Haunting at the Hotel Page 21

  * * *

  I HAVE TO get down that ventilation shaft. It’s my best way out of here.

  “Hey,” I say to Sunny and January. “Can you just explain one thing for me? How did you—”

  I cut off midsentence and charge at January. Head tucked in, like a football player about to tackle. January yelps and hops out of the way instinctively, and I dive headfirst down the ventilation shaft.

  “FOLLOW HIM! He knows too much!” yells Sunny, and January goes into the shaft after me, feet-first.

  The shaft lands me in the middle of the kitchen—I drop straight out of the ceiling and onto the floor. I have so much momentum that I somersault forward, knocking into Fernando’s legs.

  “Watch out!” he cries as he drops a bowl of pasta. Noodles and spaghetti sauce splatter everywhere.

  I have a five-second head start in front of January, and I know exactly where she’s going to land. I quickly grab the trash can and put it in place.

  Squish.

  January falls out of the vent and lands right in a heaping pile of garbage.

  She gags. “Oh god, I’m going to be sick. The smell!”

  “You don’t like it?” I say, pulling the string tight on the garbage bag so that she’s trapped inside with just her head sticking out. “Because to me, it’s the sweet smell of success!”

  Fernando fetches Reese, who bursts into the kitchen like a hurricane.

  “Fernando said you needed . . .” She takes in the scene: her daughter tied up in a trash bag, me keeping watch. “I don’t understand. January? What’s going on? Why are you . . .”

  Suddenly it hits Reese. She gasps, eyes wide as she stares at her daughter. And she turns as white as a . . . well . . . you know. “It can’t be. January, you wouldn’t!”

  Tears pour down January’s cheeks. Either her mom’s reaction has activated her conscience, or the smell of the garbage is really getting to her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” January cries. “It was me, Mom! I was the ghost!”

  “But how? Why?”

  “It all started eight weeks ago, when I told you about that summer program for video editing and sound mixing, and you said I had to stay here and learn the family business because you want me to take over the hotel. But Mom, I don’t want to take over—”

  “Nonsense! Of course you’d want to—”

  “Mrs. Winters,” I say quietly. “Listen.” Then I nod at January.

  “I don’t want to take over the hotel.”

  Reese nods slowly, like she’s finally hearing her daughter for the first time.

  “But . . . I found someone who does want to run it. Aunt Sunny. So we started haunting this place—so I could go to a real school and take real sound mixing classes.”

  “The ghost sounds . . . you made them on your computer?”

  January nods. “I understand if you hate me forever—I’m so, so sorry, Mom. I really am.”

  “Don’t cry,” Reese says, walking over to her daughter and untying the garbage bag. “We’ll figure this whole thing out.” She gives her daughter a hug, even though she smells like old fish and rotten eggs, and even though a banana peel is stuck to her shirt. “I have unconditional love for you, January. Don’t you know that?”

  That makes January sob even harder.

  When the hug eventually ends, Reese wrinkles her nose. “All right, sweetheart. Go take a shower, and then we’ll talk about it—”

  “Not. So. Fast.” I step in front of her. “You and Sunny have kidnapped my team, and I need them back.”

  Sunny and January returned my mom, Eliza, and Frank. They were unscathed, but understandably shaken. January’s change of conscience was a bit unnerving, but even weirder was that Sunny also apologized to her sister. They’ve already decided to schedule a counseling meeting to possibly work on their issues without Reese having to press charges.

  The only thing Reese is pressing at the moment is a box of cookies into my hands. “Here,” she says. “I’ve had Fernando make you cookies for the road, and here’s a week of free hotel stays, whenever you want to come back. In addition to the compensation we’ve agreed upon.”

  “That’s very generous, thank you,” Mom says, picking up two of our suitcases.

  “You seem very happy,” I say to Reese.

  “TOO HAPPY,” Frank says. “You’re the ghost, aren’t you?”

  “Frank, we already found the ghost.”

  “We did?”

