7

Gabriella sat up in bed with her new best friends surrounding her. Maddie had brought her orange juice up from the kitchen to drink before heading to breakfast. Sonny and Alex sat on the bed with her, and Kat and Jessie stood a bit further from her. She had described to them what happened to her, and upon hearing it, Alex realized these ghosts were far unlike any raucous spirits she had ever seen. Maddie wasn't sure if she believed yet, but both Sonny and Jessie were starting to believe the place was haunted by something.

"It sounds like…" Kat was trying to rationalize the sighting using her knowledge from the paranormal field. "Some sort of residue haunting."

"What?" Sonny looked at her as if she was making it up.

"A place memory…" Kat explained. "Most researchers agree that ghosts are either surviving personalities that refuse to pass over or that they're just imprints of images and sounds imbedded in the substance of areas that get replayed by meteorological or by emotional activity. Some experts claim that the reason some people don't pass over as spirits is that they get bound to objects that are important to them in life. You could say that place memories could be why spirits get earthbound to begin with, but what Gabriella's describing…" She paused trying to rationalize it. "It could be energies from all the deaths here manifesting to her."

Alex scoffed. Jessie, Sonny and Maddie turned to look at her.

"You've got another opinion?"

"Look," Alex tossed her hair back with the back of her hand. "I may not be a paranormal investigator, but I know a few things too about ghosts, and these ghosts are crazy… They are trying to scare us like a bunch of bored mental patients…"

"And where do you get your research?" Kat asked.

"I'm a wizard." Alex said in her head, but what she really said out loud was something different. "My brother is a sort of… paranormal expert."

"Your brother…."

"Justin…"

"Never heard of him…" Kat confessed.

"No, you wouldn't…"

"Gabriella…" Maddie looked to her. "Do you feel up for joining us downstairs for breakfast? I could bring you something up if you prefer."

"I don't want to be left alone." Still reeling from dreams of her boyfriend and friends from high school taunting and haunting her, Gabriella echoed back demurely with her legs folded up before her like a scared young girl. "I'd rather stay with you guys." She peeled the blanket back on the bed and extended her feet off to the floor and stood in the same clothes she had been wearing last night. "Will one of you come up later with me so I can take a shower?"

"Sure…" Jessie pulled her close as they all realized how much they were bonding like sisters in this experience.

"What do you have waiting for us down stairs?" Sonny looked to Maddie. "I heard you and Jessie making breakfast early this morning."

"Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice." Maddie lead the way out of the room with Alex to lead Gabriella safely by her side. "Of course, we also have cold cereal if you want that…"

"How are we doing on eggs?" Alex turned to ask, but as she turned she noticed a seventh figure far beyond the five girls with her that skirted just out of her view. It looked like the sort of figure Kat had described, a tall, blonde cadaverous woman in a long white dress hurrying to hide out of view at the end of the hall. She was more like an afterthought, a brief image drifting just out of her sight. She wondered if she should mention her to the others then quickly changed her mind. After Gabriella and Kat's stories, they all needed some form of normalcy.

"Plenty…" Maddie answered. "But I don't want to be stuck making breakfast every morning for everyone. If I make something for myself, I can cook a little extra, but I don't want to be responsible for cooking for everyone."

"We're not expecting you to cook for us everyday… Are we?" Sonny followed their white-clad group through the hall to the first floor. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

"Well, " Jessie postured. "I have to take care of four kids. I know how to get a lot done really fast." She wondered fondly about her young wards. "I do hope they're being taken care of correctly while I'm away." They pushed through the metal swinging doors to the stairway down to the downstairs access hallway alongside the lobby. Another sharp turn, and they'd be in the main employee corridor. "Anyone know what time it is?"

"Eleven fifteen…" Kat noticed the clock first, but she wasn't sure if it was correct.

"Well, let's go eat breakfast so we can have lunch…" Alex followed Sonny down the hall. They were all slowly getting used to finding themselves through this place. The main employee and utility corridor ran the length of the place with a few side halls and numerous stairways to the top floors. The lobby area with the kitchen behind it was off center with the Colorado Lounge at the far end and the Gold Ballroom at the other. The Game Room was in the front hallway off the wall of photos on the other side of the lobby. They strolled silently through the place wondering why they were here and barely existing. They were alive, they were surviving and they had each other, but what life did they have knowing they friends and families were back home wondering where they were with no way to get a message out? The phones were still out, their transmitter radio wasn't getting a signal and outside, the snow had started again turning their winter wonderland into a frozen hell of snow and ice.

