The Second-Best Haunted Hotel on Mercer Street

by Cory Putman Oakes

  The carpet was the same in each Hauntery, too. And the three-quarter lighting, spooky portraits, and ghost staff’s uniforms were all rigidly regulated by Corporate to be exactly the same in every property around the world.

  The ghost staff quarters were no surprise, either. Hidden behind all of the finery of the public spaces, they were identical to the dull, dingy, depressing rooms that Evie, her mother, her father, and her cousin Louise had called home at every other Hauntery they’d ever worked at.

  Since everything was the same, Evie couldn’t explain why she suddenly felt different.

  But she did. The moment she’d walked through the gates of this particular Hauntery, she hadn’t been able to shake the strangely anxious feeling that had come over her. It got steadily worse, even after they met a nice, bubbly member of the ghost staff named Patricia Spengler, who showed them to their rooms and complimented Evie’s maroon Dr. Martens.

  Patricia left far too soon, and when Evie’s mother announced that it was time for them to change and rehearse their acts for the hotel manager, Evie knew she Just. Couldn’t. Take. It. Anymore.

  “No,” she said.

  Her mother didn’t hear her. She had already turned away and was fussing with the fastener on Evie’s father’s Phantasm cloak.

  “You’ll be brilliant, darling,” Evie’s mother cooed to her husband. “The most frightening Phantasm this town has ever seen.”

  “And you, my dear, will be the most hauntingly beautiful Weeping Woman, as always,” he cooed back.

  “No,” Evie said again, louder this time.

  “What did you say, dear?” Evie’s mother asked, but before Evie could repeat herself yet again, Louise bounced into the room. Evie’s cousin was already dressed and ready to go, clad in a pink pinafore dress with a white lace collar, tasseled knee socks, and shiny Mary Janes. Her curly red pigtails bounced with every skipping step, as did the floppy, oversize, bubble-gum-pink ribbons on either side of her head.

  The sight of Louise made Evie want to vomit. But Evie’s mother’s face lit up with a giant smile.

  “Oh, Louise, you look adorable. Simply adorable. Jim, doesn’t she look adorable?”

  “Adorable,” Evie’s father agreed.

  “Come, come, Evie.” Evie’s mother clapped. “Let’s have a look at the most adorable Spooky Little Girl ghosts on the Eastern Seaboard—Louise, are those ribbons in your hair?”

  “Yes, Aunt Karen.” Louise swung her head from side to side, making the ribbons smack against her cheeks. “I just added them. What do you think?”

  “Adorable,” Evie’s mother gushed, and Evie was certain she was going to scream if she heard that word again. “Evie, dear, do the ribbons! Do the ribbons like Louise!”

  But Evie didn’t do the ribbons. Or the dress. Or the socks. Or the shoes. Not because she couldn’t—in fact, being able to change her clothes and hairstyle in the blink of an eye was one of the only things Evie actually liked about being a ghost. She did it all the time; today, she had changed her naturally straight red hair to wavy gray with blue streaks. Usually, she changed into her performance outfit every evening without complaint.

  But not tonight.

  “No,” she said again, wondering how many times she was going to have to repeat herself before somebody actually heard her.

  “You don’t like the ribbons?” Louise asked innocently.

  Evie narrowed her eyes at her cousin, who, she was sure, had thought up the ribbons solely to torture her.

  “I don’t want to wear those,” Evie said dangerously.

  Evie’s mother sighed. “Fine, fine. Forget the ribbons. But do change the rest of your clothes, Evie. The manager will be here any moment to check us over for the test run tonight.”

  Evie shook her head. “I don’t want to wear any of it,” she clarified. “I don’t want to be a Spooky Little Girl anymore. I want to be a Terrifying Phantasm, like Dad.”

  Evie’s mother sighed again.

  Evie’s father stepped forward. “Evie, we’ve talked about this—”

  “You’ve talked about this,” Evie corrected him. “I never get to say any—”

  “We all play our roles,” Evie’s father interrupted. “We scare the guests, and their fear helps us to remain on this plane of existence. It allows us all to stay together. It’s a good arrangement, Evie.”

