11

Ten girls trapped in a deserted snowbound hotel in the mountains over Sidewinder, Colorado, a tiny tourist town known for its skiing, scenery, fishing and occasional Bigfoot sighting since 1957. The winds were whistling once more, the heat cracked and expanded the AC vents as it kicked on and the freezing and contracting wood timbers holding the place together creaked and made other noises from the cold weather. Grouped together in the kitchen, they each had a bowl of Kat's homemade stew with a piece of bread and a cup of fruit cocktail or pineapple slices from a can as dessert. Alex sat quietly at the corner with Maddie at the end of the table to support Sonny still reeling from her bad dream. Lily's spoon clicked the bottom of her bowl as Keely looked up at her. Still feeling the effects of her powerful hallucination, Jessie tried to eat, but she just stirred her soup with her head still shaking and making subtle jerking motions as if she was trying to wake up from the hotel. Maddie looked to Gabriella then to Kat at the other end of the hotel. They were ten strangers bound by strange circumstances, forced caretakers to a hotel of crazy and mad ghosts trying to kill them or scare them to death. Kat pictured them floating the darkened halls of the hotel and peeking around the corners. Sonny was tired these days but scared to sleep, and Stella lifted her head from her arm balanced on the edge of the table, looked around the kitchen and sighed loudly.

"I don't know about you girls." She announced to the room. "But I need a shot." She left her empty bowl, shoved her wooden chair back and turned round past the door to the storeroom to march down the hallway off the kitchen.

"Where is she going?" Alex asked.

"She said she needed a shot." Keely's large azure eyes bobbed to and fro over them.

"Is there liquor in the place?" Teddy asked.

"Not a drop…" Alex answered.

"Then where is she going?" Lily scowled concerned.

"Guys, after what happened to Jessie, Sonny, Teddy and myself, I don't think we should be letting her wander through this place by herself." Gabriella spoke up, and they took a full second to react before breaking away to chase after Stella the way she had gone. The hall ended close to the utility hall beyond the lobby, and Teddy looked down it briefly to see Stella turning left at the far end. Notifying the others, they raced down toward her trying to catch her. Vanishing through some glass doors after her, Gabriella saw a brief image of a man in a suit toasting her pursuit as she recognized this route. This was the way to the ballroom where she'd had her experience. Even Teddy couldn't stand to be back in th this hall so soon after Phantom Alex had tried beheading her, but this time, she wasn't alone. Freezing in place after the next corner, the young brunette progeny by her side couldn't go any further.

"Gabriella…" Maddie stopped by her as Jessie then Keely raced past her calling for Stella. "What is it?"

"That's the room…" The beautiful ingénue spoke up. "That's where I had my… my incident."

Maddie looked up as the girls stormed the room. Alex rounded the room first and looked up to see Stella at the bar with a bottle of Scotch at the counter, lifting a shot glass up to her lips just as the girls came running. Sonny, Lily and Keely had slowed to admire the room and its hangar-like size, but Teddy, Kat and Alex raced to confront Stella at the counter. A light satisfied gasp from her first taste of liquor, Stella's eyes closed tiredly and her lips grinned contently before starting to pour another one just as Teddy covered her glass with her hand to prevent it.

"I thought you said there wasn't any liquor in the place." Teddy asked Alex.

"There isn't…" Alex announced. "Or there wasn't…." She recalled her first day in this place. "Stella, how did you know this was here?" Stella looked up at her as if she had woken from a trance. She looked at the bottle in her hand, realized what she was doing and hesitated.

"I don't know…" The attractive blonde seamstress looked scared. "I just… knew it was here."

"This isn't good…" Kat walked behind the counter and noticed ten bottles of champagne in a tidy row with three more bottles of scotch and three boxes of expensive bottles of beer. Foam erupted from the beer tap when she squeezed it. Up on the stage, the other girls were testing to see if the microphone worked. Out the corner of her other eye, she saw a black and white photo oddly out of place leaned up against the lighted shelves and lifted it up to her eyes. It looked like the Gold Ballroom as it looked long before the 1973 renovation. "Oh my God…" She spoke. "That… that's Jack Torrance. I recognize his face from my father's book on this place!" She showed it to the girls as Sonny came to join them.

"Fourth of July Ball, 1921?" Sonny read the inscription in the photo. "I thought you said he was here in 1979."

