“Idiot,” he whispered to himself. The old-fashioned key protruded a good five inches from the lock. He was happy to hear the heavy release of the lock inside. When he tried the handle again, his smile and self-rebuke faded. It still would not turn.
The large walk-in closet doors slowly swung open with a crawling, squeaky noise. Jimmy could not make himself turn around to investigate—he knew for sure that if he did, he would see something dark and scary. Instead, he started shaking the handle and pounding on the door. The thoughts of Kelly’s ass and of getting caught in the house after dark by his parents were no longer much of a concern.
Outside in the hallway and only eight feet away from the room where Jimmy was frantically calling out and pounding on the door, Kyle, the effects man, had placed the large cast iron grate back in the wall and screwed it back into place. He hopped down from the stepladder and slapped some of the dust from his clothes. He thought he heard a sound, but decided it was just the old house settling.
Almost directly across from where he was standing in the hallway, Jimmy Johansson was pounding and screaming for someone to let him out of the room. Kyle could hear none of this. He picked up his toolbox, folded the stepladder and walked away, passing inches from the room where Jimmy Johansson was learning the meaning of stark terror.
Kelly opened the van’s large door and allowed Wallace Lindemann inside, pulling the curtain back to usher him into the control area. She introduced him to Harris Dalton, who just held out his hand without turning from the bank of monitors.
“No, Goddamn it, I want Paul on the outside standing in front of the ornate doors and Greg in front of the damn staircase, then he’ll greet Paul when he comes inside the house for the first time. How fucking hard is that?”
Kelly grimaced, and then nodded at an empty seat for Lindemann. On the broadcast monitor, Greg finally stepped through the front door and then stood with his soundman. He waved, showing Dalton he indeed could follow instruction.
“Yeah, we know you’re there, numb-nuts,” Harris mumbled. “Okay, send the picture test signal out and see if New York can see these dumb-asses.”
“Test pattern is up and New York is receiving,” Kelly said. She placed a set of headphones on her head.
“Cue intro.”
Los Angeles
Peterson watched the test pattern from Pennsylvania go from the old Indian head to the Hunters of the Paranormal ghostly logo. Then their theme song began; Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper came through the speakers loud and clear while the opening credits and pictures of the hosts and their team rolled. Peterson shook his head. He had never understood why people—viewers or sponsors—would waste their time on this sort of programming.
“Well, the signal’s good and clear, at least,” his assistant said as she handed him his drink.
“Great. A good signal is what I live for.” Peterson frowned and looked at his watch.
The sun outside his office window had yet to set, and that didn’t help his suspension of disbelief in the ghost show coming from three time zones away—another problem for west coast viewers that they would have to solve for a live broadcast. Maybe they could push back the show’s normal starting time until at least dusk. “Peterson, are you watching this?” a voice said over his phone’s open speaker.
“Yes, sir, we have a crystal clear picture here,” he answered CEO Feuerstein in New York.
“Good, looks like everything’s up and running. It is a beautiful house.”
“Up, running, and beautiful,” Peterson mumbled. He sipped his drink. “Terrific.”
Summer Place
Jimmy Johansson became still. There was a presence in the room—it was behind him. His breath came in sharp, short gasps of air that he could clearly see in front of him. The temperature in the room dropped below freezing. The glass knob had frosted over.
Light peeked through the drapes from the floodlights outside. The television people were starting their test. But the light didn’t reach him—he saw it being absorbed by a swirling blackness that appeared before the window. The glow in the break between the curtains was dispersing, bending and then darkening, and something large seemed to be assembling before him. It resembled smoke being sucked out of a powerful vent. His body felt limp and he slowly slid down the door to the floor, the skin of his back making squeaking noises as his shirt hitched upward.
The black mass formed into a shape, and then just as quickly spread apart, only to reform once more. The light from the window was completely gone, but Jimmy was seeing the impossible in front of him. A tendril of inky blackness reached out and tentatively caressed his face. Everywhere that the tendril touched, frost formed, producing long streaks of ice across the boy’s cheek and jaw. The mass silently dispersed, blowing apart softly as a dandelion, and then it slammed into the floor almost as if it had become liquid. Then the darkness curled past Jimmy and slithered under the doorframe.
“Hold it, Greg, we have a malfunction on infrared number five on the second floor,” Harris said. He ordered Camera Six to take its place.
“What was that?” one of his people asked, watching the monitor at his station.
“What was what?” Harris shifted angles. “Greg, hold the intro a sec, we have—”
The color monitor showed the multicolored view from the forward-looking infrared camera, or FLIR. The screen flared bright blue and green as if the air in the hallway suddenly froze, and then it flashed quickly back to its normal hue.
A garbled, deep sound reverberated through the speakers mounted on the van’s interior walls. The crew listened, and watched the gauges on all the sound monitors peg out in the red. Kelly leaned back and smiled at Kyle, who was looking up at the speaker. Then Kyle looked Kelly’s way, and she didn’t like the expression on his face at all. He slowly shook his head and mouthed that’s not us. He held out the small device that was meant to trigger his sound effect remotely, and she could see the instrument was dark. He had not even turned it on. She slowly turned away and backed toward the bank of monitors and the angry director. The sound still droned, halfway between a moan and garbled speech.