  “But Dad, I can be a Terrifying Phantasm. I’ve been practicing! I could inspire much more fear doing that than—”

  “Why would you want to do that,” Evie’s mother interrupted, “when you’re so wonderful at being a Spooky Little Girl?”

  “Just because I’m good at being a Spooky Little Girl doesn’t mean I can’t do other things, too,” Evie pointed out. “I want to be a Terrifying Phantasm. I can do it, I know I can—”

  “You can’t,” Evie’s father cut in. “I’m sorry, but you can’t. It’s not you.”

  “How do you know it’s ‘not me’ if you won’t even let me show you what I can—”

  “Enough!” Evie’s father thundered, summoning enough of his Phantasm voice to make the rest of them stand up straighter. “I’m tired of having this argument. You are a Spooky Little Girl. You’re lucky to be a Spooky Little Girl. You are a Hauntery ghost. And why are you lucky to be a Hauntery ghost?”

  Evie gritted her teeth and refused to say it. With Louise around, she knew she wouldn’t have to, anyway.

  “Because Hauntery ghosts never Fade!” Louise proclaimed loudly.

  “Hauntery ghosts never Fade!” Evie’s father repeated, smiling down at Louise before turning back to Evie. “Now, I don’t want to hear another word about this Phantasm nonsense. Is that understood?”

  Evie opened her mouth to say quite a few more words about it, but Louise stepped up right in front of her face, grinning nastily.

  “I can get her ready, Uncle Jim,” she offered, staring pointedly at the left side of Evie’s head.

  Evie gasped as she felt one side of her hair spring up into a pigtail.

  “Stop that!” Evie shrieked at her cousin, closing her eyes and not opening them again until her hair was back to its wavy gray with blue streaks.

  “Girls!” Evie’s mother admonished them. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “They’d laugh at her if she tried to be a Phantasm,” Louise spat, curling one of her pigtails around her finger. “All the guests would just laugh and laugh.”

  Evie ground her teeth and pondered, for the billionth time, how cosmically unfair it was that she was stuck with her hateful cousin for all of eternity. Ever since they’d all died together in that car accident, Evie’s parents had declared that Louise was “like another daughter to them.” Nobody had ever asked Evie how she felt about gaining a sister. She definitely had thoughts on the matter.

  “They wouldn’t laugh at me,” Evie informed Louise.

  “They might,” Evie’s mother declared, coming between the two girls. She was starting to look less annoyed and more worried by the moment. “And then what? At the very least, we’d lose our jobs at the Hauntery—and you know how hard we’ve worked to make it here. There’s a line of ghosts a mile long waiting to fill our positions. And at worst, you might start to Fade! Maybe even enough that you’d Move On! Without us!”

  Evie’s mother enveloped her daughter in her arms, smashing Evie’s face against the beaded bodice of her Weeping Woman wedding dress. “We’d lose you, Evie! Forever! I couldn’t stand it! I couldn’t! Don’t do that to me, darling, say you won’t! I—”

  “OK, Mom,” Evie mumbled, freeing herself from the hug. “OK.”

  Closing her eyes against Louise’s smug grin, Evie called up an image of herself in the Spooky Little Girl outfit. When she opened her eyes and looked down, she was wearing the dreaded pink dress, the knee socks, and the pinchy black leather shoes. She couldn’t see her hair, but she knew it was back to its usual fiery orangey red (to match Louise’s). The ribbons drooped like lead weights on either side of her head.

>   Evie’s mother cleared her throat. “Show me,” she commanded.

  Evie reached for Louise’s hand. Standing side by side, they both fixed Evie’s mother with identical haunted stares.

  “Come and play with us,” she and Louise said together in spooky singsong voices.

  Evie’s mother clapped. “Adorable,” she declared. “Frighteningly adorable.”

  CHAPTER 3

  WILLOW

  There were muffled screams behind the closed door on the fourth floor. Several crashes. A sound like something heavy being dragged across the floor. Then an otherworldly, disembodied screech shook the hotel rafters.

  But none of those things were what made Willow go suddenly pale.

  “Oh no,” she groaned.

  “Oh yes,” deadpanned Pierce, handing Willow the flyer that had arrived with the Hotel Ivan’s morning mail.

  “So Mr. Foster was right,” Willow muttered.

