I'll post an updated guest list later on. This time, I'll include who's in which room.

Welcome to the next part! 

------------------------ 

The CBers found a surprising amount of fun in Icy's old hobby--recording every single thing that happens, ever. Even though they found themselves having to make many more notebooks (for some reason, those were the only thing the CBers couldn't find in one of the storage closets), they were happy they were finally doing something useful. And happiness is the first step to success.

However, one CBer was not taking part in the scamble for information: Brooklyn Newsie. While the CBers were investigating the upstairs storage closets for possible clues (or traps), Newsie was searching for Cassy--by herself. She also planned on interviewing Moonfrost later. There was something suspicious about the way she had been acting lately. Newsie hoped she was the only one who had noticed.

Cassy was chatting with the receptionist when Newsie found her. "Hi Cassy!" the CBette greeted cheerfully. She was a trained newsie, and knew how to get information out of a person. First you have to warm up the conversation.

"Hi, Newsie!" Cassy said. "Marge and I were just talking about the spring cleaning from yesterday."

Spring cleaning? wondered Newsie, never one to miss a stray detail.

"That sounds fun. What's the spring cleaning?"

"It's when we clean our cabins. Of course, Lily and I don't sleep down in the cabins; we sleep here in the mansion, down on the lower floors, but we run the cleaning anyway. It's the only time the staff gets to clean their cabins."

Brooklyn Newsie didn't remember seeing Lily and Cassy's bedroom anywhere in the house. Did they sleep on the floor? Or did they have a bedroom somewhere in the house the CBers hadn't seen yet? This was strange, because the CBers had been everywhere in the mansion--hadn't they?

"Cool. Sounds fun!"

"I thought you guys were investigating upstairs," Cassy said.

"Yeah, we were, but I--" Newsie trailed off, staring at Cassy's ear. Her walkie talkie was gone, replaced by a new black earpiece. She'd have to investigate this!

"--but I got bored of it," she finished lamely. "So I came to talk with you." Safe enough to say, right? From what she could tell, Cassy loved to talk. And perhaps having the receptionist here would make things easier.

"I heard about all the things going on," said the receptionist to Brooklyn Newsie. "With that awful murderer. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," Brooklyn Newsie said. "I'm sure we'll find the murderer soon. There's no way we can't. All of us are scouring the entire house for clues, and then we'll move outside. I'd be surprised if the murderer tried something now."

"Yes, you're all very responsible when it comes to finding evidence! I'd love to stay and talk a little longer, but I have to go file some papers," apologized the receptionist. "See you two later!" She left through the door to the right of her desk.

Brooklyn Newsie grasped for something to say to Cassy. "Uh--uh--so I was just curious, Cassy. Can you tell me a bit more about the history of this place?"

"Sure! What do you want to know?"

Tom Noodle, thought Newsie. That was the first thing that popped into her head. "Tom Noodle. What was he like? He must've been pretty rich."

"Oh yeah," Cassy said, nodding her head in agreement. "He owned this entire lake, and TONS more vacation homes across the world." Cassy giggled at something. "Aha, now that was a good pun."

"A pun? I don't get it."

"TONS, get it? Oh, wait, I forgot--! Um, heh, nevermind. Inside joke!" she amended hastily, once again revealing her special talent for not being able to keep secrets.

"So he liked to vacation?"

"Yep. Loved to. When he, erm, died, we bought his lake property and turned it into a resort."

"I thought--" Something pushed itself to the front of Newsie's brain. '"...the surrounding land was donated to our small little band of vacation-loving staff."'

"Did you guys have to do a fundraiser for it?" asked Newsie slyly. "I mean, this is a lot of land!"

Cassy looked bothered all of a sudden, as if some minor detail had just entered her brain as well. "Um...yeah. Sure did."

Brooklyn Newsie made a mental note of this. So Cassy was keeping secrets. But what if Lily was in on this, too? Newsie had a lot of interviews ahead of her.

"I'm glad you guys invited us here when you were done with it," Newsie said. "It's so much fun here!"

"Yeah, totally! It's too bad these bad things keep happening," Cassy said, playing right into Newsie's hands. Was she doing this on purpose? Or did she really not know she was secretly being grilled for information? Well, hence the secret part, Newsie guessed.

"Yeah, that part's not so much fun. I can't help but worry the murderer has an accomplice, though. I mean, leaving the group alone is really suspicious to us, so how is all this...stuff happening if the murderer doesn't have a partner?"

