“This is his show now,” he said, making Damian flinch about the prospect of watching another man torn to pieces in front of them.
Hadley stepped up to the vault and stood still. The children all gathered at his back. The former president stood on shaky legs and lovingly reached out and felt the cold steel of the door. He fell to his knees and started crying.
“I failed her,” Dean said as he kept his hand on the door. He stood with renewed strength and pulled on the lone handle of the vault until his strength gave out.
Hadley was suddenly thrown backward by an unseen force. The door bent outward as the occupant had decided that it was now time to make its move. The children came forward and added their power to the force inside. Damian and Gabriel heard the popping of heavy-duty bolts as the door loosened in its strong frame. It came free and was tossed aside, barely missing Dean’s prone form. The children stepped aside and looked at Gabriel and Damian as if expecting something from them.
Gabe went to the vault, and Damian assisted Hadley to his feet. The man was sobbing uncontrollably.
“She has the right to my soul. I failed her,” he said as Damian tried to get him under control. He nervously stood inside the gaggle of long-dead children holding the sick man up by sheer willpower. The large detective would rather have just dropped the man and gotten the hell out, but like Gabriel, he knew they had been brought to this point by the very entity that started everything.
Gabriel eased inside, taking a cautious step over the damaged threshold of the frame. His eyes quickly adjusted to the semidarkness of the vault’s interior. His shoulders slumped when he saw the mass in the far corner of the vault. He felt a lump in his throat as he recognized a body in a fetal position. He had to grab the frame of the door for support as John’s greatest fear had been realized; Gabriel knew he was looking at Gloria Perry. He had to step out of the vault when the smell of decades-old death hit his nostrils. The body was thin and almost deflated. The old letterman’s jacket collapsed, as if all the air had been let out of a balloon. Then, before he realized it, someone was standing next to him. He smelled clean air. He also smelled perfume. He slowly turned, and his eyes went from the small body inside to Gloria Perry. She stood without her dark glasses, and she was whole. She tilted her head and placed her right hand to her eyes. Then she moved it toward Gabriel. Her hand caressed his face as she examined him. Her fingers ran from feature to feature. It was if she were seeing a face for the first time ever. She smiled. It was a sad thing to see, and Gabriel’s heart reached out for the murdered girl. Then the expression changed as she turned and faced the children. She stepped away from Gabriel, who felt weak in his knees, realizing that Gloria had drained some of the strength from him while touching his face.
“Alley, you have been very bad.” She stepped closer. “This shouldn’t have involved anyone other than the person who left me to his father.” She looked over at Damian, who was holding Hadley upright. Gabriel saw the look in the old man’s face. It wasn’t terror, but it was something he had seen before—it was longing. The man actually did love this girl, far more than even John hinted at. “It’s now time to settle, Dean.” She moved forward, and Damian felt his bladder let go as her face dripped and foundered on her bones. The hair came free in clumps, and her eyes fell back into her skull. Her right hand reached up for Hadley, who closed his eyes and waited for the thing that had controlled his life for over fifty-five years.
“Gloria,” Dean whispered in a haunting voice as the rotting corpse came on. He closed his eyes as the skeletal fingers reached for him.
Gabriel and Damian felt the satisfaction of the children as they anticipated the justice of what was about to happen.
“Gloria!” came the shout from the bottom of the stairs.
Gabriel turned and saw John Lonetree being held up by Jennifer and Julie. He was staring at the apparition of the girl he had seen Dean become enamored with.
The deteriorating mass turned and looked at Lonetree. They all felt a change in the room as Gloria, or what had once been the girl, faced John. Lonetree saw the familiar turn and tilt of the girl’s head as she tried to figure something out. Then her form started to come back to her young self again. She recognized Lonetree from her past. Before anyone knew it, Gloria was her old self again as she looked from person to person.
The children, however, looked agitated. They began to move as one toward the former president and Damian.
“Gloria, it wasn’t Dean. Robert did this to you. The boy was stopped from returning by his own father. He did this to you, not Dean. He had nothing to do with his father’s plan.”
Gloria made no move. She stood there and looked at John for the longest time. She didn’t even flinch when Lonetree tossed something that landed at her feet with a small tinkle of breaking glass.
“Dean’s father knocked those from your face when he hit you that night,” John said as everyone in the room saw the dark glasses at her feet. Gloria leaned over and picked them up. “I was there and saw it all. He can’t hide behind the lies anymore, Gloria. You know I was there; you saw me,” John said, almost begging the entity to remember.
Her eyes, the most beautiful blue any of them had ever seen, looked up from the dark glasses to face Lonetree.
“I watched you two fall in love. I saw how you felt about each other. You know that Dean never let you down. He’s been paying for your death for his entire life. He has made his existence one of hatred and malice. He didn’t deserve this any more than you did.” John left Julie and Jennifer and stepped forward. He felt the hatred from the children as they advanced slowly on the newcomers. “Release them, Gloria. Get them to stop.”
The girl looked at John, and then her eyes settled on the old man. Dean stood with the help of Damian, and then he gently pushed Damian away and stood on his own. He watched as Gloria advanced on him. He bravely faced his own death, a death he had wished for since 1962.
