Title Page

  Dedication

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  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Carlisle Hotel in person.

  After my mom died, my dad wanted a fresh start. He kept saying he wanted to get out of the city and reconnect. With nature. With the place he and Mom had met. With me, if he could. We’d grown so distant since Mom died. I knew he wanted to reconnect with me most of all.

  He talked about the town all the time: Gold River. He talked about it so much that even though I’d never been there, I felt like I’d lived there my whole life.

  I listened to his stories. I felt the pull, too. Gold River was home—it was where I was meant to be.

  Which is how I ended up halfway across the country in the tiny tourist trap of a town at the base of Crossback Mountain, one of the biggest, oldest ski resorts in the area.

  Gold River was sprawling but quaint at the same time, perfectly made to invite in eager skiers. There were some ski-repair shops whose names I knew from the multiple applications my dad had sent in. There were cute diners and high-end restaurants to warm up in after a day on the slopes. And if tourists wanted to rent a chalet with Swiss lattice and a steep roof, there were a few dozen to choose from. There was only one place they couldn’t stay—

  The Carlisle Hotel.

  The Carlisle was perched at the edge of town, surrounded by pine trees and backing up to some abandoned ski runs. Huge and ancient, the size of a city block, with wood-shuttered windows and gilded front doors—the type of hotel millionaires once flocked to in droves. The type of hotel that once promised luxurious furnishings and elegant dinners and dramatic views from every firelit room.

  But not anymore.

  I felt my breath catch the first time I passed it. It was beautiful, but also sad and empty.

  That’s exactly how I felt then—sad and empty.

  I had felt that way for what seemed like forever.

  I stayed away from the hotel at first. Moving in August meant I could start school like everyone else. I made friends and learned my way around the town before the holiday season kicked in. In those first few weeks, the hotel wasn’t the only building that felt abandoned. Only for the Carlisle, the emptiness wasn’t seasonal.

  Eventually the mountains got their first dusting of snow, and all the tourists flocked back, eager to get back on the slopes. The chalets filled. The shops bustled.

  The Carlisle stayed vacant.

  It had been that way for almost thirty-three years.

  * * *

  I should be honest, though: That wasn’t the first time I truly saw the hotel.

  I first saw the Carlisle in my dreams.

  Three years ago, on the night of my tenth birthday.

  Before my mom died. Before the move to Gold River.

  I dreamed of walking up that hedge-lined drive leading to the front doors.

  I dreamed of wandering inside. Through the lobby with its massive staircase, crimson carpets, golden chandeliers, and marble reception desks. Past the indoor pool and spa that smelled of chlorine and eucalyptus. Past the meeting rooms and dining halls filled with ancient statues, Renaissance paintings, and round tables with crisp white linens and glittering crystal.

  Down a long, dark hall.

  A hall so unlike everything else in the Carlisle.

  Dark.

  Narrow.

  Flickering.

  Forgotten.

  I remember the tug that led me forward.

  My destination?

  A plain

  white

  door

  at the end of a plain

  white

  hall.

  I remember what happened when I reached the door.

  I remember, because I’ve had that dream or some form of it every night since.

  I always get to the door,

  but I

  never

  get

  past

  it.

  I touch my hand to the old doorknob.

  I start to turn it.

  I am filled by fear.

  And then I wake up.

  But I know what waits behind the door.

  I know it in the darkest corner of my being.

  Death.

  All that waits in the Carlisle is death.

  “You know what Saturday is, don’t you?” Rohan asks.

  My stomach twists with fear and excitement.

  “Of course we know,” Mira says. Despite the crowded lunchroom, her voice is soft. She looks down at her tray while she says it, her dark cheeks flushing in embarrassment. “You haven’t stopped talking about it all month.”

  Rohan grins at her discomfort. Mira’s right—Rohan hasn’t dropped the subject since the end of November. Now, a few days before winter break, it’s practically all he can talk about.

  “And I’m not going to stop talking about it now,” he says. He pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, his brown eyes gleaming with excitement. “This is our one chance to finally be among the cool kids. No one has ever completed the Dare. All we have to do is spend one full night in the Carlisle Hotel. That’s it. If we do it, we’d be the most popular kids in Gold River, like, ever.”

  Mira sighs. This is the same thing he’s said every day since the word spread that the seventh-grade Dare would take place this Saturday at ten. Everyone who wanted to be anyone was expected to show up and test their bravery.

  “I don’t know,” Mira mutters.

  Rohan turns to me.

  “What about you, Jasmine?” he asks. “Can I count you in?”

  I look to Mira. She and I have spent countless nights talking about the Dare. The truth is, I don’t really mind the idea of staying overnight in the Carlisle Hotel; if I’m honest, I want to know why I’ve always felt drawn there. But Mira is scared to death of it. Unlike me, she grew up here, which means she’s grown up with all the scary stories associated with the hotel. Rumors that it never reopened because a bunch of people had mysteriously died there. Or that it’s haunted. Or cursed. That it still craves human souls and will snatch up anyone brave—or stupid—enough to step foot there.

