“Dean!”
The damn children of Jürgen Fromm turned as one and went into the vault. Hadley counted all twenty-seven of them before he charged out of the steel storage cabinet and quickly slammed the door closed. He spun the locking wheel and then reached for the first container of mercury. He quickly started spraying the entire stainless steel surface with silverish liquid.
He heard the screams of the children inside. He knew he shouldn’t have been able to because of the thickness of the steel, but he could anyway. The sounds were satisfying to him on a base level. Then he heard crying, and that froze him until the now-empty extinguisher fell from his hands. He covered his ears, but he still heard Gloria’s sobs as she felt the horror of what had happened. He could swear he heard not just her but the children as they pounded on the door, begging for freedom.
Hadley couldn’t stand it. He knew Gloria would be dead in a matter of an hour as her air ran out, but listening to her die was something he could not stand. He ran.
As he reached the main floor, kids were running to get free of the new terror to strike.
* * *
As Freekin’ Rowdy Rhoads sent five more screaming girls out into the night after picking them up from the floor, Roberta, who had sobered up quickly when the assault on Moreno had begun, grabbed him and pointed at the hill. The flames climbed high into the sky, and Freekin’ realized that a disaster of massive proportions had just struck the town. They watched flaming material start falling from the sky. Pieces of burning wood and steel struck the town.
“We have to get out of here!” Roberta yelled. She pointed to Dean, who was laid out on the remote van’s floor after being dropped there by Harvey Leach and his two friends.
“Where’s his girl? She’s blind!”
Roberta shook her head as she ducked sparks from the sky. “He keeps mumbling something about the balcony!” she shouted.
Freekin’ turned and ran for all he was worth back toward the now-flaming front of the theater.
“No! Come back!”
“There are still kids in there!” Freekin’ shouted as he ran back into the Grenada.
* * *
Moments later, the heaviest object ever to fall from the sky—with the exception of NASA space catastrophes losing their unstable orbits—crashed directly into the rounded roof of the Grenada.
The last containment vessel full of mercury slammed into the auditorium. Freekin’ Rowdy Rhoads, late and great DJ of the Chicago music scene, stood next to several boys and girls, including three very woozy young thugs named Weller, Cole, and Manachi, when the entire balcony came crashing down, killing them all.
Outside, the town was burning as sirens from the surrounding towns wailed over the screams of terror. As Roberta bravely drove the K-Rave remote van away, a large section of brick wall came down and sent the beautiful marquee crashing to the sidewalk, killing three more trick-or-treaters and their parents.
* * *
John sat straight up in bed. He was unable to draw a breath. Harvey Leach came straight out of the chair he had been sitting in. The room was still dark, and all he heard was the large Indian trying to draw a breath. Jennifer, whose eyes were adjusted better to the dark because she had never closed them, sprang to John’s side, and she tried talking him out of his dreamlike stupor. His hands were flailing, and he was slapping away her attempts to calm him. She saw his features in the semidarkness of the room, and they were a mix of terror and anger. His head rocked back and forth, and he shook uncontrollably.
“Harvey! Bob! Hold him down!” she shouted.
Both men sprang into action and tried their best to get John’s flailing arms and kicking legs under control, but he was too much for them; Harvey was sent flying into a wall and Bob was kicked in the head. Linda threw her body on top of John to hold him in place.
Julie handed Jennifer the syringe, and without hesitation, she plunged the Adrenalin hard into John’s thick forearm, but instead of waking him, it stimulated his efforts. Bob added his weight to his wife’s, and they both bounced like cowboys bucked by an angry horse. Casper tried to help, and Peckerwood added his barking for support.
“John, wake up!” Jenny screamed.
Julie backed away when she saw the intensity on his face. Even Peckerwood stopped barking and ran under the bed, where the only cover could be found.
Suddenly, all went still and John lay easily back. He blinked several times as if he had just awakened from a ten-year coma. He looked around slowly and easily. Then he found he couldn’t breathe. He saw three people lying on him, and the reasons for his breathing difficulty was apparent. He came eye to eye with Linda, who smiled as her face met his.
“Hi. Welcome back.”
“Breathe … can’t breathe,” he managed to grunt out.
Suddenly, they realized that he had close to six hundred pounds on his chest. They quickly rolled off, and then he grunted again when Jennifer tossed her own weight on him. She kissed him several times as he tried to catch his breath. He finally managed to sit up when Jenny rolled free of his body. He took several deep breaths, and the air felt heavenly.
“What happened?” Julie asked as she tried to give John a bottle of water. He slapped it away as he tried to gather his thoughts.
“Murdered … them … all,” he finally managed to say.
Bob, Linda, Harvey, and Casper moved away from the bed, but the haunted look never left Lonetree’s face.
“Who?” Jennifer asked.
“Where is Gabriel?” he asked as he swung his head to the right and to the left, trying to peer into and penetrate the darkness. Lightning gave him a brief glimpse of only Leonard standing and watching from the window, happy not to be involved with bringing John back to the land of thought instead of dream.
