The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Exploring,” I answered truthfully. And then I embellished for the sake of Madame Lucia’s career. “I was following the essence of the spirits roaming around the resort. It’s no wonder they led me there. Those rooms are crawling with energy. What’s the story there anyway? Why does King and Queens have two lobbies? It’s like whoever was in charge after that fire built the new resort right over the old one.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” Daniel said. “I was as surprised as you to find all of that, so I pulled the public records on the renovations. None of the information on the construction after the fire mentioned anything about the old wing.”

  “What about the fire itself?” I asked. “From the looks of the old wing, it sure wasn’t a small one. People probably died. That sort of thing makes the front page.”

  He showed me an article stored on his smartphone. “You’re right about that too. 1988. Forty-nine people died when the resort caught fire in the middle of the night.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, skimming the article. It didn’t include many details. “Why would anyone leave the burned bits?”

  “That’s what I intend to ask Mr. Watson as soon as I find him. You don’t happen to know where he might be, do you?”

  “He’s skiing with Riley.” I checked the time. “It’s been hours though. They should be getting back soon.”

  Right on cue, the lobby door slammed below, and Oliver’s indignant shouts echoed through the lobby and into the Eagle’s View. Daniel and I hurried across the lounge and looked over the double staircase. Oliver stomped by the front desk, startling Trey out of his Tetris-induced coma. His skis and parka were dumped in a puddle of melting snow as if he was too upset to return his equipment to the rental shop. Riley trailed after him, her own skis dragging behind her.

  “It’s an outrage!” Oliver yelled, ripping off his gloves and throwing them to the floor. “The nerve. The nerve! I’m going to sue him. That’s what I’m going to do. I am going to rip that ugly piece of crap resort right out from under him.”

  “Sir?” Trey collected Oliver’s gloves and hat. “Did something happen?”

  “Did something happen?” Oliver snarled. “I’ll tell you what happened. That son of a bitch Nick Porter is trying to sabotage me.”

  Daniel jogged down the stairs to join the fray. I followed after him, beelining toward Riley. Her face was paler than usual, and for once, she didn’t hone her withering stare on me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Detective Hawkins,” Oliver boomed before she could answer. He clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Perfect. I need a word with you. How do I sue Nick Porter?”

  Daniel glanced warily at Oliver’s grip. “I guess that depends on what Nick Porter did to warrant being sued. Why don’t you explain what happened out there?”

  “He’s trying to screw with me,” Oliver declared. “All I wanted was a nice day on the slopes with my daughter, but—”

  “The point, Mr. Watson. Get to the point.”

  “We were skiing the regular routes,” Oliver said. “Riley’s favorite trails. Everything was fine—great even—until a couple hours in, two goons on snowmobiles showed up.” He held up air quotes. “‘White Oak Trail Officials.’ Give me a break. Anyway, these idiots had the nerve to tell us we weren’t allowed to ski that route because Nick Porter had recently acquired the land, and that if we wanted access to the mountain, we had to be guests of White Oak. They had the nerve to tell me that I couldn’t ski on my own land. I’m going to kill him.”

  Daniel led Oliver toward the office behind the front desk. “Probably not the best thing to say in front of a detective, Mr. Watson. Let’s go talk this out.”

  As they closed themselves in Oliver’s office, I knelt in front of Riley and waved a hand in front of her vacant eyes. “Hey. Riley, are you okay?”

  She steadied herself on my shoulders but made no reply. Warm liquid dripped from her gloves and onto my sweater. It was blood.

  “You’re hurt.” I pulled off her borrowed glove, which was drenched in blood, and rolled up the sleeve of her jacket. The pale skin on the underside of her wrist was raw and bleeding like she’d scraped it against a patch of asphalt. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. Trey, can you return their things to the rental shop?”

  “No problem, Miss Star.”

