Chapter One

June, 2024

Mare

They took everything from Jenny Adjuk, not that she had much to start with. She was twelve when she died, an Alaska Native with a round face, straight dark hair chopped short below her ears, and brown skin stretched taut over tiny bones. She wore the same long-sleeve yellow dress she’d been given in exchange for the animal furs she’d arrived in three years earlier. The dress still fit.

No one knew what drew her to the roof of Lee House that windy night in 1964. For years, rumors had persisted, with some claiming she sought relief from nightmares while others argued she’d caused them by mercilessly tormenting fellow students. She’d been labeled difficult at the school, slow to make friends and disinclined to follow rules. Class photos often showed her standing by herself, a sullen expression reflecting a hostile disposition, it was said.

Perhaps that’s why it was more than twenty-four hours before authorities bothered to investigate her broken body found lying in the courtyard the next morning. They declared her death an accident. By then, however, missionary-run boarding schools were falling out of fashion anyway, and a few weeks later the Elmer Lee House in Silver Lake, Alaska, closed.

* * *

These details, including far-fetched tales of Jenny Adjuk’s hauntings, have been running like a rat in a maze through my panicked brain. It’s three a.m. and I can’t sleep. I refuse to believe in ghosts. You don’t, you just can’t, when your family owns a funeral home. I know all about corpses, caskets, ash-filled urns, and mourners who want nothing more than a final word with their dearly departed loved ones. I’ve listened to my father chat idly about his favorite baseball team while a crematory operator poked a burning skull. The dead are dead, he says. They’re never coming back. Everybody knows our bodies are simply flesh and bones that will ultimately feed the soil.

Yet here I am, my first night in a hot, drafty, third-floor attic room of a hotel that still resembles a residential schoolhouse clear down to the drab, off-white walls, scuffed-up floorboards, and a single, lumpy mattress that’s got to be original to the house. I’m stupidly fearing things I once thought fake. Ghosts. Poltergeists. Evil spirits.

It’s not real, I keep telling myself. Not real.

The dim light of a full moon bleeds through dusty window sheers, casting a yellow frame around my unpacked camo rucksack propped by the door. It’s eerily quiet, other than the occasional clatter of water beating through the pipes, which sounds like someone’s banging futilely inside the walls, like a child begging to be let out. And the cold spot next to my elbow when I climbed into bed—what was that?

A week ago, when I saw the job notice posted on a coffee shop bulletin board, the idea of working in a newly opened hotel adjacent to Denali National Park seemed appealing. In two and a half short months I’d start my senior year of college. I’ve always loved visiting the park, especially in summer when wildflowers create colorful carpets across the meadows and four-legged creatures can be seen grazing on the mountain and warming in the sun. The opportunity would give me the separation I needed from my parents who still believed in checking in on me and meeting every woman I dated. Secretly, I planned to use the experience to write a newspaper story debunking the haunted hotel myth and focusing on the property’s new owners instead.

Richard and Patricia Ward were a pair of schemers, I’d decided. Hucksters who’d chosen to profit off a sordid period in Alaska’s history by opening a hotel on the very site of the old abandoned Elmer Lee House.

I pictured myself walking into my advanced journalism class and handing over the article to a very impressed professor who’d say, “Maren Mason, you’ve got incredible instincts, not to mention superior writing skills.”

No more “Maren Mason who?” the invisible girl who’d drifted through her first three years of university without any notable achievements.

A screech outside my window sends adrenaline pumping through my veins. Is it human? God, I hope not. “An owl,” I whisper to myself. That’s all.

I check my phone again and see it’s nearly four a.m. Employee orientation starts at eight. I squeeze my eyes shut.

Go to sleep, Mare. Stop being so neurotic. Everything will look better in the morning light.

It does, of course. I’m not sure when my phantom terrors ceased and a dreamless state took over. I recall feeling like I was careening toward a terrible car accident that never happened, then waking and sliding back into sleep. I open my eyes to the sounds of chirping birds and a scent reminiscent of burning motor oil. This, I can deal with.

My phone on the rickety bedside table indicates it’s seven thirty. A lawnmower fires up, replacing the horrid odor with the fragrance of fresh cut grass. I rise and gaze out of a tiny dormer window at a relatively flat green landscape. Two small houses—one blue, one white—occupy prominent spots along a bumpy gravel driveway that I know from my arrival last night ends in a circular parking lot at the hotel’s main entrance. There’s a four-car garage in back for the vans that transport guests on tours through the park. A sagging barn with missing boards like knocked-out teeth is silhouetted on a hill in the distance.

