Chapter 7

“Let’s do another exterior shot!” Jake blurted as he blocked his mother from climbing the front steps of the Balthazar Hotel.

She was limping and her arm was still bruised and hung in a tan sling (to match her tan vest), but after a week on the mend, she was bound and determined to stay ahead of schedule for their big “Halloween Haunts” debut episode on the Scream Channel.

“Another one?” she asked, looking impatient. It was midafternoon, and Jake knew that the painkillers she always took at lunch would be wearing off soon.

“I agree,” said Tank, who slipped the camera off her shoulder and wiped sweat from her brow with her good hand. “A bird or something flew by in that last shot. We need to redo it anyway.”

Mrs. Weir frowned and shrugged to adjust her sling strap. “Fine. Well…if we’re going to do exteriors, let’s go around back. I don’t think we’ve done much there, right?”

Tank nodded eagerly, hoisted her tripod, and lead the charge around the side of the hulking, silent hotel, while Jake lagged behind. He turned to see Frank and Clara conferring on the front porch, talking closely and whispering too quietly for him to hear.

Jake huffed, all of his relief at having distracted his mom turning to stiff irritation. He picked up the rest of the equipment and trudged after his family. His cheeks burned with jealousy, though he told himself he was just being silly. Frank had been single for fifty years, give or take. No wonder the guy wanted to chat up the new ghost in town.

Still, there was a hotel full of other ghosts – all in need of Frank’s help – and all he seemed capable of doing was hanging out with Clara. Jake hardly saw the big guy anymore, and with his dad in the hospital and Tank taking the time to tend to his mom, it made for lots of lonely days and nights.

Even Marley felt neglected; Jake could tell by the way that the little pup sat faithfully on the edge of the hotel porch, waiting for Frank to give him a little attention.

Jake looked at the little dog now, head on his paws, eyes half-closed as he lay in the afternoon sun.

“Marley!” He slapped his thigh, but the dog merely looked up, ears perking, before he sniffed and putting his snout right back down on his chocolate brown paws.

No ghost friend, no dog – now all Jake had was Tank and his mom. He heard them squabbling as he rounded the corner at the back of the hotel.

“But Tank,” Mrs. Weir was saying, her face strained from the long week since the ghost attack, “the light is really bad over here. What if we just set up on the back deck, over there?”

Jake looked in the direction of her pointing finger and sighed.

The back of the hotel had once been a lavish garden, filled with white wrought iron tables and matching chairs, where guests lounged over afternoon tea and, at night, strolled the grounds under bare bulbs hanging high above the hotel’s famous grounds.

Now the near acre of property behind the building was barren and dead, grass dry beneath Jake’s feet and the garden long since gone to seed. It smelled, just like everything else, of smoke and soot and rot, despite the clear blue sky and the crisp, salty air wafting in off the Bay.

“But look at the background,” Jake offered as his mom lingered on the back porch steps, itching to get inside. “If you do it Tank’s way, you really get to see how different the garden is now.”

“Oh, all right,” Mrs. Weir agreed, if only to shut them up. She gave her son a pointed look. “But if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you were trying to keep me out of this building.”

Jake blushed and looked away while Tank chuckled dryly. “Yeah,” she said, and Jake looked up to catch her winking at him. “Like anyone could get you to stay away from a paranormal property.”

They all groaned at Tank’s joke, and then they started laughing, but Jake silently breathed a sigh of relief. Visiting hours at the hospital would soon be over, and this would likely be their last setup of the day. After this, his mom would race across town to see her husband, and Tank would tag along to get dropped off back at the apartment to begin editing the footage they’d shot that day.

She was getting good at all this – she had picked up right where Mr. Weir had left off. Jake felt a little jealous of her too. All these years chasing his parents around the country and Tank could already out-record, out-video, and out-edit him!

“Ready?” Mrs. Weir said. Her face was pale as she adjusted her arm in the sling. Tank nodded, and then his mom’s face changed to a smiling, pleasant mask as she announced, “Welcome to what was once the pride of San Francisco.”

She looked past the camera and, as if on cue, Tank followed her down the decaying steps of the Balthazar, onto the patchy grass of the decaying garden. Hovering close, Jake hoped he caught the distinctive, creepy sound of his mother’s feet crackling on the dead grass with the boom mic.