  That’s the whole point of the Dare: Around here, kids believe that if you stay a full night, you’ll never be allowed to leave.

  Despite my dreams drawing me in, I’m still not sure. It could be dangerous. Mira, though, is pretty convinced—she most definitely does not want to go in. Ever. There’s no way to answer without upsetting either of my new friends, which is the last thing I want to do.

  “I’ll go if Mira goes,” I reply.

  I hope it’s the right thing to say, but it’s clear from the glare she shoots me that it isn’t.

  Rohan whoops with glee.

  “See! You can’t chicken out now, Mira. If the new girl is willing to do it, you have to as well.”

  She doesn’t look at either of us, just stares at her tray of food.

  A second later, she flinches as something smacks the back of her head.

  I look over to see a fry drop to the floor.

  She grumbles, but she ignores it. She always ignores it. And yet, kids still pick on her, maybe because she tries so hard to pretend the bullying doesn’t exist.

  Rohan lowers his voice and leans in.

  “Come on, Mira,” he says. “We need this. You know we do. If we do this, maybe they’ll leave us alone. I’m not saying I believe it will make us popular, but it might make us safe. I don’t want to keep dealing with this all through high school. You know it will only get worse.”

  Mira keeps staring at her tray.

  “How do you know?” she asks.

  “Because everyone—”

  “No,” she interrupts. “How do you know we’ll make it the entire night?”

  Rohan reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Because the three of us are a team. We can do anything,” he says. He looks at me when he says it, and it makes my heart warm to know he thinks of me as a true friend, even though I’ve only been here a few months. I didn’t have any friends like that back in Florida.

  Another fry flies past us, just barely missing my ear. Behind us, a table of kids erupts into laughter. I glance over my shoulder to see Bradley among them. Most of the kids look away when I glare at them, but not Bradley. He acts like he runs this town, and I guess in a lot of ways he does; his dad is the mayor, and he lives in a manor nearly as big as the Carlisle. This is something he points out all the time, whenever I’m in earshot. Somehow he knows I live in a tiny house on the outskirts.

  Bradley isn’t scared or ashamed of anything. He stares right back at me and sticks out his tongue.

  My hands ball into fists. Ugh. I wish I could show him.

  There is a way I could show h im.

  I look back to Mira and say, “All I want to do is wipe that smug smile off Bradley’s face. I don’t know why he’s such a jerk to us.”

  Without missing a beat, Rohan points to himself. “Band geek.” Then to Mira. “Mathlete.” And me. “New girl.” He shrugs. “We’ve basically got targets painted on our backs.”

  “It isn’t right,” I say. It’s not that I was popular in Florida—honestly, it was the opposite. So far, Rohan and Mira are the best friends I’ve ever had. But the fact that we’re being picked on, let alone by someone as boring as Bradley, makes my blood boil. I thought these tourist towns were supposed to be friendly to everyone, but I guess there are mean people everywhere.

  “Of course it isn’t right,” Rohan says. “But there’s not much we can do to change it. Some kids are meant to be bullies, and some are meant to be picked on. It’s like the natural order or something.”

  “Don’t tell me you actually believe that,” I say.

  He shrugs again and goes back to eating his sandwich.

  “Of course I don’t believe it,” Rohan says. “But that doesn’t matter so much when people like Bradley do. The only way we’re going to change things is to make him realize we aren’t his victims. And we do that by proving we’re braver than he is. We do it by staying overnight at the Carlisle.”

  Mira groans as another fry lands on her sandwich. This fry definitely had a bite taken out of it. She pushes her tray forward and stands.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” she says. “I think I’m gonna go to the library until recess.”

  “Just promise me you’ll think about it,” Rohan pushes. “We can do it together. You don’t have to be scared.”

  Mira bites her lip. “I’m not scared,” she says after a moment. “I just … it feels wrong. Like we’re playing into their game. Besides, you know it’s illegal to step foot on the Carlisle property. What if we got caught?”

  “It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he says.

  Something smacks into the back of my head. I reach back and pull a fry out of my curls. Anger burns inside me, but I don’t look back to Bradley. I don’t want to let him know he gets under my skin.

  The words leave my lips before I can stop them, before I even realize I was going to speak them: “Me too,” I say. I lock eyes with Rohan. “I’m in. But no pressure, Mira. Rohan and I can do it alone if you don’t want to.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Mira says with a sigh. She picks up her tray as she stands to leave. “I just don’t know if being popular is worth doing something like this.”

  “It will be fine,” Rohan says. “It’s just one night. The stories are just stories—I bet there are some high schoolers hanging out at the hotel trying to scare us off. Nothing bad ever happens. Kids have been doing the Dare for years, and no one’s died.”

  Instantly, my dreams flash into my mind. Walking down the long, flickering white hallway. The imposing door at the end.

