Haunting at the Hotel Page 17

  “Where’s my mom?” I ask, gesturing toward the hotel room.

  “Am I your mother’s keeper?”

  I try to edge around her to look for Mom, but she pushes the cart into me.

  “Calm down,” Sunny says. “She’s in your room. She kicked me out before I was done.”

  “Done what?”

  “What do you think?” Sunny snaps, gesturing at her cart. “Next time I won’t turn down your sheets, if this is the thanks I get.”

  “Sorry,” I say. She turns to leave, and Eliza nudges me.

  * * *

  TO ASK SUNNY WHAT SHE THINKS OF THE WINTERS FAMILY, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK SUNNY WHETHER SHE’S SEEN A GHOST HERE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I’M PROBABLY ONLY going to get one solid chance to examine his shoe. “I wanted to ask you . . . ,” I say to Fernando. “Ooops! I think I dropped my contact!”

  I don’t actually wear contacts. It’s something my Mom does sometimes. But I bend to the floor and pretend to search around with my hands. I grab Fernando’s shoe.

  “Hey!” he shouts. “That’s my shoe!”

  “Sorry! I can barely see without my contacts.”

  Fernando takes a step back, and Eliza holds up her hands. “Wait! You can’t move, Mr. di Cannoli. What if you accidentally step on Carlos’s contact?”

  I examine the length of his shoes . . . they’re definitely long enough to be the footprints from last night, but I won’t know for sure until I get a good look at the rubber underneath.

  “I think you did step on my contact,” I say. “Can you lift your foot, so I can make sure you didn’t squish it? Mom’ll kill me if I don’t find it.”

  Fernando sighs and lifts his foot. I take a peek at the pattern on the sole. . . .

  It’s not the ghost shoe.

  “Found it,” I say, pretending to put the contact back in my eye.

  Fernando cringes. “Aren’t you going to wash that first? It’s been on the ground.”

  Oooops.

  I can see the wheels in Eliza’s head turning, trying to think of a good explanation of why I’d risk an eye infection. But surprisingly, Frank rushes to my aid, his mouth full of spray-can cheese. “Five-second rule,” he says.

  Fernando nods. “Ah, sì, certo!”

  * * *

  TO ASK FERNANDO ABOUT HIS ALIBI, CLICK HERE.

  TO LEAVE THE KITCHEN, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE CAN’T DO any more investigating until we find Mom. She was right behind us during the haunting. And now she’s missing.

  “We have to go find Detective Serrano now,” I say. “We’ll be back later.”

  “What do you mean, find her?” Harris says. “Where is she?”

  “We don’t know,” I admit. “She was right behind us . . . and then she was gone.”

  “GONE!” Reese sobs. “Taken by the ghost! Dragged to the other side!”

  She stands up. “That’s it—that’s the final straw. I’m shutting down the hotel.”

  “What?”

  “You’re selling?” Harris says incredulously.

  “I can’t sell. If I sell, more people will be victims of the ghost, and I can’t have that responsibility on my shoulders. No, I’m closing it down. We’re all getting the heck out of here!”

  “But wait, Mrs. Winters! First we have to find my m—”

  “Too late for that! Let’s go, go, go!” Reese cries as she drags Eliza and me out of the house. “I’m getting rid of the deed right away, and no one will ever come back to this old haunt.”

  CASE CLOSED.

  NO MATTER HOW hard I stare at the reassembled mirror fragments, I can’t figure out what the message is supposed to say. “Eliza, can you help?”

  She hums and kneels over the mirror pieces. “It’s got to be mirror related,” she mumbles under her breath.

  That seems obvious to me. Of course it’s mirror related—the message is on the mirror!

  Eliza leans forward, grabs a mirror fragment to the right of all the letters, and tilts it up. Then she laughs.

  “WHAT?” Frank says from the doorway.

  “Take a look, Carlos,” she says, switching places with me. “Now put the mirror at a ninety-degree angle with the letters. Right down the line—yes, like that! Now what do you see?”

  The first mark, which I thought was a V, is actually a W when duplicated in the mirror. The second letter looks like an I. Then a T. Then an H. “With,” I say. “The first word is with.”

