4

The new girl to their strange company was Jessie Prescott, just as she had announced herself. Born in Texas to Captain John Prescott of the Army's Fifth Regimental Battalion near Fort Hawthorne, she was admittedly a former Army brat and an only child. Upon seeing her, Maddie briefly flashed back to another girl she had once met, a farm girl from Kansas named Bailey Pickett who attended school with her friends, Cody and Zack Martin, but Jessie was much older and more vivacious. If she saw Bailey today, she'd be sure she'd look like Jessie, who was very concerned about her young charges, the adopted children of director Martin Ross and his actress-wife, Christina Ross. Upon hearing that Jessie was from New York City, Maddie and Gabriella had curiously and suspiciously turned to look at Alex and her abrupt effort to disavow knowing Jessie.

"It's a little suspicious, you think?" Maddie sat on the desk in the hotel manager's office as Gabriella tinkered with the radio. "The fact that they're both from New York City."

"It's a big city…" Gabriella had been there once with her boyfriend, Troy Bolton, to support her friend Sharpay in a Broadway play there. "Maybe they don't know each other."

"I don't know…" Maddie was skeptical. "I just can't help but wonder if Alex could be connected to whoever trapped us here." She paused. "How do we know she was here for five days before we arrived?"

"We don't…" Gabriella listened and searched the radio band signals for traffic. "But we have no reason to not believe her either." She took off the headphones she was wearing. "Look, this thing is definitely broadcasting, but it's snowing again and we don't know how far in the mountains we are. The phone lines may be down, and the storm could be disrupting the signal. Let's just leave it on and keep checking it. I mean, there has to be forest rangers or mountain patrols that check the area…"

"Another thing…" Maddie still tried to figure out this odd situation. "You've seen the snow outside. How possible is it that someone can get in and out of this hotel with you, myself and Jessie under Alex's nose, change our clothes, leave us in rooms and then get out again without any of us waking and seeing this person?"

"I'm a completely scientific and rational person." The cute and attractive Hispanic beauty responded analytically. "I can only respond to stuff I know, but if we can be drugged and brought in here without seeing our abductor, Alex can be too and we have to assume she's a victim along with us until we have evidence otherwise."

"You are so not Corrie…." Maddie compared Gabriella to one of her best friend's back in Boston. Corrie and Gabriella may have looked enough alike to be twins, but Corrie was much more spirited and effervescent. She was practically a big shy kid with a huge trusting heart. Gabriella also saw a distinct difference between Maddie and Sharpay. Maddie was smart and less assertive that the Broadway-bound blonde actress and that distinction helped them form a bond she never could have with Sharpay.

"At least we're in a warm place…" Gabriella remained optimistic.

"You still think we're somewhere in the Adirondacks?" Maddie asked and hopped off the desk as Gabriella departed through the door to the back corridor.

"My mom and I used to travel a lot…" The brunette prodigy confessed. "In the brief instance the snow stopped, I saw snow-topped granite mountains and fir and pine trees in the distance. We are either in the mountains of Lower New York, the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee or the Rocky Mountains of Central Colorado. I can get a better idea tonight when I check the constellations, but I'm going to say the Adirondacks since both Jessie and Alex are from Manhattan." She paused. "Of course, I could be a lot more sure if this place had an Internet connection." She drew quiet as if waiting for Maddie to respond. "My mom must be going crazy wondering where I am." She finally responded again.

"Yeah…" Maddie had the same thought. "My parents and grandma must be freaking out too." She turned into the kitchen and flipped the light on. "I'm putting a chicken in the oven. It should be ready by dinner. Why don't you go see how Alex and Jessie are doing?"

"Okay…" Gabriella looked at her and turned away to stride down the length of the hall for the lounge area in the far end of the hotel. It seemed a much more hospitable place that the Gold Ballroom on the other side of the lobby plus it had windows and was not nearly as creepy or scary as the ballroom. In the kitchen area, Maddie noticed the chicken she had left to thaw out at breakfast on the wooden table and lifted it up by the pan. The plastic cover slipped off it much easier now. Filling a metal measuring cup with water, she added it to the bottom of the pan then turned to slide it into the oven.

She heard a loud ding from the room.

Turning around, she looked at the oven and around the room. She didn't recall setting the timer on it. She just recalled saying she wanted chicken, and the girls offering to help her cook it. Gabriella had cut the potatoes and carrots to go with it and had left them sitting in the strainer in the sink. Pouring them out into the pan around the chicken, Maddie started wishing she had Chef Paollo from the Tipton to advise her on how to prepare it. Roasted chicken was fine, but she thought it required some seasoning.

That loud ding sounded again.

More curious than spooked, Maddie looked up again to the white and light blue room with all the stainless steel shelves, stoves, ovens and counters. There were just too many places to hide in here. Had Jessie or Alex been playing with one of the timers on the stoves in here and left it to spook her? Shoving the chicken into the pre-heated stove, Maddie looked into her peripheral vision once more then closed the oven and increased the temperature a bit. She didn't consider herself much of a chef, but she had helped her mother quite often at home when she wasn't fending for herself. A light sigh from her lips, and she turned to head out between the kitchen manager's office and the two cold storage rooms for the employee corridor. As she neared the bathrooms, she heard the ding again.

That time, she knew exactly where it had come from. Stopping where she was, she turned and peered inquiringly into the lobby. It sounded like the bell for the bellboys back at the Tipton. This bell for this place was right in direct sight of her on the counter of the admitting area. Someone was trying to scare her.

