This addictive YA horror about a group of teen ghost hunters who spend the night in a haunted LA hotel is The Blair Witch Project for the TikTok generation. Intrigued? Well read on to discover an excerpt from Horror Hotel by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren, which is out now!
SYNOPSIS
When the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang—Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki—visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark, they expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings. Spooky enough to attract subscribers—and ultimately harmless.
But when they stumble upon something unexpected in the former room of a gruesome serial killer, they quickly realize that they’re in over their heads.
Sometimes, it’s the dead who need our help—and the living we should fear.
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1
CHRISSY
“‘Die, you pig-faced bitch!’”
“Damn it, Kiki, we told you to never read the comments.” Chase scolds Kiki without looking up from the video he’s editing with intense focus.
“Do I have a pig face?” When Kiki looks up from her phone, she’s near tears. She’s the most sensitive soul on planet Earth. Also, somehow, the most lovable.
Emmaline sucks in a deep breath to suppress an eye roll, her fingers tightening on the EMF detector she’s fiddling with. Emma is thick-skinned, with steel guts. She’s smart as hell and will go to any school she wants next year. No doubt one of the Ivies.
This ghost detector is an Emma brainchild, just like a lot of our gear. Apparently, this one uses electromagnetic frequencies to spell out words. It mostly works.
“Oh my God, no,” Emma groans.
“It’s probably about me,” I say. Kiki’s pulsing with energy and I’m already on the verge of a headache. I throw her a reassuring smile and squeeze her hand. It does the trick. Her nerves settle and the throbbing in my head lightens.
Kiki’s gained a few pounds recently, and despite the fact that the weight looks good on her, she’s letting it get to her. It’s not something she says to me; it’s something that pops into my head. A thought that doesn’t belong to my own brain.
Other people’s thoughts often drop into my head like pebbles in a stream. Feelings out of place and unfamiliar, a voice that isn’t my own, knowledge I shouldn’t have and can’t explain.
I run a hand through my hair and realize the reason Kiki’s in my head is because I’ve taken my hat off to scratch my scalp. I throw the wool beanie back on and make a mental note to find a different, not-itchy hat for this weekend. Hats are my mind’s protection from unwanted, intrusive thoughts and feelings, from both the living and the dead.
Cue that famous line whispered by the little kid in the movie The Sixth Sense:
I see dead people.
Wah-wah-waaah.
A blessing and a curse, right? Scares you shitless when you’re three years old and you wake up to a shadowy man standing in your bedroom doorway. You’re unable to move, too scared to make a sound. After countless nights of terror, you get fed up and tell him to go away. Surprise, surprise, he doesn’t budge.
Shortly after he appears, your mom starts taking “special” trips to the hospital with your dad while you play at the neighbors’ house. Eventually, she loses all her pretty hair and gets really skinny and sad, with hollows under her eyes. For two years, the shadow man appears in your doorway, faceless and silent. It’s not until you’re five years old that you finally ask him what he wants. This time he starts to move, to shiver, like you’re looking at him through a glass of water. One second, he’s in the doorway, the next he’s right in front of you. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. A shadow where his head should be. You scream until you black out, and when you wake up in the morning, your mother is dead.
Everyone you try to tell pats you on the back with poor-little-girl-just-lost-her-mommy eyes. “What a horrible dream. That must have really scared you, huh?”
But what they don’t know is that now the spirit world has got your number, so your childhood bedroom becomes a rest stop on the road to the great beyond. A holding cell for souls with unfinished business. Or those who die too soon. Sometimes violently.
Unfortunately—spoiler alert—there’s no otherworldly psychiatrist to help you cope with all the dead people. You do eventually tell your dad and he shrugs it off as silly kid’s stuff. You realize you’re all alone with this curse, so you’re going to have to figure it out. You try lots of things to get the dead people to go away, to get them out of your head, but nothing works. No, they don’t always want your help. Yes, sometimes they just want to scare you. The spirit realm is not the rainbows-and-butterflies place most psychic mediums (who are mostly frauds) will tell you it is. It’s not black-and-white like that.
