by Tracy Lane
Mr. Weir managed a sigh. “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”
Marley was rolling merrily in the dried grass to the right of the steps while Frank stood watching, grim, as Mr. Weir hobbled into the hotel lobby. Mrs. Weir paused, a length of cable wound around her shoulder, to squeeze Jake’s arm.
“Don’t mind him,” she said, favoring him with a tired smile. “I think it’s sweet that you’re worried about his leg.”
Jake frowned as she hurried past. It wasn’t just his dad’s leg he was worried about.
“What am I supposed to do?” he lamented as Tank lugged a massive TV monitor behind him.
“Uh, help me haul in the rest of this junk?” she huffed, pausing at the top of the steps.
He groaned. “I meant about them.” He jerked a thumb toward the lobby where his parents were talking.
“Look,” she puffed, face red and sweaty, “the sooner we film this episode and get it in the can, the quicker we’re out of here and onto the next place. Far as I’m concerned, I’ll be happy when this place is in the rearview mirror.”
“You and me both,” Jake said as he headed for the van to haul out more equipment. Frank followed and, of course, Marley nipped at his ghostly heels.
“This isn’t good,” said the gangster.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jake grunted, reaching for a box of cable wires to help his folks set up for the final taping of the Scream Channel Halloween episode.
“It’s more than that,” Frank replied. “I can feel the spirits getting restless in there, none more so than Atticus Granger.”
Jake hefted up a dusty cardboard box with his name scrawled across a sticky note on the top. “What am I supposed to do about it, Frank? What am I supposed to do about any of it? I’m just a kid, remember?”
Frank made a disproving sound. “You’re a special kid, Jake.”
Marley yapped as if in agreement. Jake avoided Frank’s gaze as he walked back to the hotel. “How special will I be if I get my family killed by letting them roam around in a hotel full of angry ghosts?”
Frank sighed heavily. “This is it,” he assured. “After today, your family can leave this place behind.”
“If they survive,” Jake muttered.
He trundled back up the steps with the last of the supplies. In his absence, the Balthazar lobby had been transformed into a studio soundstage, with bright lighting and miles of video cable snaking across the dusty old floor.
Frank was right: the air felt hostile and, now and again, Jake thought he caught a glance of figures lurking in and out of the shadows.
“Jake,” said his dad, leaning against the front lobby desk. “Can you hand me that box?”
Mr. Weir nodded toward the crate Jake had just lugged in, and Jake reached for the box with his name on it. “Not that one,” said his dad. “The one with my cable splicers.”
Jake handed over the splicers. “Then what’s this one?”
Mr. Weir, distracted, merely shrugged. Jake, tired from the bustling activity, sank into a dusty parlor chair and opened the box.
“Oh, you found it,” said Tank, who dropped into the chair across from him and dragged a forearm across her brow.
“Found what?” Jake asked as he opened the box.
“I copied those for you at the library,” she said as Jake admired a stack of stiff, white sheets of paper.
He looked from the papers to her. “What are they?”
“When the cops searched Atticus’ apartment, they found a whole bunch of letters he’d written to Clara.”
Jake furrowed his brow. “So…I don’t get it. Why were they in his apartment?”
“See for yourself,” she said, and reached over to tap the first photocopy. It was of an envelope, weathered and faded, but the “Return to Sender” stamp was quite clear over Clara’s street address.
Jake flipped through the stack of alternating letters and envelopes Tank had copied. Every single envelope was stamped “Return to Sender”. There must have been fifteen, twenty letters, all returned.
He read a few words from one and immediately blushed at the purple prose: “Your wisps of hair drive me mad, Clara. To reach out and touch them is my fondest desire…” Or one nugget: “Your ruby lips enflame my desire as I watch you complete your rounds. Why don’t you ever stare back at me the way I stare at you?”
“Yikes,” Jake said after reading a few more. “Creepy.”
“More than creepy,” Tank said as he put the stack back into the box. “He’s like a stalker. I’ve read them all, and every time she sends him a letter back, he gets really, really angry.”