  I took Riley by the hand—the uninjured one—and led her into the first aid room. Oliver and Daniel’s muffled voices echoed from the office next door as I sat Riley in a chair and gathered the supplies to clean her arm. She stared at the floor, showing no pain or discomfort at the sight of her mangled skin.

  “Something happened out there,” I guessed as I rinsed the wound with saline. “Other than your dad’s run-in with the White Oak Trail Officials. How did you hurt yourself? Riley?” I snapped my fingers in front of her face, and she blinked. I softened my voice. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”

  “Someone was on the mountain with us,” she whispered.

  “Who? The White Oak guys?”

  “No, after that.”

  Her jacket sleeve kept falling over the wound. I maneuvered her out of it and set it aside. Underneath, her thick fleece sweater was drenched in melted snow, like she’d taken a fall on the slopes and rolled through a deep drift.

  “Who was it?”

  Riley pivoted her head—slowly—to look up at me. “One of them.”

  My entire spine threatened to evacuate my body as I attempted to control the shiver that Riley’s answer induced. I blotted Riley’s wrist with clean gauze. “You met a spirit?”

  “She followed us,” Riley said. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell Dad, so I went faster to get away. But she kept up. I got distracted and fell. Tried to catch myself on a tree, but the bark—” She brandished her red, exposed skin. “Dad didn’t notice. He was so mad about the White Oak thing that he kept skiing.”

  “I’m sure he was preoccupied,” I said. Thankfully, Riley’s wound wasn’t deep, just ugly, so I dressed it the same way I’d done the cut on my palm, with a layer of antibiotic cream, fresh gauze, and sterile tape. “Do you feel like the ghost was trying to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t say anything. I’ve never heard one of them on the mountain before. It usually only happens in the hotel. This was different too. I felt her. Like energy. We have to go back.”

  I ripped the tape prematurely and ended up with a piece that was too short to make use of. “Excuse me? Go back where?”

  “Up the mountain,” she clarified. “You and me. To tell the ghost to leave me alone. We’ll have to go at night though. My dad can’t know about this. He already thinks I’m insane.”

  “I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I said, finishing up the bandage. “First of all, it’s not safe to go out in the snow at night, and second, we don’t know if this spirit meant you harm or not. We shouldn’t provoke it.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?” Riley challenged. “To provoke the spirits?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m here to help you. And you should never waltz into mediumship with the intention to provoke anything. What do I always say?”

  “Confidence, candidness, and caution.”

  “And which one do you think is most important?”

  “You want me to say caution, don’t you?”

  “Right.” I tossed the gloves into the trash with the rest of the used gauze since the original owner wouldn’t want them back with Riley’s blood all over them. “Caution is the most important thing to consider during any conversation or connection with the dead. We don’t know anything about that realm, no matter how much any of us claim to. Understood?”

  Riley examined me as I wiped the counters down with disinfectant. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “You are,” Riley accused. “I can see it all over your face.”

  “Riley, I’m not scared,” I
said. “And we’re not going up the mountain through the snow in the middle of the night to track down a spirit that may or may not be amicable. That’s final. We’re not in a Casper movie, kid.”

  “Okay.” She hopped off the counter with a significant boost of confidence. “But I wonder what my father will say when I tell him you’re not doing your best to help me after all.”

  I ground my teeth together. The kid had me, and she knew it. The satisfied smirk on her face said it all.

  “Fine,” I said. “Meet me in the lobby at midnight.”

  6

  I left my room five minutes before midnight, bundled up in as many layers as possible. Without the sun to warm us, the mountain was bound to be as cold as death. The irony wasn’t lost on me. As I slipped into the vacant corridor and pressed the call button for the elevator, I felt fifteen years old again. As a teenager, my mother was constantly trying to rein me in. Naturally, I pulled tighter against her ropes. Sneaking out after curfew was a specialty of mine. I rode the elevator down, reminding myself on each floor that, as a responsible adult, I wasn’t going to get in trouble for being out of my suite in the middle of the night. However, I might get arrested for taking the resort owner’s daughter up the mountain for a ghost hunt. It was a toss-up.

