In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II

by David L. Golemon

  “So, you don’t believe the theory cast about by the authorities that this is an outside attack by a foreign power or source?” Damian asked for Gabriel, who was busy sizing up the woman almost as hated publicly as the president himself.

  “Not at all. Why do this when he was on the way out anyway? As you know, he was going to be impeached eventually but had decided to resign before that. What would a foreign government hope to achieve?”

  “A test, perhaps. Maybe they just tested this offensive strike before hitting a real target,” the FBI agent infused into the conversation with one of the opinions forwarded by CIA and his own office, “like the sitting president or someone in intelligence.”

  “That theory is nothing but horseshit.” Leonard continued to slash away at three out of the six keyboards in front of him.

  “Excuse me, young man,” the agent said. “I think we have a handle on this. Now it may not stand up to your higher scrutiny of how things work in the hood, but that’s what most intelligence people think. This has to be outside influence.”

  John and Gabriel exchanged amused looks as Sickles stopped typing and turned to face the career FBI agent.

  “The hood, huh?” Leonard said with a grin. “Let me explain something, my red-tape-bound friend. In the midsixties, a small group known as the Wheeler Team, a unit contracted by the CIA in July 1967, conducted unauthorized human testing on American military personnel in Germany—out of the way of nosy people, I guess. During those tests, they tried to project thought through space and time. They used drugs, hypnosis, and other nefarious ways to get substantially high ratings on telepathic ways and means. Never mind that the experiments cost no fewer than five soldiers their lives. For what? Nothing. Don’t sit there and tell me something is viable when there is not one shred of evidence to support your theory outside of some whack-job doctors from the Middle Ages. No, this is not the work of some dark enemy in Moscow or Beijing. This is something that we’ve never come across before. Now say it with me … ‘We just don’t know.’ It’s not hard. ‘We just don’t know.’”

  “And you seem to know a lot about classified data,” the agent said, growing angry that he had been shown up.

  “It’s because all of us black folks in the hood are that way. We sit and sharpen our knives in our hangouts, and after we clean our AK-47s after our latest drive-by, we discuss all the new and unusual ways the enemy forces of the world can screw us up by gaining access to our minds. That’s a high priority in the hood.”

  Gabriel smiled. “Okay, you made your point, Boy Wonder. Now get back to it.”

  “As distasteful as it is, I agree with this … gentleman,” Catherine said, glancing toward Leonard. “I don’t buy what the intel agencies suggest. It’s psychosis, pure and simple.”

  “And he kills people in his sleep? That’s taking Gabriel’s theory to the extreme, don’t you think?”

  Catherine Hadley turned to face the smaller woman who had spoken. She smiled when she saw who it was. “Ah, the woman who was possessed. You tell me, Ms.…?”

  “Tilden, Professor Tilden,” Jennifer said as she returned the smile even though the First Lady didn’t mean it as a welcoming or friendly gesture in the slightest.

  “As I was saying, Professor, the brain is a powerful thing; you of all people should know that. It can produce any number of physical and mental capabilities, and these are your own theories. So the faster you can declare the president mentally unstable, the sooner we can get him some real help.”

  Jenny was about to respond to the slight when she caught the look from Gabriel. She closed her mouth as John moved to her side.

  “As I said, a one-million-dollar bonus to each of your team when you come to the obvious declaration of incompetence.”

  “And if our conclusions differ from the conclusion you have arrived at?” George asked, worrying about the wording of the offer.

  Catherine smiled and then left the library.

  “Leonard?” Gabriel turned for the double sliding doors.

  “I’m on it,” he said, never even looking up from the computer screens, which were all operating now.

  “On what?” Julie Reilly and Kelly Delaphoy asked at the same moment.

  “On just why our illustrious former First Lady wants her husband declared insane and thus incompetent to run his affairs. Just what does she have to gain besides the obvious divorce?”

  “Motivation?” Damian asked as Gabriel pulled the doors open.

  “Money, of course,” Kennedy said as the others came toward the door. “Now shall we go see the president?”

  * * *

  Kennedy and the others went up the stairs, passing no fewer than twenty security men in their black Nomex fatigues and carrying M4 assault rifles. Julie held Kelly’s hand as they stepped from one riser to the other.

  The hallway was even more crowded than the stairs or even down in the kitchen. These men were a combination of very lethal-looking FBI hostage rescue team members, ten combat-ready marines, and no fewer than fifteen Secret Service agents. None of these groups looked like they wanted to be there. They saw Special Agent Lipscomb standing by the door of a bedroom. He was waiting for them.

  “How many people are inside?” Gabriel asked as the other seven gathered around them.

  “Two nurses, one doctor, and six security.”

  “With the exception of the security detail, we need to see the president in private.”

  Lipscomb nodded and then entered his security code into the doorway locking mechanism. The door opened, and Julie and Kelly smelled a familiar odor; it was like the subbasement of Summer Place. It was as if death were waiting for them right inside the brightly illuminated room. With a look at the others, Kennedy stepped inside.

