Haunting at the Hotel Read online

  “Well,” I say, standing over Sunny, “I guess you’re just unlucky.”

  Three months later.

  Eliza and I are sitting at my kitchen table.

  “Okay, see how you multiply the fraction here, Carlos?” Eliza says.

  “No.”

  “You have to flip the nominator and denominator—”

  “Eliza.” I slam my notebook closed. “This is boring.”

  “You solve math puzzles harder than this all the time. Homework should be a breeze!”

  I snort. “It’s different. It’s easier to do math in life-or-death situations.”

  “That’s literally the opposite of what anyone would ever say.”

  Ding!

  Saved by the doorbell!

  Mom goes to get it, and it’s Frank. “Elizaaaaaa,” he says. “Dad says you have to come home now.”

  Eliza starts packing up her homework, and Mom ushers Frank inside. “Actually,” she says, “I’ve been waiting until we all got together to give you this.” She pulls out a letter from her purse. “I got it on Tuesday.”

  Eliza and I lean over the letter, and Eliza reads it out loud.

  Dear Las Pistas Team,

  Thank you so much for everything—I don’t know what I would have done without you. I’ve been meaning to write, but things got so hectic here.

  I’ve realized how important it is for January to grow up with peers her own age, so she, Harris, and I have moved to the town of Bear Ridge, just an hour away from the lodge. January is doing much better, and it’s been great to see her so happy in her new environment.

  As for the hotel, I’ve left it in Sunny’s capable hands. She was right—in a way. She went about it terribly, but I think I understand now how hurt she was that our parents picked between us. So . . . we’ve decided together to split the hotel shares. She owns 49 percent, and I own 51 percent. We are near-equal partners. And she will have it for the next five years—until January goes to college.

  I know what you must be thinking—that I must miss the hotel. It’s true. I do love the hotel, but I love my daughter and sister more.

  Hopefully I will never need a detective again, but if I do, I know where to turn.

  Best, Reese

  “It stinks that she had to leave the hotel, though,” I say. “Just because January threw a tantrum. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Yeah,” Frank agrees. “No fair. My temper tantrums get me NOTHING.”

  “Hmm. I don’t look at it like that,” Mom says. “It’s clear that January wasn’t being her best self in that environment, and they did everything they could to help their daughter. You know, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, hijo.”

  “Including bringing me in on another case?”

  “Para siempre.” She laughs. “Always, always, always.”

  CASE CLOSED.

  I HAVE TO go with my best friend. “I pick Eliza.”

  She sighs in relief. “I was nervous for a second.”

  I don’t say anything—to spare Frank’s feelings—but she didn’t have anything to be worried about.

  “Frank,” I say. “I chose you to go back to the Dead Room, because I think you’re braver than me, Eliza, and my mom. Don’t you agree? Aren’t you the bravest person in this room?”

  “Bravest person on the planet!” he boasts. “Maybe even the universe.”

  “You’re not scared of a little old Dead Room, right?”

  “I AM SCARED OF NOTHING.” He tugs on my mom’s sleeve. “Let’s go!”

  Mom gathers up four flashlights in her hands as Frank tries to pull her out the door. But before she leaves, she says my name. Very softly. “Carlos.”

  She’s going into the belly of the beast . . . again. That’s what I admire about my mom—she risks it all to find the truth, to help people in danger.

  So I push my fear away. Because that’s what my mom does.

  “Be careful,” I tell her.

  She nods once, and then she’s gone.

  “Let’s go, Carlos,” Eliza says, not two seconds after Mom closes the door. We leave the room and run down the curved staircase, into the lobby. The door to the fire den is open, and I can see Byron typing away. He squints at us, then shuts the door. Weird.

  Cricket is missing from her desk, which does seem odd, considering she told us that she and Reese had worked things out.

  Fernando di Cannoli comes out of the kitchen with a tray of food, sees us, yelps, and does a complete about-face. Bizarre.

  Harris is in his office, talking to Sunny, who is scowling quite intensely. No surprise there. I’m sure she’s getting scolded for losing the master key.

  Reese Winters is in her office alone. January has her homework spread out in front of her on the dining-room table, also alone.

  “Reese,” I say. “Or January. They’re alone. And we have questions for them.”

  “We do?” Eliza says.

  I know I do.

  * * *

  TO QUESTION JANUARY, CLICK HERE.

  TO QUESTION REESE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “JANUARY, WHY ARE you fighting with your mom?”

  “None of your business!” January snaps. “Anyone ever tell you how nosy you are?”

  “Every case,” I say.

  “Now answer the question,” Eliza demands.

  “Wow, you two are super rude.”

  “Just trying to solve the ghost haunting,” I say. “It’s impossible to do that without prying for more information.”

  “If you don’t tell us why you’re fighting with your mom, we’re going to assume you have something to hide,” Eliza says.

