“What is that?”
Jackson removed his hat and looked up. Written on the far wall, in what had to have been his own blood, were Kyle Pritchard’s last words.
“I await,” Jackson read aloud.
“What the hell does that mean?” the constable asked. Jackson turned and left the cell area.
Jackson put his hat back on and stepped outside into the clean morning air, distancing himself from the foul smell inside. Pritchard’s body had voided itself of unneeded material, and the smell hung in his nostrils. The constable followed behind him.
“Jesus Christ,” Jackson mumbled to himself.
“Why did he write something like that?” the constable asked. Damian squinted up into the bright sunshine. He knew it could not restore the good mood he had been in before.
“It’s just the ramblings of an insane man,” the detective answered. He turned back to the constable. “Take pictures, and then get that doctor you use as a coroner over here. Tell him you have more work for him. I want him pronounced dead so we can get the two bodies to Philadelphia for a proper autopsy as soon as possible.”
As the constable turned away, he saw several townspeople emerge from the diner. They watched him with suspicion as he tried to keep down the bile that threatened his throat. He swallowed and crossed the street. When he thought he was far enough away, he turned back . The townies still watching him. An old man in worn overalls stepped forward into the middle of the dead street.
“Why don’t you get yourself to that house and get it over with?”
Jackson straightened and looked the man in the eye.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You outsiders have stirred something up that was meant to be left alone. Now you go and stop what it is those TV folks are up to. No good can come from it.”
The old man turned and joined his mates on the sidewalk. They all turned back into the diner without a backward glance at Jackson.
“Whole goddamn town is nuts,” he said as he moved off toward the motel’s office.
All the same, Damian Jackson of the Pennsylvania State Police was about to do just what the old man had suggested.
His next stop was Summer Place, where he and Gabriel Kennedy would settle things once and for all.
One way or another, this thing was going to end.
Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania
Almost halfway back to New York, Gabriel and Julie had gotten the call telling them that the schedule for taking possession of Summer Place had been moved up two days. Instead of heading all the way back, they had found the nearest motel. Leonard was still at the network working on his equipment and would be the last to arrive later that night; everyone else was in the caravan of network cars following the production vans into Pennsylvania. John had passed along news of George Cordero’s change of heart, and Gabriel had no qualms about letting George go. He had been more high-strung than Gabriel had remembered from seven years before.
Gabriel had tossed and turned for hours, finally dozing off around seven in the morning. It was now close to ten and although he was bone weary, he forced himself to shower, shave, and try and greet the day with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, even though the network was sorely testing his ability to greet anything in a good way. Summer Place wouldn’t react well to a hundred people hanging out on its property for two solid days.
Gabriel opened the door and shielded his eyes from the glaring sun. In the doorway, he removed his corduroy jacket and threw it over his shoulder. Slipping his sunglasses on, he stepped out into the beautiful Pennsylvania day.
“Good morning.”
Julie Reilly was sitting on one of those ancient lawn chairs that were painted green and white, the kind with a back in the shape of a fan. She was sitting with her ever-present notebook open in her lap and pen poised over a clean page.
“Why don’t you use a laptop like everyone else in the world?”
“I carry enough crap in this thing,” she patted her abnormally large bag, “without being weighted down by six more pounds of cyberspace.”
Gabriel adjusted his glasses and nodded. “Uh huh.”
“Breakfast?” she asked, placing her notes back in the giant bag.
Kennedy looked around at the motel’s small parking lot. “Yeah, coffee at least.”
Julie gestured toward the motel’s coffee shop next door.
“I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of a shocker for you this morning,” she said as they started walking.
“And what could be shocking on this lovely day?” he asked.
“Lionel Peterson called. Kyle Pritchard killed himself this morning in the Bright Waters jail.”
Kennedy stopped walking and closed his eyes behind the dark glasses. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Could you have done something about it?”
Gabriel took a deep breath and started walking once more. “I suppose not. Did your boss say how he killed himself?”
“No. He received a call from a very pissed off Damian Jackson. That’s all I know.”
“So, I take it he’s not accusing me of murdering the poor bastard?”
Julie smiled but didn’t comment. She walked beside Gabriel in silence.
“Let’s get the coffee to go; I want to get to Summer Place before the Marines do.” He opened the café door for Julie. “I’ll start the car.”
Julie ordered two cups of coffee to go. By the time she made it back to the door, Gabriel had the car waiting. Julie climbed in and before she could fasten her seatbelt or place the coffee in the cup holders between the seats, the car was in motion.
“Hey, take it easy. I was here last night too, you know. I had nothing to do with it.”
Kennedy glanced over at her. He had been taking Pritchard’s death out on the only person available, and he knew he was wrong for doing it.
“Thanks.” He slowed the car while Julie fastened her belt. Then he relaxed and accepted the Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“I didn’t know how you took it, but considering how clinical you are, I thought dark and bland would suit you.”
For the first time since they had met seven years before, Kennedy actually smiled in her presence.
“Clinical, huh?” He sipped his black coffee.