“I need to tell him something … I don’t remember … but it’s important.” Again, he tried desperately to sit up.
“Take it easy; your heart is going a hundred miles an hour. We had to use Adrenalin to get you back,” Jenny said as John finally managed to place his feet on the floor.
“Well, I don’t know how to say this, but I think Gabe’s about to have a lot of company,” Leonard said from the window. He was still staring out into the windswept storm. “All of them kids, the ones that look like a coked-out version of Wednesday Addams, they’re doing something down there.”
“Help me up,” John said as he struggled to stand. Everyone, including Peckerwood from beneath the bed, offered support. He felt his brain go momentarily blank and his knees gave way, but with the assistance of all, he managed to stay upright. They moved through the darkness to the large set of windows where Leonard stood rooted to the spot.
“Glad to see you made it back from Neverland, Chief,” Leonard said as he pointed down to the street. “It looks like you had some kind of effect on them.”
As they watched, Linda gasped as the children all formed in a group in the center of the street. With one last look at the second floor of Newbery’s, first one and then another of the black-eyed and soulless children started jumping. They hit in midair and re-formed, and others jumped into what now looked like a swirling mass of blackened rainwater. Each time one of the children jumped into the air, its form added to the tornado-type funnel. They did this until a solid wall of black on black formed. As the group watched from the windows, it stopped. Suddenly, what they saw made them jump back from the window. Across the way, the three agents trapped inside the phone exchange ran from their window to take cover.
The form was almost human in appearance. It stood at eye level with the second floor of Newberry’s. Harvey and Casper felt as if they were seeing a repeat of an old horror film they had never wished to see again.
“It’s happening again,” Harvey said. Instead of being frightened, he became angry as the sight of the swirling mass in human form jogged his deepest buried memories.
The darkness was discernable because of the rain striking its form, almost as if the children were a solid m
ore than a ghost when they were together. The children, in the form that made them formidable for their own protection, looked into the second-floor windows until they saw John. The large hand came up and steadied itself at the window, then lowered it, and the swirling blackness moved away. It was heading for the theater.
“Gabriel and Damian are in danger! That thing perceives them as a threat—not to them but to Gloria!” John yelled and then turned. “Help me get to the theater! I’ve got to stop them all. I have to tell Gloria what happened.”
“What are you saying?” Jennifer asked, more confused than ever.
“The children aren’t the real power here! Neither is Gloria!”
“You mean there’s something else here more powerful that what we’ve seen?”
“Yes, trapped, but still the real power. Now help me, damn it!”
Leonard, though he didn’t want to, left the window and assisted in getting John to the stairs.
“Not you, I want you to get to those agents in the search party and get me some explosives. The hostage rescue team unit ought to have breaching charges. I need them.” John quickly leaned over and said something in Leonard’s ear that only he could hear due to the tremendous shaking of thunder from outside. Leonard’s eyes widened, but he didn’t argue. John wasn’t done. “Harvey, I need you and Casper to be brave for one more night. Bob, you and Linda can help. Get to the mission if the whole damn thing hasn’t slid down the hill, and find me that original vault.”
“No need for that,” Leonard said as she reached the stairwell. “It’s that big shiny thing that came rolling down in that last mudslide from the hill. The entire mission and winery are gone. But the vault is right out there, half-buried; it came down with the entire hillside as an escort.” Leonard vanished down the stairs.
“See, things are starting to break our way,” John said with a smirk as he sent the others on their particular assignments.
“If this is things breaking our way, why am I ready to shit my pants?” Casper Worthington asked just as they too vanished down the stairwell.
“Let’s go and see if we can end this.”
What remained of the Supernaturals started down the stairs in a harried flight. They had one final mission in them, and that was to save two of their own that were about to be meat for the grinder if things didn’t work out the way John hoped.
The second death of the town of Moreno was now at hand. Halloween was almost over.
25
Gabriel had been drawn to the basement of the Grenada. The old theater was still decked out in all its antique glory. The walls looked freshly painted, the gargoyles sconces lining them looking as if a dust rag had been recently run across their scowling faces.
“It feels like an impression, like this is to make us feel more at ease,” Damian said as he followed Gabriel. He leaned over and examined the candy on display in the half-circular concession stand. He saw the old standards—the hot dogs spinning bottom to top in the hot dog machine, the buns resting in a small doorway, catching steam from the hot dogs, the Jujubes and Junior Mints, the ice cream compartments displayed at both ends of the snack bar. But the popcorn smelled delectable. He even heard and saw a fresh batch being made—without so much as an attendant present. The magnetic lettering above the snack bar told them that the large boxes of candy and cups of ice cream were twenty-five cents. Popcorn was ten cents. He shook his head in wonder at the rate of inflation in this country. That is the real horror, he thought bravely just to get his mind off where he was. Then came the sounds from the auditorium. Damian turned and looked at Gabe, who stood behind him. He cocked his head, trying to place the jingle.
Let’s all go to the lobby … let’s all go to the lobby … let’s all go to the lobby, and get ourselves a treat!