The Supernaturals all jumped when Gloria suddenly and inexplicably jumped into the old man’s arms. They watched as fifty-five years of desperate hate dissolved into what it always was—pure love. Hadley began crying as he raised his frail arms and took Gloria into them and they embraced. She was on her tiptoes and crying also.
“Uh, someone isn’t too damn thrilled with this lovely reunion,” Damian said as the children advanced.
They could all feel the rage emanating from the twenty-seven souls murdered long ago. They were feeling betrayed by Gloria; Gabriel knew this as a fact. They had been her guiding influence since the day she had befriended them.
The time had come for their revenge against all.
* * *
Leonard started pointing as if he were crazed. Bob, Linda, Casper, and Harvey started digging into the pile of mud. Over fifty of the FBI and hostage rescue team that had been searching for the president earlier moved to assist. The fear that the people from town showed made them move all the much faster. Leonard only hoped John’s theory was correct.
As lightning flashed and rain pummeled them, the vault was slowly uncovered. Men and women worked to free a large portion of the vault. Leonard let out a sigh of relief when he saw they had uncovered the correct end of the vault.
The rubble of both the old mission and the winery had been carried by the massive mudslide to the back door of K-Rave Radio. As the men and women fought to clear a spot, Leonard waved over the hostage rescue team explosives specialist and pointed down.
“Right there!” he yelled above the din of the storm. He watched as the man in black Nomex placed his breaching charges against the thick steel. “Will that be enough?” he shouted at the man as the FBI moved Bob, Linda, Casper, and Harvey away from the vault.
“No, the charges were never made to break through steel. These breaching charges are for doors and walls.” He unwrapped a detonation cord and attached it to the six charges of explosives. He then attached a timer and looked up at Leonard. “I’ve placed them in what I hope is a soft spot. I think these
were viewing ports of some kind. That should be the weakest spot. Now if I were you, I would get the hell back!”
Leonard watched the hostage rescue team explosives expert jump from the exposed corner of the vault. He quickly followed.
Overhead, the storm raged.
* * *
The children once again formed into the giant, swirling mass of hate and revenge. The giant moved toward Gloria and Dean, who stood the ground defiantly. The huge hands reached for the couple.
“God, anytime, Leonard!” John said as the others looked at him in confusion, helpless to stop the entity from tearing Hadley to pieces. They saw Gloria defiantly hold him as his death loomed above them.
* * *
The explosives detonated with a sound that drowned out the raging thunder. The hole was ripped into what Dr. Jürgen Fromm had once described as the viewing ports on section A. The vault then erupted in motion. The stored energy of seventy-five years was released into the storm-driven night. The cloud of fury exited the vault, knocking everyone within a hundred yards off their feet. The cloud of black, swirling hatred rose into the rain-filled sky and then shot off toward downtown Moreno.
“I think that thing’s going to finish the job here in Moreno,” Casper said as he watched the night over their heads explode into massive bolts of chain lightning.
“God, I hope this works,” Leonard said as he turned and started running for town. The entire force of FBI and Secret Service quickly followed.
* * *
The mass of dead children formed into one and picked Dean up, tearing him away from Gloria in the ultimate betrayal. She reached out and screamed as Dean was once more snatched from her.
The basement erupted in bright light. The entity holding Dean stopped its assault as the room filled with swirling blackness that slowly became lighter and lighter. Then everyone saw it. There were dozens of people. They were dressed as the children had been. They were clearly older than them. The group stood surrounding not only the Supernaturals but also the black and swirling entity. Dean was released and fell to the hardened floor with a thud. The apparition that was Gloria ran to him and covered his still body.
Once more, the children dissolved into individual forms. They circled the adults that were in a state of misuse by the men who had tortured them to death many years before inside the borders of Yugoslavia. The children stood facing the parents they had been forced to watch die in the most awful experimentation ever conducted by the Nazis. The Supernaturals watched as the children ran to them. The room brightened just as Leonard came down the stairs, amazed at what he saw.
“That was the real power. Fromm never realized that the fuel that made this particular flame burn was not the children but the parents. Imagine the horror of knowing your children were going to die. That was the real power of the mind, not Fromm’s experiment. It was the human ability to project the entire mind toward the things you hate or love. This was just like our entity at Summer Place. Like in Pennsylvania, this haunting was brought on by the mind and the fear of losing those you love the most in the world. The parents of the children had hate so powerful that even though their vault was sealed, they still managed to project that power.”
Gabriel looked back at an exhausted John Lonetree. “I think you can have my job now.”
“No, thank you.”
Jennifer and Julie gasped when Gloria stood from her spot next to Dean. Her small frame was intact. She looked whole and young. She was crying, not tears of hate as she had done when Hadley Sr. had murdered her but a smile of long-sought contentment. She nodded and faced all of them.
“Thank you.”
Gloria, with one last look at Dean, vanished.
The feeling of joy was felt by all of them as one by one the apparitions of the dead children and their murdered parents faded away to nothing. The lights flickered but remained steady as Jennifer and John checked on Hadley. Lonetree looked up at Gabriel and shook his head. Dean had died during the confrontation, but the look on his now soft features relayed to them in no uncertain terms that he too was now content.
