The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  If she meant it as a comfort, the sentiment failed. The air felt charged with static, tickling the base of my skull as if an army of spiders was crawling into my hairline. When the door drifted shut behind Riley, I yanked the pins out of my hair and combed the braid loose with my fingers, desperate to scratch the imaginary itch. It was all over, spreading from the top of my head to the base of my spine. I shook off Madame Lucia’s kimono too, as if everything Riley touched or looked at was infested with ticks. God, I’d never be able to wear my Blondie shirt again.

  Despite a shower, the feeling persisted. I curled up in the center of the bed and tucked the duvet around me like a Bed, Bath, and Beyond force field, glad the mattress was so large. Like a little kid, I didn’t want to risk exposing a limb over the edge to lure whatever might lurk beneath out of its home. I turned off the small lamp on the side table, plunging the room into darkness. The suite faced the mountain, so there were no artificial lights to permeate the room, but the silver sheen of the moon cast crooked shadows through the balcony door. The wind creaked and scratched against the window panes.

  Riley Watson was weird. There was no other way to describe her. What kind of twelve-year-old dove into a philosophical debate about the point of life after her mother’s death? She was ahead of her class, that was for sure, but when it came to the voices she heard, I was sure Oliver had been exaggerating Riley’s eccentricities. The kid zoned out though, like she was no longer a member of this astral plane. Like she actually listened to the commands of the dead.

  “Ridiculous,” I muttered into the pillow. “You’ve been doing this for five years, Lucia. If ghosts were real, you would have figured it out by now.”

  But after several minutes of fuming in the cocoon of bed linens, willing myself to buck up and go to sleep, I stuck one hand out of the duvet to flip the light back on.

  Right before dawn, something shattered in the kitchen. My eyes flew open. I was covered in sweat, overheated from sleeping under so many layers, but I didn’t move. Somehow, I already knew what had broken, but getting up to check would play into the stupid childhood fears I’d let into my head. I lay there, burning up, to listen. After the glass settled, nothing else made a sound, so I poked one foot out of the blanket, then the other. I wrapped the duvet around me like a cape as I slipped off the bed, as if its protection extended past the mattress. With the heavy fabric trailing after me, I peered into the kitchen.

  The decorative vase lay on the floor, its pristine white porcelain and pretty flowers shattered in pieces across the kitchen. How it had fallen, I had no idea. Too close to the edge of the shelf maybe. I picked up the big pieces and threw them into the garbage, mourning the lost craftsmanship of the hand-painted pottery. As I examined a perfect swirl of violet paint, a jagged edge caught the inside of my palm, and blood sprayed across the floor.

  I opened kitchen drawers at random, looking for something to wrap around the open wound. In one, beneath a leather-bound album, I found a couple of dishtowels. As I yanked them free, blood dripped on the worn album cover.

  “Crap.”

  After tying one towel around my palm to stem the bleeding, I used another to wipe off the album. The blood smeared, leaving a dark stain on the soft leather. I wet the towel and blotted, but it was no use.

  “Well, sorry to whoever this belonged to,” I muttered, giving up on the stain removal. Carefully, I turned the front cover for a look inside. It was a scrapbook full of old pictures, the pages yellow and brittle. Most of the photos were faded beyond recognition. A few were torn right through. At the back of the album, a stack of slightly newer photos was stuffed haphazardly amongst the others, but every single one of them was charred and black, as if someone had rescued them from a fire pit. Curious, I rifled through them. Most of them appeared to be group shots of the same four people, but the faces were made unrecognizable by the damage. In one photo, a smooth stone archway with King and Queens’s crown logo was visible above the subjects, but I didn’t recall seeing the archway during my tour with Oliver yesterday. I closed the album and slipped it in the drawer where it belonged. If it had been there as long as I expected—forgotten by an ex-guest however many years ago—I wasn’t going to be the one to displace it.

