Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Read online

  “I’m kidding.”

  I put two fists on my hips and give her a good glare. “Not funny.”

  She laughs. “You should have seen it from my angle.”

  “Still,” I say.

  “Are you finally satisfied?” she asks me. “No severed body parts equals no serial killer with murderous intent.”

  But I remain unconvinced.

  When it comes to an empty hotel in the middle of nowhere, you have to be ready for anything.

  After our ghostly meet-and-greet and Mags’s official wardrobe check, we get ready for bed. Her in her regular nightgown and me in my mom’s 1983 Journey concert tee, the Frontiers tour. I found it at the bottom of the hamper in the hall and started wearing it to bed after she left. I wore it Mom-stinky until the stink smelled more like my stink than hers. That’s when Dad made me wash it.

  Now it just smells Tide fresh.

  But I still wear it.

  We have a lot in common, me and the shirt.

  We were important…once.

  “Ready?” Mags asks.

  “Ready,” I say.

  “Let the bargaining begin,” she says.

  I start the ante with the whole kit and caboodle.

  Me: All lights on.

  Her: Bathroom light only, door closed.

  Me: I’ll give you a bathroom light, but with open door, and raise you one desk light.

  Her: Bathroom light only, door ajar, final offer.

  Me: Bathroom light only, door ajar but wider, final final offer.

  She taps her chin with her pointer finger, thinking.

  Her: Deal.

  We seal the deal with our typical fist bump, fanned fingers and a shimmy-shimmy to the floor before slipping under the covers.

  It’s funny that me and Mags ended up best friends since the third grade. We are as different as different can be. But we’re the same, too.

  She’s outspoken and I’m the quiet one.

  Her insides are bursting at the seams with confidence and I’m scared of everything.

  She’s always picked first in gym and I’m dead last.

  She’s blond and bubbly and I’m brown and brooding.

  But we’re the same in one very important way. We’re both true blue.

  I knew that in third grade when the bully of Immaculate Heart of Mary K–8, Darby Woods, shoved me in the girls’ bathroom and told me I wasn’t cool enough to be at that school.

  Mags was the only one who would stand up for me.

  That’s how I knew I could trust her with anything. A person who does something like that is the truest of blue.

  On the night my mom left and it felt like the world was ending, we binge-watched Stranger Things episodes on Netflix in Mags’s bed and ate a whole bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies. And when I couldn’t hold back the tears for another second, she held my hand until the tears finally stopped.

  Mags is as true blue as they get.

  And I know that’s the real reason she’s here. More so than infinite dibs.

  True blue is everything.

  We lay our heads on our pillows now and stare at each other over the nightstand between us in the light shining from our lights-on contract. Alfred Hitchcock is already fast asleep at the foot of my bed.

  “You know what? I think maybe Ms. Lettie is right,” Mags says, her cheek in her palm.

  “You mean about Mr. Honeycutt?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Because of the poltergeist theory,” she tells me. “I know all about them, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “Poltergeists,” she says. “I know all about them.”

  “Not since I’ve known you,” I tell her.

  “Uh-huh,” she insists. “I saw this movie on it.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “A long time ago. It’s on my dad’s laptop.”

  “How come you’ve never told me about it until now?”

  She makes a face. “One guess.”

  “Still,” I say. “We don’t keep secrets. It’s the most important part of our best-friend pact. No secrets is our thing.”

  “Yeah, but if Dr. Finkelman doesn’t want you watching Scooby-Doo, he certainly doesn’t want you watching this.”

  “I can so watch Scooby-Doo,” I murmur.

  “I don’t think so,” she says, slipping out from under the covers and sitting up with her pillow clutched tight in front of her.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Fine, but don’t blame me when you can’t sleep tonight.”

  “Deal,” I tell her.

  “Poltergeist is this movie from the eighties. The actual word poltergeist is German for ‘noisy ghost.’ It’s like the ghosts just want to cause problems for people because the spirits are unhappy being stuck in the middle between here and the afterlife. And in the movie, first that’s all it is. Some ghost just throwing things around like a kid having a tantrum…until it’s much more.”

  “And by much more…you meeeeean?”

  “Something actually snatches the daughter in the middle of the night during a loud storm.”

  I sit straight up in my bed now too. “And by snatch her…you meeeeean?”

  “It was kind of like a paranormal kidnapping. You know, like a ghost just took her.”

  “Took her where?” I ask.

  Mags waves her hand through the space between us. “The in-between.”

  “How did it do that?”

  “Through the television,” she says. “Like it’s some kind of portal to the beyond or something.”

  I stare at the television stuck to the wall of our room and tap my fingers under the covers.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  “How does that work?” I ask Mags.

  “What do you mean how?” she says. “Paranormal entities operate on a whole other set of rules of science. And in this case, their rules of science included a television, okay? You don’t ask ghosts how. It just is.”

  I consider this.

  “Was the television on or off?” I ask.

  “It was on, but not like on a particular show. It was like, you know, fuzz.”