Was that it? Was that the flick of guilt Newsie had been looking for in Cassy's eyes? It was quickly replaced by something else that she didn't recognize, though, even with her experience reading expressions.

"I don't know. That's a good thought, though," Cassy said, shifting her weight and glancing subtly to the left. Two more signs of lying. What was going on?

"Uh oh, what's the time?" Newsie asked suddenly.

Cassy looked at the clock on the wall. Newsie blushed, having not noticed it. "Eleven thirty-four."

"Oh no! I said I'd be back at the group by eleven thirty!" Newsie exclaimed. "And--" she lied "--I forgot to get what I came here for!" she said, facepalming herself. "I'm collecting information for a news story on Tom Noodle, and that's why I was here, to learn more about him. Could you possibly write his full name and maybe some of his hobbies down for me?"

"Sure," Cassy said, taking the strip of paper and pen Newsie offered her. On the paper she wrote 'Tom Orville Noodle' followed by some of his hobbies. Newsie stared at the name hard, sensing some familiarity within it. Suddenly she gasped. Tom Orville Noodle. TONS. 'Aha, now that was a good pun.' Tom O. Noodle--T.O.N.! THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE! screamed her intuition. It was all she could do not to snatch the paper out of Cassy's hands and run proclaiming her new lead up and down the hallway. They were at a vacation home that was owned by a man whose initials were T-O-N! She couldn't believe it!

But wait. Why was she so excited about this? There was a fact her brain was missing--what did the letters T, O, and N have to do with a resort?

Well duh, she realized.

TON was the inventor of the ski lodge.

--------------------------

The murderer keeled over, clutching its sides and allowing a gasp of pain escape its lips.

"Are you okay?!" exclaimed Moonfrost, who happened to be one of the murderer's partners for the searching of the house for clues. Their other group member was Ariel, but he was buried inside a closet at the time being and wasn't aware of what was happening.

"Yeah--" lied the murderer, gasping again, squeezing its eyes shut. It felt like it was about to fly apart, to explode. A horrible, throbbing, blinding red migrane settled in its head. "I just--need--to lie--down."

The words had barely escaped its lips when its knees gave way. The murderer collapsed to the ground and rolled over onto its side, facing the wall, its eyes cinched shut with pain. "...it's just a headache," it mumbled before passing out.

~ ~ ~

As Cassy was writing Tom Noodle's last and least favorite hobby on the scrap of paper, she heard Brooklyn inhale sharply. Almost simultaneously, Cassy's mind went blank and she blacked out.

~ ~ ~

Lily was in her bedroom typing an email when the dizziness overtook her. Dots swam in her vision and sounds grew distant, but she did not succumb to the sensation. She glanced at the painting hanging on the wall between her bed and Cassy's bed, her brow furrowed, but soon returned to her email.

~ ~ ~

Brooklyn Newsie let out a cry as Cassy fell, and quickly rushed forwards to catch her. A few seconds later, Cassy's eyes opened. "Why am I on the ground?" she asked, disoriented. Her face was pale.

"Um, good question," Brooklyn Newsie answered. "You just blacked out for a second." But she had a feeling she knew what was going on. Cassy had fainted right when Newsie had made the connection that they were at a ski lodge...

Cassy sat up and stared off into space for a moment. "Mm...yeah, that can't be good," she said, rubbing her face. She looked into Newsie's eyes. "Can you pass me that paper, please?" she asked, indicating the one teetering at the edge of the reception desk. Newsie nodded, stood up and grabbed it, and handed it to Cassy, who ripped the heading off the top--the one that read 'Tom Orville Noodle'--and tore it to shreds. She let the little pieces of confetti float to the ground. Then she dusted the paper off of her hands and stood up.

"I probably shouldn't have told you Tom's middle name, should I have," Cassy asked, leaning against the reception desk for support.

"Probably not," agreed Newsie. "Do I want to know what's going on?"

Cassy grinned. "I don't know, do you?"

"Is it safer if I know?"

"No, not particularly."

"Is it safer if I don't know?"

"Well, I'm not really sure," Cassy said with a shrug. "Not anymore, at least. Follow me, and tell me what you know so far. I'll fill you in from there."

Cassy led the CBette to a dark, curtained room down a side hallway. There, Brooklyn Newsie explained about the overheard conversation between her and Lily, the fact that there was something suspicious about how the lake was aquired, and of course the realization that someone whose initials spelled out TON 'used to own the lake'.