Harris Dalton angrily pushed his right headphone into his ear. “What the hell is that? Latin?”
“New York is picking it up also,” his assistant said.
“No, not Latin…something…wait. It’s English, but it’s being spoken so deep that we can’t understand it,” the audio technician said.
“Harris, are the recorders working?” Kelly asked. She stood and brushed past Wallace Lindemann, who was sitting wide-eyed and listening to the eerie sounds coming from inside of his house.
Harris looked over at the video feed from the second floor. “I can’t tell from here. Now, what’s wrong with that camera? What kind of equipment are you people using?”
“The FLIR has returned to normal function on the second floor, normal heat signature. The flare-up was more than likely electronic,” the assistant director called out.
The infrared camera poised next to the low-light stationary camera suddenly went fuzzy around the edges.
“There it is again, the same thing as before,” Harris’ assistant said, pointing to the monitor.
It looked as if part of the viewing angle went inky black, while the rest stayed normal green.
“We have a serious degradation problem on that damn floor. Jesus Christ, turn that noise down!”
“New York wants to know what the problem is,” the assistant director called from her workstation.
“Tell New York that when I know, they’ll know.”
Kelly looked back at Kyle, who was watching with bemusement. She nodded toward the house and raised her eyebrows—a gesture that ordered him to find the problem with his equipment before the whole test was blown. He stood and leaned toward her.
“I’ll go check it out, but that’s not the recording I used. Mine is just incoherent mumbling. This crap is actually saying something,” he whispered to her. He parted the black cur
tain and left.
Kelly watched on the monitor as he bounded up the steps and into the house, carrying his toolbox and ladder. An astonished Greg quickly stepped out of his way. Then he held his hands up in the air in a what the hell is happening? gesture.
Before the audio engineer inside the van could turn the incoherent noise down, the sounds stopped just as suddenly as they had started. Harris looked from monitor to monitor but could no longer see any malfunctions at all. He shook his head just as Kyle came into the grainy picture on the second floor.
“What is he doing?” Harris asked as he ran his hand through his hair. “Paul, you’re on the main floor. Get your ass up there and pull that asshole out so we can get these kinks worked out.”
On Camera Two, which had the benefit of bright lighting, they saw Paul shake his head as he turned and ran up the staircase, his sound and camera people close behind.
“No, damn it, just Paul!” Harris yelled, but the camera and soundman bounding up the large staircase ignored him. “These people better start using some freaking common sense!” he said through clenched teeth as he watched the three men continue on their way.
Kelly closed her eyes, knowing that every single word was going out live to New York and LA. She could picture the brimming smirk on Lionel Peterson’s face.
New York
At New York corporate headquarters, Abraham Feuerstein watched the test. The other executives stared at the large screen where the fiasco in the Pocono Mountains was unfolding. However, Feuerstein was seeing something very different from the rest of them. He was watching a lot of network money being spent, for sure, but he could also smell even more money coming in. Advertisers—after a little creative editing of these test sequences—would see the potential of this special. One corporate sponsor, possibly GM or Chrysler, would pay handsomely for a show that would guarantee a forty percent share on Halloween night. Halloween was a far different day now that people didn’t particularly trust trick-or-treating any longer. They stayed home and did family things. And that was just the way this show would be pitched: a family time styled ghost story.
The CEO pulled up his coat sleeve. He had goosebumps. He didn’t even believe in this crap, but that beautiful old house scared the shit out of him for some reason. His Jewish blood remembered all the stories he had heard about the old country, and the strange things that happened there before the war brought the tales to an end—to be replaced by the real-life horrors of the Holocaust.
The door opened and Julie Reilly, the news division’s number one field reporter, walked in. She kneeled in the dark beside the CEO.
“So, has our intrepid producer produced?”
Feuerstein reached over and touched Julie’s cheek softly.
“Right now, it’s in doubt. They seem to be having trouble with the electronics, but we’ll see. You just may be off the hook if it keeps going the way it is.”
“Thank God,” she whispered. The testing droned on around them.
Feuerstein gave Julie a closer look. He wasn’t sure if she was relieved that she might not have to do the show, or relieved that she wouldn’t have to relive ruining the career of Professor Gabriel Kennedy. He suspected some of both. He also suspected that old tough Julie regretted her reports on Kennedy, even though they had bought her the fame she needed as a small time reporter back in the day.
The other executives, when they snuck glances toward their boss, saw that he was actually watching the debacle with interest. They sat quietly in the darkened screening room, watching the man who signed their paychecks.
Summer Place
As Paul reached the second floor landing, he saw that Kyle was on the stepladder looking into the large ornate iron heating vent midway down the long hallway.
“Hey, Harris is pissed. He said to get the hell off this floor. Remember, you’re not even supposed to be here.”
