PART FOUR
Maddie had been missing for two days now and Moseby had had Esteban fill in the vacant post intermittently in the time, but the job was conflicting with his bellboy duties. He couldn't trust Zack and Cody with the responsibility so he turned to Maddie's friends who had come around playing detective to find her. From among them, only one of them seemed earnestly interested in filling in the position.
"Now, Corrie…" Moseby checked out Maddie's friend, Corrine Willows, on her new job at the candy counter. "I want to thank you for volunteering to fill in for Maddie here. You do know how Maddie runs the counter."
"Oh, sure…" Corrie resonated with the same vacuous look of a dumb blonde. "I know how to use a register thing." Her head turned toward London entering the lobby carrying shopping bags. "Oh, look! It's London Tipton!" She became overwhelmed by a wave of idol worship.
"You hired the weird girl?" London took Moseby aside.
"She's the only one I could get who was willing to work for wages lower than Maddie's." Moseby confessed.
"Lower?" Corrie had a revelation. "I thought I was getting the same."
"And I'm sure you're really worth it!" London answered trying to be sincere then turned back to Moseby. "Still no sign of Maddie? Has anyone found any trace of her?"
"Nothing so far…" Moseby gestured without a word for one of the extra bellboys to take London's shopping bags up to the penthouse for her. "London, you may think of Maddie as just an employee here, but I'm really positively concerned about her. In the last few days, I've learned more about her than any of the other employees, and quite frankly, I'm worried. She's a lot more than you think."
"Moseby," London followed him part of the way across the lobby, and placed her dainty hand to her heart. "Maddie is my friend. Of course, I care about her. Why is it that we never realize how special our friends are until they are gone?"
"I guess it's because it takes until we lose them to realize it." Moseby answered and turned back without another word to his office. London turned back to the elevators as well and glanced to Corrie along the way.
"I can't believe I'm working in the same hotel with London Tipton." Corrie grinned to her. "No wonder Maddie loves this job."
"You really need a Prozac!" London hopped into the elevator and hit the button for the penthouse. The doors slid closed on her and shut herself off to the lobby before lifting her up. Looking up to the numbers lighting up, she took a deep breath with the elevating platform at her feet and tossed her hair back as the sixth floor came up. Once reaching it, the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
Looking out to the empty hall, she scowled quite perplexed and hit the button for the top floor again. There was not a person in sight as the doors closed and she started moving once more. Coming up on the thirteenth floor, the elevator stopped again, and the doors opened again. The placard on the opposite wall read she was still on the sixth floor!
"Who's screwing around with the elevator?" She looked to the numbers inside the elevator. It was the sixth floor!
Making a face, London extended two fingers on her right hand and pressed her weight into the button for the top floor. Once more, the elevator started up with her up to the tenth floor, the twelfth floor and past the thirteenth floor. Breathing deeply, she leaned up off the button as she started reaching the twentieth floor. At the twenty-third floor, the elevator stopped and she moaned out loud with the doors opening again.
"Hey London…" Zack and Cody were entering the elevator. Arwin was with them and greeted her as well while carrying another large shoebox-sized invention with a long silver tube out of it.
"What are you guys doing?" She wondered out loud.
"Cody had a dream abut Maddie still being somewhere in the hotel." Zack spoke up.
"Yeah," Cody continued. "I'm not sure, but going by my dream, I think we were in Suite 613…"
"The haunted suite?"
"Yeah, I think that's where we're going to find her." Cody reacted optimistically.
"Oh," London realized that she had seen Arwin's invention before. "Isn't that your ghost-finding device from the fake séance we had?"
"What? Uh, um, no, I had to strip that for parts." Arwin grinned proud of his new invention. "You see, when Mr. Collins was here examining Suite 613, I noticed his team had all these different electronic sensors and recorders, so I built my own master sensor capable of recording everything from electro-magnetic to invisible light."
"Does it work?"