  Riley waited in the lobby, a ghost herself, standing outside the elevator door as it opened. Her jacket bulged, a backpack creating a humpback from underneath. My heart jumped into my throat before I realized it was her. I steadied a hand against my chest.

  “Don’t do that!” I whispered.

  “What?” She spoke at a normal volume. The marble floors and domed ceiling magnified her voice. The single word bounced around like a repeated tone on the marimba.

  “Scare me,” I said. “And would you hush? The last thing I need is for your dad to find out what we’re doing.”

  “Dad’s room is in the old wing,” Riley said. “It’s miles away. Unless he’s a bat, he won’t hear us.”

  “The old wing? You mean near the resort’s second restaurant?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know. I never go over there.”

  “You don’t? Where’s your room?”

  “Tenth floor,” she answered. “It’s the only corner suite in the entire resort with extra windows and a reading nook. It also has the added benefit of being far away from Tyler’s room.”

  I zipped my jacket up to my chin. “For future reference, where does he stay?”

  “Down here,” she said. “His room is right next to the gym. I’ve never seen him lift a weight in his life, but I guess that weird skinny muscle comes from somewhere. Are you ready to go? Have you got the stuff?”

  I patted my pockets. All I had was my smallest digital camera. “What stuff?”

  “The séance stuff,” she clarified. “You didn’t bring anything?”

  “Whoa, since when are we holding a séance?”

  Riley huffed like a tiny frustrated bull. “Are you kidding me? I told you I wanted to go out there and ask the ghost to leave me alone. How are we supposed to do that without holding a séance?”

  “A séance is to call earthbound spirits to you,” I reminded her. “If this chick’s already out and about, she shouldn’t have any trouble finding us. Here, take this.”

  The amethyst stone from earlier was still in my pocket. I plunked it into Riley’s palm. She weighed it in her hand and stared at it.

  “What is it?”

  “Amethyst,” I said. “It provides protection.”

  She lifted the gem to her nose to inspect it. “Is it real?”

  “Yes.” Probably not. I’d gotten it at the same flea market as my questionably-priced crystal ball. “Can we go now? I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible.”

  Riley tucked the rock into the chest pocket of her ski jacket. “Fine. Come on. And don’t drag your feet. Dad has the floors waxed every night. If he sees scuff marks, he’ll know someone was out.”

  “We’ll just blame it on Tyler.”

  Her face lit up. “Great idea!”

  The cold bit into me like a feral cat as soon as we left the lobby, sinking its frigid teeth into every pore. I opened a packet of hand warmers and slipped one into each glove then gave Riley a pair too. She put them in her boots instead. The moon stained the world silver. Every foot of snow shimmered like metal dusted from a blacksmith’s honing blade. The chair lift was quiet, a still picture of a silent beast with many legs as it slouched up the mountain.

  “Guess we didn’t think this through enough,” I said of the unmoving lift. “How are we supposed to get up the mountain?”

  Riley dangled a single key from her index finger. “I borrowed a snowmobile.”

  The vehicle was hidden amongst the dead roses in the butterfly garden. How Riley had managed to get it there without anyone spotting her was a mystery. For all I knew, the kid had magic powers.

  “Borrowed?” I asked.

  “Yes. It belongs to the resort. The resort belongs to my father. As logic would follow, I am perfectly within my bounds to take this snowmobile out for a jaunt whenever I want.”

  “Uh-huh.” I circled the vehicle. It was bigger than I imagined, painted matte black with bright yellow stripes like a hornet. No wonder Riley picked this one. It matched her garish ski outfit. “There’s only one problem, Riley. I can’t drive this thing.”

  She straddled the seat, slid the key into place, and gripped the handlebars as the engine turned over. “Who said anything about you driving? Get on.”