“Or something like that,” she said, returning the smile.
“Well, I guess I have been kind of dark and bland for a while now. But hanging out with you could only make that worse.”
“So I guess we won’t be getting engaged anytime soon?”
This time they both laughed. For the time being, the day was as beautiful to Gabriel as it would have been for anyone else. The rainstorm of the night before had cleansed everything away, and even Summer Place didn’t seem to matter for now.
It was the calm before the storm.
Gabriel had pulled over an hour into their trip back into the Poconos, giving Julie the wheel. He dozed fitfully in the passenger seat, and every once in a while he would mumble in his sleep. Julie would slow the car down to try and catch what the professor was saying. She heard the name Warren over and over, but could make nothing else out. Warren, she knew, was the name of Kennedy’s student who had disappeared seven years ago. Unlike Kyle Pritchard and Paul Lowell, he had never turned up in Bright Waters, or anywhere else for that matter.
They were just outside of Bright River, near enough to Summer Place that Julie was starting to feel an apprehension she hadn’t felt before. It was what she imagined traveling through Indian country used to feel like for the settlers crossing the plains—a warning of hidden dangers ahead of you. Kennedy mumbled once more, this time mentioning the summer retreat by name, and Julie turned her head. Her eyes only left the road for a moment, but when she turned back she nearly ran over a large carcass in the road. She hit the brakes and swerved. The tires caught and she avoided the dead animal by mere inches, but that was just the start of the gauntlet. There were three more dead deer strewn across the roadway, along with severa
l other smaller animals. She struck one of the smaller deer and then swerved off the side of the road, finally bringing the car to a stop.
As she sat staring wide-eyed out the windshield, she felt Gabriel move beside her.
“Now, that was exciting. Did you manage not to hit something?” he asked sarcastically as he rubbed his eyes. Julie was breathing heavily, still gripping the steering wheel tightly. Kennedy turned in his seat and saw the dead animals lying in the road. There were even more carcasses off to the sides of the road. He counted seventeen. “I take that back, no one has aim that good.” He opened his door and stepped out into the bright early afternoon.
“Fuck,” Julie said under her breath. Her heart was finally starting to slow back to its normal pace. When she thought she could manage, she peeled her hand away from the steering wheel and opened the door. She swallowed, and then stepped out. Gabriel kneeled beside one of the many deer.
Thinking quickly, Julie reached into the car and grabbed her small camera. She started videotaping what had to have been the most bizarre scene she had ever seen.
“Were they hit by other cars?” she asked, slowly walking to join Kennedy on the right side of the road.
“Not a mark on it.” He turned and moved a foot away, to a small squirrel. “This one either. No blood, no damage to the outer skin. It’s like they just dropped dead. They’ve been dead eight to twelve hours, would be my guess.”
“But why wouldn’t they die in the woods? Why cross into the road like that?” Julie taped Kennedy as he checked the animals. She focused in on the dark eyes of one of the dead deer, and felt cold chills along her spine.
Kennedy raised his head and looked around. A soft autumn breeze had come to life and was rustling the pine trees lining the road. He looked back the way they had come and saw the steep incline they had just traveled.
“Have you noticed where we are, Ms. Reilly?”
Julie panned the camera around. She could only focus on the animals. The corpses extended far back into the shadows of the trees. She shook her head.
“Look at this, over here.” Kennedy crossed over to the opposite side of the road. Julie followed and looked around, but didn’t see whatever it was that he was trying to show her. “Look down at the grass,” he finally said.
There were tire marks in the grass. She looked from them to the tires on the car, then it hit her; this was the exact spot where their car had stalled the night before, when the dense fog bank had closed in on them.
“Are you saying these animals may have been dying around us when we were stuck here?” she asked, lowering her camera.
“The time of death is about right. Hell, maybe they continued dying after we left. When we get to Summer Place, I’ll have the police check this out. They may want to bring the fish and game people in on it. This is just too much death for one spot in the road, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at her with a creepy little grin.
Julie gave him a go to hell look and then moved away from the spot where their car had sat the night before.
“You know, for an award winning investigative reporter, you seem to be closed minded about the obvious. Do you think all of these animals walked out of the wood and then had heart attacks?”
“I admit that it’s creepy, but a few dead animals are all we have here, Professor. I’m not going to go running off like a frightened schoolgirl when the boy in her class hands her a frog.”
“Even if the frog is dead, and the boy has twenty to thirty more just lying around? I think whatever is in that house was angry that it didn’t get us last night, so it took it out on the local wildlife.”
“I get your point. Do you feel up to driving? I don’t think I’m ready yet. Besides, I want to get this footage off to the network through my cell phone.”
“For some reason, I don’t think we’ll be running into any more dead animals past this spot.” He moved toward the car. “Also, if you notice, we have cell phone service now when we didn’t last night in the exact same spot.”
She looked at the dead animals one last time, and then followed Kennedy.