Alex pushed her way into the kitchen prep area first and noticed the food left out just as Maddie and Jessie had left it, but a second look and they realized it was not exactly the same. The platter with the bacon was empty, the metal tray with the scrambled eggs in it was half empty and the toast was all but depleted except for five pieces and the sixth one had a bite in it. The table had four used plates around it, four empty glasses and the clear plastic orange juice dispenser which Jessie had filled with orange juice concentrate was half empty, the liquid catch tray under the tap full of orange water. They stared at the mess with confused shock and annoyed frustration.

"Well, it's nice to know you two left us with something." Sonny spoke first.

"This is not how we left it!" Jessie looked at Maddie then to Sonny, Gabriella and Alex. Maddie walked through surveying the mess.

"There's got to be someone else in the hotel other than us." Kat announced.

"There's some left…" Gabriella took the large spoon and carved sections out of the scrambled eggs in the metal tray. "But I'm willing to eat cereal if you guys want it."

"It took us almost an hour to set this up." Maddie's heart was broken to see her work taken by someone else. She looked to Alex for answers then to Jessie and Sonny.

"Okay…" Alex took a deep frustrated breath and turned around. "We are searching this place and finding out who else is here! This place may be haunted, but I do know ghosts don't eat breakfast!"

"Well, actually…" Kat started.

"Don't want to hear it!" She heard the sound of someone's shoe scuff the floor in the hall and then the doors behind them get bumped open as their new intruders came to investigate their voices. It was four more girls, each of them clad in the same white attire they had all been left as forced guests of this place. They were all blonde, each of them attractive and eye-catching in their own different ways. Two of them resembled each other enough alike to be sisters, one of them was thin and petite with long blonde hair while their leader, a tall athletically built young adult with high cheekbones, brown eyes and shoulder-length curly hair acted as their leader.

"Who are you?" She asked frustrated and annoyed. "Why did you bring us here?"

"Well, if we had those answers, do you think we'd still be here?" Alex spoke first as if she and the others were staking their claim on the place.

"You're Mikayla, aren't you?" One of the girls asked.

"Of course, she's Mikayla!" Another one responded.

"Not this again..." Jessie recalled the problem with them seeing a resemblance in people from each other's lives.

"I am not Mikayla!" Alex insisted.

"This is impossible!" Sonny stood by Alex. "We watched this place all night long from the front and both ends! No one showed up here. There is no way anyone could have dumped anybody off last night!"

"We didn't watch the rear…" Gabriella revealed.

"But you said no one would use the rear to sneak us in here." Jessie turned to her.

"What are you girls talking about?" The tall blonde with the brown eyes looked around expecting answers.

"We're prisoners here." Maddie spoke. "And now, so are you…"

"What?"

"Have you seen outside?" Alex stood with her arms crossed before her chest and her eyes narrowed annoyingly. "We're in an isolated mountain hotel surrounded by four to six feet of snow all around us, the phone doesn't work, the transmitter radio isn't receiving and yet, as you have just noticed, someone or something is collecting us like baseball cards to live in this isolated hotel with each other. We're not going anywhere!"

"Well…" One of the curvy statuesque blondes stepped forward to confront her. "Have you tried going for help?"

"Across twenty-five miles of snowy mountain wilderness without knowing for certain where we're going in deep ice and snow?" Jessie responded. "I doubt we'd get twenty feet in these mountains."

"What's wrong with you idiots?" Alex hissed in this dual army of angry white clad young women in matching outfits. She was tired of explaining the circumstances to every new girl who got dumped here. "If we knew how to get out of here, we'd be gone already." She didn't like saying it the first time.

"And why should we believe you, Mikayla?" One of the girls rolled her eyes at Alex. The room simmered and drew quiet.

"I am not Mikayla!" Alex snapped. Maddie was off to the side trying to divvy up what was left of the scrambled eggs.

"Who's Mikayla?" Someone asked.

"Some one-hit wonder best known for feuding with Hannah Montana…"

"Oh, I love Hannah!" The tall blonde grinned and bobbed her head. "Despite what she calls herself now…"

"Hey, Miley's my best friend..."

"You know Hannah?" The other blonde looked up. "I met her at a Jonas Brothers concert some years back…"

Gabriella and Maddie looked at each other then to Alex and Sonny. Jessie started to say something then Kat turned around confused. With almost everyone talking at once, she wondered if this was something they should discuss openly. Was this even a subject that they should be discussing out loud?

"Hold up!" Kat pulled out a chair from the table and stood on it. "Is everyone here connected somehow to Hannah Montana?"

"I'm the nanny for Marty and Christina Ross's kids." Jessie announced. "They produced her movie, "Indiana Joanie!"

"Miley's my best friend." Lily Truscott stepped forward to reveal herself. "I am the first person in the world she told of her secret identity."