“Forget how it looks now,” his mother said, her voice low and dramatic. “Imagine it in the 1920s, gay and merry with dozens of guests roaming the grounds, admiring the local fauna as they sip champagne and listen to live ragtime music, which would have played just behind me on a bandstand that burned to the ground in the disaster which, dear viewer, I’m sure you’re more than familiar with by now…”

Her voice trailed off as she stared at the spot, square and bare, where the bandstand once stood. If he listened closely, Jake thought he could just make out the strains of a snare drum and bass guitar from decades earlier.

His mother cleared her throat and said, “After last week’s…incident, I feel we’re getting closer to uncovering the mystery of the Balthazar Hotel, and I only hope you’ll stay tuned as our Halloween Special unfolds here at our new home on the Scream Channel!”

Her voice was upbeat by the end, but just after Tank yelled, “Cut,” the eagerness fell from Mrs. Weir’s face.

“I really wish the network would quit asking us to advertise for them so often,” she said. “Once every five minutes is their new request. I feel like I’m inside a big commercial…”

Tank, who was turning the camera off and securing it inside its silver case, only shrugged. “Yeah, but look at all this fancy equipment that big commercial buys us.”

Mrs. Weir handed Jake her vest mic so he could stow it for the next day. “It’s true, I know,” she said, and she ruffled her son’s hair with her good hand. “But remember the good old days, when we didn’t have to try so hard and nobody was editing my scripts?”

She was laughing a little, but her eyes looked sad. So much had changed since they’d moved to San Francisco, and so very little of it for the better.

“You sure you want to hang out here?” she asked her son as they walked toward the front of the building, where the green and black Paranormal Properties van sat, as always, the only car in the deserted hotel parking lot.

“Yeah, I kind of like the walk home,” Jake said. He stroked Marley’s soft ears as he sank onto the top step next to the pup. “And it doesn’t look like Marley’s ready to go yet, either.”

Mrs. Weir paused to run a hand down the dog’s back before she retrieved her car keys. “And Tank, what about you?”

Tank looked at Jake sitting there on the stoop and smirked. “Let’s let Jake and Marley bond.” She ambled over to the van and reached for the passenger door. “Besides, I want to see if Jake actually managed to pick up any good audio back there behind the hotel.”

Jake snorted and waved as they drove away. The sleek van rolled up the street and turned onto the busy thoroughfare as he loosed a long breath and slumped back against the steps.

Marley stirred and Jake felt the familiar chill of Frank’s presence as he appeared from a wall of mist on the sidewalk in front of them.

“How’d it go today?” he asked.

“What do you care?” Jake replied, his tone a little harsher than he’d expected.

“Hey now.” Frank tipped his hat back and stared down at Jake. “What’s all this about?”

“Nothing,” Jake grumbled as Frank sat down next to him. His gaze dropped to his worn sneakers. “I just—nothing’s like it was back home.”

“Home?” Frank asked with a gently chiding tone to his voice. “You were only in Dusk for a few months.”

“I know, but…it kind of felt like home after everything that happened there, you know?”

Frank let out a long breath; he shifted closer and attempted to nudge his friend’s arm with his own. “I know, Jake, and I’m sorry.”

The chill of the mist so close to Jake was almost uncomfortable, and perhaps for the first time, the lack of Frank’s humanity made him sad. “I forget sometimes,” he muttered, and then glanced up into the ghost’s blue eyes, “that you’re not real.”

Frank managed a smirk. “I’m as real as you are, pal,” he said, “just not quite as solid.”

They fell into silence; the only sound was Marley’s panting as he lay slumped between them. Then Frank said, “And real people aren’t perfect, Jake. I’m sorry if I’ve been neglecting you, and your parents, and this case.”

“You are?” Jake had to laugh. He was already feeling a little better, even if the old gangster was just shining him on.

“I am, Jakey Boy. And it hasn’t all been for nothing.”

“No?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “Because Clara said she’d introduce me to some of her friends inside.”

Jake perked up. “That’s something, right?”

“I think so,” the old gangster said, but his voice was tight. It matched the look on his pale face.

Jake knew the look well. He’d seen it back in Dusk, North Carolina and several times since they had moved to San Francisco. It meant Frank was worried but didn’t want to worry Jake.

Too late, he thought as the two of them sat on the front steps of the haunted hotel, watching the old, stately street come to life as streetlights flickered on to beat back the dark of the approaching night.