"Why does everyone ask that?" Arwin looked morally defeated as the elevator stopped once more at the sixth floor. London screamed at the placard for the sixth floor. Zack and Cody covered their ears while Arwin resonated from the pitch of her voice.
"Again!" She griped. "I'm starting to think this elevator is haunted! This is my third stop here today!"
"That could be significant." Cody had a revelation. "In my dream about Maddie, we were in Suite 613. I'm positive that's where she is!"
"Well," Zack backed off from another adventure. "You just go check it out. I'll wait here with London."
"Uh-uh…" London was uncharacteristically brave as they turned the corner for Suite 613. "Moseby implied I didn't care about Maddie; I'm going to prove him wrong!" She watched as Arwin commenced with using his passkey to unlock the suite. "On second thought, I can see the whole suite from out here in the hall!"
Arwin and Cody made a non-verbal look of annoyance for their intrepid team and pushed ahead with Zack and London before them. Zack made guttural noises of still being intimidated by the room as Cody pushed him in and London whimpered like her dog in the presence of the spooky dark suite.
"It's even creepier than before!" Cody cringed at every shadow and face-like pattern in the baroque furnishings. Every piece of covered furniture was a ghost to him, and every shadow was hiding something he couldn't see.
"Now, for my invention!" Arwin excitedly held up his device and pointed the radar at the end of the tube for the room. "Stand back as my creation reads every sound and wavelength in the room!" He laughed like a mad scientist and flicked a switch before the sound of crackling screeched from his device. There was a small puff of smoke from between his fingers and a small flame that issued forward and died a few inches from his arm. Zack and Cody jumped back and pulled London with them at the spectacle.
"Hands up if you saw that coming." Zack chuckled and held his hand up. London and Cody held their hands up as well.
"Very funny…" Arwin deflatedly waved the smoke away with his left hand. "I just burnt out the batteries. I just need an extra fuse and another battery." He placed his creation on the same table they had years ago frightened Zack with a phony and exaggerated séance out of revenge for his vicious practical jokes. Zack had changed his tune a bit, but Suite 613 had never really left his mind. He and his brother knew that had seen the ghost of Irene in here since, but they had never told anyone about it. It was only for the sake of Maddie that they dared return to search through it. Back during that time, they had never even looked into the back bedroom. Cody reached up to its handles and with a nervous click opened them up and pushed them wide. The curtains to the room were partially drawn with filtered sunlight coming through dusty white curtains flanked by rich violet tapestries. One window to the front of the building divided a series of closets while a large canopy bed rested against the other wall. It looked like it belonged in a grand castle, especially a haunted one. It's coverings were dark violet with gold ropes, and its blankets slightly disturbed as if someone had just been recently sleeping here. A nightdress was draped silently over a Victorian mahogany chair near the open door of a dingy deserted bathroom. Cody's eyes drifted to the darkened crystal chandelier overhead to the far wall where a high-backed velvet chair was turned toward the window. A sudden chill danced down his spine thinking someone, or something, was sitting there.
"Maddie's not here." Zack responded to his intrepid brother jovially eager to depart this room. "Good theory you had."
"The chair." Cody looked to his brother and then to London. The brown eyes of the heiress were vacant of that sparkle of light that usually danced through them in the light. They were rounded and afraid as she clung to Zack to protect her, or to throw him behind her if she had to make a run for it. Cody could only stride forward and unafraid toward the chair in the limited light with his intelligence and determined tenacity as his only shield. Coming upon it, he noticed the trace of someone's arm over the left side. The sight of another human figure temporarily assuaged his fear, and he forced himself to look upon the face of the person.