  Eliza and I sigh, and Reese laughs. “I am happy. Happy not to be going to bed afraid every night. Happy to have a bit of transparency.”

  If there’s one thing I know about ghosts, it’s that they’re transparent. I wonder if that applies to detectives on ghost cases. There is something on my mind . . . and I wait until we’re in the car to get it off my chest.

  “Mom,” I say as she slowly drives down Sugarcrest Mountain, “that was the scariest case I’ve ever been on. I was terrified the whole time. I’ve never screamed so much in my life. I thought I was going to pass out. And . . .”

  She raises an eyebrow at me.

  I hesitate. “Is it crazy to want another case like that?”

  “I’ve created a mystery monster,” Mom mumbles.

  That she did.

  CASE CLOSED.

  “HELLO? HELLO!” I shout, but Sunny has shut off the speaker.

  I turn to Mom. “How were you so calm talking to her? Aren’t you scared?”

  “Terrified, actually,” she says with a smile. “Welcome to detective work . . . where a ghost is the least scary thing that haunts you. But no use fretting when we have work to do.”

  Work? What is she talking about?

  “Eliza, how is that door looking?” Mom asks.

  I was so focused on Sunny that I was barely paying attention to Eliza. And here she is, crouched by the iron door, playing around with the lock—a typical keypad with nine digits.

  “Nothing yet,” she says between gritted teeth. “I’m afraid to press any buttons in case a fail-safe turns on and locks us in. But there has to be some way. . . .”

  Mom goes over to Eliza, and I stand back and let them work. But soon I’m distracted by Frank, who finds a stack of papers on the only table and starts folding them.

  “What are you doing, Frank?”

  “Paper airplanes,” he says. “Want to race?”

  “You know we’re in danger here, right?”

  He shrugs.

  I grab a piece of paper. It has a message between our two culprits. I feel like Sunny left a stack of clues down here to torture us while we slowly dehydrate to death.

  “Ready, Carlos?” Frank says, and he doesn’t even wait for my response before he launches his airplane across the room. It soars straight into Eliza’s head. She turns and glares at us.

  “Again! Again!” Frank cries, picking up another paper. Only . . . under that paper is a third paper that catches my eye.

  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.

  The fourth digit is an odd number.

  Could this be the code to the lock?

  “Eliza!” I run the paper over to her. She reads it hungrily, then looks up at me. “There’s no way Sunny would be stupid enough to leave the passcode to the door in the same room she was planning to lock us into, right?”

  “Hijo, in my line of work, you learn that the more complicated the crime, the clumsier the culprit. These six weeks of near-constant ghost haunting must have taken lots of effort and planning. Our culprit was sure to slip up somewhere.”

  “Culprits,” Eliza says. “Plural. Maybe Sunny wasn’t the one who messed up. Maybe it was her bungling accomplice.”

  “In any case, I think we should take a risk on this code,” Mom says. “We have nothing to lose. So Carlos—can you and Frank
take the lead on cracking the code while Eliza and I try one last thing with the door?”

  “We’re on it!” I say.

  Frank responds with an enormous fart.

  Well, I’m on it, at least.

  * * *

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 9563, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 7341, CLICK HERE.

  OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  ELIZA SCOOTS NEXT to Frank on the piano bench, and I tell her to play the D E A D notes that we need. Then, suddenly, the piano stops vibrating—it just goes dead silent. Like someone put a muffler on the strings. And across the room, a bookshelf swivels open to reveal . . .

  A secret passageway in the walls.

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Eliza says.

  “It does?”

  “We heard those thuds in the walls during last night’s haunting. I’ll bet you anything that whoever is behind these hauntings was in the walls, banging.”

  “Who would know about a secret passageway in the walls?” I ask.

  “Anyone with X-ray vision,” Frank says, like he’s given me an actual lead and not nonsense.

