2
The phones were dead. For as far as she could see from the front windows, all she could see was snow. Her confusion had turned to frustration, and that turned to anger. Alex had attacked one of the chairs in the lobby and smashed it into the wall, shattering a picture, while losing her temper. She then tried one of the old style phone booths in the corner of the lobby, and when that failed to get her results, she tried to destroy that as well, moving into the hall and pulling down all the black and white photos from the wall, smashing them in the wall and scattering them through the lobby trying to see how far she could fling them. Whoever had trapped her here was going to be upset that she had trashed the place. She had never had a fit like this before in her life. She had once nearly come through the floor of her bedroom at home after having her wand taken away from her, but that was more of an accident. Her temper soon abated and turned to hunger, and she went searching for the kitchen. Surely, places like this had something left behind. The kitchen area was in the first place she checked beyond the employee corridor behind the lobby. It looked like a cast iron nightmare with in excess of ten sinks, twelve stoves, eight large industrial ovens and an abundance of prep and work areas. The pantry was fully stocked with a plethora of canned and baked goods, and the first freezer she checked was full of frozen chickens, hams, sides of beef and other carnivorous treats. She could live very comfortably in this place for the rest of her life if the extreme silence and loneliness didn't bother her. From the resources before her, she made herself not one but two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and poured herself a glass of chocolate milk from the walk-in refrigerator. Sitting at one of the wooden employee table in the stainless steel jungle that was the hotel kitchen, Alex glanced around her new surroundings eating her sandwich and tried to discern her situation.
"Okay, Justin…" She called out expecting a response. "This has all been very funny… Ha-ha… but you can bring me home now. I'd like to leave now…" She looked around expecting a reaction. "Max? Max, did you get your wizard powers back?" Alex looked down the hall past the head chef's office then sipped the last of her chocolate milk. "Creepy little girls?" She had not seen or heard from them in a while either.
"Can anyone hear me?" Alex called out then rose up with her plate and dirty glass to set in the sink at the wall. All she heard was the hum of the neon lights overhead, the air conditioning kicked on and the metal air vents expanding from the heat. At the end of the counter in the corner between her and the empty office was a large steel door with an exit sign above it. She had seen it earlier, but she hadn't checked it yet. Strolling up to it like the curious young girl she was, she felt the door itself. It was cold to the touch. Pressing against the handle showed it wasn't locked but popping it open was a big mistake. A gush of below zero wind and snowflakes flooded in around her, scattered the paperwork on the tote board by the door like leaves in the wind and stole all the warmth in her body. It was an exterior pathway to the outside, and the outside weather was filling it up with snow and ice, closing off that access to the property outside the hotel. Quickly pulling it shut again, Alex shuddered uncontrollably and shook from the cold and hastened to the stove area to warm up, switching on the burners under the range canopy and holding her hands over the stove burners turning red then bright orange until the chill left her bones. Once she felt warm again, she switched them back off and looked around the kitchen once more.
"Freezing cold outside…" She told herself. "Warm and toasty inside…" She turned on her heel in her all-white outfit and returned to the employee corridor, painted along the bottom a long dark evergreen and across the top a sickly sea green. Someone must have liked that combination to paint the employee corridors such a toxic combination. Right took her to the lobby restrooms and back to the lounge at the far end of the hotel, but she took the left way to explore the hotel and familiarize herself with the location. Along the way, she saw more storage areas and employee break areas plus more doors to the guest areas of the hotel and the behind-the-scene hidden egresses to the upper floors. The further she had traveled, the corridor became more industrial; there were less kitchen and food prep supplies once she passed the stacks of plastic shelves and stored metal carts, many of which had metal drink containers for tea or coffee. Spotting a sign for the boiler room, Alex turned back the way she had come and upon passing a set of double doors, she turned through some secluded doors in a small egress into a large ballroom from near the dance area.
"Wow…" She gasped and turned around in a pirouette to examine the room. The room was decorated in gold paint, dark green curtains and low-hanging chandeliers. It was filled with enough tables and chairs to seat at least three hundred hotel guests around a small area for dancing near a band area. Enclosed on three sides with high walls to a high ceiling with low hanging light fixtures, the grand ballroom was lined against the exterior hall by tall windows showing every detail of its exterior. They weren't as high as the windows in the lounge area, but they did give multiple glimpses from the hall into the ballroom. Strolling past the restrooms of this palatial party room, Alex found directly across from the guest entrance the bar area and freely admitted herself behind the counter without hesitation. There were glasses and decanters for every beverage possible but not an ounce of spirits to drink. There was neither a bottle of champagne nor a decanter of brandy. The undersides of the counter and the display behind definitely looked as of it was meant to hold every form of liquor and potion possible, but it was as empty as the cupboard in a haunted house. The beer tap was dry, and when pressed, it gently exhaled a waft of fresh air from its hoses.
"Guess my first glass of wine will have to wait a little bit longer…" Alex commiserated then noticed a placard in the next corner of the room diagonally across from her entrance from the employee access corridor, and it was her first sign of anything reflecting people once worked or served jobs here. It was the hotel welcome sign to the ballroom. It read: "The Gold Ballroom. Nightly Music, Dinner and Dancing with Live Music for All Hotel Guests. 7PM to 11PM. Large Parties Please Book In Advance."