So Cassy went ahead and told Brooklyn Newsie everything she knew, answering all her questions and then some. She warned her not to tell ANYONE about what had happened, and insisted that Newsie help her downstairs for a while longer. Now that Brooklyn Newsie knew what was going on, she understood why she couldn't rejoin the CBers right away. 

----------------------- 

THE NEW GUEST LIST:

Lavender DeRoma/Crystal Shore

Owlgirl
Kate the Great
Hotairballoon
Moonfrost
Joan
Holly (CAPTCHA)

James B. Nelly/Window of Gold

Cinderpelt
Booksy
Luna (CAPTCHA)
Elvina
Legolas (CAPTCHA)

Tabitha Tucker/Emerald Aisle

Brooklyn Newsie
September
Tina (CAPTCHA)
Autumn Leaves
Cinderheart (CAPTCHA)
Sir Galahad (CAPTCHA)
Wordsy (AE)

Johnny Johnson/Hidden Trove

Ice Wolf
Nico De Furr (CAPTCHA)
Chester (CAPTCHA)
Nighthawk
Briar (AE)
LilyCat (CAPTCHA)
Poetic Panda
Dragonrider
Ariel (AE)
Shadow (AE)
Puck (AE)

TOTAL CHATTERBOXERS:15
TOTAL ALTER EGOS: 5
TOTAL CAPTCHAS: 9
OVERALL TOTAL: 29!!!

Oh my goodness, do I really have this many people left??!! *panics* Yikes, this is the ski lodge that never ended...

Don't worry...I'll finish it eventually. I mean, we're only just finishing day six, and 13 people have already died. That means...in less than six days there will be only fourteen people left! I've already started writing the ending--now I just have to fill the in-between. Maybe it won't take as long to finish as I thought it would...

I just want to thank you guys for sticking with this story! I know my ski lodges tend to run a little long, and probably boring at times, but you guys still read it, and that means a lot to me. :)

Also, thanks to the Admins who read and post every single one of my installments. Without you, both of my ski lodges would literally not be here. :D

What the heck is going on here? Write the next part please!!

Day Seven--Part One

No light shone into the CBers' rooms on their seventh morning at Lake LeLillo.

Absolutely no light.

Nothing. They couldn't see anything.

At all.

So when they woke up, they sat in their beds and let the night be their eyelids

until the drowsiness faded

and they shook their heads

and realized that the murderer was probably behind this.

The panic was overwhelming. The CBers couldn't see each other, no less their hands in front of their faces. They had been shut inside their rooms with no means of escape! Throw a murderer into the mix, and massive panic ensues.

Thankfully, the CBers were sensible enough to not panic. They did a little roll call in their bedrooms, then huddled together in the middle of the floor. Those who'd brought flashlights to the lake groped through the darkness underneath their beds, unlocked their safes, and pulled out the little beams of hope. Thankfully, the flashlights still worked. But when the CBers were able to see what had happened to their rooms, the hope vanished.

Boards had been nailed over the windows in their rooms.

Dark black blankets covered some parts of the floor and the nightstands.

The light switches were useless.

Their communications devices had disappeared.

But possibly most alarming was the fact that their bedroom doors were all opened. This meant that the entire mansion was just as dark as their rooms. The entire mansion had become a cave. No, a prison. A dark, pitch-black prison with all the windows boarded shut.

The CBers knew that the murderer had been inside their rooms last night, and this added to the fear. They called out to each other from their bedrooms, playing a sort of Marco-Polo game until they met in the middle of their living room, led by those who had been able to salvage their flashlights.

"What's going on?" whispered Ice Wolf, her voice wavering.

"What happened to the lights? Is your room as dark as ours?" asked Elvina.

"We're all going to die..." whimpered Shadow. "Wait. No, YOU'RE all going to die...I'M a shadow, so I belong here. Hah! I'm totally not scared! Of the dark! So...so there!"

"Shh!" snapped Moonfrost. "Look around!"

The living room too had been partially draped in black blankets, making it look like an abandoned ghost house. The window had been painted black, covered with black paper, and nailed shut. What was the reason for this...?