  I blink at her. “Fuzz?”

  “Yeah, fuzz.”

  “You mean like no-picture-on-the-screen fuzz?” I ask.

  “Right, like your-Wi-Fi-is-out fuzz,” she says. “And then it just took her. Just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “Gone.”

  “Gone?” I whisper.

  “Gone,” she tells me.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  Onetwothreefour.

  I try to swallow, but there’s no spit left in my mouth to muster a gulp. My hands go cold and the centers of my palms start to sweat.

  WHAT-IFS

  What if the fuzz is watching you now?

  “Wh-what happens to the girl?” I ask.

  “In the movie they said there are two kinds of dead people. The ones that pass over the way they’re supposed to after they die and the ones that get stuck.”

  “Stuck where?”

  “You know, somewhere between living, and accepting that they’ve died and moving to the beyond. The light or heaven or whatever you believe. So, they’re just hanging out on another plane of existence…out there.” She waves her hands in the darkness. “Or in Mr. Honeycutt’s case…in here—”

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  “And there’s something else,” Mags says. “I probably shouldn’t even tell you.”

  “You should definitely tell me,” I say.

  “It’s about this hotel.”

  “What about it?” I ask.

  “This hotel is connected to The Shining, one of the
scariest horror stories ever written,” she tells me. “They made a movie of it too. My dad won’t let me see that one because it’s rated R. But I snuck it. I was going to watch the whole thing until I got to the eleven-minute, fifty-second mark. That’s when I turned it off, and I’m not even going to tell you why. You’ll never sleep again.”

  I swallow. “Worse than in-between fuzz?” I ask.

  “Way worse. Like a million times worse,” she tells me. “And you want to know what else—”

  But before she even has the chance to finish, something horrible happens.

  A scream.

  A bloodcurdling, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping scream that seems to go on forever.

  She wide-eyes me and I wide-eye her back.

  Alfred Hitchcock hops to attention.

  Footsteps pound the hall outside our door.

  Voices shout.

  Time stops.

  Another scream pierces the air.

  “Who is that?” I whisper to Mags.

  “He’s heeeere,” Mags whispers.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  “Karma!” someone hollers from the other side of the door.

  Mags jumps down from the bed and grabs both of my arms, giving me a shake. “How does Ozgood Honeycutt know your name?”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Alfred Hitchcock jumps from the bed now and runs in circles on the viney carpet, barking whole-body barks at the ceiling.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Mags shouts, giving me another shake.

  “Crystal Mystic will know,” I tell her, grabbing it off the night table.

  “Great.” She throws her hands out. “Our very lives in the hands of a stupid, plastic ball. I knew you and your woo-woo would be the death of me one day, Karma Moon, and here we are!”

  “Crystal Mystic, is that Ozgood Honeycutt here to snatch our souls to the in-between?” I give it a shake, and I wait for the voice from beyond the stars to guide us.

  CRYSTAL MYSTIC

  YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES ARE ON A LUNCH BREAK. TRY AGAIN LATER.

  “Great. Not helpful in an emergency? Check,” Mags says. “I knew we shouldn’t trust woo-woo.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  “Karma! Open this door!” the disembodied voice demands.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  One two three four.

  Onetwothreefour.

  Another scream. This one turning into a wail and then…the knob on the door rattles.

  “There’s only one thing left to do,” I tell her.

  She nods and we both scurry under my velvet bedspread and hold hands while I shake Crystal Mystic over and over again under the covers, asking the same exact question.

  Each time, the same stupid answer.

  CRYSTAL MYSTIC

  YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES ARE ON A LUNCH BREAK. TRY AGAIN LATER.

  “Maybe the evil spirits have clogged the channels.”

  “Or maybe it’s a hunk of junk,” Mags mumbles.

  “Woo-woo isn’t cuckoo and without it—”

  “Don’t even,” she says, pointing a warning finger in my direction.

  “But this is my surefire woo-woo system. It’s usually right-on,” I tell her.

  “Usually isn’t always, is it?”

  Shake.

  CRYSTAL MYSTIC

  YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES ARE ON A LUNCH BREAK. TRY AGAIN LATER.

  Shake.

  CRYSTAL MYSTIC

  YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES ARE ON A LUNCH BREAK. TRY AGAIN LATER.

  “You need to rethink your surefire woo-woo system in emergency situations,” Mags tells me. “What about your stupid crystals? Bring anything to ward off the evil spirits?”

  “Oh, sure,” I say. “They’re stupid until you need them.”

  “Did you bring the ward-off-evil-spirit ones or didn’t you?” she asks.

  “I just brought your garden-variety courage ones.” I pull the tiny leather sack of crystals that I wear around my neck out from under Mom’s Journey T-shirt to show her.

  She huffs air out and crosses herself. “We’re doomed.”

  “I think you’re right,” I tell her.

  “About being doomed? Or the fact that I knew one day your woo-woo would be the death of me?”