Last night, Richard Ward (“Call me Rich. We’re not formal around here.”) warned me that the barn could collapse under a mild wind any day. “Stay away from it, young lady. The wife and I can’t afford death insurance.”

I assumed he meant accident insurance. He’s a big man with broad shoulders, thinning hair, and brownish, horse-size teeth. He’d stood uncomfortably close when we talked last night.

I still liked him better than his wife, Patty, who directed me to carry my suitcase to my room with the unnecessary admonishment: “You work for us, Maren. Not the other way around.”

She did give me the option of managing the front desk or assisting the chef since the other new employee hadn’t yet arrived. One look at an outdated kitchen with no dishwasher and I quickly decided I’d prefer greeting guests. I thanked her silently for that.

One of the housekeepers, Alina or Mila, I don’t know which, showed me to my room, then gestured down the narrow hall to a bathroom that I gathered the three of us would share.

“Is it just us?” I asked and got a headshake in reply. No English. Russian, I’m guessing, from the sounds of their accents.

The town of nearby Silver Lake, with a winter population of eleven hundred, is a mile north of the hotel and approximately ten miles from the main entrance to Denali National Park. Meals are provided with the job. There’s a gas station/minimart this side of town if I require anything else. A boutique advertising handmade baby clothes and Alaskan trinkets occupies the spot a few yards away from it with a field of tall grass and blue flowers surrounded by a barbed wire fence on the other side.

Currently, there are no guests staying at the hotel, but that’s supposed to change this afternoon. It officially opens today.

I throw on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, grab a towel from a metal luggage rack beside the window, and pad down the hall to pee, brush my teeth, and take a bath. There were no showers available for the children of Lee House apparently. It’s quiet, other than an occasional creaking of the old wood floor under my feet.

Twenty minutes later, I find myself sitting in the dining room with the handyman, Carl’s twenty-something son, who tells me for the third time that his name is Norman.

“Norman helps out around the property and accompanies Rich on park excursions,” Carl informed me after leading me through the lobby past the museum (five bucks to visit even if you’re a registered guest), and into the dining room.

Norman, a hulking fellow with a vacant expression and a thick scar running parallel to his lower jaw, says, “I help out.”

“You guys live in the hotel?” I ask, taking in the gloomy dining room.

“We live in the blue house,” Carl replies.

“We live in the blue house,” Norman echoes.

Patty enters through a swinging door from the kitchen, catches sight of us and offers me a sour expression. “Jeans, Maren? I don’t think so. We need to get you a uniform.”

“You need a uniform,” Norman repeats.

“Where do I get that?” I hope it won’t be the black polyester pants and gray collared shirts Alina and Mila wore last night. I’m not keen on Patty’s ruffle-hem peasant skirt and beaded black shawl either. Her outfit looks like a cheap Halloween costume.

She waves a hand. “From me. You’ll need to launder it yourself.”

“Of course,” I say before Norman can tell me who’s going to take care of my uniform.

I hear the distinctive sound of a vehicle crunching through the gravel at the front of the building. It grinds to a halt. Car doors open and bang shut. Voices follow. I can’t make out the first, but I recognize Rich’s from last night.

“Maren, the other new girl, has called dibs on the hostess desk, which means you’ll be assisting Chef Arnaud in the kitchen. Right now there’s just you two and the maids. They’ve been here a couple of weeks. Don’t bother trying to hold a conversation with them. They barely speak English. The wife will give them their instructions.”

A female voice mutters something indistinguishable, to which Rich answers, “Then you should have gotten here yesterday.”

He clomps into the dining room, followed by an attractive woman about my age with a neat black bob, a fleshy face, and gorgeous pouty lips.

Patty wrinkles her nose, giving her the once-over. “Kat, is it? We were expecting you last night. Please try to be more punctual. Have a seat.”

Kat scowls back at her and drops a hard-shell suitcase on the floor with a thud, setting her backpack beside it. She glances around the dining room, probably noting like I did a dark antique hutch blocking most of the light from two tall windows and gold-rimmed plates flanked by embroidered linen napkins around five round oak tables, each seating eight.

I’d like to believe Kat’s eyes linger on me longer than necessary, but it’s probably wishful thinking because she dazzles like a movie star. I blink and refocus because I think I know her. Correction: I know of her. My heart does a little pitty-pat. Unless I’m mistaken she’s Katrina Howard of the trio, Kitten Khaos, my celebrity crush in high school. I used to watch their dance videos all the time.

“Hotel ghost tours are free for now, but later in the summer when we get busier, we’ll charge ten dollars,” says Patty. “Now, as to your daily duties…”