  “Whoever owns the Sugarcrest would probably know,” Eliza says. “The Winters family. And possibly anyone who works here, like Cricket, Sunny, and Fernando di Cannoli.” Eliza pauses. “But . . . well, we found this secret passageway, and it’s only our second day here. So I wouldn’t cross anyone off our suspect list yet.”

  “Well, should we go in?” I peer into the dark hallway. It seems to be claustrophobically tight, and full of spiderwebs. The perfect place for a ghost to lurk. I’m head to toe full of dread.

  But I have to find Mom . . . I have to go forward.

  The moment we step inside the hall, the bookshelf slides back into place behind us. It’s pitch-black.

  “Eliza?”

  “Here,” she says, clicking on a flashlight. She uses it to dig into her backpack and fish out one for each of us. “You have to be quiet, Frank.”

  “Quiet as a mouse!” he shouts.

  We shuffle through the hallway. I can hear Eliza’s heavy breathing behind me. And Frank’s creaky footsteps. The rest is silence. And darkness.

  I don’t know where in the house we are, or where we’re going, or what we’ll find at the end of it. I only know that the hairs on the back of my neck are sticking straight up, and I have this paranoid feeling like we’re being watched.

  I stop, and Eliza bumps into me.

  “Ow! Carlos, what’s the holdup?”

  I point my flashlight. Ahead, there’s a rotting wood staircase that leads down. It’s so dark that I can’t even see what’s at the bottom.

  “Should we?” Eliza says.

  “Should we . . . go in there? That’s sure to be a ghost trap!”

  Two cockroaches scurry down from the wall, crawl across my shoe, and disappear down the stairs. I’m certain we all saw that in the flashlight beam. I am definitely panicking.

  “Don’t you want to find your mom?”

  “I do, but . . .”

  But the ghost. It’s haunting me, even when it’s not haunting me.

  “You stay here,” Eliza says. “Frank and I will look for your mom and be back soon. You ready, Freddy?”

  “The name is Frank. And don’t you forget it!”

  “Wait, Eliza.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Don’t leave me behind. I’ll go.”

  Is it possible that Mom is down here? I really hope not—because it would be freaky to be down here alone. And at the same time, I hope she is here because I need to find her.

  The steps wobble under my feet. We hold onto the railing as we go down and down—so far belowground that we’ve left the heating of the lodge. The air is cold.

  Or maybe that’s the ghost. . . .

  I put my foot on solid earth and flash my light around. We’re in a little dirt room—tree roots poke out of the ceiling. It’s a wonder this thing hasn’t collapsed. There’s nothing here but a small wooden door, like the entrance to a cupboard or something.

  I open it.

  And I gasp.

  It’s like a security guard’s workspace, with a computer displaying cameras all around the lodge. There are also papers scattered everywhere across a collapsible table, a wardrobe, a sound mixer, and candles with the wax still wet.

  “Eliza,” I say. “The wax is still melted! Someone blew out the candles . . . recently.”

  “Probably whoever was playing that piano,” Eliza says. She and I fan out, searching every area of the room, under the table, in the corner. But I don’t see anyone hiding here.

  “Ooooh!” Frank says in delight. “Ooooooooooo!” We turn our lights to him. He’s wearing a scary pale-faced ghost mask. “There are fifteen different kinds in here—oooh! This one is bloody!”

  We sift through the ghost masks with him, and I can feel my heart racing. “It’s a lair,” I say, finally understanding. “It’s an evil lair. We found it.”

  “But who does it belong to?” Eliza asks.

  “I don’t know. But maybe if we poke around, we can get some clues. We could look at the monitor to see what they’re taping in the lodge with hidden cameras. Or maybe we could look through papers on the table.”

  * * *

  TO LOOK AT THE MONITOR, CLICK HERE.

  TO LOOK AT THE PAPERS ON THE TABLE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE HAVE TO talk to Reese about the letter from Luther we found in her room.

  We find her in the fire den, face buried in her hands. Harris sits beside her, rubbing her back gently. Hopefully our evidence will make her feel better.

