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She pulled out her phone. Twenty percent battery. She wished she’d grabbed her charging cable from the room. Too distracted by rattling closets. Coco sat down on the hearth beside the fireplace. Mount Hemlock, she typed into the search bar, ghost.
Maybe the internet knew something. Didn’t it always?
She had to wait a long time for the page to load. The signal wasn’t great, and there was no Wi-Fi with the power out. Coco thought longingly of doing homework at the Egg, with cinnamon rolls and fast internet.
Surprisingly, the first hit Coco saw wasn’t even about the orphanage at all. Instead it was an article about a boy who’d gone missing five years ago.
MISSING on Mount Hemlock: Gabriel Bouvier, the article’s headline read.
Coco clicked and read:
Mount Hemlock has long been closed to would-be skiers, standing as it does on the grounds of Sacred Heart Orphanage. But since the orphanage has been boarded up for decades, that has not stopped local youths from hiking in, hoping to climb the famously empty mountain and ski down.
Now that adventurous pursuit may have claimed a victim.
Coco kept reading. She saw a picture of an older boy in a blue ski jacket—the article said he was seventeen—with freckles and red hair, and a big smile.
Gabriel Bouvier disappeared while skiing alone in the vicinity of Mount Hemlock and Sacred Heart Orphanage. An extensive search is under way.
Curious, Coco went to a later article. And another.
They never found him, she realized.
“What are you reading, Coco?” Ollie asked.
Coco looked up and handed Ollie her phone. “Funny,” she said. “I googled Mount Hemlock to see if I could find anything about ghosts. But if you google Mount Hemlock ghost, the first story is about someone named Gabriel Bouvier.”
“Who?” said Brian, peering at her phone over Ollie’s shoulder.
“He disappeared on the mountain a few years ago,” said Coco. “Nothing to do with the orphanage at all. They never found him.”
Brian and Ollie read the article together. When he’d finished, Brian looked up. “Coco,” he said, “didn’t you say the—person—maybe ghost—you saw on the road was . . .”
Coco had been waiting for someone to say it. “Was wearing a blue ski jacket,” she finished. “With a ski mask, but no gloves.”
“Gabriel Bouvier was wearing a blue ski jacket,” Ollie said, scanning another article. “On the night he disappeared.”
“Another ghost?” Coco asked, saying aloud what they were all thinking.
“Too many,” said Brian darkly.
Ollie tried to click to another article. Frowned. “Hey, Coco, your phone says no service now. Not a single bar.” Coco took her phone back. Ollie and Brian pulled out theirs. No service, said all three of their phones.
A chill of memory ran down Coco’s spine. When the three found themselves in the world behind the mist, their phones had also stopped working. No, she reminded herself. This isn’t the same. We were alone last time. Now we have our parents, and the Wilsons and Mr. Voland.
There was a crash from the front desk in the lobby. The trio looked over. Mrs. Wilson had slammed a phone receiver down. “Landlines are out,” she said. “Storm must be knocking over phone lines too. If it goes on much longer, I guess we’ll be buried here.”
She said it like she was trying to make a joke. No one laughed.
Ollie’s dad squinted down at his own phone. “I had service earlier today,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“Do you have a radio?” Coco’s mom asked Mrs. Wilson. “A satellite phone?”
Mrs. Wilson, coming back into the dining room, shook her head. “They were going to be delivered on Thursday,” she said. “I never dreamed . . .” She looked kind of helpless. Coco figured that she’d been ready to handle hordes of guests, but she didn’t know what to do when they were snowed in without lights, heat, or a way to contact anyone.
“Okay,” said Mr. Adler firmly. “This is fine. You hear me, kids? We are completely fine. Not a good time for nerves. You guys aren’t nervous, are you?”
They were, but not in the way Mr. Adler was thinking.