  Since there was no hope of returning to sleep and there were no first aid supplies in the suite’s bathroom, I got dressed for the day to head down to the lobby. I didn’t bother with any of Madame Lucia’s looks, not even the braid. I left my hair down for once, so the silvery strands rippled like a moonlit low tide across the fabric of my sandy-colored sweater. In the hallway, I held my bloodied hand above my head to stem the blood flow and pushed the call button. When the doors to the elevator opened and I went to step in, I bumped into a brunette woman in a red evening gown standing inside.

  “Oh,” I said, startled by her presence. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here. I thought I was the only guest at the resort.”

  The woman smiled politely. “Not to worry. Going down?”

  “Yes, the lobby, please.”

  She pressed the button for me, eyeing the ruined towel as I re-wrapped it around my hand. “Oh, my. That doesn’t look good.”

  “I had a run-in with a broken vase and a miscreant shard of glass,” I said. “And of course I couldn’t find a bandage. Do you happen to know if the resort has a first aid center?”

  “It’s near the gift shop.”

  “Great, thanks. Sorry about this. I know it’s kind of gross.”

  The woman waved this aside. “I have a baby girl. With the amount of times I’ve cleaned up her misfiring bodily functions, a little bit of blood has no chance of disturbing me.”

  “Aw, how old is she?”

  She beamed. “Eight months. Would you like to see a picture?”

  “Sure! I love babies. Well, other people’s babies.”

  The woman drew a real photo instead of a smartphone from her sequined gold clutch purse. The infant, with dark curls and radiant blue eyes, was adorable. “Her name is Odette,” she said. “She’s just learning to crawl, so I’m at my wit’s end with her. Thankfully, I just got her down for a nap, so I’m running down to the lobby for a quick coffee before she wakes up.”

  “She’s the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen,” I said. Most babies reminded me of those little troll dolls with the wrinkly “old man or alien?” faces and untamed tufts of hair.

  “I like to think so, but I’m quite biased,” the woman said. “I’m Stella, by the way. Have you been staying at the resort long…?”

  “Lucia,” I offered. “I arrived yesterday. You?”

  “I’m quite familiar with King and Queens,” Stella said, returning the picture of Odette to her clutch. “My husband is busy with work, so I’m watching the baby on my own.”

  The elevator chimed as we reached the lobby.

  “Let me know if you ever need a hand,” I said as I stepped out. “Like I said, I love babies. Are you coming?”

  Stella lingered in the elevator. “You know, I’ve just remembered Odette hates waking up alone. I’ll get coffee some other time.”

  I waved with my good hand. “See you around then.”

  As she returned to the top floor, I headed for the gift shop. With no employees to man the counter, it was closed. Stranger, there was no sign of a first aid center nearby. Thankfully, I bumped into Trey.

  “Hi, Miss Star.” He glanced at my hand and swallowed a gag. “Wow, that’s a lot of blood.”

  “Making you queasy? Sorry.” I hid the wound behind my back. “Where’s first aid? Someone told me it was near the gift shop.”

  “They were way off,” Trey said. “It’s by the lobby. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Trey, stomaching his horror, showed me into the clinic behind the front desk, where I rinsed and dressed the cut on my palm by myself. It was jagged and ugly, too large for a standard Band-Aid, so I wrapped it with gauze squares and medical tape instead.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Trey as
ked as he organized the rest of the resort’s bandages and ointments.

  I flexed my hand. The cut would have a hard time scabbing over considering its placement. “My line of work tends to lean toward hazardous. Ghosts like to throw things around.”

  “Wait, you actually found one?”

  Before I could fake an answer—or explain the vase’s kamikaze attempt that morning— Riley Watson appeared from the lobby, wearing a lurid neon-yellow ski jacket and black snow pants with silver reflective strips sewn in patches along the sides.

  “Let’s go,” she ordered, ignoring Trey entirely.

  I placed another strip of tape to secure the gauze strips. “Go where?”

  “Skiing.”

  “I don’t ski.”

  “You’re going to learn today,” she said. “Come on, get your coat. Trey?”

  The teenager knocked over a tub of cotton swabs. “Yes, Miss Watson?”