  “No way. You don’t even have a learner’s permit.”

  Riley tugged me toward the snowmobile until I had to swing a leg over or risk the skis taking out my shins. “Would you relax? I’ve been doing this for years. My mom used to let me steer all the time.”

  “How safe.”

  Riley flipped a switch, reared the handle, and the snowmobile shot forward, spinning a wave of snow up behind it. Nearly upseated, I wrapped both arms around Riley’s pygmy torso.

  “Lean into it!” she shouted over the sound of the wind as we careened up the mountain.

  I followed her lead, ducking as low as possible to avoid resistance. When she leaned in either direction, I followed. After a few minutes, I got the hang of shifting our weight back and forth depending on the angle of the snowmobile, and we proceeded up the mountain at a breakneck pace. Riley, bless her heart, actually seemed to know what she was doing, but the farther we progressed, the more I dwelled on my conversation with Daniel from earlier. Was there a difference between my trip with Riley and the one she took the morning of her mother’s death? Were we really up here to track down a ghost or did she have something more macabre planned for me? Her determined fingers handled the massive snowmobile with apparent ease. Between the two of us, she had the advantage of navigating through the snow. I was relying on a twelve-year-old to keep both of us safe, but what if Riley’s intention had never been to keep me safe? Too busy thinking about it, I forgot to lean in around a turn, and the snowmobile jerked across the snow.

  “You okay back there?” Riley called over her shoulder. The fluffy white ball atop her beanie fluttered in the wind like a rabbit’s tail. The hat itself was a deep maroon instead of Riley’s usual neon garb. It wasn’t her style at all, and it highlighted the innocence of her young face.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just keep going. Are we close?”

  “Getting there.”

  A few minutes later, Riley coaxed the snowmobile to a smooth stop. I stumbled off with wobbly legs and a tight core. Apparently, snowmobiling was a full body workout. Riley laughed as I shook out my shaky muscles.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I should’ve warned you.”

  “It’s fine. Where are we?”

  She pointed to a nearby sign that marked the run for intermediate and advanced skiers. “Winder’s run. It was my mother’s favorite because it’s so twisty and fun. It’s mine too.”

  “This is where you felt the ghost?”<
br />
  “Yeah. What do we do now?”

  I stamped my feet as the cold threatened to seep into my bones. “Now we wait. If she wants to talk to you again, she’ll show up.”

  Riley reclined on the seat of the snowmobile like it was a therapist’s couch, cradling her head in her hands as she stared up at the starry sky. “It’s boring being psychic.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered. I attempted to clear a patch of snow from beneath a tree, but it was too deep to bother with. Instead, I lifted myself to the lowest, thickest branch and sat in the fork in the trunk. The tree’s bark warmed up after a few minutes as I shared my body heat with it. I thought of Sam Gribley, the teenager from that book My Side of the Mountain who decided to leave home and live in a hollowed-out tree in the middle of the Catskills Mountains. When I read it in middle school, I was skeptical that anyone under the age of eighteen would have the endurance to make it in the wilderness alone, but after meeting Riley, I was beginning to change my tune. If King and Queens disappeared without reason, she would be the one to keep us both alive.

  I tracked the constellations and the moon’s path across the sky as minute after minute crept by. After an hour, I opened another packet of warmers and shoved them down the front of my shirt. Riley took a thermos from her backpack, took a sip of the steaming liquid inside, then offered it to me. It was thick, homemade hot chocolate, sweet enough to strangle an oompa loompa, but it did the trick. Its warmth coated my throat and trickled into my stomach. I returned the thermos to Riley and took out my camera to shoot a few angles of our place on the mountain.

  “Do you ever go anywhere without a camera?” Riley asked.

  “Not if there’s good content available.”

  “Can I see?”

  I passed the camera down to her. The red light on the front blinked as she filmed me up in the tree.

  “You look like a bear,” she said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “A small one. Is it weird?”