The Supernaturals

by David L. Golemon

  The song finally came to an end and the audience was silent in rapt fascination. Jennifer had closed her eyes, and as the lights came up and the crowd started applauding and cheering, she slowly looked up. That was when Kennedy knew this wasn’t going to be good.

  As the applause finally started to slow and then come to a stop, Jennifer demurely stepped from the stage, this time assisted by the band members. Jennifer ignored the praise from the audience as she easily stepped between tables on her way toward Martin. She stopped just short of the table as every set of eyes in the room watched.

  “Are you related to Bobby?” Martin stuttered his question.

  “You could say that,” Jennifer said as she pulled out a chair. Lonetree stood like a hulking guardian angel over her shoulder.

  “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Bobby sold me that song. It was all above board.”

  “He was deeply in debt to some unsavory characters in 1963,” Jenny said, staring at Martin. Kennedy slowly waved Leonard and Cordero into the lounge from their position at the door. Jason and Kelly followed, still stunned. “He had a chance at getting out from under that debt by selling a surefire hit to a foreign publisher. But that publisher found that I and my friends had a bit more music smarts than he thought.”

  “This is outlandish, and you better chose your next words very, very carefully young lady.” Martin’s greasy forehead had started to break out in a sweat.

  “So he sent those unsavory men to my apartment one night, and when I refused to sign, they broke all of my fingers.” Jenny leaned forward as far as the table would allow, making Martin’s company lean backward, away from the woman’s venomous looks.

  “This is outrageous!” Martin stood, knocking the table forward and spilling several of the drinks. “She’s talking like she was there!”

  “Then I signed the papers, selling my song to Martin, just wanting the pain to stop.” Jenny’s voice lowered as if she were ashamed of caving into to torture. “They took me into my bathroom and then shot me in the head.”

  Jenny slowly turned and looked at Gabriel, then turned back and looked at Lonetree. Her eyes were watery and she looked lost.

  The people who were closest to the table looked from the small woman to the shocked burly man. He slowly sat down in his seat and couldn’t look at his company. It was if everyone in the room believed what Jenny was saying. Gabriel leaned over and whispered something into Jenny’s ear. She looked at him and shook her head.

  “All I ever wanted to do was write music. The money, although necessary, was never important to me. I didn’t deserve what happened.”

  With that, Jennifer slowly slumped down in her chair. Gabriel and Lonetree went to her and helped her to her feet. Gabe knew that Bobby Lee had gone. Jennifer had one last thing to say before she let go. The strange thing was, Kennedy suspected that Bobby Lee McKinnon had left Jenny long before the last words were spoken. It was if he trusted Jennifer to say what he was feeling, and left her to say it her own way. They lifted Jenny and started out of the room.

  “I’m going to sue you. This is slander and it’s…it’s—”

  “I think it’s best that you leave well enough alone,” Julie said, leaning over Martin’s table. “You know who I am. Would you like me and my staff of twenty tenacious researchers digging into what was said here tonight?” She dug into her purse and threw a hundred dollar bill onto the table. “The next round is on Bobby Lee McKinnon.”

  The four men watched the strange entourage leave the lounge. Martin swallowed, trying desperately to get the lump out of his throat, and then looked at the three businessmen around him. They had accusatory, or at the very least speculative, looks on their faces. For the first time in his long career, Stephan Martin was afraid to look into a suddenly changed and damaged future.

  As the rest of the group made their way back into the meeting room, Kennedy and Julie Reilly had to smooth things over with the Waldorf management staff. It seemed Mr. Stephan Martin was a major spender and the Waldorf wasn’t very pleased about embarrassing the man. It was touch and go until Julie Reilly started pushing UBC’s weight around. Needless to say, the Waldorf saw fit to allow a onetime indiscretion by the group who was being fronted by the UBC television network.