"I don't know" Kat lightly shook her head. "Maybe it's his grandfather, but I know his face because I thought he was kind of dashing at the time…"

"Guys…" Maddie strolled up behind Sonny. "Gabriella says we need to get out of here." They looked back to her standing in the doorway too scared to come in.

"Why?" Sonny asked.

"This is where she had her incident…" Alex looked up and called the others to get out of the room and come with them. From now on, they needed to avoid this room. Alex wasn't sure where the liquor had come from, but she speculated whoever had brought Teddy, Lily, Maddie and Keely to the hotel had dropped it off with the assistance of whatever people was helping him. A bit woozy from her one drink, Stella leaned into Kat trying to lead her out, and Alex paused with part of the felt rope taken from the room. She threaded it through the exterior handles once Lily and Keely came scurrying out of the room and tried tying it as best as she could. It wasn't an ideal barricade, but at least it reminded everyone to stay out of the ballroom. However, as she started strolling away, she heard the latches rattle from the inside of the ballroom. Not really wanting to look back, she stopped and half-heartedly peered back as the door latches rattled again, but as she stepped back to peer beyond herself back into the darkened ballroom, she saw a tall thin cadaverous bartender resembling the specter of death staring at her from beyond the room as he cleaned Stella's glass. Briefly locking eyes, Alex suddenly quickened her step and caught up with Teddy.

"See something?"

"No…" Alex shook her head and lied. "What makes you say that?"

Teddy pulled her close with a playful tug and they both grinned like friends for the first time that they could remember. Alex felt they could stay friends even after leaving this place, but then, she had become fond of all of them. She wasn't as close to these girls as she was with Harper Finkle back home, but she wanted Gabriella to introduce her to Troy, and Lily promised to show her how to surf in California. They knew they would get out of here eventually even if they had to stay here until April. Coming up on the back hall to the lobby, they had drifted a bit behind the others, but as they passed the elevators, they both heard a sound that came timed almost perfectly to their view of the lobby.

"KDK-One to KDK-Twelve… Are you receiving me?" A man's voice called out from nowhere, and both Alex and Teddy stopped smiling and froze where they were. The voice sounded oddly mechanical as if it was accompanied by static. Alex's brown eyes turned up to Teddy who looked spooked. After a period of silence, it came again.

"KDK-One to KDK-Twelve… Are you receiving me?"

"KDK?" Teddy reacted spooked. "KDK! That's the local forestry call letters!" A native of nearby Denver, she screamed with a big grin and raced to the manager's office where she saw the lights on the transmitter radio lit up in the darkened room. Flicking on the lights, Teddy grabbed the speaker box as Alex started grinning and holding her hands excitedly unable to control her glee. They were going home!

"Hello?" Teddy tried calling out on it. "Hello, can you hear me?!" She paused then recalled how to use the radio. "Over…"

"Yes, I can hear you." The man on the other side responded. "Who is this? Over…"

"Teddy… Teddy Duncan…" She and Alex were crying tears of joy and hugging each other to tell the others the good news. "I'm trapped up here at the Overlook Hotel with a bunch of other girls, and it's too cold to go down the mountain. Can you come get us? I want to go home! Over…"

"Why don't you girls go back to the ballroom and have some drinks?"

Alex's head turned to the radio unnervingly alarmed, and Teddy froze unsure how to response. How did he know they were just in the ballroom?

"Who is this?" Alex asked.

"I'm cold… Teddy, can I sleep with you tonight?" A young girl's hollow voice emerged from the radio, and Teddy's eyes rounded with fear before trying to throw the speaker box down to the floor only to bounce right up on its wire. Their joy turning to terror, Alex and Teddy scrambled from the room and back into the lobby with the sounds of two young girls giggling from the radio behind them. Teddy nearly stumbled and fell head first into the model of the hedge maze at the landing of the staircase, but Alex was there to catch her as they looked back to the hall into to the manager's office. They were completely crushed and shocked. They had gone from renewed hope and joy to sheer terror so fast. Outside the lobby, the dark blue environs of the hotel stirred with the wind blowing the snow around.

"Why are they doing this to us?" Teddy asked barely above a whisper, her crushed look of hope mirrored her exasperated fear of this place.

"Because this place makes them crazy…." Alex spoke as if she knew from experience.