HERE.

  TO IGNORE THE DOOR, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  ELIZA’S RIGHT—WE should look at the map again. If we figure out where it leads, we can figure out why someone would try to burn it. And while I want to talk to Sunny, this feels more important somehow. Like it will get us physical evidence.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s figure out this map.”

  It doesn’t make any more sense the second time I look at it. Clearly it’s a map because of the directional compass in the corner . . . but what are these numbers? I’m assuming we’re starting at the bottom left, but how do we get to the star?

  A crease forms on Eliza’s forehead as she studies the map.

  “What do you think?” Mom says after a solid five minutes of silence.

  “I think these are measurements of distance,” Eliza says, pointing at the numbers. “We start in the left corner, and we have to go two hundred feet in one direction. Then the next square will tell us how many paces to go in another direction. And so on until we reach the destination.”

  “But . . . how do we know which direction to go in?”

  “I think that’s what we have to figure out,” she says.

  “So we start with the two,” I say. “We can’t go diagonally.”

  “Right.”

  “And we have to stay in the same direction for two spaces.”

  “You got it,” Eliza says.

  I pull the parchment closer to me and get to work.

  * * *

  ADD UP ALL THE NUMBERS FROM THE SQUARES YOU PASS THROUGH.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 43, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 47, CLICK HERE.

  OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “OKAY, FRANK. LET’S see if you’re as good at puzzles as Eliza! What do I do with these letters?”

  “Read them. Duh!”

  “Okay . . . well, I already said that I think the words will have to do with winter and mountainous areas. Do you think that’s right?”

  “I think it’s left,” he says, just to be difficult.

  I sigh. “Okay . . . here are the words I’ve found.” I grab a paper off Reese’s desk and write them down:

  coat

  luge

  cold

  moose

  gloves

  scarf

  hat

  skiing

  hot chocolate

  sled

  ice skate

  “What now?” I ask Frank, who is spinning in circles.

  “CIRCLE!” he cries. “CIRCLE!”

  That’s not actually bad advice. Maybe if I circle the words I find, I’ll see some clue, either with the words or the leftover letters.

  * * *

  THE LETTERS NOT USED IN THE WORD SEARCH WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR NEXT PAGE. READ THEM IN ORDER TO FIND YOUR NUMBER.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 245, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 246, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I’M GOING FOR the dogs, because I am not going into the Dead Room. No way, no how!

  I slide down the banister, into the lobby with four dogs baring their fangs at me.

  “Carlos! No!” Mom shouts. She runs after me, and while my eyes are on her, one of the dogs lunges at me.

  Its teeth sink into the fabric of my jeans, narrowly missing my leg. But the dog still drags me across the floor. I kick and thrash, but it’s no use. The dog is too strong. Another one bites into my jacket, and now the two of them are pulling me out the door.

  “Mom!” I shout. A dog is blocking her way to me. “Mom! Help!”

  “Carlos! I’m coming!”

  And then I’m out in the snow, being pulled across the mountaintop and into the forest. We go so deep into the woods that I’m lost. Every day I try to escape, but the dogs find me before I reach the edge of the woods and they drag me back to their shelter.

  Once I stop trying to escape, the dogs make me part of their pack. Soon I’m howling at the moon, scratching fleas, and biting bones. Life used to be ruff, but now it’s so much easier living as a dog. Aoooooooo!

  CASE CLOSED.

  I HAVE TO accuse January.

  “You’re the ghost.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” January snaps. “Haven’t you heard? The lodge will belong to me one day. Why would I want to devalue my future inheritance?”

  “Maybe you don’t want your inheritance,” Eliza says.

  “Who doesn’t want free money?”

  It’s tough to argue with that one.

  “You really think I have time to be the ghost, when I’m so busy with homework? My private tutor isn’t satisfied unless I have no fun whatsoever. Besides, what kind of cruel, heartless person does this to their parents? And I’m just one kid. I wouldn’t kno
w the first thing about haunting a hotel. Plus, what makes you think it’s a human, and not a real ghost? Because that’s a real possibility.”

  She’s giving a million excuses, and I don’t know if that makes me more or less suspicious of her.

  “All I know,” she concludes, “is I’m not the one behind this.”