She reached over and took the stack, rifling pages until she got to the last one. “Here.” She handed it back to him. “Read the last three paragraphs.”
As Tank stood and began hefting some of her own supplies into her arms, Jake scanned the page of tight, old-fashioned script. It was as if Atticus was trying to cram all his feelings onto a single page. Finally, he reached the ending paragraphs:
It’s clear you could care less for me, Clara. I can see that now. Not only do you return all of my letters, but you’ve stopped speaking to me at work as well. How else can I get your attention but with something elaborate?
So that is what I will do. I will win your attention in the most original way. A stunt you require? Then it is a stunt you shall have, the stunt to end all stunts. You will not ignore me, Clara, nor will you forget me. That is, if you survive.
If you do, I will be a hero. The city will welcome me with open arms instead of ignoring me as it has for so long. When that day comes, Clara, you will see me. But I won’t see you. Because heroes always have their pick of the girls, don’t you see? So maybe you don’t need to survive, after all…
“Wow,” Jake said. He could feel his skin prickling with disgust. “That’s…crazy, Tank. Do you think that’s what happened?”
Tank, who was hauling her equipment into the ballroom where Mr. and Mrs. Weir were setting up, called back to him, “I think he started that fire so he could save Clara from it and it just got out of hand.”
But Jake was no longer listening. He stood too, slowly. “What are they doing in there, Tank?” he asked, lurching forward.
Tank looked back at him, perplexed. “Your dad wants to film the closing scene in the ballroom.”
“They can’t!” Jake said. His stare was locked on a shape outside the ballroom doors.
“Why not?” Tank asked with growing concern.
But Jake could barely speak, as he watched the ghost lurking just outside the doors. It was Atticus Granger III.
Chapter 18
Jake wasn’t alone in his distress. Marley noticed too, and he crouched low, stalking toward the ghost with his hackles up and ears pricked.
“Marley!” Jake said, but it was too late. The pup was standing too close to Atticus, teeth bared and his little body poised to spring.
“Don’t worry,” said Frank’s hurried voice from behind. “Atticus won’t be able to—”
Granger suddenly let out a shout. “Get away!” he snapped, turning to the dog. “Get! Away!” He lashed out with polished shoes and, instead of his feet dissolving into mist like Frank’s always did when coming in contact with something living, they connected with the dog. Marley let out a yelp and flew several feet across the room, landing in a heap over in the sitting area; dust flew as a purple chair toppled.
“Hey!” Jake balled his fists. “Cut it out!”
But Atticus ignored him and peered inside the ballroom. Beyond him, just inside, Mr. and Mrs. Weir turned from their sound check, startled by the sudden commotion. Tank turned too, a boom mike in her hand and a baffled expression on her face.
They couldn’t see Atticus reaching for the doors. They couldn’t see Frank rushing in a whirl of mist and gray to tend to Marley. They could only see Jake, racing as if through thick, cold water, trying to get to them.
But it was too late. With swiftness that defied all logic, Atticus slammed s
hut the ballroom doors and locked them tight.
“No!” Jake screamed as he finally reached the doors and threw himself on them.
He pounded on the wood as Atticus ignored him, reaching into a nearby broom closet. From the other side of the thick doors, Jake could hear his parents’ muffled voices.
“Jake? Honey? What’s going on? Is this a joke?”
“No!” Jake shouted again, before a pair of cold hands grabbed his shoulders and shoved him aside. He caught the gleeful smile on the face of Atticus, who stood triumphant as Jake tumbled to the floor.
“Away, boy!” he said, eyes sparkling with menace. Something in them flickered, and when Jake looked down, he saw a matchstick fall into a metal bucket filled with oily rags.
Jake burst into action and kicked the bucket over before the match could ignite the rags, which made Atticus howl with rage. The sound was horrifying. The entire building shook, and behind him, Marley whimpered.
Atticus reached for Jake, but a flash of swirling white movement stopped him.
