"Nice and easy there, Doc," Mr. Chase grimly told the hotel doctor, sliding Rob's now sheet-covered body onto a gurney, "Put him on ice until we can call his family."
With a shake of his head, he strode towards the security chief. "Mr. Hunt, lock down the kitchen at once; I want the entire staff questioned and the food tested before we serve anything else. Something's going on here, and I want it stopped immediately."
"As you wish, Mr. Chase. I'll get to the bottom of this," Hunt turned and bustled out of the dining room. With a sigh, Mr. Chase now walked over to his daughter, standing with Melanie in the corner and watching the gurney being wheeled out. "Sophie, honey, I want you to be extra careful here going forward," he told her, putting a hand on her shoulder, "I think this is dead serious what's going on."
"Yeah, I can tell, Dad. Don't worry, I'll be careful," Sophie assured him. Her father forced a small smile and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead before exiting the dining room. Sophie turned to Melanie with a scared look. "If they've poisoned the food, this is something big and coordinated," she mumbled out loud, "And with this blizzard starting," she gestured at the heavy snow now falling outside the dining room window, "there's no way we can send anyone away. I don't know what to do now."
"Well, we can at least see how they got into Carol and Roxanne's room. Tell the other girls to meet me there; we'll search for a secret entrance after I have a few last words with Rick," Melanie turned to her left, where Rick sat slouched over his table with his face in his hands, being comforted already by Patrick.
"I hope we're not putting ourselves in any danger here, Melanie," Sophie looked uncertain, but walked briskly towards the other girls, clustered around the door to the hallway. Melanie walked towards the sniffing Rick. "Rick, I'm so sorry," she said softly, "The last thing I wanted was to see..."
"No need to be sorry, Melanie; you didn't do anything wrong," Rick reached over with one hand and patted her wrist. He sat back up and wiped his eyes, "So long, I've avoided all the deaths here in Shadyside, but now...I've known Rob since we were six, and now, just like that..."
He sniffed again. "I know, pal, it's breaking me up too," Patrick said sympathetically, patting Rick's shoulder, "We should have known we couldn't avoid the curse of death here in Shadyside forever."
"Who would do this!?" Rick all but shouted, "Rob never hurt anyone...!"
"If you need someone to talk to, Rick, I'll listen any time," Melanie offered him, "I'm good at grief counseling, and I..."
"Rick, I heard the news," a new voice rang out. Melanie turned and recognized Rhonda Rouse rushing towards their table, "Is Rob really...!?"
"Yeah," Rick choked, wiping his eyes again, "Poisoned and keeled over dead. Where have you been all this time?"
"Bowling game downstairs; we went into...who is this!?" Rhonda frowned at Melanie.
"This is Melanie Haddix; she's the new girl. She saved my life when the avalanche hit; I was having lunch with her until Rob..." Rick hung his head in grief.
"I see. Well, thanks for saving him," Rhonda told Melanie without making eye contact with her, "I don't know what I'd do without Rick. Anyway, you promised we'd play some tennis together on the indoor court, so let's get ready; I've reserved a six o'clock appointment for us," Rhonda told Rick, taking his arm and hauling him upright.
"Without telling me? Rhonda, my good friend just died; I don't feel up to it right now...!"
"But you promised we would! Come on, Rick, I put so much into this!" Rhonda all but whined. Rick sighed softly. "All right, but let me get some things together first in my room," he mumbled. He turned once more towards Melanie. "It was wonderful to meet you, Melanie," he smiled warmly at her, "I'd still like to go skiing together once the storm stops."
"I would too, Rick. Hope you feel better soon," Melanie smiled back. She walked towards the doorway, where, by now not surprisingly, Marti was waiting for her. "He doing all right?" she asked Melanie.
"Decently, but it's clearly hurting him a lot," Melanie looked back at Rick exiting the room in the opposite direction, "I told him I'd be willing to talk with him if he wanted."
"You know, I think he really likes you," Marti rubbed Melanie's shoulder with a huge smile, "I could see it in his eyes. You really did good if you won his heart. Now I just wish Patrick would let me win his," she stared sadly at Rick's friend as he followed Rick out of the dining room.
"Well, you never know," Melanie assured her, an idea cropping into her mind that she hoped to bring to fruition later. "Anyway, we'll look through Carol and Roxanne's room to find a secret entrance," she told Marti, turning and walking up the hall.
"Yeah, Sophie said so; the others should be there now. What do you think we'll find?" Marti asked, sounding a little worried.
"Hopefully just the answer, and not..." Melanie was abruptly cut off as a hand suddenly came down on her shoulder and spun her around. "All right you, I don't know who you think you are, but listen and listen good," Rhonda glared in her face, cold fury in her eyes, "Rick is my boyfriend, and I will not stand for anyone trying to cut in on him with me!"