  Eliza nods.

  “What about this?” I ask, pointing to the next word. An R is just chilling out in no-man’s-land. In the mirror it looks like there’s an R, and then a backward R.

  “I think,” Eliza says, “that when a letter can’t be mirrored, the culprit just put it off the line. We should only count the R once . . . and ignore the backward one in the mirror. Do you think you can get the rest of the message? Since you’re already sitting in front of it?”

  * * *

  FIND THE TIME YOU MUST LEAVE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 1:09, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 1:08, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  THERE’S NO WAY I’m opening the door for anyone. Not after we found this threatening mirror message!

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Winters, but we’re not at liberty to open the door for anyone.”

  “What do you mean?” he says. “I’ve come to deliver a message!”

  “We won’t come out!”

  “NOT BY THE HAIRS ON OUR CHINNY CHIN CHIN!” Frank cries.

  “What hairs?” Harris says. “You’re prepubescent!”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Winters,” Eliza says. “But we’re not coming out.”

  “And what about Detective Serrano?”

  I cringe. I can’t tell him that Mom’s gone missing, because I don’t want him to think she can’t do her job. “She’s, uh, not coming out either,” I say.

  There’s a tense pause. Then Harris pounds the door so loudly that it shakes on its hinges. “Fine!” he bellows. “You can starve in there for all I care!”

  Out of spite, he barricades the door to our room. After hour and hours—or maybe days and days—we’re practically begging to be let out of our room. But Harris doesn’t care.

  “I’ll teach you not to open the door for your employer.”

  CASE CLOSED.

  “HAVE YOU SEEN a ghost in the lodge?” I ask Sunny. “You do live on the premises, right?”

  Sunny runs a hand through her silky black hair and leans on her cleaning cart. “Yes, I live here. And no, I haven’t seen a ghost.”

  “Do you think ghosts are real?” I ask.

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “COULDN’T? OR WOULDN’T!” Frank shouts, sticking a finger in her face.

  “Couldn’t,” she says. “How do I know if ghosts are real? You might as well ask me if there are aliens, or if you can ever truly know someone, or if it’s possible to time travel.”

  Frank’s eyes grow wide. “Are there? Can you? Is it?” He pulls on Eliza’s sleeve. “Can I time travel, Eliza?”

  “Sure. You’re time traveling right now . . . going forward, second by second. But what we want to know,” she says, turning to Sunny, “is what you think is haunting this place. Do you think it’s a person or a ghost?”

  Sunny’s lips press together. She is irritated with us. “I haven’t the foggiest, and you’re preventing me from doing my job.”

  * * *

  TO ASK SUNNY WHAT SHE THINKS OF THE WINTERS FAMILY, CLICK HERE.

  TO END THE CONVERSATION, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “HAVE YOU SEEN the ghosts in this hotel, Mr. Bookbinder?”

  “Of course I have,” he says. “There are six of them. They look just like the hikers. Can’t you feel their presence all around us, even at this early evening hour?”

  I shrug.

  “No?” Byron says. “Sit down on the couch there—yes, just li
ke that. Now close your eyes. Really feel the power of the ethereal world, reaching out to you through the veil of death. Concentrate! Now . . . can you feel the spirits?”

  My hair brushes to the side, and my heart starts pounding. “I feel them! They touched my hair—”

  I open my eyes to find Frank’s fingers on my head.

  “There’s an egg on your head, and the yolk is running down!” he whispers.

  I shake my head, and Eliza tries to suppress a laugh.

  Byron doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy digging into his bag for his EMF reader. “Every night, the needle on my ghost detector goes wild. And this is the place to look for them. The hikers, guess where they died? Right here! In this very room.”

  “Hey!” Frank says. “I wanted to guess! You ruined it!”

  “My posterior will not leave this chair until I see the ghosts again.”

  “You’re not going to sleep in your room?” Eliza says, surprised.

  “I’m a ghost writer! Well, I’m not a ghostwriter, I’m a writer of ghosts. But still! I didn’t come to this lodge to sleep. My editor is counting on me to get a good account of the paranormal activity that’s happening here. And I’ve had my eyes open.”