Kyle tuned and looked at Paul and his two-man camera and sound unit. His face didn’t look all that healthy.
“The sound isn’t coming from here, it’s—”
Suddenly all the power went out, including the battery operated sound equipment and camera. The static video camera at the entrance to the long hallway went out and the four men were cast into darkness.
“Oh, shit.” Paul inched closer to his large camera operator.
Suddenly the still camera, which was battery operated and equipped with a bright flash and attached motion sensor, started popping off bright flashes of light, creating a strobe effect. Then it stopped as suddenly as it started.
Harris Dalton lowered his head in frustration. He couldn’t believe they had lost all power.
“Do these people ever check their batteries? And please tell me the electrical for this house has been upgraded since the turn of the GODDAMN CENTURY!”
“Damn it, Harris, everything was charged before the test began. We’re not amateurs here!” Kelly said angrily. “Now, you tell me what the statistical odds are that when the power goes out, our battery backup also goes on every piece of equipment. Huh, smartass?”
Harris backed off when he realized Kelly was right.
Paul was breathing heavily. There were sounds ahead of them in the hallway.
“Kyle, I suggest you take it easy coming down that ladder,” he said. He felt the comforting shoulder of his ex-marine camera operator.
“Man, I can’t move. I swear to God there is something right on the other side of this grate. I can feel hot breath on my face and I smell roses. Jesus—”
The camera operator looked over at Paul’s dark outline. The co-host was actually grabbing his arm for some sort of comfort.
Inside the production van, they heard snatches of conversation from the recorders on the second floor—it was as if the battery packs were being shorted out by something, and they could only hear when they connected.
“We have battery power on some of our equipment coming back online. We have something—not much—but it’s definitely our people’s voices,” the sound technician said from his stool.
“Bring it up as high as you can get it, full gain!” Harris switched out his headphones for another set. “Paul, get your team closer to whoever it was that was talking just a moment ago. Or was that just you?”
There was no answer, just a mewling sort of crying.
“Paul, goddamn it, what the hell is that?” He then turned to face Kelly. “For the live feed, if there is one after this technical nightmare, I want stationary, parabolic microphones placed throughout the damn house!”
“There’s something—Kyle—on the ladder...Jesus, he says—right—front—him.”
“You’re breaking up, Paul, goddamn it! This tech was your and Kelly’s idea. Now get in there and pull his ass out. We have a power problem to fix!”
Paul closed his eyes and tried to adjust his sight to the pitch-blackness before him. He had never in his life seen such utter and total darkness. It was like looking into a bottle of India ink. Even his hearing was faulty—he could swear he could hear whispering coming from all around him.
“Look, guys, batteries are working now. I’m picking up noise on every microphone in the house. It’s like this place has just come alive.” The soundman pressed his headphones harder into his skull and held the mic-boom further into out the hallway. His faintly illuminated gauge told him he was at full gain. “This is a closed system. I shouldn’t be picking up the microphones on other floors.”
“Kyle, you still with us?” Paul asked nervously.
“Shit, man, I can’t move. This thing is right in front of me and it smells to high heaven. It’s not roses anymore, it’s a rotten smell. God, please…You guys have to pull me off of this ladder.”
“We can’t even see you,” Paul said. He hoped beyond hope that Kyle was doing some sort of act that he and Kelly had cooked up.
“Why?” Kyle asked from the darkness.
“Wake up, open your eyes. The power is out, damn it. Even our camera light is dead.”
�
�Oh, man. The goddamn lights are blazing in here. I can see you—you guys are only about five feet away. Oh, God, the screws are coming out of the damn grate—turning by themselves!”
“All right. If you’re screwing with us, that’s enough. You get—”
There was a loud crash, followed by a blood curdling scream that Paul had only heard in the movies. It was a sound he thought no man was capable of producing.
That was it—the three men turned and ran for the stairs. Paul caught his right foot on the camera strap and tripped. His voice caught in his throat as he heard the two others pounding down the staircase. They were gone, and he was alone on the floor, sprawled on the expensive Persian carpet runner.
“Damn you guys, get back up—”
He heard the footfalls behind him. Kyle’s ladder hit the floor near his head and then rebounded into the wall, knocking wallpaper and plaster into his face. Paul tried to get to his feet, but stumbled and fell. The footsteps sounded as if whatever was in the hallway with him was walking on hollow planks. They reverberated, shaking the landscape pictures on the wall. It was as if a giant was pursuing him. The pounding footfalls were beginning to sound more and more like the beat of a heart.
Shaking, he tried once more to push ahead with his feet, actually bunching up the Persian runner. He rose to his knees, ready for a sprint into the dark, when something closed around his ankle so hard that he heard the bone snap. Screaming in pain and terror, he was yanked backward so hard he found himself airborne.
On the first floor, the sound and camera operators heard Paul’s scream of pain. Then something slammed into a wall upstairs and the house shook under their feet. The two men screamed. Every light in the house suddenly switched on, even though the power to each individual floor was under the control of the electricians standing by at the breaker box outside.
The Supernaturals Page 9