Then Frank was there. He steadied himself, his hat crooked from the speed, and then went for Atticus again and slammed him into the wall. Dust flew and mortar fell and Atticus grunted, but Frank looked…shaky, somehow. He was never more physical – more real – than when he was fueled by strong emotion, but even now, filled with rage, Frank looked fragile.
His face wavered in and out, half flesh, half flaky gray. Meanwhile, Atticus recovered and bellowed in fury, shaking more dust and paper from the walls as he pushed back and sent Frank stumbling.
Jake gasped. It was such an odd sight: Atticus, so small and frail in real life, beating back the much larger, tougher Frank. Frank grunted and caught himself on the far wall, hat askew, his face crumpled with an expression that Jake couldn’t read.
“Frank?” he asked as Atticus scrambled for the spilled rags.
Frank ignored him and barreled forward again, but this time Atticus was ready. The metal pail in his hand he swung wide, and the impact turned Frank’s head to a fine cloud of mist.
“Frank!” Jake cried. He could hear pounding on the ballroom doors. Behind him, the dazed German Shepherd pup struggled to stand.
Frank swept up into nothingness, then reappeared on the other side of Atticus. Summoning all his physical form, he shoved the clerk away from the ballroom doors. Atticus stumbled right into the path of Marley, who nipped and tugged on his pants cuffs. Atticus kicked out again, but this time the little pup dodged him and dove back in for more.
Granger howled once more; a chandelier clinked overhead as dust fell into Jake’s eyes. Then he shoved and kicked and freed himself of Frank and Marley at the same time.
As they crumpled to the floor, one trembling in a ball and the other fighting back from mist, Atticus stood, collected the rags, and dumped them back in the bucket. Before Jake could move, he struck another match.
“Stop!” yelled Frank as he collided with Atticus, who then crashed into the ballroom doors and dropped the match – right next to the bucket of rags. The two ghosts grappled, but Frank was kicked loose again.
“Frank!” Jake called out. “What is wrong with you?”
“He’s too strong for me, kid.” Frank straightened his hat as half of his body swirled without form. “I can’t compete with that kind of anger.”
“Well try something else!” Jake shouted.
Frank shook one arm out and stood on half-formed legs as Marley followed him back to the ballroom doors. Atticus knelt there, blowing on the match as an oily rag began to smoke and belch little flickers of flame.
“Atticus!” Frank said, grabbing hold of the front desk clerk’s maroon suspenders. “Listen to me!”
“Get away from me!” the other man cried out. Above them all, the trembling chandelier gave way and smashed into the middle of the floor. Jake scampered away to escape it just in time, but the chandelier shattered on impact and flew everywhere. Shards of it knocked over the bucket of rags.
“Listen to me,” Frank repeated. He was shaking the smaller man and somehow summoning the rage – or at least the desperation – into physical form long enough to manhandle the clerk. “I am not real,” he said. “You…are not real. This…this is not real.”
“These flames are real,” Atticus growled, and indeed, they were. The rags tumbled and flickered and flamed, little embers turning floor-level wallpaper into steaming strips of smoke.
Jake hurried to his feet, avoiding broken shards of glass as he tore the curtains from one parlor window to help stamp out the flames.
“Your rage is even more real,” said Frank, shaking the smaller man once more. “You are dead, and so are all the people you killed. You have to let go, Atticus! There are real people in there now. You can’t kill them too!”
Atticus shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Neither do you, Atticus,” snarled Frank, and he threw the man across the room. He approached Granger while he was still on the ground and pressed his foot down on the other ghost’s throat. “All of this anger has kept you a prisoner in this hotel for nearly seventy years, man! And it’s not just you: your victims are prisoners too.”
“I can stop this,” Atticus whimpered. He shook his head wildly and pounded his fists on the moldy carpet. “I can get it right this time. Just let. Me. Go!”
Frank refused, bearing down as he demanded, “You let go, Atticus! Let go of this place and these people. Free yourself from this torture you’ve created for yourself.”
As Jake tried to beat out the fire, which was glowing and growing despite his best efforts, he suddenly felt another ghostly presence in the Balthazar Hotel lobby.
Chapter 19
“Clara?”