  Jennifer and Lonetree were huddled into a corner, as far away as they could get from the items that had been taken from Summer Place. Gabe had to smile when he saw that Jenny was actually looking at John with her own soft expression, finally letting the moment in the lounge slip to another area of her mind. Kennedy stepped up as the other team members settled into their chairs around the table. Julie placed her tape recorder on the table, but did not turn it on. She just watched Kennedy, Lonetree and Jennifer talk in low tones.

  “How are you feeling?” Gabriel asked.

  Jennifer looked as if she wanted to smile, but instead yawned.

  “Excuse me,” she placed a thin hand in front of her mouth. “It seems the past eight years are catching up with me.”

  “How’s Bobby Lee doing?” he asked.

  “He’s not here. Or at least he’s not making himself felt.”

  “Was it enough for him to confront that jerk?” Lonetree asked.

  Jennifer looked from Kennedy to John’s concerned face. She shook her head in the negative and then looked off into the room as if she were trying to get in touch with her thoughts. “I feel like he’s confused after what happened. When I was asleep upstairs, I suddenly awoke as if someone had walked into a dream I was having. It was Martin, only he was far younger than the fat pig he is today. Bad complexion...I guess for the time you would have called it a beatnik look. It was like he was sitting right on the edge of my bed.”

  “Did you know who he was?”

  “No, but Bobby did. It was like he felt it when Martin walked into the hotel. The next thing I knew I was out of bed, into my clothes and out the door. Only….”

  “Only what?” Gabriel asked. Jennifer had that faraway look in her eyes again.

  “I was wanting to go with him,” she said. “It was no longer Bobby Lee making me do something against my will, it was if I felt his hatred, his utter despair for the first time, at what happened to him.” She looked at the green evening dress she was wearing. “You have to admit, Bobby Lee had very good taste in clothes.” Jennifer had a pinched look on her face as she glanced over at the two women sitting at the table. Julie and Kelly were watching with mild curiosity. “I think I owe them a lot of money for this thing. Bobby Lee charged the dress to the room.”

  “Oh, I think they can cover the cost,” Kennedy said smiling and looking back at the two women. “Now, the question is, where’s Bobby Lee?”

  “He’s not here, Gabe.”

  Kennedy was torn between being happy for Jennifer and feeling he may have lost an advantage in facing Summer Place. He smiled at Jenny and patted her hand. “I’m happy he’s gone,” he said. He straightened and moved to the front of the conference table, then turned and faced Lonetree and Jennifer once again. “You’re going to assist John from here on out. That is, if you still want to be a part of this thing. I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to go straight to hell and not collect two hundred dollars on my way.”

  Jenny looked from Kennedy to Lonetree, and nodded. “If he needs help, I’ll stay.”

  “Okay. Come take a seat around the table and I’ll tell everyone the starting lineup.”

  “I think everyone had a wakeup call, as far as things that go bump on the night. Jenny handled things as well as she could, and she will be assisting John in his Dream Walking. May I suggest you sleep tonight, and begin when Jenny has had some rest?”

  John Lonetree nodded.

  “The rest of us won’t be here for the next two days. It’s the final research push before we strike out for the mountains. We have to divide up into teams to accomplish everything we need to cover, and still we won’t have enough time. This process will continue through the live broadcast from Summer Place when we co
rrelate our findings. We may need what we come up with now, during the night.”

  “How many teams will we have in the field?” Kelly asked, writing in her ever-present notepad.

  “Four teams. Mr. Sanborn and Leonard, you’ll work on everything we need as far as electronics go. Leonard is going to be requesting some rather bizarre materials, and I expect you to ram through corporate to get them.”

  Jason Sanborn placed his pipe in his mouth and nodded. Leonard just sat at the table staring at Jennifer as if she were going to jump across and bite his head off.

  “You with us, Leonard?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah Doc, you got it.”

  “George, you and Ms. Delaphoy will be going to five different cemeteries and their corresponding halls of records, in New York, Pennsylvania and Maine. You’ll be digging for autopsy reports, certificates of death and anything else you can dig up—pun intended—on the children of the Lindemanns.”