New York City
The morning show co-hosts for UBC’s highly rated wake-up show were only minutes from their eleven AM sign-off when the CEO of the network and its parent company showed up in the wings. Everyone on the set became nervous when they saw the old man in his legendary bowtie, sipping a cup of coffee complete with china cup and saucer. He was speaking with the morning show’s producer and talent coordinator, and the two co-hosts looked on nervously during an extended commercial break. Then they watched as a videotape was handed over to the producer and a gaffer ran a new script over with only thirty seconds to spare.
“Bob says to run the script and then hand it over to the morning news desk.”
“But what about our last guest?” the male host asked.
“He’s been cut. Do it. The CEO brought down this segment himself.”
Both hosts looked over at Abe Feuerstein, who raised his china cup toward them and smiled. They nervously returned the smile. Off stage, they could see the bad news being delivered to the New York Times bestselling author, who wasn’t happy about being bumped from the show.
“Okay people, we’re back in 3, 2,” the producer held his fingers up and stopped counting at two. On one, he pointed to the male host.
“We’re back, and we’ve had a change in the program. We’re delighted to bring you a tag-along segment coordinated through our primetime ratings juggernaut Hunters of the Paranormal. As you know, tomorrow night here at UBC, an historical event is taking place at eight PM Eastern Time. The Halloween special, scheduled for a record-breaking eight hours of coverage, is one of our network’s proudest achievements in programming. For more details on an ever-changing situation, we go to our news desk and Connie Towers. Connie?”
The producer cut off to camera four and the news desk. The desk was in the foreground, but viewers could still see the two co-hosts in the background. Then the camera switched over to number five—a head-on view of the dark-haired news lady.
“Thank you, Richard. As you know the special holiday presentation of Hunters of the Paranormal has been the topic of conversation, from this famous building to other programming rooms across the city. The special, which airs tomorrow night at eight, is the talk of the town and is expected to capture not only the top Wednesday night ratings crowd, but bring in record rates for its lucky advertisers. And now we actually have our first video coming in, not only of the house where the special will be taking place, but of the roads leading up to the famous summer retreat. The video was taken this morning by UBC reporter Julie Reilly, who is on assignment all this week at Summer Place. She will be hosting the live broadcast tomorrow night, and on her way to the assignment she came across a rather bizarre incident not far from the retreat, which many suspect to be haunted.”
On the television monitors around the studio, the view of the news desk vanished and the pictures Julie had recorded not more than an hour before unfolded for the viewers of the nation’s most watched morning program. In the wings the CEO smiled and sipped his coffee. As Julie’s small camera panned the roadway, it caught the first dead animal, then she expertly pulled back and took in the entire roadway. Everyone was shocked. The strewn animal carcasses made for a view that would upset a lot of viewers. UBC had brazenly placed this segment on the air without warning, because that was exactly what the CEO wanted: gossip, talk, outrage and interest about the show. He smiled. The segment concluded and faded to black.
“The video you saw was filmed by correspondent Julie Reilly, who was gracious enough to phone in her report. We have her live on her cell phone, reporting from the Pocono Mountains. Julie, this is Connie Towers in the studio. We understand you’ve had an exciting start to your day already, and Halloween isn’t until tomorrow night.”
“That’s right, Connie. The unexplained deaths of over two hundred animals occurred not less than a mere few hours after myself and the former professor
of paranormal studies from the University of Southern California, Gabriel Kennedy, passed through the area late last night. To see this much death surrounding the road is unlikely to be a natural occurrence. It has led this reporter to speculate that it indeed has something to do with report about the house known as Summer Place. Thanks to our producers, we were able to research the area and have found that the land surrounding this stretch of road is part of the Summer Place property. It is possible that water contamination or a rare outbreak of animal disease has struck these forest animals.”
“Julie, were these animals possibly struck and killed by automobiles after you and Professor Kennedy left the area late last night?”
“The possibility is there, Connie, but only if they ran the Indianapolis 500 here at four in the morning. Professor Kennedy has confirmed that there is no visible bodily damage to these creatures, and therefore the cause of death remains a mystery. Until I report live from Summer Place for the Evening News, this is Julie Reilly, sending it back to the news desk.”
Connie Towers looked over at her producer. He was running his hand in a circle, telling her to continue. He held up ten fingers: she had ten seconds to comment on the report.
“Thank you Julie, that is sure some creepy stuff. I can’t wait to watch the special. Now, back to Robert and Lynn. Guys?”
“I agree with you, Connie, that is something I wouldn’t be happy to be covering,” said the female host. “Julie Reilly will be reporting live on tomorrow’s show from Summer Place, as we all prepare for this monumental special.”
Abraham Feuerstein smiled and handed his cup and saucer off to an assistant. He nodded at the cast of the morning show and then moved away, happy he had decided to make Julie file her audio report by phone.. He didn’t think about the events themselves; even after what had happened last night in his own limo, all the CEO saw were dollar signs scrolling across the teleprompter in his mind. He felt wise and beyond reproach for pushing the special.
As he waited outside of studio 1-B, Abe smiled wider than before.
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