Then the haunting ended. The lights in the basement went out, and it was Damian who broke first. He realized that when the lights went out, he had about the last nerve shocked from his system. The last they heard, he was pounding up the stairs without a word.
* * *
The group came out of the ruins of the Grenada Theater. They looked up at the clearing morning sky. The town was now useless to anyone. Mudslides now covered most of the old tract homes that used to house its citizens. Earth now covered most of the buildings on Main Street on the north side of town. Moreno was fading fast into California history.
“Wait,” John said as the team stood just inside the debris field of the shattered marquee and box office. Lonetree dug through a pile of concrete and wood. The team watched him with interest. He finally stood, and with a smile, he tossed Gabriel a black book. It flapped in the stiff wind as Gabriel caught it.
“The journal.” He looked up at Lonetree. “They hid it in the box office?”
“Yes, it seems that the old theater had everything to do with that night.”
The Supernaturals stepped aside when the FBI and the Secret Service removed the covered body of Dean Hadley. They remained silent as the rescuers moved the former president’s body to a waiting helicopter to be evacuated.
“What are we going to do with the journal?” Lonetree asked Gabriel.
“No one needs to know what happened to those innocent people. I have a friend in Nevada—at least I think he’s still there. He is an archivist, from what I understand; he works closely with the National Archives. He’ll know what to do with it.”
“Who is this?” Lonetree asked.
“Oh, just a man I met many years ago. Name’s Compton—Niles Compton. From my understanding, they’re pretty good at unraveling the truth of things.”
“Well, I hope this mysterious friend of yours has a strong stomach,” Damian said as he kicked at the loose debris at his feet.
With that, the Supernaturals were finished inside the ghost town known as Moreno, California.
EPILOGUE
GLORIA AND DEAN
Blue moon … you saw me standing alone … without a dream in my heart … without a love of my own …
—The Marcels, “Blue Moon,”
Billboard #22, 1959
Gabriel Kennedy, Julie Reilly, Jennifer Tilden, Leonard Sickles, Damian Jackson, and John Lonetree were greeted as their limousine pulled into the makeshift parking area atop the hill that once housed the oldest Spanish mission and winery in California. The land was now barren. The hills were still there, but that was all.
Bob and Linda Culbertson, Harvey Leach, and Casper and Peckerwood Worthington shook hands with all of them as they faced the empty valley that once sheltered the small town of Moreno. The land was now scraped bare of all trace of human habitation. The off-ramp that led travelers to Moreno had been closed, refusing access to the area. The old ruins of the Hadley Corp factory had been erased from existence, and that hillside was also freshly plowed under. New grass was starting to sprout where life once flourished.
The group was silent as they looked at the spot where Moreno once stood. They remained so even when the black stretch limousine approached and parked at about the spot where Newberry’s once stood. Gabriel looked over at Harvey Leach, who had a sad look on his face. Gabe knew he had been despondent when the federal and state authorities had arrived in Moreno the month before and handed him a court order to evacuate the town. He was informed that the entire area was now under a strict quarantine for mercury contamination. It was now something that was far beyond Hadley Corporation’s ability to cover up. The EPA was now in charge.
“Shall we go down and see our benefactor?” Gabe asked Harvey.
Swiping a tear from his old eyes, Harvey nodded, and the entire entourage walked down to greet the guests to the resting place of a once-happy town.
* * *
>
They approached the stretch limo and waited. The driver stepped out and opened the door. Three men in expensive black suits stepped out. They were followed by the familiar form of Catherine Hadley.
“Okay, I’m here,” she said as if she were the Queen of England. Gabe shook his head as he stepped forward. “I take it the settlement offered by my company wasn’t sufficient for any of you. I gather you are assembled to take me to account?”
“Not at all, Madam First Lady.” Gabriel gestured to Bob and Linda and then Harvey and finally to Peckerwood and Casper Worthington. They stepped forward and handed Gabriel several envelopes, which he handed to Catherine, who refused to accept them. One of her attorneys took them instead.
“What are these?” she asked as she saw the look of confusion on the faces of her legal representation.
“That is the generous offer you made to my team and these kind people. We cannot settle at this time.”
“Settle what?” she asked with indignant arrogance. “This was compensation for property lost and an unsettled contract payment for the Culbertsons. I know your personal compensation was more than just satisfactory, Professor Kennedy.”
Gabriel and the others watched the black SUV come from the direction of the old off-ramp to the interstate. Kennedy turned back to face the elegant former First Lady of the United States.
“Very satisfactory. However, our legal counsel, of which these kind people are now a part, have advised us to not accept the payments as offered. It may come to light that if we did accept said payments, we could be indicted on charges of conspiracy.”
“What are you talking about?” the new widow asked with her smile deteriorating faster than her demeanor.
The black SUV pulled up, and two men in United States Marshals’ windbreakers greeted the group. After showing their identification, they turned to Catherine. The taller of the two men started talking.
“Ma’am, you have our sympathies for the passing of your husband. However, our office has been ordered to serve you and your legal representation with this summons.”
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 43