  “What are we going to do?” Pierce asked, and Willow blinked at his expression. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought Pierce looked nervous. But Pierce was never nervous. He was never anything other than mildly annoyed.

  Before she could answer, Pierce handed her another piece of paper.

  “This came today as well. It says it’s from the Truancy Board—”

  Willow snatched the paper and crumpled it up. “That’s a mistake.”

  “Hmmmm.” Pierce gave her a look. “When was the last time you went to school?”

  “I took a leave of absence,” Willow informed him. “When Mom died.”

  “I wasn’t aware you could take a leave of absence from sixth grade,” Pierce countered, then softened his voice a smidge. “It’s been six months now. Maybe it’s time to think about—”

  “A Hauntery, huh?” Willow said, changing the subject. “Why would they put a Hauntery here? So near us?”

  “What are we going to do?” Pierce asked again.

  “I don’t know.” Willow folded the flyer and tucked it safely into her back pocket. “But for now, whatever you do, please don’t tell—”

  “A HAUNTERY!” a voice on the other side of the door shrieked. “A HAUNTERY! This is the end! The ennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd!”

  Willow looked accusingly at Pierce, who shrugged.

  “Leo got to the mail before me this morning. He was looking for his Phantasm Weekly.”

  Willow took a bracing breath before opening the door. “Leo—” she tried, then promptly ducked as a china plate hit the doorframe above her head.

  A rotund male ghost wearing a green velvet dressing gown over a black tuxedo floated by. Leo, the Ivan’s Terrifying Phantasm, was a German-born former opera star with an undeniable flair for the dramatic. Between wails, he stuck two more dinner plates beneath his right arm, grabbed a serving tray, then took aim again. The tray shattered against a wardrobe on the far wall.

  “It’s over!” he bellowed. “There’s no hope! None!”

  He tossed another plate above his head, causing pieces of china to rain down from the ceiling.

  “Psssst!”

  Another ghost, this one wearing a dusty brown soldier’s uniform, gestured frantically at Willow and Pierce from behind a chair. Willow could tell Alford was stressed. He always wore his death era outfit (that of a World War I American cavalry officer) when he was on duty haunting the second floor, but he only wore it during his off-hours when he was worried about something.

  “Alford, what’s gotten into him?” Willow asked as she and Pierce joined Leo’s husband behind the chair.

  “He’s been like this all day,” Alford said, kicking several pieces of a broken teacup away from where they were all crouching. “I don’t know what brought it on.”

  “What brought it on?” Leo thundered, coming to a sudden stop in midair, causing his dressing gown to swirl dramatically behind him. “What brought it on? What brought it ON? I’ll tell you what brought it on; my voice! My voice is gone! Gone, I say! It’s gone!”

  “All evidence to the contrary,” Pierce pointed out, standing up with his hands protectively over his ears.

  “Not my normal voice!” Leo snapped at the concierge. “My Phantasm cry. The very cry that the Vermont Board of Tourism called ‘bone-chilling.’ The cry that has landed me on the Zagged Guide’s Top Ten Phantasms in America list every year for the last eighty-five years!”

  “Actually, you were number eleven last year,” Pierce pointed out.

  “CLOSE ENOUGH!” Leo thundered, throwing his last plate, Frisbee-style, at Pierce’s head.

  Pierce made a show of yawning as he leaned out of the way. The plate shattered against the wall behind him.

  Now that Leo was out of ammunition, Willow stood up hesitantly.

  “Surely it can’t be that bad—” she ventured.

  “Oh, really? You don’t think so? Watch this.”

  Leo puffed out his chest and drew himself up so that he was floating several feet above the floor. A cold wind whistled through the room, ruffling Willow’s hair. Leo raised his arms over his head, screwed up his face into a truly menacing sneer, and opened his mouth. Willow braced herself for his familiar earsplitting yowl (which, she knew from experience, the Vermont Board of Tourism had been absolutely right to call “bone-chilling”)—but nothing came. Not even the tiniest squeak.

  “See?” Leo floated back down to the floor with a hiccupy sob. “I don’t know why I even bother. I might as well just Fade! Who would even notice? Who would even care?”