"Live music, huh…" Alex sighed. "Well, maybe not tonight…" She had that scant image of the twins again just out of eye shot once more and looked up just as their blue dresses and brown hair vanished around the corner. Hitting the hall out side the ballroom with her feet pounding the floor under her, Alex charged after them down the hall past the length of the ballroom and sailed past the corner trying to catch up with them. They seemed ephemeral and more solid than mere spirits if that's what they were. They giggled and danced skipping away from her, somehow staying just always out of reach.
"Come back here!" Alex tore through the hallway to their images vanishing around another corner. "When I get my magic back, I am so making you brats miserable!" She dashed around another corner and found herself back at the lobby again, this time down the short hall next to the elevators and in view of the General Manager sign to the hotel offices. That was then she realized they had to be ghosts. Little kids were fast, but they couldn't materialize and disappear at will, and besides, these girls exuded something else. Their attire was not of this time, possibly late Twenties, Early Thirties. Modern girls did not wear dresses like those anymore nor barrettes that pulled their hair back to unobscure so much of their faces. Could she be chasing ghosts?
Her head lightly swaying tiredly, Alex tried fighting the feelings of paranoia filling her head. She was slowly unnerving herself. The isolation, the darkness, and the whistling wintry winds pounding the hotel… it was all slowly getting to her. Her hand moving up to her head on its own volition, she tried to hold on to her sanity by reminding herself of who she was. Her name was Alex Russo, she was nineteen years old, she lived at 1328 Waverly Place in New York City and her best friend's name was Harper Finkle. Her parent's names were Jerry and Theresa Russo, and although she was possibly not always the best daughter or sister, she had a whole life to make up her horrible behavior in the past to her family. Without meaning to, her body had turned right under the general manager's sign and she took the short hall next to the elevators into the office area. It was warm orange in color, the desk cleaned of all the stuff a hotel employee might take to leave his job on the last day. There was no nameplate, plants, pictures or anything of a personal nature. There was a desk blotter, a pencil sharper, a cup of pens, a stapler and a number of empty slots for hotel paperwork the dark brown phone, but it might as well be a rock because it got no signal. The door in the room exited into the employee access corridor running behind the lobby and admission desk. The portrait on the back wall looked like a fake window overlooking a serene winter scene as if Alex needed any more reminders she was snowbound by persons or spells unknown without her wand or any magic powers in the creepy hotel.
To her left, her eyes fell on a piece of electronic gear she didn't recognize. It had a number of numbers and dials and switches and knobs. The tiny factory nameplate on it read something she needed to turn the light on to read.
"Cunningham Electronics, 1967, Coleman Transistor Radio Ground System."
"Radio?" Alex felt a glimmer of hope and flipped on the power switch as dials and lights lit up and came to life on it. Grinning and breathing easier with the optimism and anticipation that she could be rescued soon, she turned one knob as the speaker squawked loudly with transistorized white noise and grabbed the speaker piece hanging off it. Her brother had one of these, and he could talk to people on them!
"Hello? Hello?" Alex tried speaking through the frequencies. "Any one out there?" She tried looking for a channel where people were talking. She briefly had voices then lost them by turning too far, turning back trying to get them back. "Hello? This is Alex Russo… please someone talk to me…" She got more cracking and loud shrieking from the radio waves. There had to be someone out there. There had to be a truck driver, a ship's captain, a tall good-looking boy scout… somebody! "I need help! I'm trapped in this hotel…"
"Hello, Alex…" A creepy voice came through the radio.
Alex froze and looked at the speaker.
"Ready to play yet?" It was a creepy little girl's voice erupting into sadistic cackling laughter.
Alex screamed and tried smashing the mouthpiece into the floor, but it bounced and sprang back up on its spiral cord. Jumping back in surprised and terrified fear, she grabbed the stapler and the cup of pens and hurled them at the radio trying to fight back, then stopped and realized she might have damaged her one hope to get out of the creepy hotel. The cup had shattered and the pens had scattered, but the stapler had just bounced off the edge in two parts. She couldn't tell if she had broken anything, but she switched it off and backed away from it in terror. Was that the plan? Was she trapped here to keep losing her mind until she was one of the ghosts too? Her head shaking, her lips trembling and eyes widened in shock and fear, she tried to stay defiant. She was a wizard… a powerless one, but she was not about to let herself get pushed around by a few ghosts.
The sound of furniture moving in the lobby aroused her attention.
Not wanting to go out, Alex closed her mouth that had been hanging open in fear and cleared her throat. Nervously treading out, she slowly inched in short steps out of the office and carefully peeked out into the lobby, checking the room in short bursts by blocking the room with the edge of the hall until she was completely out once more and could see all of the room. She didn't see a thing. Out the front of the hotel, it looked as if it had stopped snowing, but out above the snowdrifts piled up along the front entry, the sky looked a dark bluish-gray that meant more had to be coming. The subdued light cast long shadows behind the chairs and columns creating myriad shapes across Alex's path, but the employee access corridor ran the extent of the hotel, and there was a stairway in the hall behind the hotel lounge that went directly up to the hallway outside her suite on the second floor. She would take that route back up to her room even if she didn't want to stay in it, but upon passing the phone booths, she stopped and looked again. This room and the hallway corridor beside it should have been a mess from her earlier conniption fit. She had left two shattered chairs and all the pictures on the wall scattered and shattered around her, and now, the chairs were back whole and the pictures were restored back to the walls.
Someone or something had cleaned up after her!