  January’s nose twitches. “If you must know,” she says, chipping away at her black nail polish, “my parents don’t get me. Sometimes I feel like they treat me like a puppet. They expect blind obedience, always wanting me to do exactly what they say, the moment they say it. Have they ever taken the time to get to know me? Maybe if they understood me at all, we wouldn’t argue so much.” She folds her arms. “But from my side, Mom starts all the fights. I just finish them. So go talk to her about why she stirs up drama.”

  January opens her textbook again and starts reading. It feels like we’ve gotten all we can out of her, so Eliza and I retreat from the dining room. Without even discussing it, we walk toward the door of Reese’s office. It feels like the key to the mystery, like all the answers to all the secrets are behind this door.

  I knock.

  “Come in,” Reese says. She looks tired. She rubs her eyes slowly. “I was just . . .”

  She doesn’t finish her sentence.

  “Can we ask you a question or two?” I ask.

  She nods.

  * * *

  TO ASK ABOUT HER FIGHTS WITH JANUARY, CLICK HERE.

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

  * * *

  ELIZA AND MOM are crouched near the door, trying everything they can to get us out of this cramped underground room. And I hate to disturb them, but I need help cracking this code.

  “Help?” I say simply.

  Eliza takes the paper from me. “Hmm . . . I think we have to start with what we know. We know that there are no repeated digits.”

  “Funnily enough, I worked that one out by myself,” I say sarcastically.

  “Just thinking aloud here,” Eliza says.

  “Carry on!”

  She turns her pigtail braid between her fingers. “The first digit will probably be a large one, since it’s the sum of the second and third digits.”

  “Is that where we start?”

  “No,” Eliza says. “I think we start with the second clue and the fourth clue.”

  “Okay?” I look at the paper again.

  Four digits . . . and no repeated digits.

  The first digit is the sum of the second and third digits.

  The second digit is two more than the last digit.

  The third digit is one more than the second digit.<
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  The fourth digit is an odd number.

  “The second clue says that the second digit is two more than the last digit.”

  “And,” Eliza says, “the last digit is an odd number. Which means . . .”

  “The second digit also has to be an odd number!”

  Eliza writes down some possibilities.

  ? 3 ? 1

  ? 5 ? 3

  ? 7 ? 5

  ? 9 ? 7

  “These are the only things that can make clue two and clue four true,” Eliza says.

  “The third digit is one more than the second digit,” I say. I grab the paper from her and write.

  ? 3 4 1

  ? 5 6 3

  ? 7 8 5

  ? 9 8 7

  “And the last clue,” Eliza says. “The first digit is the sum of the second and third digits. And if this is only a four-digit code, then only one of these options can be true.”

  “Oh! I think I see what you mean!”

  “See how fun math can be?”

  “Okay, fun is taking it a bit far,” I tease.

  * * *

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 9785, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 7341, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  THE BEST WAY to stop the ghost is to knock the boxes over. They’re ten feet high and full of stuff. If we crush the ghost in a knickknack avalanche, we can easily escape.

  “Frank,” I say, my voice real low, “follow my lead.”

  “Follow the leader? I LOVE THAT GAME!”

  The ghost comes flying—no, running—toward us.

  “Now!” I shout, toppling a pile of boxes. Like a house of cards, they all come tumbling down.

  The only problem is . . . they’re burying us, too!

  Frank and I cover our heads with our arms as the dusty boxes and loose trinkets trap us in a tiny corner of the attic. There’s a mountain of stuff now between the escape route and us. We’re at the mercy of the ghost, and completely boxed in.

  CASE CLOSED.

  “YOU!” I SAY to Byron Bookbinder, and he jumps.

  “Apologies,” he says. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here with me. Sometimes I get so absorbed in the cadence of my own writing that I’m able to block out all sounds! I’m working on a particularly riveting chapter in which the lead hiker—”

  “Cut it out,” I snap. “We know the hikers aren’t true.”

  “Of course they—”

  “No,” I say firmly. “They’re not.”

  I pull out his letter from his publisher, and Byron’s round face gets redder than a tomato. “You went through my briefcase?”

  “And we’d do it again!” Frank yells. Then he adds an evil laugh for emphasis. “Mwahahahahahahaha!”

  Byron is part flustered, part angry. “How dare you . . . what gives you the right to . . . when did you . . . this is highly immoral!”

  We stare at him in disbelief. Like he can lecture us about being immoral?

  “We’re just trying to get to the truth,” I say. “You’re the ghost, aren’t you? You made up this phony story about the six hikers, and then you started haunting the Sugarcrest Park Lodge.”

  His brown eyes narrow behind his thick glasses. “Now why would I do that?”

  “So that when your book came out, the story would seem true,” Eliza says. “Hundreds of people could verify that hauntings had happened here, and no one would question the truth of the book.”

  “It explains a lot,” I say. “Like how you told us you were going to stay in this room all night, but when the haunting happened, you were gone.”

  “I . . . I had to. It was only a momentary absence. I . . .” He wipes his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “I know you’re suspicious of me. And yes, I have done wrong. But I am not this ghostly apparition. Ask me what you want, and I’ll be unflinchingly frank.”