  “You think this has something to do with the haunting?” Kelly asked. She was frowning, apparently displeased to be teamed with George Cordero.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence, Ms. Delaphoy,” Gabriel said. “You’ll dig, George here will analyze in his own special way. I want impressions; I want you to feel what happened to these kids and young adults. This has a bearing on what’s going on at Summer Place. Does that answer your question?”

  Kelly didn’t answer, she just wrote down her instructions.

  “Good. I have the names and places, you can start tonight with the furthest burial site, in Maine.”

  George looked at Kelly and grimaced.

  “Now, Ms. Reilly,” he said the name as if he had bitten into a bad piece of fruit, “will be visiting a few museums in New York and Philadelphia.”

  “Museums?” Julie asked as she adjusted her tape recorder.

  “Yes. The Lindemann building in the garment district has been turned into a museum of turn-of-the-century clothing manufacture.”

  “And you expect to find something there that will help?” Julie asked, looking straight at Kennedy.

  “The main office of Lindemann Sewing Machine is located there and is not a part of the tour. They also have employee records—that is what we are interested in.”

  “And Philadelphia?” she asked.

  “The Lindemann historical society,” Gabriel answered as he made his way around the table. “Family history, artifacts, and the diaries of F.E. Lindemann and his wife Elena are located there.”

  “Thrilling,” Julie said as she reached out and snapped off the tape recorder.

  “Watch out what you ask for, Ms. Reilly. The Lindemann historical society has been closed for the past twenty years, due to, let’s say, disturbances in the building.”

  “Disturbances?” Jason Sanborn asked as he pulled his pipe from his mouth.

  “It seems they can’t keep a staff there because they scare off too fast.”

  “Wonderful. Not one, but two haunted locations,” Julie stood and started putting on her coat.

  “Yes, it seems Summer Place has a long reach, as we discovered this afternoon in your offices.”

  Julie looked at Gabriel and then without preamble, walked from the meeting room. Kelly scrambled to gather her things and also left the room, in a hurry to catch her ride.

  “Good luck working with her. Talk about wrapped too tight,” Leonard said.

  “I think we all may be wrapped too tightly, young man,” Jason said, “because I have the distinct feeling that is exactly what our good professor here is banking on.”

  thirteen

  Bright Waters, Pennsylvania

  Bright Waters, along the Bright River, had rolled up its sidewalks at eight o’clock that night, as it had on every other night for the past two hundred years, so it was no wonder that there were so few witnesses to the strange events that took place as the hour hand struck twelve. It was a lone man in room number 17 of the Bright Waters “Come As You Are” motel that heard the arrival of Summer Place into the town.

  As Detective Damian Jackson lay in bed, he studied the case file he had opened on Gabriel Kennedy seven years ago. His eyes were locked on the photo taken of Kennedy back in his USC days, before that night here in Pennsylvania. His beard was gone now, and the eyes without his glasses on looked far more...how would he put it? Dark. Yes, he thought. They were darker now.

  Jackson closed the file folder and placed his large hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. It had been six hours since he had requested background checks on the people Kennedy had assembled for his foray into that damnable house. Thus far his superiors hadn’t asked the dreaded questions about why he wanted these people checked out and the far more worrisome question as to why he would want them checked out while he was on vacation. Jackson had been specifically warned about not pursuing anything having to do with Professor Gabriel Kennedy on his personal time. The State of Pennsylvania wanted to keep distance from the goings on in Bright River. They were trying to live it down, while Jackson was busy tearing away at the old wound in his effort to reopen it.

