I kept my eyes on the smoke serpent and heard Heath gasp again for breath. A tiny moan came out of him, and I knew he was trying to do as I said. I moved to my left, and the head of the smoke serpent swiveled toward me. “Come on, ugly,” I coaxed, opening up all my intuitive senses, trying to get a feel for exactly what I was dealing with.
“M.J.,” I heard Heath groan.
“I’m right here,” I said to him, crouching low and edging close to him so that I could pull him away from the hovering smoke.
“No!” he whispered, and I looked at him and saw that his eyes were clearly frightened. “Run!”
And then, almost as if it were in slow motion, I saw the smoke serpent shrink down right before darting straight at me! I had no time to react, and in the very next instant I felt something like a lightning bolt hit my chest, and a searing pain so sharp that I cried out even as I tumbled backward to land like Heath on the cold, hard ground.
In my ears there was something like the sound of a hiss, but also words were forming that I couldn’t quite make out. I rolled around on the ground, trying to get away from the noise and the pain, and then I think I blacked out, because the next thing I knew I was blinking hard and looking up into Steven’s concerned face.
“M.J.,” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”
“What happened?” I said, staring first at him, then around at my surroundings. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the lobby,” he said, leaning in to put his arms underneath me and lift me up.
“Where’s Heath?” I asked, putting a hand to my head, which felt as if it had been slammed against a wall.
“I’m right here,” Heath said, and I squinted over Steven’s shoulder to see him walking behind us, rubbing his chest.
“You okay?” I asked as Steven bent down to place me on an overstuffed chair.
“Yeah,” he said, but by his pale cheeks and pinched eyes I knew he was feeling as bad as I was.
“What the freak was that?” I asked him.
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Hell if I know.”
“Here’s some water,” said someone to my right. I looked over to see the manager, Murray Knollenberg, handing me a bottle of water. “I’m so sorry about this,” he added. “My bellhop told me he saw the whole thing. He’s having some sort of a melt-down in my office right now, and he wants to quit his job and walk off his shift immediately.”
I gripped the side of the chair as I took a sip of water. I felt really queasy and out of sorts and was struggling just to keep up with the flow of the surrounding conversation. “Murray,” I said after I’d had a few sips more and felt as if I could let go of the chair without falling out of it. “You’ve got a big problem on your hands.”
Chapter 5
Heath and I explained to Knollenberg what we’d encountered, and the general manager kept insisting that to his knowledge, no incident like the one that had occurred by the elevators had ever happened before at the Duke. “We have our share of strange occurrences,” he explained, “but no ghost has ever attacked our guests. Frightened them, maybe, but nothing close to the violent nature you’re both describing.”
I glanced over at all the scaffolding and orange cones marking areas off-limits due to the construction. Ghosties hate construction. They really take offense when you start tearing into walls and making a lot of racket.
“You think some of that might have awakened something and made it angry?” Heath asked, and I noticed he was glancing in that direction too.
“It’s possible,” I said. “But if the construction did provoke it . . . what did it provoke?”
“This is most distressing,” muttered Knollenberg. “I should let the owner know about this.” The GM looked over his shoulder at a man behind the front desk and called, “Oh, thank goodness you’re back from your lunch, Anton. We’ll need to close off the main elevator and direct our guests to the freight elevator for now. Will you help me set up some cones?”
Knollenberg left us to make his call and divert the traffic. Heath eyed the front desk and said, “Think I’m going to request a room on the ground floor so I don’t have to use the elevator for a while.” And he hurried off to make the arrangements.
Steven then looked at me and said, “Ready to go upstairs?”
“Am I ever,” I said.
We walked over to the stairs—I wanted nothing to do with elevators for a little while either—when I heard Gilley’s unmistakable, “Yoo-hoo!” Steven and I both stopped and looked back to see our partner trotting along in his leather pants, feather boa, and fur-trimmed vest. And wild though his outfit was, his face was deadly serious.
“I’ve checked the entire lobby,” he said as he hurried to catch up to us. “There are no unusual readings coming off the electrostatic meter, M.J.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to panic. “That means that whatever that thing was, it’s on the move.” I glanced at both Gilley and Steven, their expressions mirroring my own worry. “Gil, we need to start checking this place from top to bottom.”
“You need to go to bed,” ordered Steven, and the tone of his voice said he wasn’t kidding. “The ghosties can wait until the morning,” he added when I opened my mouth to protest.
“You don’t understand,” I insisted. “That thing . . . that . . . whatever it was, is no joke! I mean, if it could knock two trained mediums on our butts, imagine what it could do to the average layperson!”
“And what are you going to do if you find it?” Steven argued. “Right now you’re in no shape to fight with it, M.J.”
I rubbed my forehead again, and Gilley made a suggestion: “How about I go back to my room and get my sweatshirt? Then Steven and I can do a thorough check of all the floors, and if we find anything weird or any readings that are off the charts, we’ll come get you and let you handle it, okay?”
