In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II

by David L. Golemon

  “He’s having a heart attack!” the vice president called out as they all stood to assist.

  As the two agents moved to help, they came to a sudden stop when the man before them rose off the carpeted floor of the office and was flipped backward into the desk, where he landed and then rolled free. The president tried to rise, getting to his knees.

  “God!” someone shouted as more agents came into the office. The light from the reception area briefly illuminated the strange scene inside. Then those suddenly went out as well. As the first Secret Service agent reached the president and attempted to help ease him back down to the floor, he was thrown backward into the wall. The impact shattered the drywall and sent the agent sprawling. The second agent watched in shock as his partner was literally thrown across the room. The door opened, and more flashlights and agents streamed inside.

  Chief of Staff Avery had gone from a man about to be outed as the man collecting evidence for court proceedings with the assistance of the First Lady of the United States to watching a magic show inside the most powerful political office in the world. He stood in shock as more agents reached the choking president, who could not catch a breath as he tried to sit up from the floor, the agents assisting him. Three of these agents were brutally lifted from their feet just as they reached the downed man. They too were thrown against the wall by an invisible force inside the White House. Finally, a fifth agent reached the president. He started to lift the leader of the free world up by his jacket lapels, but the room suddenly shook as if they had been hit by a six-point earthquake.

  “NO!” came the echoing voice that shattered the bulletproof glass that faced Pennsylvania Avenue. The men inside ducked as if a bomb had exploded, which many would attribute the event to later. The president was again lifted into the air so drastically that they thought his back would break. President Dean Hadley was spun twice, and then the action slowed. Then his body crumpled in midair and thudded to the floor. The flashlights followed him all the way to the carpet while men, even the Secret Service agents, stood frozen inside the darkened office.

  “My God!” the vice president shouted again as even more agents and uniformed White House guards came streaming through the door.

  Then they felt the pressure wave as something seemed to get momentarily stronger. The smashing of drywall came to the ears of all present. It was a strange thing to hear, but it was like someone was intentionally punching a wall. Then they all felt that whatever it was had vanished as the pressure lessened and the air became quiet and still.

  The lights came back on to everyone’s shock. There were even a few yelps of fear as they did so.

  The First Lady rushed in with several other armed men as the devastation inside the Oval Office was seen for the first time in the bright lights. The broken windows, the smashed walls, and the president who was now being attended to by three Secret Service agents.

  “What happened?” the First Lady shouted, seeing for the first time the painted walls around the expensively furnished office.

  As the president lay on the blue carpet while men tried to revive him, everyone in the room saw what had happened. The entire wall space had been damaged. As the First Lady moved her eyes from her hated husband, they fell on Avery, who had stepped up to the closest wall and saw what it really was.

  “My God, what in the hell is going on here?” he said as the other shocked men saw what he was seeing.

  Every inch of wall space was taken up. The pictures and portraits had been smashed and now lay on the floor. The badly damaged walls were totally covered, and they could not believe what had literally smashed into them. At least six hundred words were made apparent by the large holes that had been beaten into the walls. As the president lay comatose with medical staff finally taking charge, they all read the words that ran in a circular order on the light green paint and traveled from the trim of the ceiling to the mopboards.

  Come home, and below that in six hundred words, repeated over and over again were physically annunciated through the holes that looked as if a large fist had punched them in that spelled out Boo!

  PART I

  THE SUPERNATURALS

  Well, they’ve got a new dance and it goes like this …

  —JOEY DEE AND THE STARLITERS,

  “Peppermint Twist,”

  Billboard Top 100, 1962

  1

  LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  The buzz started once more when the man in the corduroy jacket, blue shirt, and tie walked into the courtroom. The presiding judge had ordered a three-hour lunch recess for more than just dietary reasons. The man was greeted immediately by his three attorneys, but they could see from his demeanor that he had not been swayed by the judge’s earlier threats. As the bearded man with the wire-rimmed glasses took his seat at the counsel table, he locked eyes with the lead attorney across the way. His team of no less than five associates huddled around him, and they all seemed to be convinced the man they had on the hot seat was going to cave in to the court’s demands. Professor Gabriel Kennedy smiled and winked, and the lead attorney immediately lost the confident smile he had shown for most of the morning.

  “All rise,” came the order from the large bailiff.

  The judge rapped the gavel three times, and they all sat.

  “Mr. Johnson, you had your recess. Did you consult with your client?”

  “Your Honor, we still respectfully ask for at least a week of continuance before our client makes his decision, especially since that decision involves the personal lives of men and women outside of this trial.”

  The fifty-three-year-old judge pushed her glasses back up on her nose and then fixed her eyes not on the attorney but Kennedy himself.

  “Counselor, is there a chance that your client’s decision would be any different in a week’s time than the three hours he has been afforded? He was warned last week that those names would be under subpoena.”

  The young attorney, the best that the UBC network could attain within the Los Angeles and Hollywood communities, looked from the bench to Kennedy. He took a deep breath as Gabriel sat stoically.