  The doctor and the nurses protested, but they eventually left with the promise that the door would remain unlocked for them to get back inside quickly if they were needed. Lipscomb then left the room, closing the door behind him. The six-man security team eyed the newcomers but kept their distance from the overly large bed and its occupant.

  The president lay in bed with the blankets pulled up to his shoulders. His right arm was free of the covers and hooked up to an IV, which Jennifer went to and she eyed the two plastic bags full of doctor-ordered intravenous drip. She looked up at Gabriel.

  “Saline to keep his veins open and a nutrient to keep him fed. No medicines or painkillers.” She turned from the stand that held the IV bottles and faced the group. She reached for the chart at the foot of the bed and read. “Vitals are erratic at best. Yesterday he received an opiate for pain. How they came to the conclusion he was in pain is beyond me,” she mumbled. “His temperature fluctuates in leaps and bounds. I’ll have to compare these stats with video and see if these spikes in temperature coincide with the attacks. The damn doctors aren’t noting the obvious here.” Jenny went to John, and he handed her the black bag. She removed a stethoscope and went to the side of the bed and looked down on the former president.

  John and the others joined her as she took Hadley’s vitals. The man looked well beyond his seventy-two years. His brows were untrimmed, and that alone made him look insane. His pajama top was wet with perspiration.

  “His temperature is up some from the last reading taken fifteen minutes ago,” Jenny said as she released Hadley’s wrist and then gently laid it aside. Gabriel saw something on the bedsheet and then pulled the covers back. He nodded at Jenny for her to continue her examination. She slowly unbuttoned the blue pajama top. When she finished, she took a deep breath and then raised the white T-shirt underneath.

  Jenny slowly peeled away the gauze and the tape covering the recently received wounds. They all saw the healing scabs and stitches from the assault two weeks before. They saw the ugliness and how deep the cuts must have been. It looked as if he had been carved on. Even the security men in the room looked away from the sight.

  “‘Trick or Treat,’” Damian said aloud. “Is it just me or is anyone else getting a
little tired of these Halloween surprises?”

  “Brutal,” Julie said as she stepped closer to get a few pictures.

  Jenny lowered the T-shirt and then buttoned Hadley’s pajama top. She took a deep breath as she quickly examined the other injuries sustained by the assaults.

  “You know, nothing we have seen goes against the First Lady’s ideas on the brain,” John said as he watched Jenny work.

  “In my line of work, there has never been a case of this kind of aggression against a host,” Kelly said as she finally broke away from the group and approached the bed to look at Hadley. Kennedy smiled when he saw her paralysis concerning her supposed betrayal was now gone, or at least closeted for the time being. “Outside of our own experience at Summer Place, there is not one documented case of physical harm coming from a haunting. The First Lady may be right in her assumptions that it’s him doing this, not anything supernatural.”

  “George, do you want to take a crack and see if he’s feeling anything?” Gabriel asked a staring Cordero, who didn’t look too enthused about getting too close to Hadley.

  George swallowed and nodded reluctantly. Jenny and the others made room as Cordero stepped to the bed, closed his eyes, and took the exposed wrist of the president. His eyes remained closed as he concentrated. He never, ever tried to see into someone’s thoughts while they were asleep. When he had tried it in the past, he came away with a confused and jumbled look at a person’s warped view of their lives through their dreams, and he didn’t care for the secrets that most had; even if they were unconscious and unfettered thoughts, they still disturbed him to no end. He had learned that the base human thoughts when not controlled by wakefulness are those of violence and death.

  He grimaced as a vision popped into his head. It was Jennifer. George tilted his head as if he were trying to understand something. He flinched and then released Hadley’s wrist as he stepped back. He looked at Jenny.

  “What is it?” John asked when he saw the worried face of Cordero.

  “Hadley just named everyone in the room. It was like he was reading attendance for a class. After each name, he would say, ‘Present.’ He didn’t mention Leonard, but he did mention someone else.”

  “Bobby Lee McKinnon,” John said, not as a question but as a fact. Jenny looked from George to John.

  “You knew?” she asked as the others looked on very surprised at the announcement.

  “You talk in your sleep.” Lonetree took Jenny’s shoulder and squeezed. “I figure Bobby Lee came home to roost about two years ago, and he’s once again gaining strength. Reapplying the hold he had on you.”

  They all knew that the ghost of the old rock-and-roll legend had been a part of Jennifer’s soul for years. He had vanished when confronted by the evil inside Summer Place, and they thought Jenny’s curse was finished for good. But it was now obvious that the ghost that attached itself to her during a routine investigation many years before had indeed returned. Bobby Lee McKinnon, while not evil, had almost cost Jenny her life through the use of her life force.

  Kelly let out a yelp of surprise when President Hadley sat straight up in bed. He reached out and grabbed the hand of George Cordero and then with tremendous pressure squeezed it. George looked as if he had been hit by an electrical charge, hard enough that John reached out to steady him, but Kennedy stopped him.

  “Let him communicate,” Gabe said as he released John’s hand.

  “Sing it for me, sing it for … her.”

  They watched as the words spilled from the mouth of the clairvoyant. They were those of a much younger George, but they were clear and extremely intelligible. Cordero opened his eyes and looked straight at Jennifer.