  I wonder if he’s had his eyes open about all the comings and goings in this hotel, or just about the ghost things. I guess it can’t hurt to ask.

  * * *

  TO ASK BYRON IF HE’S OBSERVED ANY TENSION BETWEEN THE WINTERS AND THE HOTEL STAFF, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I’VE CRACKED THE cipher, and I shine my flashlight over the decoded message:

  You in the lobby, me in the hall.

  What time?

  Three. Do not get caught.

  I never do.

  Go team kind

  Minus the D, you mean

  It’s a conversation. I look up at Eliza, and her eyes are wide too.

  “There are two culprits,” I whisper to Eliza. “Two people working together.” I guess my ghost theory has been blown right out of the water.

  “It explains so much, logistically!” Eliza says, barely able to contain her excitement. “I mean, there was just so much going on last night. It only makes sense that someone wasn’t doing it alone! If one person was in the walls banging and scratching metal on metal, and the other person was taking care of the glowing footprints . . .”

  “But who?” I say. “Who could possibly be working together?”

  “Cricket and Luther,” Eliza says, and then she curses. “If only we hadn’t lost the letter between them!”

  “Harris and Reese could be plotting,” I say. “Or Harris and January. Harris and Luther.”

  “It doesn’t just have to be Harris, Carlos.”

  “Then who do you think? And what is team kind? Is that what they call themselves?”

  Eliza frowns at the paper. “What does that last line mean? Go team kind . . . minus the D?” She looks up at me, an urgent expression on her face. “Kind minus the D.”

  “Er . . . does that mean something to you, Eliza? Because it means nothing to me.”

  “Kind minus the D is kin. Go team kin.”

  I stare at her blankly.

  “Kin is another word for relative,” she explains. “If that is what our two ghosts mean by that, it means that two relatives are working together.”

  “But . . .” I pace back and forth, trying to think. “Who’s related to each other besides Harris, January, and Ree—”

  Screech!

  I don’t even have to pivot to know the sound is coming from Frank. He’s holding a walkie-talkie—and for a second my heart stops. But then I realize it’s not the same model as the ones Mom and I have. It’s a different walkie-talkie.

  “Testing, testing, one two!” Frank says into the button. “Red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather.”

  “Stop that!” I say, snatching the walkie-talkie out of his hands. It belongs to the ghost team. We shouldn’t play around with it. Still, I slip it into my pocket. Who knows when it could come in handy? I mean, we’ll have a direct line to listen to the bad guys, whoever they are.

  Frank pouts and stomps his foot. Just when I thought he had grown out of the tantrums.

  “What’s that leather thing you were saying, Frank?” Eliza says. Clearly an effort to distract him, but he falls for it hook, line, and sinker.

  “A tongue twister!” he says. “Unique New York. Say it! Three times!”

  “Unique New York, unique You Nork, unique You Nork,” Eliza and I end up saying. Frank nods once, satisfied with our failure.

  “What now?” Eliza says.

  “Try ‘a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee cup’!” Frank says.

  “I meant with the investigation.”

  “It’s time to wait for the ghosts,” I say. “Now that we know there are two, we are better prepared to catch them in the act. And to get Mom back.”

  We retrace our steps through the walls, exit out of the bookcase in the library, and head back to room 237. The mirror threat is still there, and our sheets are still crumpled up—probably since Sunny couldn’t get into the room, now that her key was stolen.

  I don’t want her in here anyway. Just being in here reminds me that when we were sleeping, someone was setting up the bathroom threat. The ghost was here. In the room. With us.

  It makes me not want to sleep. I stare ahead with my eyes open. I am the guard dog, and I won’t let anybody get inside undetected again. Not while I’m on watch!

  * * *

  Night Two

  * * *

  “CHARLIE HOTEL ALPHA sierra echo,” says a crackling voice.

  “Eliza?” I say groggily. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have.

  “Tango hotel echo mike.”

  I roll over and flick on the lamplight. Eliza and Frank are curled up together, fast asleep.