  “Your Honor, we ask for this extended period for the reasons of convincing Professor Kennedy to think this over thoroughly. We—”

  “Counselor, does your client have an answer to the question asked of him today, not next week or next year?”

  “But if you will, Your Honor, we still—”

  “Professor Kennedy,” she interrupted, “will you comply with this court’s order to produce the members of your scientific team for the purpose of placing their testimony into the official court record?”

  Kennedy stood, buttoned the corduroy jacket, and then placed his right hand on the shoulder of his lawyer, who sat and took a deep breath.

  “My answer is still the same as it was last month, last week, and today, Your Honor. I will not produce these people who have nothing to do with the conclusions of these cases that they were only assigned to by me. I am the person responsible for all conclusions on our cases. Not them. So, no, I will not produce my team.” Kennedy nodded in deference to the judge. “With all due respect to the court,” he finished and then sat. His lawyers all closed their eyes, waiting for the wrath of the judge to descend upon them. They didn’t have to wait long.

  In the courtroom, all the members of the press started talking at once, and a few even had to get up to leave to make calls, as they had expected the same thing as Kennedy’s counsel. The man was going to go to jail. The judge pounded her gavel several times to get the gallery to settle.

  “Before we continue with this, I’ll ask for an opinion from the representatives of the aggrieved parties. Mr. Linden, do you or your clients have an opinion on Professor Kennedy’s statement regarding the producing of his employees?”

  The rotund man in the black suit who represented the most powerful producers in LA stood. His team at the table smiled, as they knew they had the ghost professor by the
short and curlies on the point.

  “Yes. The good professor’s insistence that it was he and he alone who had the final say in the investigations, all seventy-seven of them discussed in these proceedings, is a whitewash of misinformation. I intend to show beyond any doubt that his team, jokingly called the Supernaturals”—here, he snorted, and Kennedy frowned, as he hated the nickname for his investigating team—“have come to many, many differing conclusions than the good professor on the authenticity of their investigations. Many of these team members will corroborate the testimony of the production companies we represent. He must allow us to depose these team members so we can start to get to the truth—the truth that they have conspired to say that there are no such things as hauntings, even though their very claim to fame is the result of the most notorious haunting in history that had been caught on tape—the incident at Summer Place over seven years ago.”

  “Your Honor, where in the record does it say that my client and his team of investigators have said unequivocally that there are no such things as real hauntings, or ghosts for that matter?”

  The judge was about to speak when the opposing attorney stood, shooting to his feet.

  “It doesn’t have to be said in those exact words. Through seventy-seven investigations that were bought and paid for by many, many networks, this team has not found evidence of one haunting that actually took place. That means seventy-seven television broadcasts of reality programming were deemed hoaxes when there is actual proof on film that says Kennedy’s team either ignored or overlooked evidence in the summation of their cases. They had an agenda of putting every one of these ghost-hunting shows out of business, regardless of their verifiable evidence.”

  “My client’s organization was hired by these shows’ own networks in the hopes that this famous scientific investigation team would verify outright lies and the gullibility of innocent viewers. In other words, the networks and their various heads of programming that hired Professor Kennedy fully expected a whitewash job on their behalf by those who they assumed would be team players in pulling the wool over viewers’ eyes, or at the very least outright fabrications to justify their shows programming.” Kennedy’s attorney sat down and hoped he had swayed the judge as much as he could. He did not.

  “Thank you.” The judge nodded and looked at Kennedy instead of his attorneys. “Let’s go through this one name at a time so I can count up the offenses, Professor.” She raised a sheet of paper and then looked it over. “This George Cordero, are you aware of this man’s whereabouts, Professor?”

  Kennedy looked at his team of attorneys. Then with a sad nod, the lead counsel told Kennedy to answer.

  “George has always been a little flighty. He could be anywhere from Maine to Berlin. Mr. Cordero isn’t well, and my knowledge of his whereabouts has always been limited.”

  “So, you deny knowing where we can find George Cordero?” the judge asked as she checked off the first name.

  “Not a denial. I just don’t know,” Gabriel said.

  “Mr. Leonard Sickles?”

  “Leonard is the most brilliant software and practical application engineer in the country. I haven’t a clue as to what he is doing.” Kennedy smiled and looked over at the counsel for the networks. “The last time I spoke to him he mentioned going to the moon to think.”

  Again, the judge angrily banged her gavel down, silencing the crowded room of laughing reporters. Again, Kennedy’s legal team all lowered their heads.

  “So, you deny knowing where Mr. Sickles is at the current time?”

  “Most definitely.”

  She checked off another name. “I understand that a deposition has been received from a member of your team, a Ms. Kelly Delaphoy.”

  “Which was nothing but lie upon lie, Your Honor.” The counsel for the production companies stood angrily and faced Kennedy. “She was one of the main architects and field producer of the original Summer Place haunting. Of course, she would tell the lies that the good professor here would ask her to tell. After all, it made her quite famous as a producer.”