"Gabriella…" Maddie spoke matter-of-factly. "Are you trying to scare me?" She grinned thinking about clever it was and how close she had come to be scared. "Come on out…" Maddie lifted the flip-top lid of the counter to the employee staff work area behind the counter and looked behind the counter expecting to find Gabriella hiding, but it was empty. No one was there.

Standing there, she wondered if she could be wrong. No one was in the concierge's office either. Slowly getting that creepy feeling back, Maddie slowly slipped back out and headed back toward the restrooms beyond the phone booths trying to pass off the sounds as a figment of her imagination. Maybe it was something else, but she didn't think so. She had been the Tipton Hotel candy girl for almost eight years, and she had heard hotel manager Marion Moseby hit that bell hundreds if not thousands of times. She knew that type of bell several times over. As she stepped into the corridor again, she heard it again and her heart jumped a beat. Something she couldn't see was hitting that bell! She knew it, and her feet tore down the corridor as fast as she could run. The soles of her white loafers made a rhythmic pattering sound under her feet against the polished concrete floor. Her breath raced from her lips, and her terrified heart pounded as she pushed through the wooden doors from the hall into the lounge. Her eyes glanced around for the others.

"Alex! Gabriella?" She scanned the room over from the chairs and sofas. "Jessie?" She looked at the fireplace. Alex had wanted to light the fireplace, but they didn't have any firewood, and it was so bitterly cold and icy outside no one wanted to walk into the trees to gather branches to burn. She then recalled Alex claiming she had moved a television set from the lobby to her room along with almost a dozen bags of snacks from the kitchen. Maybe that's where they were. Still fighting the creepy feeling in the back of her head, Maddie crossed the back of the room and took the stairs to the second floor. There was another smaller fireplace up here and a small table set with chairs. She had not explored the far end of the hotel yet, but she wasn't in any hurry to do so. She turned left a bit casually from the balcony into the hall down from Alex's suite and treaded the intricate pattern in the carpet to join them. When she passed the empty hall, she saw two new faces she'd never seen before. They were two young girls in blue dresses. Wide faces, round vacant staring eyes, slender arms holding each other by the hands and white socks with side buckled-shoes. That strange creepy feeling in Maddie's head was so loud she felt it was screaming.

"Hello, Maddie…" The two girls spoke at the same time. "Come play with us…" Their voices had a creepy British accent in their voices as well as a weird otherworldly undercurrent in them. Maddie backed away from them feeling her heart pounding faster and faster about to explode in her chest.

"We can play forever….

"And ever…

"And ever."

Unable to scream, Maddie turned making a short guttural noise from her throat. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. Her body couldn't make the noise. She actually found herself racing past Alex's suite and down the hall to her room on the other end of the other upstairs balcony over the lounge. Her eyes were rounded in fear, her breath coming in short terrified bursts, she ran past Gabriella's room in 248 for her room on the back of the hotel in 250. Jumping on her door, she pulled it open and rushed inside. She had a small room with a small bathroom and a balcony over the back of the hotel with the same room of the lounge, but she did not want to be alone. Locking her door behind her, she turned and looked at the door, but in this small room, she felt the walls might be coming in on her. In fact, she felt she was being watched. She checked her closet and then the bathroom. There was no one in the room, but she didn't feel safe here. She wanted to be with the others. Why did she run past Alex's door?! She debated heading back out for what felt like several minutes, scared and terrified to be both alone and hesitant to go out again then fought her fears to risk it. One minute too scared to open the door to the hallway, she forced herself to open the door and take the balcony shortcut outside her room for Alex's suite. Springing from her room as a terrified jack-in-the-box, a stifled scream still in her chest, she rounded the corner and plowed straight into a person who she barely saw until the last minute.

"Are you okay?" It was another girl. Dressed in the same white sweater and slacks, she looked about her age. She had long straight black hair and two warm brown colored eyes on a round kewpie-doll like face atop a very full-figured frame. "I'm sorry…" She tried reaching to Maddie to lift her from the floor. "I didn't mean to…"

"Don't touch me!" Maddie rolled over and lifted herself to her feet.

"Oh, okay…"

"Don't touch me!" Maddie had tears in her frightened eyes as she slid along the wall unsure who this girl was and what she wanted. She wanted to find Alex and Gabriella. Tearing down the hallway, she turned right down the hallway and smashed into the doors on Room 237. It was locked from the inside, but there was voices and laughter inside. Maddie pounded at the door while looking left and right down the hall.

"Alex! Open up!" She pounded and fought with the door. "Open up!"

"Maddie?" Alex opened the door and let her inside. Laughing and grinning one minute, Jessie and Gabriella looked up from the sofa and potato chip covered coffee table a bit confused as Maddie hugged Alex crying and shaking. The brunette sorceress looked confused, but the girls realized Maddie had been scared badly and rallied to her side. Jessie handed her a cold soda from the mini-bar in the room.

"Maddie? What is it?" Jessie asked her.

"Two girls…" Maddie was helped to the sofa as Gabriella patted and rubbed her back. "Maybe three… two creepy little girls in powder blue dresses…"

Alex reacted and looked away covertly.

"I don't think they were real…" Maddie shuddered with fear and broke down crying terrified for her life. She had been scared in her life, but there was a difference between surprised and truly scared. You could forget being surprised, but getting scared meant not being able to forget the fear and panic of looking into something that defied rational thought. Alex stood over her as Maddie sipped her soda and leaned into Gabriella for support.

"You saw them too?" Alex's voice quivered. "I thought for sure I had hallucinated them…"

"Them?" Jessie stood before her. "Alex, what are you not telling us?"

"Guys…" Alex cleared her throat unsure of what was happening, but she did know one thing. "I think the hotel is haunted…"