I had to hand it to my partner—for how frightened he was of spooky things, this was really big of him to offer. After a moment’s consideration, I sighed and nodded reluctantly. “Fine,” I agreed. “But come get me if anything—and I do mean anything—weird buzzes the meter.”
“I promise,” said Gil.
I left Steven and Gilley at Gil’s room to switch out of his party outfit and into his ghost-hunting uniform and then continued on to my room. The last thing I remember before my head hit the pillow was how grateful I was to have someone look after me for a change.
It was dark when I woke up, but my internal clock insisted that I’d slept long enough. I crept out of bed, trying not to wake Steven, (whom I had a very faint memory of coming back to the room earlier), and went to the curtain in front of the large sliding glass door to our balcony. Peeling back the curtain to see how dark it still was, I shrieked at the top of my lungs when I came face-to-face with a woman staring right back at me on the other side of the glass.
I heard Steven’s voice behind me shout, “What is it? What’s happened?” while I wheeled away from the curtain.
I backed myself against the wall as Steven hurried out of bed to my side. I tried to calm myself and told him, “There’s a woman out on our balcony!”
Steven moved to the curtain and yanked it open, but no one was there. The balcony was empty.
“Son of a bitch!” I swore as I stared at the place where the woman had been.
Steven looked from me to the window, then back again. He then reached for the latch on the sliding door and opened it. Carefully he took a step out and looked around. With a shrug he said, “There is no one here.”
I sat down on the bed and ran a hand through my hair, feeling my heart still thundering in my chest. “You know,” I said to him as he came back into the room and shut the door, “it takes a lot to creep me out, but this place . . . well, this hotel may just do me in!”
“Maybe you were dreaming?” Steven suggested.
“I wasn’t dreaming.”
“Another ghost?”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh as I got up and went
back to the glass door and slid it open myself. I moved to the railing and peered down. Then something occurred to me, and I turned back to Steven. “I know who the woman was,” I said after a bit.
“Who?”
“Carol Mustgrove. She committed suicide in the room right below us. I think she’s taking a tour of the hotel and was attracted to my energy.”
“Do you think that was who attacked you last night?”
I shook my head and shuddered, leaving the cool air of the balcony to go back inside. “No,” I said as I latched the door again. “What came after Heath and me last night was more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen. And, Steven,” I said, looking up at him nervously, “I’m not even sure it was ever human.”
His mouth fell open slightly. “What else could it have been?” he asked.
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling very cold all of a sudden. “I’ve heard stories from other ghost hunters about evil energies coming out of portals that aren’t from this world.”
“I am not understanding this,” Steven said, scratching his head.
I headed over to my suitcase and rooted around for a sweater. Throwing it over my head I explained, “You know that portals connect the lower realms to our world and are easy pathways for some of the nastier ghosts to cross back and forth through, right?”
“Yes, you are talking about ghosts like Hatchet Jack,” he said with a small shudder, referring to the particularly awful fellow we’d dealt with a few months back.
“Exactly,” I said, going back to the suitcase for a pair of jeans. “Sometimes when a nasty ghost builds a portal, another entity can come with him.”
“You mean,” said Steven, searching for the right word, “like a demon?”
I nodded gravely. “Yes. I’ve never actually seen one—they’re extremely rare—but I have a strong suspicion that something got through a portal somewhere here in the hotel and is now loose among the bricks and mortar.”
“So which of these ghosts built the portal in the first place?” Steven asked, saying aloud the thing that I was actually wondering myself.
“I have no idea,” I confessed. “Did you and Gilley get anything off the meters last night?”
“No,” Steven said. “It was very quiet, but there were several sections of the hotel that were closed off.”
“Closed off? Oh, you mean because of the construction?”
Steven nodded. “But we checked everywhere we could.”
“Well, the construction could definitely be kicking up this extra poltergeist activity. But from everything I’ve read in the hotel literature, none of the recorded ghosts at the hotel fit the profile for a spirit vile enough to create a portal to the lower realms. It certainly wasn’t Sara, and I doubt her father is an evil guy. He seems to be solely concerned with finding his daughter. That leaves the bellhop who worked here for all those years—and again, I don’t think he’s our dark entity—and Carol Mustgrove, the woman who committed suicide in the eighties, unless there are a couple of other ghosties afoot that weren’t in the literature.”
Steven was silent for a bit before he asked, “What are you going to do?”
I sat down on the bed next to him and laid my head on his shoulder. “I have no idea,” I admitted. “I mean, we’re shooting this stupid show in a few hours, and then I guess I’ll team up with Heath to see if we can’t root around and locate a portal while we’re also working on finding any clues about Sophie’s murder, but I really feel like we’re going to be searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“Why would a needle be in a haystack?” Steven asked curiously.
“It wouldn’t,” I said. “Which is the point.”
“Then why wouldn’t you say you are looking for hay in a haystack?” he insisted. “I mean, that you would find. Looking for this needle, well, that would be a waste of time. But you could say that you are looking for the needle in the tailor shop. Now, that would make more sense, no?”
I resisted the urge to groan. Steven often struggled with the nuances of our American colloquialisms. “Good idea,” I said, too tired to get into it. “We’ll look for the needle in the tailor shop after the shoot.”