Gabe and Damian remembered the jingle from their younger years; it was the dancing soda cups and popcorn boxes showing their wares as if they were the Rockettes. As they smiled at each other, the distant music dwindled to nothing.
In the silence, they heard the door creak open. They turned and saw that the red curtain had been drawn back, and an open door was just finishing its swinging arc. The light switched on just inside the doorway.
“This is like being politely invited to join your own execution,” Damian said as he watched Gabriel head for the open doorway. He followed only because he didn’t want to be left alone inside the deserted lobby.
They went down into the basement.
* * *
The basement was clean and orderly. There was no water on the floor, and everything was upright. The smell was dank but not overpowering. As they eased past old chairs that needed to be reupholstered in the gaudy red of that golden era, boxes of cups, and folded popcorn boxes, they saw it. The vault. They knew exactly what they were looking at.
“The famous Savings and Loan bank vault, I presume?” Damian asked, not expecting an answer.
The lights flickered for the briefest of moments, and they froze, expecting the worst. But they steadied. Gabriel realized that this was it. Whatever was behind all of this wanted them to be able to see the end results of man’s meddling where it should not have been.
They froze again when they heard movement from inside the vault.
“Oh, shit,” Damian said. He never felt so helpless in his life while holding a powerful handgun. The barrel moved to the tarp-covered vault but was not in the least steady.
Gabriel felt the presence. It was right behind them. Somehow the children had come into the basement as they had been studying the vault. It stood there. It was massive. They heard the breathing of all twenty-seven children as the black mass stood by the bottom step and stared at them, unmoving except for the sparkling elements that swirled and eddied like a tornado flecked with gold. Damian and Gabriel jumped back as the black tornado moved past them, knocking them from their feet. It approached the vault, and then a giant hand reached out and pulled the tarp away. The jumbled mass of water, dust, and human life quickly stepped away with a roar of pain, and the mass started to come apart. First one, and then another, then another of the children fell free of the hurricane before them. One by one, they appeared out of the funnel cloud of motion. Each child stood and stared at them as they came back into singularity one soul at a time. The wind inside the basement picked up and then stopped as the last few children formed.
“Well, there goes your newest theory about how most hauntings are faked,” Damian said, his bladder almost letting go as he watched the children staring at the two men. The smell was starting to get to them as well as the sight of their emaciated forms. The horror of seeing the skeletal bodies of mere children was enough to drive a good person insane.
“This isn’t a haunting; this is something that has never happened before. The evil here isn’t like what we ran into inside Summer Place—this is man. This was perpetrated on these innocents. Their evil is nothing but a reflection of us.”
Damian half turned and looked at Gabriel. “Is that your professional opinion?” He snorted out of fear, not levity. “I see twenty-seven ghosts that appear very real.”
“Ghosts? No, not ghosts. They’re still with us because they are being kept here for some reason. As much as they want their freedom, they can’t leave. Something is holding them here.”
“Okay, that’s it; you can’t spend any more time with John. He’s starting to affect you in some weird ways.”
“Look,” Gabe said as the children started raising their small hands. They were pointing to something. Gabriel bravely stepped forward, and the children stepped farther back. Gabriel stepped up to the vault’s door. His brow furrowed when he saw what remained of the mercury that had been spread fifty-five years before from the fire extinguishers Robert had used to trap the entity back in 1962.
“Is that—”
“Mercury? Yes.” Gabriel reached out and took a corner of the discarded tarp, wiping the offending heavy metal from the thick steel door just above the dial mechanism combination lock th
at had been missing since Hadley had it sealed days after the disaster in Moreno. His tracks had been thoroughly covered—or so he thought. When Gabriel had wiped most of it clean, he stepped back. The children still remained toward the far wall, glancing at each other and hoping for an answer.
“They don’t know what to do. Their script in this nightmare has come to an end.” Gabriel looked back at a frightened Damian.
The former Pennsylvania detective really wasn’t concentrating on what these nightmare apparitions were confused about. All he knew was that the so-called innocents they faced had killed two of his friends and many others. The children turned their blackened eyes on the two men as if they expected help from them. Gabriel was nearly convinced that this was what they wanted all along. They wanted someone here who understood. These children had manipulated the natural order of things to end the nightmare they had been in since 1943.
Gabriel stepped to the door of the vault.
“No, she wants me,” came the voice from the darkened area of the basement.
Gabriel and Damian saw the lightly formed shape of a man. He was frail, and he stumbled as he moved. The strangest part was the fact that the area the person spoke from was a wreck; it wasn’t in pristine shape like the rest of the theater. As the form moved forward, so did the real appearance of the basement. The odor of mildew, rot, and rat droppings was prevalent. The basement itself was being brought back to a state of reality, not one of perfect preservation.
Damian jumped back when he saw the familiar shape of President Hadley step from the shadows and into the dimming light. His hospital gown and hair were filthy and covered in mud. His legs were scratched and bruised from surviving the landslide, and he was bleeding heavily from cuts that crisscrossed his body. Damian moved to assist him as the children parted for him. Gabe held the large detective in check before he could get too close.
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 42