Chapter Nine
The Clipper Lake Hotel, nestled on the woodsy shore of a large freshwater lake, had been built in 1902. According to legend, it had dominated the area for decades as the premier summer resort for the wealthy residents of Boston.
It was the kind of place that was given a fresh coat of white paint each year. It boasted a large wraparound veranda with dozens of wicker chairs and tables with chintz cloths. The ladies sipped lemon iced tea and fanned themselves on hot summer afternoons, while the gentlemen ordered brandy and talked about politics in the library. There were a number of small private cottages as well, stretched along the pebbled shoreline.
It was especially popular with honeymooners, but Riley and I had heard from a girl in the eighth grade that when a new owner took over in the 1970s, he installed a bunch of heart-shaped beds and shiny red hot tubs. After that, it lost most of its historic charm, the rates went down, and gradually it became the premier party location for drug users.
Sadly, it shut down in 1986 when one of the guests went on a shooting rampage and killed nine people, including the owner’s wife. Six months later, the owner declared bankruptcy and hung himself from one of the beams in the basement.
It was a dark and tragic tale, but Riley and I were just kids and we couldn’t truly comprehend the reality of it.
In any case, what lured us to the lake that day was something else entirely. We were most fascinated by the stories about the ghosts—because according to rumor, the place was splendidly haunted.
* * *
It was long past noon when we peddled onto the weedy, deserted parking lot. As soon as the building came into view, I hit my brakes and skidded to a halt. Riley did the same.
Together we looked across at the once majestic hotel, now a beastly monstrosity with a sagging roof and rotting gray clapboard. Only the smallest traces of white paint remained as evidence of its former glory.
Off to the side, in the field next to a dilapidated swing set, was a rusted-out, broken-down car with bullet holes in it.
“Wow,” Riley said. “This looks amazing.”
“Are you sure we should go in?” As soon as the words passed my lips, I regretted them.
Riley turned to me with an accusing glare. “Are you chicken?”
“No,” I quickly professed. “I just don’t want to get arrested, that’s all.”
He rolled his eyes. “We won’t get arrested, nimrod. It’s not like the cops ever get called out here. Come on, let’s go.”
Not wanting to appear a coward, I followed Riley to the main entrance, where we got off our bikes and stood them up on their kickstands.
For a brief moment I hoped that the place would be locked up tighter than a state prison and we’d have to settle for peering in the windows, but all the windows had been boarded up long ago, then ripped off by vandals. The ornate, heavy oak entrance doors were knocked off their hinges, so there was nothing but air to keep us out.
“Do you think anyone’s here?” I asked.
“I sure hope not,” Riley replied.
He entered first, stepping over the fallen door, and I followed him into the main lobby.
It was difficult to imagine what it might have looked like in its heyday. Now, the wallpaper was faded and torn away; the walls and ceilings were covered in cobwebs and graffiti; and the spindles on the main staircase railing had been kicked out.
What was most unsettling, however, was the silence of the place. Outside of my own breathing, there were no sounds of humanity, not even the hum of an air conditioner or refrigerator or the faint roar of traffic in the distance. It felt as if we had crossed over into another dimension.
A pigeon fluttered out of a hole in the wall, flapping its wings wildly and flying out through the main door. Riley and I both jumped as the bird sailed past.
“Geez! That scared me!” Riley shouted. “Come on. Let’s go check out some of the rooms. I wonder if they still have beds in them.”
“If they do, they’ll probably be crawling with bugs,” I replied, following him up the stairs. “It smells musty.”
We reached the second floor and started down the long, narrow corridor where more graffiti covered the walls. As we pushed our way through a few more cobwebs, my heart pounded heavily in my chest. I kept expecting something to jump out at me—something far worse than a pigeon.
“No wonder they say it’s haunted,” Riley said. “It’s really creepy. I wonder where the shootings happened.” He peered into the first room we came to with an old bed, no mattress.
“There’s hardly any furniture,” I said. “Everything from the old hotel would be antiques by now, probably worth a lot of money. I wonder if people stole stuff over the years.”
“That’s probably what happened. Or maybe the owners sold it.”