"Hannah once appeared on So Random…" Sonny wondered why she didn't think of this before.

"My boyfriend Phil and I once won tickets to see Hannah in Boston." Keely Teslow suddenly recognized Maddie. "That's where I've seen you before!"

"Oh my god!" Maddie somehow recognized the blonde beauty from that brief stay several years ago. Hannah had also stayed at the hotel at that time. Could that have anything to do with what they were doing here.

"I do the outfits for the Jonas Brothers." Stella Malone finally came forward. "That's how I met Hannah. She recorded a song with them."

"That's how we know each other." Maddie felt as if she'd been blind. "I met Hannah at the Tipton… That's how we're all connected. I bet we're all somehow connected to Hannah Montana…" She paused then walked through this gathering of white clad confused young girls. "I'd bet this hotel isn't even haunted. I'd bet we're all on some sort of hidden camera show."

"Oh, it's haunted…." Kat spoke up and looked at the sea of blonde and brunette heads. "But I doubt we're here because we're all connected to Hannah Montana. I mean… Hannah… Miley… She's a public persona. She meets over a thousand people a day. We could all be a few degrees of separation connected to almost any major celebrity. If anything…"

"Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa…" Teddy Duncan put her hands up before her and pushed between Alex and Sonny, stopping a few feet from Gabriella and Jessie near one of the industrial ovens. "Haunted?" Her head flitted left and right as her lips lightly parted in surprise. "What's haunted? This place?"

"Yep…" Alex looked to her to see how she handled it.

"But there's no such thing as ghosts…" Keely responded and looked from Stella over to Sonny and back to Lily.

"Look," Gabriella strolled forward in this gathering of white-attired young girls. "I don't exactly believe in ghosts… but I was surprised by something last night that looked very real to me." She still felt touched by it. The image of all those corpses staring at her was etched into her brain. That was the difference between being scared and surprised. She could get over being surprised, but being actually scared meant she still suffered the pangs of fear every time she flashed back to the images now trapped in her head of those empty eyes staring and watching her. "Whatever it was tricked me and fooled me…" She turned to Maddie for support, and Maddie pulled her close as if she was her sister to console her.

"Well, how haunted are we talking here?" Teddy was well aware of a few ghost stories through her brothers. "Are we talking Ted Raimi scary or Stephen King scary?"

"What's the difference?"

"About two million dollars in revenue…" Jessie quipped.

"Have you ever heard of the Hotel Overlook in Colorado?" Teddy asked.

"This is the Overlook in Colorado." Kat approached her at the same height.

The room drew quiet as everyone stopped talking.

"Oh crap…" Teddy had heard about this place through her father. A nervous and fearful sensation came up from her stomach through her spine to her head. "My dad does the pest report for this place every April when it re-opens. Do you know what happened here?"

"We have…" Sonny looked at Alex still trying to stare down Teddy. "…some idea…"

"Grab a plate and a fruit cup…" Maddie had saved what she could from the mess. "I say we go sit and get our bearings in the lobby and figure out what we're doing next." She paused. "Oh yeah, and from now on the kitchen is closed. In a kitchen this size, we can all fend for ourselves…"

Keely sighed out loud and looked to Stella who gave her a squeeze to the arm for support. Gabriella took a plate of eggs with a fruit cup and a cup of orange juice to sate her grumbling stomach. What was once four and had became six was now ten young women kept isolated from the outside world in this huge mountain lodge by forces or persons unknown. They did not have any answers, but more questions than before. Sonny followed behind their group then stopped and paused behind Kat and Lily. She recalled something from last night when she and Alex was comforting Gabriella from her horrifying experience. What was it that Alex had lost last night, and did she get it back already? She placed her plate with her eggs, fork and fruit cup down next to her glass of juice and turned toward the prep area. Getting down on her feet on the tiled floor, she looked under the table.

At first, she didn't see it, but another glance around the empty floor and she noticed it had come to rest in the mortar crack between the tiles and picked it up in her fingertips. Standing up, she looked it up and down. It looked like a magician's wand, a foot long of finely cut wood that had been hollowed that a feather could be inserted in it with the hard tip sticking out and runic symbols etched very faintly in the wood half, rounded at one tip and at a point on the feather end. She thought it might be some sort of souvenir from a magic show or a gift from a stage magician because of its innate potential as a wizard's wand. She half-heartedly waved it over the end of the room and briefly saw the outlines of people standing and watching her from the far end of the room. Taken aback, she jumped back from the sight of those non-existent people and started hurrying out… skidding to a step, turning around to grab her plate and drink and then resuming her way out of the room.

Behind her, she failed to hear the throaty male chuckle from the empty kitchen.