Atticus felt her presence too; summoning his last bit of strength, he launched Frank up and away from his body and stood, shimmering, his face an ugly, twisted mix of anger and shame and heartbreak.
“What—what are you doing here?” he spat. “Clara, get out of here! This doesn’t involve you!”
“Of course it does,” she said, and her voice was calm despite the flames that strengthened around her with each passing moment. “Don’t you see, Atticus? Didn’t you hear? The reason we feel so strange, the reason all of this seems so familiar, is that we’ve done it before. Day after day…” She walked closer with each word. “And every day after that…”
She continued to approach him, cautiously, as Jake fought the flames with very little success. They were growing thicker, hotter, and the curtains he was using to smother them were being licked by the fire as well. Marley raced in little circles by his side, whimpering frantically as Jake kept at it.
“Don’t believe them!” Atticus insisted. He seemed to be growing more human, more physical, with every one of his frantic heartbeats. “They’re strangers, Clara. You and I, we’ve known each other for what feels like forever.”
“That’s just it,” said Clara, standing before Atticus fearlessly now. Her own skin was flushed pink as heat swirled around her. “It feels like that because it has been forever. If we’re ghosts, Atticus, then we’ve been haunting these halls for far too long.”
“And I’ll haunt them for much, much longer,” Atticus vowed, reaching out to clutch her hand. “I’ll haunt them forever, if only to be together with you for that long.”
She yanked her hand back, her eyes growing harsh and cold. “I won’t be here, Atticus,” she stated. “I won’t stay in your warped world. Not another minute.”
She looked to Jake trying desperately to suffocate the flames, with his face covered in soot and sweat dripping into his eyes, and she added, “It was you who killed me, Atticus. It was you who killed us all, wasn’t it?”
Atticus bowed his head, not meekly, but perhaps in desperation. “I didn’t meant to, Clara. You have to know that. I only did it to rescue you. Don’t you see? I did it for you!”
Clara’s expression shifted from one of confusion and pain to one of anger and disbelief.
“So now it’s my fault?” she challenged him, her face stony but her eyes alight. “Now it’s my fault all those people died? That I died?”
“I never meant to hurt you—” Atticus started, but Clara wasn’t finished.
“But you did, Atticus. What’s done is done. But it doesn’t have to stay done.”
“What do you mean, Clara?”
“You can free us,” she said. She nodded at Frank, who had regained his footing and was closely watching the exchange. “Let us go, let us pass over, and we can leave this place once and for all!”
Clara was yelling now, over the sound of crackling fire and Jake’s family pounding on the ballroom doors, over the whimpering of little Marley, who was fearfully dancing around the flames.
“I can’t,” Atticus insisted, and then he crumbled to his knees. “If I admit what I’ve done, if the other world knows… Clara, what will happen to me there?”
Frank joined Clara at her side and said, “Atticus, the harshest judge is always oneself. Clara’s right, what’s done is done. You can’t change the past, but if you release all these people now, if you save Jake’s family, the other side is bound to go easier on you.”
“He’s right!” Clara begged. “We can’t go on like this. To trap us here any longer will only be to—”
Atticus suddenly let out a roar and lunged to his feet, shoving Clara and Frank away. But he didn’t advance on them. He stood facing the flames, fists clenched at his side as he began to suck in huge gulps of air.
Then, gasping, groaning, howling out violent breaths of air the sounds of which sent goosebumps racing up Jake’s arms, Atticus blew out the flames that had already singed and blackened the bottom halves of the ballroom doors. The wind that rushed from him was cold and fierce, coating the wallpaper, rolling over the carpet in waves, and swirling around the drapes and picture frames that were also burning. The blinding orange glow of fire vanished, the scorching air was swept away, and in its wake, the wind left blackness and ash and cold smoke.
Without touching the doors, he merely waved his long hands and they flew wide, revealing Jake’s family. Mr. and Mrs. Weir and Tank, their faces panicked and blurry through Jake’s tears, rushed to surround him; as they held him close and his head swam with dizziness, he felt the heat swim off their bodies.