  “Mrs. Winters,” I say. “We have to ask you about your staff. Do you think there’s a possibility that someone would double-cross you?”

  “Double-cross? What makes you use that word?” Reese says, and my stomach sinks. She recognizes Luther’s word. I shouldn’t have used it.

  Eliza and I look at each other. I have no idea what to say, and I can tell Eliza doesn’t want to put her foot in her mouth like she sometimes does.

  “If you could answer the question,” I say. “Do you think—”

  “You went through my mail,” Reese says. “But that’s a felony!”

  “It’s only a felony to open, intercept, or hide someone else’s mail,” Eliza explains.

  “And technically the mail was already opened,” I add.

  “And was the door to my room technically already opened?” Reese asks pointedly.

  I gulp. And when Reese’s furious eyes meet my terrified ones, I feel like she’s X-raying my brain. We both know that I trespassed (at best) and committed breaking and entering (at worst). In other words: mail tampering isn’t the only crime I got caught at today.

  “SECURITY!” Reese cries.

  “You don’t have to do that!” Eliza says.

  “SECURITY! SECURITY!”

  Harris looks at her. “Er . . . honeybunches, we don’t have security.”

  “Cinnamon toast, you’re the security,” she says.

  “Oh. Right.”

  With his lumberjack muscles, he picks us up as easily as a pile of logs. He carries us to the door, opens it, and tosses us out into the cold.

  “You kids like breaking and entering, yes?” Harris asks from the door.

  “Yes!” Frank says.

  “Well, if you enter this hotel again, I will break you.” And with that, he slams the door.

  CASE CLOSED.

  “CAN YOU STOP fighting with Frank for one second and help me with this message?” I say to Eliza. I try to hide the annoyance from my voice, but I don’t think I’m successful at it.

  “Of course,” Eliza says. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry!” Frank says. Big surprise—he never apologizes for anything.

  11-5-25-9-19-8-9-4-4-5-14-2-5-8-9-14-4-20-8-5-4-5-5-18-8-5-1-4-2-21-20-1-14-20-12-5-18-19-8-1-22-5-1-16-1-20-20-5-18-14-7-15-15-21-20-19-9-4-5-6-15-18-20-8-5-1-14-19-23-5-18

>   “It has to be a code so obvious that we’d know how to solve it instantly,” she mumbles to herself. “If only these numbers were letters . . .” She looks up and gasps. “That’s it! These numbers correspond with letters of the alphabet!”

  “Oh! So eleven is the eleventh letter of the alphabet . . .” I have to sing the alphabet to myself as I count on my fingers. “It’s K.”

  “Okay,” Frank says.

  “No O. Just K. The letter K,” Eliza confirms.

  “And the second letter is E. And the third . . .” I sing the alphabet and count again. “Y. The first three letters are KEY.”

  “We can’t sing the alphabet for every number. That’s way too time-consuming.” Eliza takes the notebook from my lap and starts writing in it. “Here—I bet it will be a lot easier if we write down the key to the code ourselves.”

  Excellent. With the key in front of me, I know I can decode the mystery Dead Room person’s message.

  * * *

  TO GO OUTSIDE, CLICK HERE.

  TO GO THE ATTIC, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I WANT THAT key, and that means I will let this ghost chase me to the library.

  “This way!” I shout, turning right at the bottom of the stairs. I open the door to the fire den, usher Eliza and Frank in, and close the door behind me, just before the beast gets in.

  The fire is glowing blue. Bright blue in every single fireplace. Not a lick of orange fire to be found. It makes the room feel sinister. Which is not helped by the thing behind us, scratching and clawing at the door.

  “Why did we go this way?” Eliza cries. “We’re trapped in here now! The only way out is through the library and into the secret bookcase passage!”

  “I know,” I say. “That’s the point. We have to get that key.”

  “Carlos, you don’t even know what the key is for!”

  “I know they don’t want us to have it. That makes me want it.”

  “That’s something Frank would say!” Eliza groans.