  “About the fact that I definitely need a new surefire system for evil spirit emergencies.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  “I’ve got it,” she says, grabbing her cell phone from her pocket. “911 will know what to do.”

  “You can’t call 911 for a ghost emergency,” I inform her.

  “Watch me,” she says, already dialing.

  I wedge my ear next to hers and listen in.

  911 Operator: This is 911, please state your emergency.

  Mags: Ah, yeah…hello? We, um, would like to report a ghostly spirit attempting to snatch our souls to the in-between.

  911 Operator: Click.

  “Genius,” I tell her.

  “Hey, you’re the one who left the antighost crystals at home.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  The knob on our room rattles again and we both scream.

  Mags grabs my hand in hers. “You will always be my best friend, Karma Moon Vallenari.” Her words tumble out at me, each one falling on top of the one before it. “And if Mr. Honeycutt is going to snatch us to the in-between, there’s no one I’d rather be snatched with.”

  “Ditto,” I tell her, squeezing her fingers.

  And that’s when I feel the courage crystals kick in, in a boost of bravery.

  I stick my head out from under the covers and yell as loud as I can so the soulless entity hears me loud and clear, “If you are Mr. Honeycutt or even a hotel-manager-slash-film-crew serial murderer, you’d better keep walking!” I yell again. “ ’Cause you’re not cutting anything off of us, got it? Not a finger or an ear or even a pinky toe!”

  Suddenly the banging and the doorknob rattling stop.

  We wait.

  Then a voice.

  But this time it sounds surprisingly familiar.

  “Have you been watching Dateline again?”

  “Oh my God!” Mags gasps. “Even Ozgood Honeycutt knows about Dr. Finkelman’s list.”

  “That’s not Mr. Honeycutt,” I tell her, shoving the covers off me. “It’s my dad.”

  She lets out a giant breath.

  When I fling open the door, Dad is standing in bare feet and his gray sweatpants. The ones he always sleeps in, with a plain white T-shirt.

  He grabs my shoulders and stretches his neck to scan our room. “Is everything okay in here? Mags, you good? You’re both okay?”

  He’s all breathy, like he just got done running a marathon.

  But before I can even answer him, we hear more loud voices floating up the giant staircase from the lobby downstairs.

  “What is going on?” Mags asks Dad.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Come on, let’s go find out. I want you girls to stay with me.”

  He grabs my hand and I grab Mags’s and we all scramble toward the grand staircase with Alfred Hitchcock leading the way.

  When we make it down to the lobby, everyone is there.

  The double doors leading to the red front steps are wide open, letting the cool night breeze blow all the way up the giant staircase. Raindrops dot the sidewalk and the drive, and a slow rumble of thunder tells us a storm is brewing.

  When I squeeze in between Ms. Lettie in her pink curlers and flowered pajamas and Ubbe Amblebee in his ratty blue bathrobe and hairy legs, I can see Mr. Plum standing on the very bottom red step outside the lobby doors.

  In his underwear.

  Polka-dot boxers, to be disturbingly specific. With a pair of
matching socks, stretched all the way up to his knees.

  T. S. Phoenix, with the worst case of bedhead on the face of the planet, is trying to coax Mr. Plum back inside like he’s a lost cat and T.S. is afraid if he doesn’t catch him, he’ll run into the street and get hit by a car.

  “I’m not going back in there,” Mr. Plum is saying, shaking his head left and then right and then left and then right. “And you can’t make me.”

  His eyes are wider than any eyes I’ve ever seen wide. Even the time when Mags punched Ollie Logan after he sang Margaret Mags, you’re a hag with bags that sag in the third grade. I thought his eyes were going to pop right out of his head when he saw that bright red blood coming out of his nose.

  “Just come on inside and tell us what happened, Mr. Plum,” Chef Raphaël says, standing with his hands on his hips in perfectly pressed cotton pajamas, minus one chef hat. Who knew there wasn’t a single lick of hair under there? His head glows like a glittering bowling ball. It sure is a good thing I don’t have peladophobia. That’s the fear of bald people. But it doesn’t matter one whit to me that Chef Raphaël is a bowling ball.

  Mr. Plum just keeps shaking his head. “First there was a breeze in my room and then someone was calling out to me and then I came down and I saw that.” He points to the open doors.

  We all turn and scan the lobby.

  “You saw what, Mr. Plum?” Mr. Lozano asks him.

  “D-don’t you see it?” he asks.

  “See what?” Madame Drusilla says.

  “Th-the furniture in the d-dining hall. D-don’t you see it?” Mr. Plum stutters.

  I look again, but all I see is Alfred Hitchcock stretching and then jumping up on top of a comfy leather chair in front of one of the fireplaces. He scratches at the cushion until it’s to his liking and then curls up in a ball, uninterested in Mr. Plum’s sighting or anything else except a nighttime nap.

  “What’s wrong with the furniture?” I ask.

  Mr. Plum takes five careful steps up the front stairs and then stretches his neck to peek inside the doorway and toward the dining hall.

  “They’re gone,” he says.

  “What is?” I ask.