“Well, I thought it worth a try, John,” Gabriel said. He turned back toward the barn and stables.
As the small group walked, they saw Kelly Delaphoy and Harris Dalton coming their way. Kelly didn’t look all that happy, and neither did Harris, but that could have been because he couldn’t stand being around Kelly.
“Julie,” Kelly said, “I thought I gave instructions that Professor Kennedy and his team were not to go anywhere on this property without at least one camera crew accompanying.”
Julie raised the small digital camera from her large bag and held it so Kelly could see it.
“Oh. Well, did you come across anything?”
“Nothing but a bunch of trees,” Julie said.
“Well, at least I have some good news. Wallace Lindemann said he owes us one for allowing in the priest and ghost hunters, so he’s letting us start setting up the equipment.”
“That’s good,” Jason said as he pulled his pipe from his mouth.
“But?” Gabriel asked as he half turned toward Kelly.
“But, we can’t have anyone in the house past midnight; he said he doesn’t want any accidents without independent witnesses.”
“A cautionary, but sane request,” Sanborn said.
“Bullshit. It’s a conman trying to keep his play hidden for as long as he can,” Julie quipped.
Kennedy had to smile. Julie was far more observant than he gave her credit for.
“You do realize the person that let Father Dolan loose in Summer Place was your boss, Lionel Peterson, don’t you?” Gabriel asked Kelly.
The question brought her to a stop.
“I would need proof of that,” she said. “I mean, why would he sabotage himself?”
“After becoming acquainted with you, Kelly,” Julie said, “I think the Professor has a valid point. He would do anything to see you fail. Men like Peterson always squeeze their way out of trouble, but he figures no matter what, if the show fails, you’re gone for sure.”
Again, Julie’s assessment was right on. Gabriel decided that she might not be so bad a partner.
As they strolled through the late afternoon, Lonetree was surprised to see that Gabriel’s attitude and demeanor had changed over from night to day. It was as if he had come home to a welcoming reunion with a long lost family member. It wasn’t only in the way he looked, but the way he carried himself, as if the horror of seven years ago never happened. It was as if he hadn’t recounted to him and the others the nightmare of Kyle Pritchard’s death in a town not an hour and a half away, or the dead animals he and Julie saw on the road in a spot that coincided with an area they had broken-down the night before.
John waited for Gabe to catch up with he and Jenny, and then intentionally slowed his pace until they were shoulder to shoulder. He would not only see how Gabe reacted, but he also wanted to gauge the others as well.
“Since we’ve been on property, Gabe, have you felt it?”
Gabriel looked up at his old friend with a curious look on his face. The others heard the question and listened in, which was exactly what John wanted. He would judge each, especially Kelly Delaphoy, by their reactions to his upcoming statement.
Gabriel didn’t answer right off. He stopped and tilted his head, as if trying to detect something he might have missed.
“You know what I mean,” John said. “Without actually going inside the house. It’s changed, hasn’t it?”
Gabriel turned and looked up at the massive summer home, watching as a light breeze blew the curtains in the third floor windows. Eunice must have been by and opened the windows to air the house out for the big night, he thought.
“It’s not oppressive to you, is it?” John persisted.
“What do you mean?” Kelly asked.
“I mean, for at least the moment, Summer Place is just a bunch of wood and stone,” John answered as he turned to face Kelly. “Does that worry you at all, Ms. Delaphoy?”
“Why do you say that,” Julie Reilly asked, eyeing the concerned look on Kelly’s face.
“Whatever was in there,” he faced Gabriel once more, “and I do believe your story, is gone.”
“Goddamn it!” Kelly said loudly. “I knew that son of a bitch was here to fuck this show up!”
Gabriel wanted to laugh at Kelly’s terror. The others saw his reaction to John’s statement and probably wondered why he would take John’s feeling so lightly.
“You’re right, whatever is in the house, or walking these grounds, isn’t active right now.” He faced Kelly. “And if it doesn’t choose to display its abilities tomorrow night, that’s just what your show is going to report. Is that clear, Ms. Delaphoy? If you try to fake something and we catch it, we’ll humiliate you. If there is one person in the world who can smoke out a rat, it’s my friend Leonard. Don’t try it.”
Kelly closed her eyes and mentally made herself not react to Kennedy’s statement. Instead she turned on her heel and went up the small incline to the large production tent.
“Jesus, I think you just scared her more than Summer Place ever could,” Jennifer said as she watched Kelly leave.
Gabriel smiled. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a drink. Miss ace reporter, may I assume your people brought the makings of a martini?”
“Oh, I think we can dig something up. If not we’ll break into the ballroom and steal some of Lindemann’s private stock.”
On the way up the hill, Gabriel looked over at the tree line and wondered if anyone had seen what he had. When he locked eyes with Julie Reilly, who was trying hard not to show Gabriel’s hole card, he knew she had seen them also.
Fifteen feet inside the tree line, beneath one of the large and ancient pine trees, Gabriel had counted over twenty dead birds and three dead squirrels.
Summer Place was very much alive, he thought. Alive and waiting for its time.
George Cordero sat in the backseat of the cab as it slowly made its way along the Van Wyck Expressway in bumper to bumper traffic. The turnoff for JFK airport was nowhere in sight. The cab driver looked in his rearview mirror and saw that the dark eyed man hadn’t moved since he had been picked up in front of the Waldorf Astoria an hour before.
