Page 18 of Unalive On Air

I check out the list of names again. Josh Little, born 2002, died 2018, making him fifteen. Seems a bit, I don’t know, convenient. Cause of death—

“Exploded?!” I read it once more just to be sure. “Cause of death: exploded.”

Helga grimaces. “It happened in the dining hall. Kid took one bite out of a breakfast muffin and BANG, gone. Helluva mess. Newspapers had a field day.”

“From a muffin? I’m sorry, but are you telling me that a ghost exploded a child with a fucking cupcake?”

She sighs and stands. “I know it sounds far-fetched, but there are no other explanations. It was just a regular muffin. No explosives. No evidence of tampering, and it happened in front of about fifty other guests and staff.”

“Were you there?” Wow, that came out a lot more accusatory than I meant it to.

Luckily Helga doesn’t seem to notice. “No. I was working as the night manager back then, but I was told about it that afternoon before I started work because when I’d arrived, the hotel was teeming with reporters.”

Still, there’s a possibility Helga could’ve snuck in that morning, or planted a bomb small enough to fit inside some confectionery. She’s right, it’s far-fetched, but perhaps if I can figure out why Josh Little, why this teenager, I might be able to find a link that connects all the victims here.

“Was an investigation conducted into the exploding cake? Anyone charged?”

“Nope. The cake turned out to be just that, an ordinary choc-chip muffin.”

Weird. “Did it explode in his face, or from his stomach?” I mime something akin to a Facehugger’s egg bursting out of my abdomen.

“I’ve got no idea.” Helga sounds exasperated now. “They won’t share the details with us. All I know is that a boy got exploded, but no explosives were found.”

“Interesting, interesting.”

“But Josh’s spirit doesn’t seem to be malicious. Just . . . well, juvenile. He’s forever fifteen. Apart from the occasional anatomically questionable doodles, he’s harmless. He’s not the one terrorising our guests.”

I want to stand on her desk and scream from the top of my lungs, “Do you really think a fucking ghost killed your husband and the rest of these people?” But I stop myself. She hired ExorSquad, she’s in need of my assistance. If I go shouting my mouth off, telling her ghosts aren’t real and it’s obvious to anyone that if there’s any blame here, it’s a living human, she might end the contract early. Turf me out of her hotel, and then where would I be?

Caseless, jobless, programmeless, incomeless, and on my way to being homeless.

Instead, I ask, “Do you know which of these ghosts . . .” I brandish the list at her. “Is the one terrorising the guests, then?”

Helga looks away from me, down into her lap, and then at the certificates on the wall. She sighs. “I don’t think it’s any of those. Whatever killed all these people was here at The Paragon before Peter and I showed up.”

Super cool. I don’t ask her why she wants me to exorcise all these spirits. Seems, I dunno, like a waste of my time, but I do need to find out as much as I can about their potential murders, so I press on. “Can you walk me around the hotel and show me where all the bodies were discovered? I’m trying to work out if there’s something tying all these incidents together. Perhaps there’s one . . . like, extremely evil spirit who’s just offing everyone. The big bad. I want to know why. Is there a pattern to its selection?”

“Let me show you around a bit,” Helga says, and leads me out of her office into the main foyer.

Guests mill about, wheeling suitcases to the front desk or dragging sandy kids in towel robes behind them. Despite the gloomy weather, it seems that folk are determined to enjoy their holidays.

“Have there ever been any names left in the ghosts’ mirror communications?” I ask.

“Nope, only . . . willies,” she replies.

“I have another question.” I hobble down a long corridor in Helga’s wake. The air smells of cooking. Roasting meats, sautéing onions, something cabbagey. “Have you heard of a group of people who call themselves The Youngscares?”

We arrive at the end of the hall. Helga types in yet another code and pushes open a door next to a plaque that reads TROPHY ROOM.

“The Youngscares . . . The Youngscares . . . Can’t say that I have.” She steps inside the trophy room and flicks the light on. It’s not on an automatic switch like most of the other communal hotel spaces. “Why? Who are they, some sort of band?”

That would make a banging band name actually.

“I dunno. I heard the name, and I’m trying to place it.” I don’t tell Helga The Youngscares were the group who essentially summoned me here.

I’m sure if Helga knew anything about them, she’d be forthcoming, since her goals and their goals are pretty much aligned. But something stops me from telling the full truth. I don’t believe Helga wrote that letter to me, so somebody else has information they want me to have, outside of Helga’s interference.

Rows and rows of display cabinets line the trophy room, like gleaming supermarket aisles. From behind the shiny glass, placards, trophies, and medals glisten. There are framed, signed sports jerseys, and signed sports balls, and signed photographs. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles create a colourful backdrop to the shelves. The whole place has the forbidden, echoey stillness you find in museum galleries. But unlike curated museum spaces, there are random pieces of antique furniture pushed against the far wall. Storage, I suspect, rather than exhibition. As though each item is waiting for its forever home. There’s a large mahogany bureau, an armoire, a couple of chaise longues, and a beautiful, elaborate Chinese cabinet.