  The terrible fate behind it.

  Maybe Rohan is right. Maybe no one new has died staying overnight at the Carlisle.

  At least, not yet.

  I wait for Mira after school.

  Even though it’s literally freezing out and it’s already getting dark, I stand outside next to a snowbank. Maybe it’s another reason people here think I’m weird, but I really like the winter. I mean, everyone in Gold River likes winter—the whole town is built around snow sports, so it’s sort of a requirement. But I dunno. Maybe it’s because it’s the opposite of what I’m used to, but there’s something about standing outside in the snow that makes me feel so alive. The way the cold makes my cheeks tingle and my breath come out in clouds, the way the snow dances down in tiny flakes or in big wet chunks that make my eyelashes heavy. I’d stay out in the snow all day and night if I could.

  It makes me think of my mother—she always told me stories of her own childhood living in cold places. The snow connects me to her.

  It makes me feel free.

  At least until I look up.

  As I stare out at the softly falling snow, I catch sight of something that makes me feel the opposite of free.

  The Carlisle Hotel.

  It sits on the other side of the valley, past the Gold River, surrounded by forest and abandoned ski slopes. It almost looks like a castle from here, a squat, abandoned fortress filled with darkness and shadows.

  I have stared at its windows for hours.

  Nothing has ever stared back.

  But now—

  Now—

  Something is different.

  One of the windows on the upper floor is illuminated.

  The light flickers slightly, like a candle.

  How is that even possible?

  The hotel has been abandoned for decades, and no one steps foot there. At least not until the Dare night.

  Even from here, a mile or so away, I feel a hook in my heart the moment I see it, even as chills race down my skin.

  I blink, and I’m back in the hall. The flickering white hallway, pulled toward a door at the far end.

  I hear something.

  In the dreams, the hall has always been silent—ominously so—but now there’s no mistaking it.

  The faint yelling.

  No.

  The faint screaming, calling out my name.

  Calling me forward … or telling me to get out?

  Jasmine! Jasmine, hurry!

  “Earth to Jasmine,” comes a voice beside me.

  I’m so surprised I actually jump back. My foot catches on the thick snow, and I tumble, landing with a heavy thump in a snowdrift.

  “Whoa!” Mira says. She immediately reaches down and helps me struggle to standing, which is difficult with all my layers. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I shake the snow off and look back to the Carlisle Hotel.

  All the windows are dark now.

  As they should be.

  As they might have been all along.

  My mind must be playing tricks on me.

  “I was just distracted,” I explain to Mira.

  She follows my gaze. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” she asks. “About doing the Dare.”

  I nod, though it’s not the whole truth; I’ve felt the hotel’s pull for so long now. It’s not something I’m comfortable telling her, though. I’m lucky enough that I was able to make friends so quickly. I don’t want to risk all that by having her think I’m crazy, or that I know about the hotel any more than she thinks I do.

  “I guess I just don’t understand why everyone makes such a big deal out of it,” I say, wondering how she’ll respond. “I mean, it’s just a hotel, right?”

  She looks uncomfortable.

  “You’ve heard the stories,” she says. It’s not a question. After all, Rohan’s the one who told me all of them, usually with Mira right there.

  I nod.

  “Well, it’s not just stories,” she says. “They’re real. I looked them up in the library’s archives.” She starts walking as she talks; Rohan took the bus home, and since Mira and I live a few blocks away from each other, we usually walk home together.

  “The Carlisle Hotel used to be the whole reason people came to Gold River. At one time, it employed over half the town’s population. We depended on it. And then, one year … one year, something terrible happened. No one really knows what took place. The newspaper articles just say that one morning, when the hotel staff came to relieve the night shift workers, they found that everyone—and I mean everyone—inside had died.” She hesitates before continuing, and when she does, her voice is muffled. She talks into her scarf like she doesn’t even want to hear what she’s saying. “Well, okay. There was one survivor. They found her in the lobby rocking back and forth, and they never got her to say what happened. She disappeared the next day.”

  “Did she do it?” I ask. I look to the hotel again, though it’s quickly disappearing in the pine trees as we head through town.

  Mira shakes her head. “She was never convicted. Because the strange thing was, it didn’t look like there had been a struggle. The people had just dropped dead. The investigators thought maybe it was a gas leak or something, or maybe some mass poisoning. But then the coroner said that every single one of them had died … of fright.”

  I shudder, and not from the cold.

  “How is that even possible?” I ask.

  “No one knows. There were hundreds of guests and hotel staff there that night. Only one of them walked out of there alive. They shut down the hotel after that, obviously. Not that anyone would want to go there even if it stayed open. The town itself nearly fell apart. But they built a new ski slope on the other side of the valley, and that saved us.” She looks over to the mountains on this side of the river. The season is in full swing there, and even from here I can see tiny flecks of skiers and boarders racing down the cleared courses.

 

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