  Riley fixed him with one of her trademark stares. Then she shrugged, turned, and said, “Nothing.”

  Trey was affixed to the wall of the clinic, halfway through refilling the cotton swab tub. I patted him on the shoulder. “See you later, Trey.”

  There was no arguing with Riley. She marched me through the resort like a prepubescent drill instructor. We returned briefly to my room to fetch my outerwear, ate a massive breakfast at the Eagle’s View, then headed to the rental shop so Riley could pick out a pair of skis for me. As I browsed through the different lengths and patterns, Riley scared off Parker—the other girl from the café yesterday who was running the rental shop today—and went to the “employees only” side of the counter.

  “How much longer do I have to talk you out of this?” I asked Riley.

  “About five minutes, but don’t bother.” The skis dwarfed her as she carried two pairs out of the storage room and dumped them on the counter. “Stop worrying. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’ve skied before, right?”

  “Twice,” I admitted. “Once with my mother, which was a disaster, and once with Jazmin. I fell on the bunny slope, and she had to carry me to our room.”

  Riley typed something into the rental shop’s computer and hit the Enter key with a flourish. “I’m a better teacher than your mom or your friend. Put your boots on and get your skis.”

  She didn’t wait for me to worm into the stiff ski boots, shouldering her equipment like a pro and leaving me behind in the shop. I snapped the buckles of the boots shut, put on my gloves, and hurried after her. She waited for me near the ski lift. Liam, who was in the controls booth, kept glancing over at her, as if checking to see if she was watching him work.

  “Ready?” Riley asked, already strapped into her skis. “You have to put them on before we get on the lift.”

  “I know.” I finagled the skis onto the ground and tried to maneuver my foot into the first one before Riley took pity on me and did it herself. As I used her shoulder for balance, I grinned sheepishly at Liam, but he was too busy eyeing Riley to notice my embarrassment. Once I was strapped in, we stepped into the path of the lift. I shuffled. Riley glided.

  “It’s all about timing,” she said. “Don’t think about it too much. When the chair comes around, let it scoop you up. Here we go—”

  The lift whirred, and our chair circled around at too quickly a pace. Riley hopped into it without issue despite her short stature, but it took me out at the knees, and I fell into it. Riley tugged on my jacket hood to keep me in the seat at we soared upward. I settled in, and the ground fell away. With a gulp, I wrapped an arm around the metal support. Riley lounged as if we were floating down a lazy river in an inner tube, kicking her skis over the open air.

  “Why don’t these things have protective bars?” I said. “Or seatbelts.”

  “They probably should.” Riley gazed across the mountain. The sun brought out the freckles across her nose and cheeks. “People are more likely to die on ski lifts because of human error than mechanical failure.”

  I gripped the chair tighter. “Good to know.”

  Riley rested her chin in her palm, quiet as we chugged upward. The higher we got, the more she relaxed, as if the ski lift carried her away from the problems at King and Queens. The tranquility spread. The coils of stress within me gradually unwound, and I stopped staring at the ground to get a look at the natural wonder around me. The mountain was beautiful, especially so early in the morning. The sun scattered pink and orange crystals across the snow. With every gust of wind, the trees released a waft of piney aroma. Whatever birds hadn’t migrated south chirped and whistled their morning songs. No one was out on the trails yet, not even on White Oak’s side of the mountain, so Riley and I appreciated the moment on our own. At the top of the lift, I surprised myself by gliding right out of the chair and stopping next to Riley without a wobble.

  “See?” she said. “You’re doing better already.”

  I peered down the different trails. Each one looked steeper than the next. “What are we doing all the way up here, Riley? I told you I can’t ski. I thought we’d check out the bunny slope.”

  “This trail is for kids and beginners,” she said, pointing into the trees. “It’s really easy. You won’t have any trouble with it.”

  “I meant we’re not supposed to be skiing at all,” I said. “We’re supposed to be figuring out what’s going on with you. How are we going to do that if we’re not at the resort?”

