The Night Sister

Piper agreed, but didn’t like it.

She wasn’t so sure she really wanted to catch the smoker, and even less sure that the smoker would respond very kindly to being caught by a bunch of girls.

And what if Amy’s ghost was real—what if whoever had been staying here had sneaked up to the house and into Amy’s room to watch her sleep?





Jason


Jason knew there was no going back to Room 4. They’d be watching it now. Maybe they’d even set some sort of trap. He watched from the edge of the woods as they went into one room after another, until all twenty-eight had been visited.

What were they looking for?

When they came out of the last one, they were tired, arguing. It was nearly dinnertime.

Margot said something about Bigfoot.

Amy said something about a ghost. Then she said words Jason caught clearly: “If it comes back tonight, I’ll take a picture.”

He watched Margot and Piper head back to the condos through the path in the woods. After waiting five minutes, just to be sure, he started toward the path himself, staying just at the edge of the woods that bordered the Slaters’ meadow.

“That you, Jay Jay?” Amy’s voice called out from far away, back down at the motel.

He turned. Amy was down by the pool, holding the binoculars from Room 4. His binoculars. She had them pointed right at him.

He stopped, gave a nervous wave.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Walking.”

“Duh!”

“I’ve gotta get home. I’m late for supper.”

“Come back tomorrow, then. First thing. There’s something I want to ask you.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow morning,” he called down.

—

The next day, he was up early. He gulped down some orange juice and a bowl of raisin bran, then ran back to the motel and waited for Amy by the pool. She came out of the house and crossed the cracked patio, with the binoculars hanging from her neck on their heavy leather strap. She was carrying a square piece of stiff paper in her hand.

“Okay, Mr. Scientist. What do you make of this?”

She thrust it at him. It was square photo with a white frame—a Polaroid. He squinted down at it.

“What do you see?” Amy asked.

He thought carefully as he looked at the photo. Was this some kind of Rorschach test?

“It’s all blurry,” he said at last.

“Don’t you see it?” Amy asked.

Clearly, he was failing the test. “Um, what is it I’m supposed to see?” It was dark and grainy, and there, off to the left, was a blur of white.

“The ghost!” Amy said, snatching the photo from him; she jabbed her finger at the white blur. “I took this in my room last night. Our house is totally haunted. Maybe the whole motel is! That’s what I wanted to ask you about. You said you saw someone go into the tower. Someone dressed in blue, right?”

“Right.” He nodded.

“But when you went inside, whoever it was had vanished. I think there’s a ghost, and you’ve seen it”—she jabbed a finger at him—“and I’ve seen it.” She touched her chest with her thumb. “And I think I know who it is.”

“Who?”

She groaned impatiently. “I can’t tell you that! Not just yet, anyway. Piper and Margot, they don’t believe me. But they haven’t seen it yet, right? And we have.”

“But I—”

“Please, tell me you believe me, Jay Jay. Please, please, please. Tell me that what you saw might have been a ghost.”

Jason hesitated, thinking. He didn’t believe in ghosts. And the figure in that blurry photo in Amy’s hand could’ve been anything. Yet here was Amy, practically begging him.

“Sure,” he said, “I guess it could have been a ghost.”

“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I knew you’d believe me, even if no one else did.” She threw her arms around his neck, knocking him off balance a little. He started to sway backward, but Amy caught him, pulled him up, and then kept pulling him closer, until her lips were on his.

In that moment, Jason believed wholeheartedly in the ghost of the Tower Motel.





Piper