  “Frank?” Frank says, perking up. “You’re going to be Frank? YOU CAN’T HANDLE BEING FRANK.”

  “Calm down, Frank,” Eliza says. “He means he’s going to be honest.”

  I squint at Byron, and he seems to shrink under my gaze. Can we really trust a known liar to tell the truth?

  * * *

  TO ASK WHERE HE WAS DURING THE HAUNTING, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE LETTER FROM HIS EDITOR, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE HAVE TO follow the glowing footprints. “Come on!”

  The footprints head out the front door and into the snow.

  “Carlos! We don’t have our winter coats!” Eliza shouts behind me.

  “We’ll only be outside for a minute! Come on!” It’s freezing in this snow flurry, but I run after the footprints. They belong to some extraordinarily big feet. Definitely a man’s feet. Harris Winters, Fernando di Cannoli, Byron Bookbinder, and Luther Covington pop into my head.

  The footprints stop, suddenly, about a hundred feet from the front door.

  “Carlos, look!” Frank says, pointing to our left. A car’s lights go on and the engine revs. In the front seat is Luther Covington.

  But how did he get over there, when the footprints stop right here? Did he cover up his own tracks? Or are these someone else’s footprints?

  The car starts driving down the mountain.

  “HEY, WAIT!” I call after Luther, but he’s gone.

  “What’s he doing here at three in the morning?” Eliza says.

  “Ghosting,” Frank says.

  I look around. “Hey, where’s my mom?” I had thought she was right behind us . . . but did she not follow us outside? I shiver. “Let’s go back inside.”

  “Brrrrrrrrrr,” Frank agrees.

  We trudge back to the front door of the lodge, but when I tug on the handle, my stomach plunges.

  The door is locked.

  I pull on the doors frantically—I knock on the wood.

  “Eliza, pass me the walkie-talkie!”

  She opens the bag and digs through it, but a few moments later, she whimpers, “Oh no, no, no! It’s not in here.”

  “What do you mean? It has to be!”

  “I took it out and put it on my nightstand,” she says in a small voice. “Just in case we needed to call your mom in the middle of the night. I forgot to grab it again.”

  The wind blows right through our pajamas, and we look at each other in horror.

  The knocking clearly isn’t working. The howl of the wind is so loud, and the ghost was wailing and thumping around inside. For all we know, the ghost is still wailing and thumping around. We can’t stay here and keep knocking—it’s freezing outside, and starting to snow.

  “Around the house! Maybe there’s another way in!”

  It’s hard to see in the dark and with the icy wind, but there’s an iron garden a little ways down the hill. The lodge’s backyard also has a hot tub and a firepit with no fire right now. And then there’s a shed. Shelter! That’s where we have to go!

  We fight the wind and the cold to get there. I can see my breath in front of me, and my nose hairs are freezing from the inside. Frank is coughing behind me—and the icy air is tickling my lungs too.

  “Almost there!”

  Eliza starts rubbing her hands together to create friction.

  At last we reach the door, where the sign says:

  OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT SHED

  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.

  It’s way, way, way past closing hours, and my stomach sinks when I notice a three-digit lock. There’s just no way we’re going to figure it out with so many combinations.

  “This is bad,” I say, suddenly feeling even colder than before. The weather was unpleasant but bearable when I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but now that there’s no end to our freezing, I want to collapse.

  “Hey!” Frank says. “Look at this!” He points to a note taped near the doorframe.


  Harris,

  I changed the password. Line one.

  Q – 3

  M + 2

  R + 1

  S + 1

  Q + 1

  S – 2

  H + 2

  P – 5

  I – 3

  N + 5

  Sorry for any inconvenience,

  Cricket

  “Line one.” Eliza shivers. She squints the sign on the door. Then she points to the first line of the sign. “I think that refers to this.”

  OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT SHED

  “Look,” she says. “The first clue is Q minus three. And there’s a Q in ‘Outdoor Equipment Shed,’ in the word equipment. So Q minus three . . . would be three letters before Q on that line. We have to keep going like that. Find a letter in the line; add and subtract until we get our new letter.”

  “You just saved our butts, Frank,” I say, shivering.

  Frank kisses his muscles. “YOU’RE WELCOME.”

  * * *

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 200, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 100, CLICK HERE.

  OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR HELP, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  MOM SCREAMS AGAIN, and that’s it! I have to turn around to help her.

  I swivel to see what’s behind me—what could possibly make fearless Frank scream, or Mom’s eyes bug out, or Eliza cover her face.

  And it makes my stomach drop to the floor.

  There’s not just one ghost. There are hundreds. Glowing blue, with sunken eyes and wispy limbs and mouths curved in a sinister smile. And they’re all kids.

  Screaming, hollow, skeletal kids.

  I gasp as I lean against the steel door. My chest is on fire; my hands are shaking. I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe!

  “Carlos? Carlos! They’re fake! It’s not real!” Eliza shouts, and even though she’s next to me, her voice sounds miles away. “Calm down! Just breathe!”