  “Tango oscar.”

  I roll out of bed, looking for the source of the sound.

  “Lima india bravo romeo alpha romeo yankee.”

  It’s coming from the pocket of my jacket. Out of it, I retrieve the walkie-talkie that I got from the ghost’s lair yesterday. Someone is talking into it! But I don’t recognize the voice.

  “Eliza!” I say, shaking her bed. “Frank!”

  “Ghost?” Frank asks.

  “No,” I say. “A code.”

  Frank groans and plops back down on the bed. He pulls the covers on top of himself and attempts to go back to sleep.

  But a secret code is enough to get Eliza up. “What’s the code?”

  I hand her the walkie-talkie. “Uniform november delta echo romeo—”

  “Carlos, get me a piece of paper!”

  I grab her the hotel notepad and a pen as fast as I can. She is sitting on the edge of the bed with the walkie-talkie next to her ear. And even when I get her the notepad, she continues to sit there, eyes closed, without writing anything down.

  “Uh . . . Eliza? Did you fall asleep sitting up?”

  “Shhh!”

  “Lima india delta. You got it? Over.”

  Eliza presses the button to talk, and I start waving my hands frantically. What is she doing? She can’t talk to them! She’ll give away everything!

  But she doesn’t listen to me. “No,” she says into the walkie-talkie. “Please repeat. Over.”

  “Really? Okay. Pay attention and listen closely.” Eliza throws the walkie-talkie at me and picks up the pen and paper as the voice says, “Charlie hotel alpha sierra echo tango hotel echo mike tango oscar lima india bravo romeo alpha romeo yankee india november foxtrot india foxtrot tango echo echo november mike india november uniform tango echo sierra.”

  Eliza scribbles frantically.

  “You got that? Here’s part two: delta oscar november tango lima echo tango tango hotel echo mike foxtrot india november delta kilo echo yankee uniform november delta echo romeo papa india alpha november oscar lima india delta. You got it? Over.”


  “Ten-four,” Eliza says into the walkie-talkie, and she collapses on the bed, massaging her hand.

  “Okay,” I say. “So . . . we have the full message. But what does it mean? Tango hotel oscar delta? This is gibberish!”

  Frank softly snores from across the bed, and Eliza smiles. “Haven’t you heard of the NATO phonetic alphabet?”

  “The what?”

  Eliza flips the pad of paper to a new page and starts drawing. This time, it’s a chart.

  “It’s a code people use for over the radio. Because so many letters sound alike when said aloud. D, B, E. F and S. M and N. Each word corresponds with a letter, so that whoever’s listening can be sure of what letter was actually said.”

  I tear off the chart, so I can look at it side by side with the message Eliza transcribed.

  A = ALPHA

  B = BRAVO

  C = CHARLIE

  D = DELTA

  E = ECHO

  F = FOXTROT

  G = GOLF

  H = HOTEL

  I = INDIA

  J = JULIET

  K = KILO

  L = LIMA

  M = MIKE

  N = NOVEMBER

  O = OSCAR

  P = PAPA

  Q = QUEBEC

  R = ROMEO

  S = SIERRA

  T = TANGO

  U = UNIFORM

  V = VICTOR

  W = WHISKEY

  X = X-RAY

  Y = YANKEE

  Z = ZULU

  CHARLIE HOTEL ALPHA SIERRA ECHO TANGO HOTEL ECHO MIKE TANGO OSCAR LIMA INDIA BRAVO ROMEO ALPHA ROMEO YANKEE INDIA NOVEMBER FOXTROT INDIA FOXTROT TANGO ECHO ECHO NOVEMBER MIKE INDIA NOVEMBER UNIFORM TANGO ECHO SIERRA.

  DELTA OSCAR NOVEMBER TANGO LIMA ECHO TANGO TANGO HOTEL ECHO MIKE FOXTROT INDIA NOVEMBER DELTA KILO ECHO YANKEE UNIFORM NOVEMBER DELTA ECHO ROMEO PAPA INDIA ALPHA NOVEMBER OSCAR LIMA INDIA DELTA.