  “Okay, then who do you think is?” I ask.

  January shrugs. “Sounds like a lot of not my problem. Buh-bye.”

  I roll my eyes. “Thanks a lot for your help,” I say sarcastically as I exit the dining room. I drag Eliza to the right—to an office near the kitchen. Through the glass door, I can see Reese with her head bent over her desk. I think she might even be napping.

  I knock, and she pops up suddenly.

  “I wasn’t sleeping!” she says as we walk in.

  Oh, she was definitely sleeping.

  “Can we ask you some questions?” I ask.

  “Of course. Sit.”

  We grab the chairs in front of her desk, and I wonder which question to ask first. . . .

  * * *

  TO ASK ABOUT HER FIGHTS WITH JANUARY, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK WHY SHE DIDN’T WANT TO HIRE DETECTIVES, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I WANT TO know what Reese is hiding. It might be the key to the entire mystery, since all the hauntings have been focused on her. If she has a secret, it’s got to come out.

  We find her in her office, looking wearily at her desk.

  “Come in,” she says, rubbing her eyes. She looks really tired. There are big puffy dark spots under her dark eyes, and she looks like she’s having trouble staying awake. “How’s the case going?”

  “Why didn’t you want to hire detectives?” I ask her. I’m cutting right to the chase. We don’t have any more time to play around. The sun is setting, and another ghost haunting will be here before we know it.

  Reese cocks her head and smiles, but Eliza interrupts her before Reese can get a word out.

  “Please don’t pretend like you wanted detectives. Harris told us that he was the one who hired us. You made us believe it was a mutual decision. So what are you hiding that you don’t want us to find?”

  “Nothing,” she says. It’s a terribly unconvincing lie. She’s shaking and terrified, though I can’t tell whether she’s scared about the thing she’s hiding or the ghosts.

  “If you don’t help us, we can’t help you,” I say.

  “I know,” she whispers. “But no one can help me now. This is my penance.”

  “What do you mean by penance?” I ask Reese.

  But it’s Eliza who answers. “A penance is a way to make amends for a wrongdoing. So . . . Mrs. Winters,” Eliza says, giving her a dark look. “What did you do wrong? What are you punishing yourself for?”

  Reese stares at us, her fingers pressed together in a tent. The clock ticks loudly from the wall.

  “Answer the question,” I say.

  “They take on the voices of my parents, sometimes. The ghosts. They say . . .” She pauses and sighs deeply. “The ghosts remind me of what I did to my sister. Not in any words . . . just the sound of my parents’ voices reminds me.”

  “Your sister?” I say. I am totally confused now. “What does that have anything to do with the ghosts?”

  “I stabbed her in the back, and now these ghosts are coming to remind me of my greatest shame. The secret I swore would never get out. The knife I put in my sister’s back.”

  She is really freaking me out now. Her eyes have this glassy sheen to them—eyes that are almost deadened. She didn’t actually put a knife in her sister’s back, right? That’s just an expression. . . .

  “Mrs. Winters,” Eliza says tentatively. “What happened to your sister?”

  “She never forgave me, and yet she never knew the full story of my betrayal. How I took the lodge right out from under her. How I forced our parents to give it to me. I wanted her to leave, but she is always here, always watching me. I pay the price every day, every time I see her face.”

  Just when I’m going to ask her another question, the clock starts chiming from the foyer. That’s our signal to go meet Mom and Frank. Which we have to do, on time, or they’ll think something bad happened to us.

  I stand up. “Sorry . . . we have to go.”

  Reese doesn’t even look at us. She clutches her stomach like she is in pain. “This gnawing hasn’t left me for years. It’s eating me alive. I was haunted long before a ghost ever appeared.”

  She turns her chair around to face the setting sun. And I’m left with only the echo of her troubling words.

  * * *

  MEET MOM AND FRANK ON CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “LET’S GO LOOK at the equipment shed,” I say.

  Up close, I can see some fine print under the OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT SHED sign that posts the hours of operation.

  M TO F 9 A.M. TO 4 P.M.

  SAT AND SUN 9 A.M. TO 6 P.M.

  GUESTS, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BORROW EQUIPMENT.

  RETURN BEFORE CLOSING HOURS.

  Eliza turns the doorknob. “It’s open!” she says, surprised.