Because it was early and we had some time to kill, Steven and I took showers, (okay, so we took one long one together), got dressed, and headed down to breakfast. We needed to report for duty by eight thirty a.m., but the time change was throwing me, and when we got to the hotel café I noticed it was only seven.
I ordered up a big plate of fruit and a Western omelet; Steven went for fruit and granola, and eyed my omelet when it arrived. “Do you want me to tell you what that is going to do to your arteries?” he asked. Steven’s a heart surgeon by trade.
“Oh, please,” I groaned with a wave of my hand. “All my grandparents lived well into their seven-ties or eighties, and my dad is still going strong. No heart disease in the family. I think I’ll live.”
Steven’s eyebrows lifted a little, but he let it go. I dove in with earnest and was only on my second bite when I heard, “Morning, guys!”
I swiveled in my chair and noticed Heath behind us, looking a bit worse for wear too. “How’d you sleep?” I asked, while Steven pointed to a chair, motioning for Heath to join us.
“Not great,” he admitted, taking the seat. “I’ve been in some creepy places before, but nothing like this hotel.”
“Did something else happen?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Heath said, smiling up at the waitress who was pouring him coffee. “About three a.m. the knocks started.”
“Knocks?” Steven said.
I smiled. I knew what Heath was likely referring to. “Sometimes ghosts will make their presence known by making knocking sounds,” I explained. Turning to Heath I asked, “Is that what you mean? Some spirit was trying to get your attention by knocking?”
Heath nodded. “And then the TV went on and off, on and off from about four to six a.m. I swear, I couldn’t get a moment’s peace.”
“Did anyone give you a name?” I asked.
“Some woman named Carol,” Heath answered, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “She kept saying someone was in her room or something.”
I cocked my head and stared at him. “Freaky,” I said. “Do you know that Carol came by my room early this morning too?”
“You’re kidding!” Heath now eyed me with interest. “Did she knock and flip your television on?”
“No, she scared the crap out of me by appearing on my balcony,” I admitted.
“Fully formed?”
“Like she was in the flesh,” I said. “I think maybe we should start with her after the shoot so that we’ll have a chance at getting some sleep tonight.”
“Great idea,” Heath agreed. “And we’re still going to work on Sophie’s murder, right?”
I sighed wearily. This was turning into a heavily loaded working weekend. “Absolutely, but I think we should also try to find out what the hell that thing was that came out of the elevator,” I added. “I’d hate to think what could happen if a regular hotel guest came up close and personal with something like that.”
“Whatever it was, I’d prefer not to get too close to it,” Heath said with a small shiver. “Frankly, that whole encounter freaked me out so much that I came really close to leaving here last night and heading back home.”
“I feel ya,” I said. “But if we don’t do something about it, Heath, who will?”
He smiled wryly. “Let Angelica and Bernard have a turn.”
I laughed. It was clear that we both shared a rather limited opinion of Captain Comb-over and Madam Hateful. “Now that I’d pay to watch,” I said.
“It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with at the shoot,” Heath said.
I pushed my breakfast dishes away as I polished off the last bite of omelet. “Let’s just hope the two of us get paired up, and not with one of them.”
As it turned out, we weren’t that lucky. When we had all gathered in the lobby at eight thirty a.m.
and were directed into the only conference room not currently being renovated, called the Renaissance Room, where crew members were just finishing up arranging the set. Gopher pulled the four mediums aside and said, “For the first part of the shoot, I’ll want girls against boys. M.J. and Angelica will start us off; then we’ll switch it up and go with Heath and Bernard.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught Angelica’s reaction, and she looked less than pleased. “Then we’ll break for lunch, and when we come back we can try a different grouping: Heath and M.J. against Angelica and Bernard.”
Heath and I exchanged glances. At least we’d get paired up after lunch.
I was then directed by one of the stagehands over to a chair, where a woman with lots of brushes and powders got to work on my face while another woman began putting some curls into my hair.
Between the two of us, Gilley is more the girlie girl, and he looked on happily at the edge of my chair while I was made over.
“Steven tells me that you didn’t have any unusual readings on the meters?” I asked him.
“None,” he said. “There were a few blips around the revolving door leading into the mezzanine, but nothing spiky enough to warrant getting you out of bed. Still, we were up until three checking all the floors.” Gilley yawned loudly for effect.
I noticed that Gil was wearing his magnetic sweatshirt. “You can’t be near me when we’re shooting if you’re wearing that,” I advised him.
Gil looked down. “But I want to watch,” he complained.
“Well, then take off the sweatshirt,” I said. “You’re going to throw off any energy coming through these haunted possessions if you’re nearby.” From Gilley’s exaggerated pout I could tell that he was struggling with the idea, but after a moment’s hesitation he did remove the sweatshirt, folding it and placing it far away from the cameras. “Thanks,” I said as I was allowed up from my chair and directed over to a small, well-lit area in the middle of the large conference room that held a round table covered by a black velvet cloth and a crystal ball in the center.