So you learn to deal because what other choice do you have? You start sleeping with a pillow over your head because it drowns out the voices. Never completely, but just enough to let you sleep for a few hours at a time. You realize later that a hat works just as well as a pillow and is portable, so it becomes your number one fashion accessory.
Enter Chase Montgomery. He’s cute and a nerd, so when he’s assigned to be your partner for a film class project, you secretly jump for joy. Little do you know, your secret talent for communicating with the dead shows up on film. Streaks of light and orbs plague the camera in your presence. Chase not only notices, he also directly inquires as to why that could be. You try to make something up on the fly, but unfortunately for you, Chase and his mom are avid paranormal TV enthusiasts. Chase calls you out as exactly what you are, and it’s the first time anyone has ever believed you.
He’s also the first person who sees your curse as a blessing. He calls it a “gift.” It’s refreshing, though you wouldn’t necessarily agree. He asks if he can interview you on his budding YouTube channel. The episode gains him one hundred new subscribers almost overnight, so he recruits his genius tech- geek bestie Emma to help him shoot a full episode of what starts out as Ghost Girl. You do readings for people and take your audience on what you call “ghost walks” of haunted Vegas locales.
In just a few short months, Ghost Girl gains a cute fan base of about ten thousand subscribers. It’s impressive, but Chase is always hungry, never satisfied. He recruits Kiki Lawrence to do a reading with you. Kiki is TikTok famous for her feminist rants, dramatic makeup transformations, and viral dances in kaleidoscopic sixties-go-go-dancer-inspired outfits. Not to mention she’s got the most beautiful color-changing hair on the planet.
Kiki’s terrified yet charming reaction to your talk with her dead grandmother skyrockets the channel to fifty thousand fans. Turns out the people want a cast of characters, and when you’re in show business, you learn to give them what they want. Just like that, the Ghost Gang is officially born.
Now you have friends and a purpose.
But what you don’t have is anyone who understands. You’re alone with the voices inside your head, and not even the scratchiest wool hat can keep them out.
Kiki gasps and it shakes me out of my reverie.
“Come on. Are you looking at comments again?” Chase asks, annoyed.
“No.” Kiki tries to hide her phone behind her back as Chase makes a grab for it. He’s quicker than she is. As he reads what’s on the screen, his jaw tightens.
“What is it?” I ask.
Reluctantly, Chase turns the phone so we can all read the comment.
if i kill u will u stay with me forever?
“Yikes, stalker much?” Emma tugs nervously at the strings of her hoodie.
“It’s hauntedbyher666,” Chase says, frowning. He looks at me, his eyes worried. I know he thinks it’s directed at me.
The problem is this isn’t the first time we’ve heard from hauntedbyher666. The comments started about a year ago. We think it’s a guy because, well, statistics point to online trolling being perpetrated mostly by men. His comments are usually about “killing u”—whoever “u” is—but he never goes into specifics. He just drops a murderous load in the comments and takes off. Other fans reply to him in our defense, but he never engages further. It’s one and done, and then he disappears, sometimes for months.
We always report him, but somehow he keeps coming back. It’s creepy as hell, but it never escalates past the comments, and there’s not much the authorities can do about cyberstalkers until they basically come to your house waving a gun around.
“It’s just some internet troll,” I say, trying to reassure Chase. “Report it to YouTube.”
Chase nods solemnly. He clicks the three little dots next to the username and flags the comment for harassment.
I do everything I can to stay out of Chase’s head—always. He hates it when I hear his thoughts, but this time his feelings make his internal dialogue too loud to ignore.
Chrissy’s in danger.
“I’m not,” I say. I clap one hand over my mouth when I realize I’ve just responded to a private thought.
Chase groans out loud and slams his computer shut. He stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets before stalking to the pool house door.
Kiki and Emma exchange a knowing look from the plush white sofa across the room. Chase’s family’s pool house is all lush decor meant to impress guests, but we’re pretty much the only ones ever in here to use the handmade marble coasters on the three-thousand-dollar Restoration Hardware coffee table. We keep the furry lavender throw pillows and crystal candle- holders in pristine condition.
“Where are you going?” I ask him.
“Snack,” he says, throwing the door open.
It slams shut behind him.