"Hey, all I did was save him from being crushed from the avalanche, and he asked to have lunch with me to say thanks! I don't see what the problem is!" Melanie protested.
"I'm warning you, little miss sunshine, stay away from him, or you'll regret it like you won't believe!" Rhonda warned her, thrusting a finger in Melanie's face, "Because if you force me to retaliate, you're not going to like it!"
"Hey back off, Rhonda!" Marti shouted, "Like Melanie said, she's not trying to...!"
"And you mind your own business, Martina," Rhonda pivoted and thrust the finger into Marti's face, "Because I'll bring you down too if you don't."
"My name is Marti, if you don't mind," the redhead frowned.
"Oh, so sorry, Martina," Rhonda snarled contemptuously, "So this is your only warning: lay off Rick, or there's be pain, and lots of it!" she warned both of them, "You'd better take me dead seriously!"
She turned and stormed away. "Jealous little jerk," Marti muttered in disgust, "If Rick said he's open to moving on from her, Melanie, I can't blame him."
"Well, I don't want to break up a relationship," Melanie mumbled.
"Melanie, if she's acting like this over you simply eating with Rick, their relationship deserves to collapse as far as I see it. Don't worry about her; she's probably just blowing hot air. Let's go see if the others have found anything yet."
"Nothing yet," Sydney called from the bathroom once Melanie and Marti had entered the Parker sisters' room, pounding on the bathroom wall, "If there's a secret entrance here, it's pretty well hidden."
"Nothing under the bed, either," Sophie called, halfway under the one Carol and Roxanne were seated on, staring around with worried expressions. "You two doing all right?" Melanie asked them.
"I'm not really comfortable being in here again, Melanie," Roxanne said with a shudder, turned to look at the back wall, as if expecting a menacing figure to come through it by magic, "After everything that happened..."
"I'm not all that comfortable either, Rox, but we're safe with everyone else here," Carol gestured at all the other girls, "So don't worry, nothing's going to happen to us now," she put a reassuring hand around her sister.
"I hope not," the younger Parker sister sighed nervously. "Anything?" she called into the bathroom again.
"For the second time, no!" Emily snapped back, sticking her head out from behind the shower curtain.
"All right, there's no need to shout!" Carol barked back.
"Sorry, but I don't approve of us doing this, and I really think we're wasting our time trying! If we haven't...!" Emily suddenly let out a loud shriek, followed by the sound of metal scraping...and then something lumbering out of place. "Emily? Did you find...?" everyone else right behind her, Melanie rushed into the bathroom, and found herself staring at the large hole in the back of the bathtub wall, a dark space clearly visible beyond it. "How'd you open it?" she grilled Emily, stumbling around on the bottom of the tub.
"I don't know; I just slipped on some standing water and grabbed the shower head. I guess that must be a trigger on this end," Emily scrambled onto her knees and adjusted her glasses. "Yep, that must be how they got in," she mused, staring at the large square in the wall.
"Well then, we know what we've got to do," Melanie took a deep breath and climbed into the tub.
"Not on your life!" Emily shouted, jumping out of the tub, "If I go down there, I know I die first, probably from a decapitation from behind or something horrible like that!"
"Well I'm going down," Sydney eagerly jumped into the tub herself, "This is one adventure I'm not missing out on."
"You're insane, Syd, as I've said a million times already on this trip! As I said, count me out!" Emily folded her arms across her chest, "And if something horrible happens to you down there, don't say I didn't warn you!"
"Have it your way, but if we solve this whole mystery, don't feel bad that you missed out on the fun," Sydney shrugged, "Anyone else?"
"Sorry, Rox and I don't want to risk it," Carol shook her head, followed by her sister.
"That's all right, Carol; you, Roxanne, and Emily can keep watch up here, covering our backs," Marti entered the tub herself. "Sophie, you should come too; you'd probably know your way around the hotel better than the rest of us," she told the owner's daughter.
"Well, I guess so," Sophie acceded. She squinted into the darkness. "I think I see a ladder heading straight down," she declared.
"But is it safe!? And what are you going to do for light!?" Emily inquired.
"Uh...flashlights in the rooms?" Melanie asked Sophie.
"Nope, sorry," the other blonde shook her head, "Guess we'll have to use cell phones for light."
"All right then, here we go. We'll be back in a half hour if we don't find anything," Melanie told Emily and the Parker sisters. With a deep breath, she crawled through the hole and started down the ladder. "Look, a release lever," she announced to Marti, climbing down after her, pointing the to lever on the wall, "That's how they activated it."
"I see," Marti nodded, "What is this place?" she activated the flashlight feature on her cellphone and aimed it around the shaft they were descending in.