"Oh..." whispered September. She had just noticed the little side table that had been moved to the center of the room. On it was a little phone sitting on a light dusting of confettii. The CBers focused their flashlights on it, and the white spotlights glinted off the glistening black, satin smooth surface. September made as if to pick it up, hesitated, looked around for a trap, and, seeing nothing, picked up the phone. It turned on in her grasp, illuminating the group with an eerie, ghostlike glow: The brightness had been all the way turned up as if mocking the CBers for their predicament. They gathered around it just as it unlocked itself and clicked play on a video--as if some disemodied, invisible hand were showing the CBers where to go.

The screen went dark again, though this time the blackness was created by the phone and thus continued lighting up the CBers' horrified expressions. Out of the speaker crackled an unrecognizable, altered voice.

"I thought it best to oblige your wishes, Chatterboxers: You are attempting to discover my identity by using the strategies from the classic game Clue, where the players share and withold information in hopes of being the first to discover the murderer. If all you see this stay as is a simple little game, then by all means, I will let you play. Allow me to introduce you to a little game I share a special connection with--you might have played it before; it's really quite popular. Have you ever heard of murder in the dark?"

There was a pause, in which a shriek filled the air, followed by a thump. Like dominoes, each CBer, CAPTCHA, and AE also took turns screaming, stumbling over the body that had fallen to the floor.

"STOP! QUIET!" shouted someone, stilling the crowd. "Autumn Leaves has only fainted!" The CBers shone their flashlights onto Autumn Leaves's frame that was sprawled across the floor. Ice Wolf's hand was on Autumn's wrist and she confirmed that there was a pulse. A few moments later, Autumn Leaves's eyes fluttered open.

"Tell me I imagined it," she murmured.

"No, it was real all right," Ice Wolf said apolegetically, helping Autumn to her feet.

The video began to play again as the room fell silent again. Someone was definitely controlling it. The CBers with the flashlights searched the audience with their beams while they listened to the recording's other half.

"If you haven't played this game before, no need to worry. You'll soon learn how. One of you--or should I say us--is the murderer. Usually, the murderer is drawn out of a hat. Thankfully, we don't need to waste time with this step, because the murderer has already been chosen. It is their--my--job to...eliminate the players.

  "All of you are the players, or the suspects. Your job is to stay alive, but of course one or more of you won't be able to manage that. You will simply walk around and try to keep from dying. If you find a dead body, you may scream, or shout, or whatnot, since I know you can't help it, but the detective, whom I will tell you more about in a moment, must find the body and announce 'murder in the dark' before the lights in the house turn on, the murderer will cease its duty, and the clue-seeking can begin.

  "Now for the detective. One suspect is also the detective, and yes, the detective can be killed. In fact, the detective is the most important player. Its job is to walk around and stay alive, but it has another job as well: It has to find the body, announce 'murder in the dark', and discover the murderer's secret identity. If the detective is killed, the game is over, and the murderer wins. After this message is complete, the detective's name will flash upon the screen for all to see. As usual, no one knows who the detective is. The name that will flash upon the screen is completely random, and not even I know who it will be, so hope that whoever is holding the phone has an ingenious plan for keeping the detective's identity a secret, because if I accidentally see who the detective is, certain death lies in wait for them. Five minutes after the detective knows who they are, the game will begin.

  "Message ending in three...two...one..."

September pulled the phone close just as the a name flashed onto the screen. She had just enough time to read the letters before the phone went black.

"Okay," she said, her voice shaking. "I know who the...detective is. Everybody turn off your flashlights so I can go and tell them who they are..."

The lights went off and September pushed through the thunderstruck crowd.

"Okay," she said. "They know who they are."

"We have five minutes!" screamed Poetic Panda. "What are we going to do?!"

"LILY!" shouted Briar. "LILY! CASSY! HELP US!" Nobody heard them.

"They're probably locked out of the house," muttered Hotairballoon.

"Every CBer for themselves!" suggested someone. "Since you can't trust anyone!"

The CBers and AEs grabbed their CAPTCHAs and frantically made for the exits.

"Wait!" shrieked Cinderpelt. "I don't have a flashlight!"

"You can come with me," Autumn Leaves offered. "I don't have one either, but the light will make you a target anyway."

"Where's Jayfeather?! I'm not leaving him!" Cinderpelt yelled. "Jayfeather! Where are you?!"

Jayfeather slunk out of the room. "I'll be fine!" he assured her. "I'm part cat!"

"NO!" Cinderpelt shouted, but Jayfeather had disappeared.

---------------------------------

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn...Who do you think the detective is going to be?