We stepped gingerly over the creaky floorboards and checked out each room on either side of the corridor until we came to the end of the hall.
“This door must have been added later,” Riley said. “It doesn’t look old like everything else.”
“It’s a fire door,” I explained, pushing the handle to open it. “They probably had to add this stairwell when the rules changed about having proper exits.”
“Want to go up a level?” Riley asked.
“Sure.”
In all honesty, I preferred the modern metal staircase to the rest of the hotel. It made me feel like we were back in a more familiar world.
The heavy door slammed shut behind us, and I jumped when it echoed loudly. Then I noticed a bad smell and covered my nose with a hand.
We climbed one flight and reached another door with the number three painted on it. I turned the knob.
“Shoot,” I said. “This one’s locked. We’ll have to go back down.”
“Let’s go up first,” Riley said. “Maybe the fourth floor will be open.
There was only one window at the very top to light the stairwell. The two of us hurried up, taking two steps at a time to reach door number four.
That, too, was locked.
A rush of nervousness filled my belly.
“Are they all locked?” Riley asked with concern, tugging violently at the knob with both hands. He proceeded to kick the door a bunch of times.
By now I was already on my way back down. “It’s a fire exit,” I said, “so there has to be a way out. That’s the whole point of having them. There should be a push handle on the ground floor.”
I hurried down. The lower I went, the darker it got. This made me run faster.
When I reached the ground floor, I didn’t stop. I ran straight into the steel door and shoved myself up against the horizontal exit bar. It refused to open. I tried and tried, but it was no use.
“What’s going on?” Riley asked when he appeared behind me. “Is this one locked too? I thought you said it would open.”
“It should,” I ground out, still fighting with it. “I think there must be something wedged up against it on the outside.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but it must be something heavy. Help me push.”
The two of us thrust our shoulders up against the door for what seemed like an eternity, but it wouldn’t budge.
Finally, Riley sat down on the steps. “Are we locked in here?”
I checked under the stairs to see if there was another exit, but all I found was a cement wall. “No, there has to be a way out.”
I stepped around Riley and climbed back up to the second floor where we had come in. That door was still locked, as were all the others. The window at the top didn’t open at all. It was made of wire mesh, and even if it did open, it was a four-storey drop straight down.
“What are we going to do?” Riley asked in a panic, meeting me on my way back down.
I paused with my hand on the railing. “I don’t know, but I think we’re in big trouble.”
* * *
For the next few hours, we continued to fight with all the doors and even tried kicking through the walls, but they seemed to be made of cement. Picking the locks wasn’t an option either, because we had nothing on us that would fit into the keyholes.
By late afternoon, the sun dropped low in the sky and we sat down on the steps, exhausted.
“My dad’s going to kill me,” Riley said. “He’s going to chew me up and spit me out on the front lawn.”
“Mine too,” I replied, though I doubted I’d have it as bad as Riley, because his father was worse than an army drill sergeant.
Every morning before Riley and Leah left for school, their beds had to be made with hospital corners and without creases. If they were ever caught leaving a dirty dish anywhere in the house, or not hanging up their jackets when they came in the door, they had to do extra chores for a week. There were more rules about grades and Riley had a hard time with that because he wasn’t as book smart as Leah.
“I guess it’s a good thing you told Leah where we were going,” I said. “At least somebody knows where we are.”
“But she’ll get in trouble too,” he said, “just for keeping it secret all day.”
“Maybe your dad won’t come home tonight and he won’t even know,” I suggested.
“How’s that supposed to work?” Riley asked. “The minute I don’t show up for supper, Mom’s going to start calling people.”
“At least somebody will come and get us,” I said. “Even if we get grounded for a year, it would be better than spending the night in here.”
Little did we know, Riley’s mom was still throwing up at supper time, so my mom had to take her to the clinic—which meant no one was home at either of our houses to even notice we were gone.
By the time the sun went down, we were huddled together on the fourth-floor landing, surrounded by pitch black, waiting for someone to find us. At the time, I told myself there were no such things as ghosts, but now, after everything I’ve been through, I’m not sure I was right.