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Overview
Can two modern-day kids solve the mystery of the ghost that haunts the old hotel--or will they be trapped in the past forever?
Walter Biggar Bronson (a.k.a. Wart) and his friend Cindy meet a ghost one night after school. The small, mournful boy leads them across the Broadway Bridge to the gracious Bessborough Hotel. After a strange incident in the elevator, they find themselves still in the hotel–but back in 1936.
Some spooky things are going on. The room numbers are all mixed up. The library on the mezzanine is filled with hundreds of copies of the same book. And out on the street, the cars are all the same–vintage Studebakers.
Back in the present, Wart and Cindy follow their motto–“Gather, identify, solve”–as they attempt to crack the case, with help from Wart’s distinctly odd parents and the loan of his mother’s time-travel-proof cell phone.
If they fail, they may be trapped in the ghostly past forever . . .
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781998273034 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Reprise |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2024 |
| Series: | Canadian Chills , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 138 |
| File size: | 980 KB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Arthur Slade was raised in the Cypress Hills of southwest Saskatchewan (on a ranch). He wasn’t raised by wolves. It was elves. And one grumpy dwarf. He began writing at an early age. It took a few years but he is now the author of more than thirty novels, including Dust (which won the Governor General’s award), Dragon Assassin, and The Hunchback Assignments. He currently lives in the mythical city of Saskatoon and does all of his writing on a treadmill desk while he listens to heavy metal. Really. It’s true.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Out of Nowhere
My only goal was to kill the pesky yellow bird.
It came at me, arcing through the air as I jumped off the gym floor and pulled back my racquet for the perfect smash. At that very same moment, I sensed that someone on the stage was staring at me. I swung heroically but missed; the birdie dropped to the floor and bounced. I landed in a jumbled pile of arms and legs, my knees thudding into the floor.
“Wart! What are you doing?” Cindy muttered. Cindy is my best friend and my badminton partner. She’s red-haired, thin, spunky, and suffers from an acute case of impatientitis. “We’re trying to win here. We’ve got the twins on the ropes. Concentrate!”
Amber and Anna, the frizzy-haired Pennock twins, watched us like raptors from across the net. They were the best Grade 7 players in Victoria School. We wanted to claim that title and so had challenged them to an afterschool grudge match.
“Someone was staring at me,” I said, looking at the empty stage. “My ESP senses detected it.”
“You don’t have ESP!”
“Well, my detective senses, then.” We were the only four people in the gym. I looked back at the stage. Still empty. “Someone’s watching us right now.”
“I’m staring at you,” Cindy said. “I’m staring and hoping you’ll stand up and get one more point. That’s all we need, Wart.”
I slowly got to my feet. My real name is Walter Biggar Bronson, but my friends call me Wart. Not that I have any warts (though I once had one on my right thumb), but because I’m a worrywart. Cute, eh? I brushed off my knees, grabbed my racquet, and glanced quickly back at the stage. The curtain was moving.
“Wait a second!” I took a step off the court. “I want to check—”
Cindy grabbed my shoulder.“No, Wart. Not another step. You’re always wandering off at the wrong moment. Finish the game.”
I breathed in, getting ready to launch into a brilliant argument. I opened my mouth.
“They’re probably gone, anyway,” Cindy announced before I could say anything. “If they were there at all.”
I shrugged, grabbed the birdie, and served, but Amber smashed it right back at me. The twins took their turn, tying the game at fourteen points. Now, because of my goof-up, we’d have to play to three points. Whoever got there first would win. I readied myself, but I couldn’t concentrate. Before I knew it, we were tied at two points each. Cindy served. I glanced at the stage. I was sure I saw someone there—just a vague shape.
“Wart!” she yelled.
The bird was coming toward me, but I was frozen, not sure what to do. Cindy leaped like a leopard, rolled like a ninja, and then popped up and smashed the bird down, winning the game.
“Yes!” she said.
I patted her back, but I was still . . . well . . . worried about what I thought I’d seen. When we shook hands with the Pennock twins, mine was cold and clammy.
“Well, we pulled it off,” Cindy said on the way out of the gym.
“You pulled it off. I’m sorry; I was so sure there was someone else in the gym. I felt beady eyes watching me.”
“How did you know they were beady?”
“In my business, they’re always beady.” The business I was talking about was the Walter Biggar Bronson Ghost Detective and Time Travel Agency. I was the Chief Executive Officer, of course, and Cindy was my sidekick. We had been open for a year and had yet to crack our first case. Or, actually, to even be offered one.
“Well, I’m going to towel off,” Cindy said. “And tease the twins. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”
I changed, went to my locker, and undid the lock, my hands still feeling clammy. I was cooling down quickly, partly because Victoria School is a giant brick building designed to be drafty (it was built in 1909 and named after an old British queen who’d probably never heard of Saskatoon). I swear some of the teachers have been here since the school opened.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. “What do you want, Cindy?”
She didn’t say anything.
“What do you want?” I repeated.
She tapped again. My shoulder felt as though it were freezing, ice creeping into my veins. A chill ran slowly down my spine, and the hair on the back of my neck began to rise.
“Cindy?” I whispered. “It is you, right?”
I slowly turned. There was no one there—only an empty hallway with flickering lights. I blinked and was surprised to see that a boy now stood right in front of me. He had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Or else I’d somehow missed seeing him. He had a lost and sad look on his face as though he’d witnessed some unimaginably awful thing. He was dressed in a nerdy grey suit-and-tie outfit and a bowler hat that made him look like a mini-version of Charlie Chaplin. The lights flickered so that he disappeared for a second and appeared again.
I blinked. Something had to be wrong with my vision.
Immediately, my detective mind kicked into gear. I noted that his clothing was an out-of-date style, possibly from the fifties or earlier. His feet were bare, and he seemed to be floating a few centimetres above the floor. It had to be an optical illusion.
I stared at his feet. They were perfectly clean. Somewhere in my encyclopedic mind, I remembered one simple but chilling fact: people are often buried without their shoes.
Which meant that he had been buried.
Which meant that he was dead.
My hands began to shake. My watch glowed and made an eep! sound. It has a band of electro-ectoplasm around it that lights up whenever a supernatural presence comes near. At least, that’s what my dad told me it would do. I had never seen it glow before. (It also has a werewolf alarm, but nothing for vampires. They rarely travel this far north because they don’t like the cold. It makes the blood thin.)
Anyway, the glow of my watch made another chill run over my spine and confirmed my suspicions: I was standing eye-to-eye with a ghost.