  As he lowered his eyes away from the bland ceiling of the room that had been his for the past two weeks, Jackson reached out to turn off the bedside lamp. As he reached the old pull chain, he felt his bed vibrate. He stopped and wondered how many of the motel’s old pipes ran right under his bed, and if one of those pipes were about to give way. He shook his head at the thought of drowning thirty-six miles away from any appreciable body of water, and again reached for the light. Another tremor shook his bed. This time it was powerful enough to make him throw back his covers and stand up. The bed was indeed moving. As he placed a hand on the mattress, the movement stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  He watched the bed closely and was about to place his hand on the mattress again when the loud blaring of a car horn made him jump almost out of his pajamas. Jackson cursed himself for being so skittish. He looked out into the dark night but all he saw was the single stop light at the intersection. It was blinking yellow—its normal green to red operation ended at nine o’clock every night. His eyes moved from the light to the diner across the street. The road and sidewalks were empty and for some reason Jackson felt exposed as he stood in the window.

  “Goddamn ghost town,” he mumbled. He was just getting ready to let the curtain fall back when a flash of lightning streaked across the sky, followed closely by a loud clap of thunder. Looking back at the bed, he shook his head. That was the vibration he had felt—the far-off sound of thunder. A storm had not been forecasted for the area. He had heard the weather reports all night long on the cable access channel on TV. “Goddamn good detective.” Out of curiosity, he turned back to the darkened street outside.

  Rain had started to fall. With its coming, something settled into the small berg that happened to be the nearest settled town to Summer Place. It was like knowing you’re about to have company for no other reason than you just knew. Jackson shook his head. He had been reading the report on Kennedy too long, and it was starting to creep him out. That was all. As he let the curtain go, he saw movement across the street just in front of the old diner. He grabbed the curtain and pulled it back once again. A man was standing right in front of the twin glass doors. He was haggard, that Jackson could see, but the rest of the man was darkened by shadow and distance. Damian narrowed his eyes. When the traffic light flashed yellow, he saw something at the man’s feet. His heart froze in his sizable chest for a moment; the man was standing over a downed body. His heart pounded loudly. He knew the man was looking right in his direction.

  Jackson let the curtain go and started dressing. He threw on his pants over his pajama bottoms and slipped into his shoes. He slipped his trench coat on and then his hat. He found his holstered gun on the nightstand. Pulling his door open, he was met with a cold blast of wind-driven rain. He hesitated. The man was still there, still looking right at him. Jackson pushed off from the door and leapt into the arms of the gathering storm. He splashed his way to t
he parking area directly in front of his room. In the flashing of the lone traffic light he saw that the man had raised his arm and was beckoning Damian forward. With gun in hand, Jackson crossed the street.

  Damian raised the gun but was careful not to aim it. He stopped fifteen feet from the man’s back-lit form and shielded his eyes as the rain blasted past his fedora.

  “Who are you?” Jackson shouted. He glanced momentarily from the standing man to the body at his feet.

  The man said nothing. Jackson could see scraggly long hair silhouetted against the light, but not the man’s face. He raised the gun a little more.

  “What are you—?” Jackson started to shout, but the man stepped forward, moving easily over the person lying under the diner’s awning.

  “An offering,” the man.

  “Your name, give me your name!” Damian shouted against another roll of thunder.

  “We are an offering, that’s all I know. I’m hungry, we’re both hungry.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll take care of that, but I have to know who you are first,” Jackson shouted, becoming nervous as the man kept walking toward him.

  “It was dark, and we didn’t know. It won’t allow what is to happen, to happen. Its home…don’t defile its home. It won’t allow that. We are meant as a warning.”

  “All right, you have to stop right there.” Damian cocked the nine millimeter and aimed. “Who are you?”

  The dark, bedraggled figure slowly turned and went back underneath the awning, where he stood like a sentinel over the prone figure at his feet.

  “I have to go now, but you are left this as a reminder not to return to my soil.”

  Damian Jackson saw the figure stoop low to the ground and then swipe at the figure lying on the sidewalk. The gesture was quick and the detective had very little time to react. As the dark figure raised his hand once again, Jackson saw the gleam of a knife in the flashing yellow from the traffic signal. At the same moment, lightning streaked across the sky and thunder ripped apart the rain-laden darkness. Jackson fired his weapon. The bullet caught the man in the right shoulder and spun him around. He flopped against the front doors of the closed diner.