It was Maddie! She was garbed in a long and expensive gold and emerald green dress. Resembling an Arthurian princess straight from a book from Camelot, her head was adorned with a silver tiara with diamonds in it. It was resting slightly on her shoulder with her eyes closed. Her blonde hair was brushed with a flourish and slightly parted from her ear to reveal her expensive silver earrings. In Suite 613, she had become an heiress herself with expensive tastes, and in her sleep, she was Sleeping Beauty once more to be awakened by her own Prince Charming. Zack and Cody shook her by her arms trying to rouse her from her eternal slumber in the reduced glow of the dingy covered window.
"Maddie, Maddie… wake up! We found you!"
"Where did she get that dress?" London had to ask. "It is like so European, but then only I could really pull it off."
"Maddie!" Zack lifted her hand as it fell limply from his. He looked to his brother with saddened fear. A tear dripped from his left eye while Cody held Maddie's wrist and tried to read a pulse.
"She's so cold…" Cody replied lifting his head in grief. "So cold…."
"What's going on?" Arwin had dropped a screwdriver he was holding in his teeth and quickly hurried into the room stirring up dust from the floor. "What did you… Maddie! Maddie, we found you!" He noticed London crying, and then Zack and Cody trying to hold back their emotions. Quickly forgetting her selfish desires, London grabbed Arwin for support and started crying.
"She's dead." Zack was close to blubbering. His breath was coming in and out in short breaths through his teeth. Cody was trying to deny the truth before him. He was still trying to shake Maddie awake.
"I never got to tell her I loved her!" Zack bemoaned through his grief.
"But how did she get here, and who dressed her like that?" Arwin asked the question at the top of his mind.
"How can you talk about clothes at a time like this?" London clung to Arwin with her mascara still perfectly in place.
"Did she just actually say…" Cody realized that London was really grieving to have uttered those words.
"I'll get Mr. Moseby up here with paramedics…" Arwin reached for the old-fashionedbrass phone on the writing table in the center of the room. "No, the phone in here doesn't work…" He gently pushed London away and she dropped to sit on the dust filled bed. "I'll run downstairs and get help…" His feet turned taking charge for the bedroom doors on his way to race out of the suite. As soon as his body exited the grimy and abandoned bedroom, he heard a loud crash in the room with him and spun around nearly falling over to see what had happened. The untouched doors had slammed shut behind him and had purposely closed him off to the room. London and the twins were now shut off to him without any way for him to get to them.
At that same moment down on the first floor, the glass front of the podium at the county counter in the lobby had cracked and shattered, allowing stacked candy bars and piled bags of sweets to pour forward. Corrie jumped back to avoid the glass wondering what had happened. After her last customer, she had started reading her Harry Potter book and was leaning forward on the counter. Could her added weight on the podium have put too much stress on the glass?
"Corrie…" Moseby was hastening his way across the lobby around guests and employees. "What did you do?"
"Nothing, Mr. Moseby, I swear!" Corrie franticly shook her head unsure if it was her fault.
"Well," Moseby was adamant to get to the problem. He didn't want new employees trashing the hotel. "Glass doesn't break by itself!"
At that moment, he heard more glass breaking. Turning his head to the front landing of the lobby, he watched as several of the glass doors started cracking untouched and shattering. Guests jumped aside and Esteban leapt through out of the way dropping luggage while all the doors shattered in unison and fell apart separately. It was almost as if an unheard frequency had resonated through the hotel and broke all the glass. The stained glass pattern high above the revolving doors even cracked defiantly. A pattern of lightning fractured up the center of the thick adornment and crumbled in its frame threatening to fall out of its shape above the door.
"Hello," Madeline Fitzpatrick suddenly appeared standing in the blink of an eye to Zack, Cody and London. London shrieked at the sight of her sudden appearance in the window and Cody and Zack whirled around to her in fright.
"I don't often have guests here." She began speaking jovially demented with her hands brought together and her fingers sliding between each other. "I do hope you can stay a while… A very long while…." The brown irises in her eyes slowly paled to light blue and turned to bright green in the dimmed room. Her ruby red lips curled up beaming with a demented and contented smile somewhat devoid of rational human thought.