"What do you think of that?" Victoria heard Therese asking her, interrupting her from looking at all these alarming articles.

"I don't know," Victoria said, "How are you even able to get some of these in here? I'm pretty sure the picture of the Doctor and Sarah Jane should have…"

"The normal rules of timelines don't really apply here," Therese explained, picking up some of the articles to study them more closely. "For instance, you see this picture of John Lennon?" she asked, holding up the picture Victoria had seen of Lennon and his family.

"Yes. I saw it in part of a documentary once," Victoria said.

"You see, Lennon was out of the spotlight during the five-year hiatus he took from music after his youngest son was born, so no recent pictures of him and his family would have been available in 1979. With that in mind, you could probably imagine how shocked our father was to find this picture of him, looking so happy when there were rumors going around that he was terminally ill or something like that."

This left Victoria silent. If their father was truly as insane as the stories made him out to be, who knows what he may have done upon finding a picture of a celebrity whom no one had heard from in years.

"Yes, that information was very unsettling for Papa," Therese said. "But he appeared to see something darker within these articles that we could never guess. He started saying that all these pictures and articles were a sign of the evil that was soon to come, that every article he could find was foretelling things we'd be forced to live through once the eighties started."

"So much for optimism for the new decade," Victoria said, trying to lighten things up.

Louise then tapped Victoria lightly on the shoulder. "You may want to take a closer look around you," she said.

Victoria did, and to her surprise, they were now sitting in the waiting area of Northern Horizons. The coffee table next to them was stalked with issues of The Guardian, The Mirror, and The Daily Mail dating between 1975 and 79. From the loudspeakers, she could hear the Boomtown Rats' hit song "I Don't Like Mondays"; a song inspired by the words of a girl responsible for a school shooting, Victoria remembered.

"How did we get here? And are we actually in…"

"It's now December 21st, 1979, the day it became clear to Papa what we were going though in here," Louise explained.

Rose looked perhaps more confused than Victoria. "Why are we suddenly moving around time so fast?" she asked.

"Because your time is coming, Rose," Therese explained. "The time when you'll get to save everyone once and for all is about to begin."

Rose now felt nervous. Were they about to face the invisible being hidden in the hotel once again? Given everything she had just experienced, she wasn't sure she was prepared for another confrontation like that.

"We don't know what we're about to face yet," Therese went on. "But if we're moving around time at such a pace, that can only mean that someone or something is waiting for us. However, you shouldn't feel too afraid. Your powers as the Bad Wolf should protect you from going through any serious harm."

Rose turned around, wondering if signs of trouble could already be spotted. The dismal state of the hotel in the late 70s that Truman had made such a point of emphasizing was clear: the walls of the room were full of cracks and brown stains, crumbs and wrappers had been littered around the linoleum carpet, and all desks appeared to be piled up with papers of some kind. Either Mr. Purdue was a terrible caretaker or the hotel had been in bad shape for so long that there was little that could be done about it.

Posted on the wall, as if under a desperate attempt to recapture the hotel's golden age, Rose saw an old black-and-white picture of Northern Horizons posted on the wall, along with a picture of several party guests, dressed almost exactly like the guests from the 1924 hotel party, raising up wine glasses. A lot more of a celebrative mood back then than you could see now, Rose thought. Was it because people were a lot happier back then, or was it just this hotel that was worst off now? Her mummy was always talking about how miserable her childhood had been, and if she was guessing correctly, she'd been a little girl in the seventies. And here were Therese and Louise, who'd spend their lives with a father whose attempts at recognition for his inventions had been a failure. But others, like Sarah Jane and Violet and Tom March, appeared to have had a lot of fun back then. Perhaps it was just different for everyone.

"Actually, a lot of people were looking forward to the seventies ending," Louise said. "Some say it was because of the energy crisis, others blamed it on the popularity of disco, but whatever it was, it had many people fed up. In fact, Papa felt the same way before he started working here."

"I didn't know that before," Rose said.

She now started going through some papers and notebooks that were left scattered around one of the three desks the room contained. Most of the papers included bills and documents with several phrases Rose was sure meant trouble, like bankruptcy and exceeding limits. The notebooks were fully of sloopy cursive and short notes, but one of them, a black and white composition notebook with PRIVATE written on the front that was placed beside several notebooks and a small rosary, seemed more interesting. The writing was in print, with the wording being simple yet descriptive and even funny at times:

The woman with the black fur coat is a little too noisy. Her loud, scratchy voice always makes the other hotel guests look at her as if she were a lion about to attack them. But she's quite nice too, and always compliments us on our clothes and our manners.