  “Ms. Delaphoy is a rather famous producer. So famous, the woman can no longer find work in her chosen field in film and television production after the revelations at Summer Place. The events in Pennsylvania not only cost her a job, it cost her the future she had fought for. She gave her deposition against my will, but Kelly told you the truth under oath. The people these gentlemen represent are thieves of not only money but of spirit and goodwill toward the home and business owners they were supposedly there to assist, and the viewers that watched them. In most cases, the producers of these so-called reality shows did what is known as ‘tricking out’ the houses and properties before shooting their footage. Hoaxes which my team exposed. We didn’t start out to do this until we saw a pattern of deceit by the varying networks and their contracted producers.”

  “You make statements when I ask you to make statements, Professor. Now where are John Lonetree and Dr. Jennifer Tilden?”

  Gabriel sat for the briefest of moments thinking about his best friend, John, a man he had gone to Harvard with and a person he would always protect. Lonetree, a former police chief of his reservation in Montana, was linked to Jenny in no uncertain terms, and Kennedy knew he would never interfere with either their personal or their professional lives ever again. Jenny Tilden, a doctor of paleontology, was also one he would never allow to sit in a court of law, explaining her unique abilities. She and John, and their special talents, had to be protected at all costs.

  “I lost track of John and Jennifer after June of last year. They are on a sabbatical to Africa, if I’m not mistaken. May I suggest putting out feelers in Kenya or Somalia, perhaps?”

  Again, that pen movement as the judge checked off two more names and ignored the small chuckles around the room.

  “Can you tell us where Ms. Julie Reilly, former field reporter for the UBC network, is?”

  “Ms. Reilly and I have not spoken since our last show airing two years ago.”

  Kennedy had just lied to the court for the first time. He knew exactly where Julie was. She was out with Jenny and John trying to find and warn Damian about what was happening in Los Angeles and the court case Gabriel was trying desperately to keep him out of. Another checkmark on the judge’s sheet of paper.

  “Now, former Pennsylvania State Police inspector Damian Jackson. Where is Mr. Jackson, Professor?”

  “He’s six foot four inches tall, and you can’t find him?” Kennedy chuckled uncomfortably. “He’s probably the only black man in the world who still wears a trench coat and fedora.”

  Again, the laughter erupted in the gallery, and again the gavel came down with an angry look from the judge.

  “Well, here’s something you also didn’t know, Professor, and after your refusals to answer today, you will be seeing him very soon. We have former inspector Jackson in police custody for refusing to answer a court summons. Counsel found him last week, and he came up with the same excuse as you have. He refused to give a deposition, and now, sir, he is in contempt of this court.”

  Kennedy felt his heart skip a beat as he realized his weeks of planning at hiding everyone had failed and now poor Damian was paying for it.

  “So, let’s see here, Professor Kennedy. We have one, two, three, four, and now five. One last time. Do you know the whereabouts of these men and women?”

  Kennedy stood, and for the first time, he allowed his anger to show as he removed his glasses. He looked at the offending team of lawyers from the combined networks first.

  “I was never happy or proud to prove these reality shows as fakes or outright hoaxes, but I was protecting the innocent families who believe in a possible afterlife, and not to let them be used by men in powerful positions. They cared for no one or anything but their bottom line. The houses and properties we investigated showed zero signs of actual paranormal activity, and we refuse to lie to make money.” He turned back to face the judge.

  “Answer this court
, Professor Kennedy, or you will be charged with contempt.”

  Kennedy smiled. “That falls far short of the contempt I have for the leeches these gentlemen represent”—he gestured to the table to his right—“and also the contempt I have for this court.” He sat down as many in the gallery laughed and then applauded.

  This time, the judge rapped the gavel so hard that Kennedy’s lawyers thought it would snap in two.

  “If that’s the way you want to play this, Professor, that’s fine by me. I hereby order the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to exercise the judgment of this court. You are to be immediately taken into custody for incarceration for contempt of my court. Thirty days in jail for each team member you have protected with your misguided thinking.” The gavel came down again. “This proceeding is in recess until such a time as the good professor starts acting like a responsible citizen.” Whack, whack, the gavel cried as the court was adjourned.

  * * *

  The jail was crowded and loud. The orange jumpsuit with the sandals made Kennedy feel guilty even though he was only in for contempt of court. The looks he received were frightening at best and murderous at worst. He waited at the large cell door for his restraints to be removed from himself and fifteen others as he held his bedsheet, pillow, and blanket closely to his chest.

  Gabriel moved down the central aisle, the number of bunk-style beds stacked three high looked as if this place could hold three hundred. It was designed for only fifty-seven inmates. He noticed that most of these sleeping areas were already occupied. He walked down the central aisle until he spied a bed with no sheets or blanket near the far back wall.

  “That’s my space, tall and lanky,” came the voice.

  Gabriel looked up through his wire-rimmed glasses and saw the largest man he had ever seen in his life. The gentleman looked like the epitome of a biker. The large arms covered in tattoos that bulged from his orange jumpsuit explained to Kennedy in no uncertain terms that, indeed, this was the man’s space.