"Wait, I think I recognize it. I'd heard there were several coal mines underneath the mountain that were abandoned over the years," Sophie spoke up above the two of them, "This must be one of them. Yeah, this explains how they got into the room with no one noticing, and probably how they got away with a trace; they probably found another shaft entrance and escaped through that."
"Well, that makes it easy then; just follow whatever bloody trail we can find down here, and we'll see exactly where they went," Sydney let out a playful evil laugh at the top of the ladder. "Can you see the bottom yet, Melanie?" she called down to her.
"Yeah, I think I can, Sydney; it's right under me now," Melanie could see the floor right under her feet. She stepped off the ladder onto the muddy passageway, and stepped back to allow the other girls to get off the ladder. She turned on her own cellphone's flashlight and aimed it around. They seemed to be at a junction in the mine, as four tunnels branched off from near the ladder. "Any idea which way we should go?" she asked her friends.
"Not a clue," Marti frowned at the various passageways around them.
"Well, the majority of the hotel's back that way," Sophie pointed to the right, "So it stands to reason they came from this way when they attacked Carol and Roxanne. So we just need to find where they entered the mine at."
"Yep, looks like there's a lot of footprints coming this way," Sydney aimed her cellphone at the floor, where a mess of footprints heading towards the ladder could be seen. "And..." she bent down and squinted at some dark splotched amid the footprints, "Yep, there's dried blood here, guys. And from the tapering of the marks, they were headed this way," she pointed up the direction Sophie had noted.
"All right, but let's stay close to each other; no telling who if anyone might be in here, and we don't know if there's any holes or anything," Melanie told them. Aiming her cellphone flashlight's beam ahead at the floor, she and the others slowly advanced up the tunnel, their footsteps echoing loudly against the wall. "Sophie, who would have known this was down here?" she asked the other blonde softly, not wanting to risk a cave-in if the walls weren't stable.
"I have no idea; someone would have had to have gotten the old mining maps and tracked the old mines' locations to know," Sophie whispered back, apparently having the same idea, "But they probably could have gotten that easily enough at the county historical society headquarters. And if they knew where the mine was, it would be pretty easy to cut entrances in at night during construction when the crew had gone home, and no one would notice. I hope we don't have to stay in here too long," she visibly shivered in the darkness, "This place gives me the creeps..."
"Well, once the threat over, why don't you and your dad make something of it?" Sydney suggested, "Make it a haunted attraction guests can enter to be scared stiff in. And while I'm at it, consider adding base jumping or hang gliding off the top of the mountain; that would be a nice extreme thrill that would bring in big..."
"Sydney, shhh, I think I hear something," Marti hissed, bringing the black-haired girl to silence. And Melanie heard it too: what sounded like a low howl that quickly cut off somewhere further up the shaft. A cold shiver ran up her spine, one that got colder at the sound of footsteps running towards their location in the dark. "Turn off your lights!" she hissed at the other girls, "And up against the wall, and be quiet!"
The four of them rapidly switched off or covered up their cellphones' screens and flattened themselves against the wall. And not a moment too soon, for a dark form that Melanie could just barely make out came huffing up the tunnel in the darkness. She sucked in her breath as it rushed by, too quickly for her to notice anything other than just a vague outline of whoever it was, not enough to even ascertain which sex the person was. The figure stopped and looked back once it passed her and her friends, making her heart freeze at the thought it might have heard or seen them, but to her relief, it turned and continued running away. Melanie waited until the sound of the person's footsteps had vanished completely from earshot before stepping back out into the middle of the tunnel and switching her cellphone back on. "Could any of you recognize whoever it was?" she asked her friends.
"Not a chance, Melanie, sorry; it was way too dark. That was a close call, though," Marti shuddered at how close they'd come to being caught.
"Too close, to be honest. If Emily had come down, we'd never have heard the end of it: 'We were no more than ten seconds away from death, thanks to all of you!'" Sydney imitated the brunette, starting back up the tunnel, "You see, I'm not a person with a death wish, even though she seems to think...ooooowwww!" she yelped as she bumped into something, "Now what would be hanging down here that...!?"
"Sydney...!" Melanie trained her cellphone upwards and gasped. Hanging from the timbers above the tunnel, freshly dead, was a man wearing a cook's uniform. "Sophie, who is it...?" she asked the owner's daughter.
"Ed Jones, we hired him for the kitchen just earlier this week," Sophie mumbled, looking nauseated, "If it was him that poisoned the food, I..."
"Wait, you guys hear that?" Marti interrupted again, sounded scared. Melanie heard it too, and saw it when here eyes spun to the left and right: sparks moving towards cylindrical objects on both walls. "Dynamite!" she cried, "Run for it!"
But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than loud bangs and fiery flashes of light rang out. Melanie hit the tunnel floor hard and crawled towards safety, but an avalanche of rocks crashed down on her, rapidly burying her for the second time on this day...