  Riley used her teeth to adjust her gloves. “There’s nothing going on with me.”

  “What about all the stuff you said last night?” I held up my injured hand. The bandage was hidden beneath the glove. “You know how I sliced my palm open? That vase you were staring at took a dive this morning all by itself. Wanna tell me about that?”

  She zipped her jacket all the way up to her chin, sparing me no attention. “Not really. Should we go?”

  I had no choice but to scuff after her, one ski then the other, as she navigated to the top of the beginner’s trail. “What you said about your brother—”

  “I don’t remember half of what I told you last night.” She put on her ski goggles. The purple tint clashed horribly with her yellow jacket. “It was late. I was tired.”

  “And the voices were speaking to you?”

  Riley whipped her head around to stare at me. “How’d you know that?”

  “You told me they were going to visit me,” I reminded her. “And you completely zoned out while you were saying it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m literally here to talk about it. Your dad—hey!”

  The kid took off. One second she was standing at the top of the slope, and the next, she was flying through the trees. She gained twenty yards in a matter of seconds, and there was nothing I could do but try and follow her.

  “So much for lessons,” I grumbled, digging my poles into the snow.

  Once I got moving, the basics came back to me. I concentrated on the back and forth rhythm, singing songs in my head to keep my zigzag pattern level. Every so often, I put a little too much force into one ski or the other. The snow cascaded over my boots, pulling me to an abrupt stop. Sometimes, the other ski swung around uncontrollably until I regained my balance. I was thankful for the empty paths. No one but Riley was around to watch as I carved a disastrous line down the mountain, and she was so far ahead that it didn’t matter anyway. We hadn’t gone far when Riley disappeared around a curve. When I rounded the bend, she was nowhere in sight.

  “Riley!” My voice echoed through the trees, sending birds from their warm nests. “Hey, where’d you go?”

  No reply. If I lost Oliver’s possessed kid on the mountain, I would never see that ten thousand dollars. I tucked my poles for a spurt of speed like I’d seen her do, hoping to catch up with her. It worked for three seconds before both skis wobbled out of control and crashed into each other. I went flying, rolling head over shoulders without any knowledge of which way was up. Finally, I crashed into a tree and came to a halt. Riley glided ove
r and looked down at me.

  “Wow,” she said. “You weren’t kidding when you said you couldn’t ski.”

  I rolled over, groaning as the muscles in my back recovered from the fall. “You owe me so much, kid.”

  “It’s okay.” She offered me a hand, pulling me out of the snow and to my feet with a shocking amount of strength. “We’re here.”

  I dusted off my jacket and pants and stretched out my back. My shoulder twinged from where it hit the tree. It was going to need an ice pack when we got back to the resort. “Where’s here?”

  Riley stepped out of her skis, picked them up, and walked through the trees. On the other side of the sky-high pines, the mountain path opened up. The ski lift chugged by right above us.

  “This is where my mom died,” she said. “I found her right there.”

  She pointed to a spot under the lift, near one of the support towers. There was no caution tape or blood or snapped machinery. Fresh snow had fallen since then, all evidence of the incident erased. It lay untouched, a smooth layer of perfection to hide the tragedy beneath.

  Riley wandered toward the spot. She gazed at the lift, closed one eye, and held up her hand to pinch her fingers together. “Don’t you wish you could move things around like a god? Life would be a lot easier.”

  “Not if everyone had the same power,” I said.

  “I guess you’re right.” She dropped her hand and stared at the snow. “I thought I might hear her too, like the others, but she doesn’t talk to me the way they do.”

  Though the statement sent a shiver through me, I didn’t get the same uneasy feeling about her as I did last night in the lodge. She stood and spoke like a scared little girl who’d lost her mother. If the words coming out of her mouth weren’t so horrifying, I wouldn’t have any trouble comforting her. As it was, my job was to keep her talking about this stuff.

  “Does she talk to you at all?” I asked.

  “No,” Riley said. “She’s not there.”

  “Not where?”