  “Of course people would notice, honey,” Alford said, coming out from behind the chair and taking Leo’s hand fondly. “You’re the Great Leopold! Your Fading, when it happens, will be an event for the ages. But it’s not happening yet. Not yet.”

  “I would notice if you Faded, Leo,” Willow added. “And I’d care. I’d care very deeply if you were no longer here.”

  Leo smiled wistfully at her.

  “I probably wouldn’t care,” Pierce said unhelpfully, ruining the moment and causing Leo to begin sobbing anew.

  “Who am I kidding?” He paused to throw himself theatrically onto a chaise lounge. “It’s already started. Look at that.”

  Leo kicked off his bed slippers. Pierce gasped and covered his nose. Even Alford took a discreet step backward. But Willow, being Living and thus unbothered by ghostly foot odors, leaned forward and examined Leo’s bare foot as closely as she could. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw that his big toe and the two beside it were missing. Gone. Faded. No doubt about it.

  “Oh, Leo,” Alford purred, fumbling around on the floor for the discarded slippers. He had the slightly congested-sounding speech of someone trying desperately not to breathe through his nose. “Let’s get your slippers back on now—”

  “No! I want her to see it! She should see it! It’s her fault!”

  Willow cringed at his words. Pierce stiffened. And Alford sighed.

  “Now, now,” Alford said disapprovingly, shooting Willow an apologetic look before he turned back to his husband. “She’s doing the best she can—”

  “Tell that to my Phantasm cry,” Leo sniffed, ripping his slippers from Alford’s hands and shoving them roughly back onto his feet. “I may never get it back, have you thought of that? Then what? We’ll lose guests. Without them and their fear, there’s nothing to stop us all from Fading!”

  Pierce snorted. “Somebody’s been buying into the gossip again.” He gestured to a nearby table, where, in addition to Phantasm Weekly, there were other crumpled magazines with headlines like “‘Ghosts Require Fear to Remain on the Living Plane,’ Says a Landmark Study by Professor J. Torrance” and “To Fear or To Fade: What the New Scientific Findings Mean for the Ghosts in Your Life.”

  “It’s science,” Leo snarled.

  “One study.” Pierce waved his hand in the air as though that could make it go away. “There’s always some crackpot theory or another going around about Fading. People have been studying it for as long as there have been ghosts, and nobody’s
been able to figure it out yet. Why do some ghosts Fade right away while others stick around for centuries? Why do some people become ghosts in the first place while most don’t? Nobody knows for sure. And probably nobody ever will. All of these so-called ‘scientific’ theories end up getting disproven eventually. It’ll be the same with this one.”

  “What if it isn’t a crackpot theory?” Leo argued. “What if this one’s right? Can you think of a better explanation for what’s happening to us? For what happened to Anna?”

  “Oh, Anna’s been Fading for decades,” Pierce sniffed.

  “Yes, but she didn’t Move On until now,” Leo pointed out. “Not enough guests means not enough fear. Not enough fear means Fading.” He gestured to his now-slippered toes, then looked imploringly at Willow. “This is simply no way to treat the talent, my dear.”

  Pierce snorted. “And I suppose you think you’re the talent in this scenario?”

  “OF COURSE I AM!” Leo thundered. “As Leopold, I was the toast of Europe! Head tenor of the Hamburg State Opera. And as Leonata, I was a major off-Broadway star—the most sought-after drag performer east of the Mississippi. Alford and I only moved here for a little quiet, a change of pace—”

  “And maybe it’s time for another change, Leo,” Alford cut in, taking Leo’s hand again. “Maybe it’s time for us to think about retirement.”

  “RETIREMENT?” Leo thundered, and Alford sighed, not looking entirely surprised at Leo’s reaction. “Impossible! This hotel would crumble into chaos if I retired!”

  “OK, Leo, OK. Have it your way.” Alford held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s just calm down . . .”

  But Leo was in far too much of a state to do that.

  “Every ghost in this hotel depends on me to generate fear—including you, Pierce.” He paused to glare at the concierge, who crossed his arms but didn’t deny it. “Because of me, the rest of you can flit around, changing bed linens and taking our guests on themed excursions. I’m the Terrifying Phantasm! If I can’t do my job, we’ll all Fade. Me, my sweet Alford, all of us! Doesn’t anybody understand the pressure I’m under?!”