  “From the valley to the sea, from the Inland Empire to the streets of Tinseltown, here’s Bobby Lee McKinnon and the Spotlights.”

  Before they could react, Jenny was pushed against the wall, where she crashed into one of the security men who reached out to help her, but again Kennedy stopped the man from assisting. “Leave her!” he said too loudly.

  Somewhere … beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands …

  They heard the male voice as it broke free from Jenny’s mouth. In the corner, Julie Reilly went to her phone and started tapping out commands, as she too recognized the voice of Bobby Lee McKinnon and also the song. The voice died away, and the look on Jennifer’s face was one of pain and shock as she just as suddenly snapped out of her trancelike state and slid down the wall. John rushed toward her and pushed the security man out of his way and assisted Jenny to her feet. She cried and leaned hard into Lonetree. Hadley slowly smiled and lay back onto the bed.

  “Bobby Lee McKinnon will be live! Be there or be square!”

  They watched as a peaceful look came into the president’s face as he finally released George’s hand from the viselike grip. Hadley’s remote mouthpiece stumbled back and was caught by Gabriel.

  The room came alive with motion as John moved Jenny away from the wall and George Cordero slumped into a nearby chair with the help of Kennedy. Gabriel then went immediately to check on Jenny and then stood and raced toward Julie. She held the phone out to him. She hit the right button, and the song started playing so all could hear it. The abbreviated verse stopped, and then Julie looked at Kennedy and then the others as she read from her phone.

  “‘Beyond the Sea,’ recorded in 1959 by Bobby Darin.” She hesitated as she looked from Gabriel to a frightened Jennifer. “Cowritten and scored by Bobby Lee McKinnon in New York. Bobby Lee wrote that song for Bobby Darin in the latter half of 1958.”

  “Oh, God, he is back,” Jenny said as she buried her face into Lonetree’s chest.

  “And Bobby Lee’s been invited to God knows what along with the rest of us.”

  All eyes once more went to Kennedy, but he wasn’t done with his summation just yet as he walked over and looked down on President Hadley.

  “I think we can rule out the Russians.”

  7

  MORENO, CALIFORNIA

  As dawn broke over the Inland Empire, there was more activity in Moreno, except for the bizarre traffic deaths the night before, than there had been since the first part of November 1962. Bob and Linda, with very little sleep under their belts from the night before, stood at what they now referred to as the haunted window at the front of the radio station / record store. They each had a large mug of coffee as they watched the activity outside. Every few seconds one or the other of them would allow their eyes to drift toward the broken neon sign in the window. Thus far, there had not been a flicker, and they were both silently happy for that. They saw Harvey Leach step through the glass doors of Newberry’s. He still wore a bathrobe and pajama bottoms as he too sipped his coffee and watched the few remaining residents of Moreno leave for good.

  The last four families, two of them with husbands and fathers that drove long-distance big rigs, had been up most of the night packing so they could get out in front of the traffic the next morning. The last of these families left as the sun crested the ruins of the Grenada Theater.

  “This couldn’t have been spurred on by the accident last night,” Linda said as she finally turned away from the sad sight of the last of their friends and neighbors leaving them. “Do you think they have heard and seen the things that we have the past few weeks?” she asked as she refilled her coffee and started for the back rooms where she would get dressed.

  With a deep breath, Bob turned from the window and faced his retreating wife’s ample behind. “I wouldn’t bet against it. Too much strange crap for just us and Harvey to have seen it. Half the families lived only a block or two from the church.”

  “Oh, you mean the church that was burned down and hasn’t had a bell to ring in four decades, but it rings anyway for the past week—that church?” she said as she slammed the door to their modest bedroom.

  “Yeah, that one,” he mumbled to himself as he tasted the coffee, made a face, and then placed the mug on the counter as the first
real rays of light burst through the glass. He watched Harvey across the street shake his head and then sadly turn for the doors of Newberry’s. The last of his regular customers were skipping town.

  It seemed Moreno was dying for the second time. This one was a slower coup de grâce compared to the sudden death in 1962.

  * * *

  Deep in the darkness of the basement of the Grenada, the filthy standing water began vibrating. The rats had long fled the basement for the upper reaches of their once richly appointed accommodations. The expended energy from the night before had sapped the power of the morning’s awakening. It was learning fast what it needed to know from the nocturnal visits in the east. Now its strength was ebbing at low tide. It found new and entertaining information in that its enemy was gathering resources to help combat that which went unseen. This was a development that the entity had not foreseen. It was still weak and depended on the active vault inside the old winery for power.

  Soon, together, both trapped entities would be powerful enough to break free of their confinement for good. The voice from the basement whispered its desire.

  * * *

  One mile away and up the hill unofficially known as Drunk Monk’s Road, in the old winery ruins next to the Santa Maria Delarosa mission, the whispering of many could be heard in answer to the call from the theater not far away. There were no rats running in fear here, for they had abandoned the ruins more than fifty years before.

  The ten-ton vault lurched in its floor mountings as the crescendo of voices spoke at once as the whispering from far below inside the town continued. The entity heard the young voice and heard her desires.