Sam the bellboy will always whistle as he walks across the lobby. He's always cheerful, even when Papa or Mr. Jameson are mean to him. He likes to say that it's better to get out of a storm with a smile as you're jumping through puddles than to be running out and crying because your clothes are wet. We're not sure what this means, but we still like seeing that he wants to stay happy.

We only have one guest today and he almost never talks, just nodding or shaking his head when anyone asks him anything. He always frowns whenever he sees us, and this upsets us because we never did anything wrong. Papa thinks there's something strange about him, and because of how we see him act, we sort of believe him.

We keep hearing the song Hotel California on our radio every night, which is weird for a couple of reasons. First, because the radio mostly plays some weird British songs, with titles like Video Killed the Radio Star and I Don't Like Mondays. Secondly, because the words to that song don't make any sense, since they make it sound like someone is welcome into a hotel where something isn't going too well. Shouldn't the singer be telling you to stay away instead, or is it all a trick? The song now makes us nervous because it seems like things in our own hotel keep getting scarier the more we stay. Who knows? Maybe that song was written for us.

"Is this supposed to be like a diary?' Rose asked.

"Sort of," Therese said. "We started out by just writing all the funny things we saw people doing in the hotel. Although we knew Papa sometimes did the same, we actually got the idea after reading Harriet the Spy, where a girl likes writing about the people she sees. Have you ever read that story?"

"No, but if you got an idea from it, then it must be good."

"It is, although it now seems a little harsh now that we're older. Plus, the author has the same name as me, which is why I wanted to read it in the first place," Louise said with a grin.

"Anyway, like the book, writing all that went from being fun to causing trouble. Although for us, it happened when we started writing everything that seemed too mysterious for us. As we wrote the part about "Hotel California", our hands started shaking a lot, as you could tell by how our writing came out more crooked than usual," Therese said.

"And that was when we saw the spirit haunting Northern Horizons," Louise said. "You could only imagine how scared we both got, but for some reason, we were left incapable of screaming or calling out for help. The spirit seemed to have frozen us, forcing us to listen to its awful threats about he'd do to us and Papa if we refused to cooperate with it."

"That's awful. Why do you think I never had an experience like that?" Rose asked.

"Because you're the Bad Wolf, the spirit can't control your mind as strongly as that of other people," Therese explained. "However, because we're psychic, it couldn't get us to do anything bad, as it ended up doing with Papa and your mom. In fact, Louise and I believe that our powers are what allow us to move through time so easily, while Papa stays trapped in 1924."

"Did you come to these conclusions on your own, or has someone been telling you?" Victoria asked.

Therese smiled. "How many people do you believe we can talk to about such strange stuff, Victoria? It's been mostly just the two of us all these years, expect on those rare occasions when the spirit comes over to bother us. But we've had several weapons that we've used against it over time."

Louise picked up a ham radio placed on the table, which started playing "One of these Nights". "The spirit seems to hate the Eagles for some reason, even if it's not 'Hotel California'. Some of the British new wave songs, like 'I Don't Like Mondays' and 'Cars', get on its nerves too."

"Reading parts of our notebook or Papa's have worked as well," Therese said. Then, picking up the rosary, she said, "This can be helpful too. Nothing scares spirits more so than religious imagery. It helps that we never stopped saying our prayers after our deaths either."

"Good to see that you're both so well-prepared for a possible attack," Victoria said.

Rose found herself walking over to the door, wondering if there was anyone else outside of the sitting area. At first, no one could be seen. But after a while, she noticed a man in a dark suit glancing over her with a scowl.

"What are you doing here, little girl?" he asked in a thick accent.

"I...I was seeing some friends..." Rose started, starting to tremble.

"Rose, shut the door!" she heard Louise calling.

"Are you aware of all the trouble little girls cause when they pry into matters which are none of their business? Did you nosy little friends give you any clue as to what happened when they did exactly that?" the man asked, taking small steps to get closer to Rose.

"I don't know what you mean!" Rose yelled, preparing to swing the door towards his face.

But instead, the door collapsed into the floor, and the man disappeared, with a dark cloud reminiscent of the spirit Rose saw before taking his place. The twins shrieked in bewilderment, and Victoria held on to them both, not knowing what this could mean for them or Rose.

Just what will it take for you to learn, little girls? the familiar voice called out.