  “It’s only three o’clock,” I say. “Of course it’s open!”

  It’s dark inside, with lots of sports equipment hanging on the walls. If we weren’t solving a mystery and were just staying at the hotel as guests, this would all be very tempting. “Do you see any deer heads?” I ask, walking the length of the wall. So far it’s looking like a lot of snowshoes, cross-country skis, downhill skis, snowboards. . . .

  Frank walks over to the wall and takes a sled off the hook.

  “Put that back, Frank,” Eliza says.

  “No!” he shouts with a babyish pout. It’s a flashback to his terrible toddler years, when Eliza and I were first becoming friends.

  “Frank,” I say warningly.

  “Carlos!” he replies.

  “You can’t go sledding.”

  “Yes, I can!”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  Does he really expect me to retort with “Yes, you can?”

  “Frank. That trick is not going to work on me.”

  He grins. “IT ALREADY DID!”

  And that’s when I realize that while we were arguing, he’s slowly edged closer to the door. He makes a break for it, and Eliza and I are too far away to grab him.

  He runs out into the snowy tundra with his sled.

  “FRANK, NO! FRANK, STOP!”

  But it’s too late.

  Frank runs and jumps onto the sled—away he goes!

  “After him!” Eliza shrieks.

  “We can’t—”

  “We have to!”

  She grabs a sled off the wall, and though I hate it, I know Eliza’s right—we have to go after her brother. So the two of us follow Frank all the way down the mountain, screaming our heads off the whole way.

  We catch up to him at the very bottom.

  “That was fun! Let’s do it again!” Frank says.

  But we can’t do it again. Looking up the mountain now, I can’t even see the top. The roads are closed, and poor weather conditions make it too dangerous to hike up. There’s just no way we can get back to the Sugarcrest Park Lodge. We’re done.

  I wanted to slay this case . . . not sleigh it.

  CASE CLOSED.

  “WHY DID THEY bring us to the Dead Room now?” I ask. “Why didn’t they lure us here when they brought you here?”

  “Because I’m the detective,” Mom says.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry . . . let me clarify,” Mom says. “I’m the hired detective. I’m sure whoever is behind these ghost attacks didn’t think that you three would be an integral part of my detective team.”

  “Th-they underes . . . underestimated us.” Eliza is shaking from the cold, and even Frank’s teeth have started to chatter. “I-is it just me, or is it getting c-c-colder in here?”

  “It’s not just you,” I say. The temperature is dropp
ing, and fast. I turn to Mom. “So they ignored us for a while. But why lure us here tonight? Why now? What changed?”

  Mom blows warm breath into her hands. “Did you find an important clue? Get too close to the heart of the mystery?”

  The ghost’s headquarters! In the tunnels in the walls. We found those coded notes—we discovered that there are multiple culprits. And we took the walkie-talkie. The moment we stole that was the moment we put targets on our backs.

  I groan. “We took the walkie-talkie out of the lair. We should have known they’d notice that it was gone! We were going to use it to spy on them, but they turned it around on us and tricked us in here.” I feel so, so stupid.

  Mom shudders. “It’s okay, hijo. But . . . wait. You said you found a lair?”

  Eliza whimpers, and Frank presses his nose against my hand. It’s like an ice cube.

  “Hey, can your nose fall off?” Frank says between shivers. Then he grabs my nose and yanks. “GOT YOUR NOSE!”

  “Ow! Frank! You’re supposed to pretend your thumb is my nose—not actually pull my nose off!”

  “Eww, awesome! Your nose is all runny. Eliza, look! I’m a human tissue.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Eliza?” I say, squeezing her hand.

  “Y-yes?” Her voice is very faint.

  “The lair, Carlos!” Mom reminds me.

  Right, I nearly forgot. I feel sluggish. I think I’m having a brain freeze. The cold is clearly affecting Eliza. And even Frank seems less peppy than normal. I feel like we’re spending too long in this room. Maybe it’s time to get out.

  “Carlos, quickly,” Mom says. “This is important. Tell me about the lair.”

  * * *

  TO TELL MOM ABOUT THE LAIR, CLICK HERE.

  TO SEARCH FOR A WAY OUT, CLICK HERE.