The driver reached over and switched on his radio.
“This is the top of the hour news from KWBW, John Stannic reporting. All is going well for one of the strangest television events to be launched in many years over at the UBC television network, as their highly anticipated Hunters of the Paranormal Halloween special is set to go off with wide spread fanfare tomorrow night from the Pocono Mountains. While the outlook is bright for record-setting numbers of viewers to tune into the extended programming, many stockholders are furious over the cost of the program itself. They say that Abraham Feuerstein, CEO of the parent company, has overstepped his bounds in the expensive endeavor. Meanwhile, here in New York, many residents are anticipating a glorious night for all Trick or Treaters and partygoers. Expect some of the nicest evening weather of the year, mild and almost balmy all the way from Washington, D.C. to the Maine border…”
George listened to the news report, thinking about the friend he had left high and dry. He knew he had let Gabriel down. Now he only had John Lonetree as a visionist, and he would only be good if he was asleep. That could be very dangerous, potentially leaving Lonetree vulnerable at the worst possible moment.
“Running away, George?”
Cordero’s eyes widened. His father was sitting next to him, eating a Nathan’s hotdog and looking straight out through the screen separating the driver from his backseat passengers. His father looked over at him and took a bite of the hotdog, and George watched as the food went through his mouth and into a throat that wasn’t really there. In the time since his father had been buried in New Jersey, his features had more than just deteriorated; they had rotted away to the point where the only thing holding him together was the suit he was wearing. George fixated on the piece of hotdog and bun that rolled from his throat to rest on the seat be
tween them.
“You wouldn’t know a thing about it, outside of the coward part of the equation, you bastard.”
The cab driver looked up and into his rearview mirror.
“You’re so fucking high and mighty, you’re leaving your friends and running away when they need you the most,” his father said. He looked over the hotdog and tossed it on the floor. That was the move George had been waiting for—it confirmed that it wasn’t his father he was seeing, but a manifestation of himself. When he was a kid his father took him to Coney Island on several occasions and they always stopped for hotdogs at Nathan’s. George always refused to eat his, no matter how many times his father thrust the dog into his face. He just never could stomach hotdogs. Now he knew the ghost wasn’t his father at all, but his conscience coming out in the shape and rotting features of his murderous dad.
“All that time your mother was dying of cancer, you never once saw the pain. Oh, you heard it, you saw the tears, but you never in your life would have thought about ending it for her. You waited until I did it.” His father turned and faced him, his cheekbones sticking through blackened and moldy skin. One eye was completely gone and the other had the lid hanging over it. The black hair was how he remembered it, but everything else was a rotten meat sack. “Ah, you knew what I was planning. You can’t be that close to another person and not feel the hate, the desire to kill. She was holding us back from making a fortune with your ability.” His father laughed. “You knew, and did nothing, because deep down inside you were a coward, George. You always were. You wanted to be free of her as much as I, oh for different reasons to be sure, but free nonetheless. So you allowed me to do the dirty work and then acted shocked when you touched me that day. You scum, you hypocrite.”
George tried to look away from his father out the window, but the reflection told him his father was still there. He closed his eyes hard and then opened them. His rotting dad was still watching him.
“Maybe it’s better that you stay out of that house, George. You know why?”
George didn’t move or utter a word. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Because that house is just like me—it despises people like you, George. Everyone who enters that house tomorrow night is on the list to have their ticket punched, just like you punched mine. You could never know what’s waiting for you, and you can never imagine the power of what walks there. You see death for one, but you blocked out far more than you told your friends, didn’t you? That thing is going to protect itself and its secrets, and now you’re running away so it won’t eat you too. How typical.”
“Would you shut the fuck up!” George screamed. The driver slammed on his brakes, startled, and nearly swerved into the back of another car.
“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” the driver asked, looking in the mirror at the wild-eyed man in the back.
“How fast can you get off this speedway?” George asked, staring at the empty seat beside him.
“What? We’re here for an hour more at least,” the driver said, shaking his head.
George pulled a wad of cash out of his wallet. He shoved three one hundred dollar bills through the glass opening.
“That’s for getting us out of here now.” He added three more hundreds. “And that’s for getting me to Pennsylvania, and there’s another three when you get me to the Poconos. Deal?”
The driver collected the six hundred dollars met George’s eyes in the mirror. “Double. Six hundred when we get there.”
George decided what the hell. He pulled out some more money out and pushed it through.
“In advance. Now go!” His eyes seemed to go back to normal, as did his spirit.
“Can I ask why you have to get there in such an expensive hurry, my friend?”
“Yeah, you can ask. But first, get moving . There’s a storm coming.”
The driver pulled his cab into the breakdown lane and started for the exit more than a half mile ahead. He looked up and saw that there wasn’t a cloud in the late evening sky.
“I’ll get you there, my friend, but I believe you to be wrong about a storm.”
George laughed to himself, then lay back against the seat and closed his eyes.
“I’ve never been more right about anything in my life, fella. A storm is coming and it’s going to be a killer.”
Three trucks wound their way through the small valley pass, forty miles from Summer Place. The vehicles were transporting the small trailers that would be used as dressing rooms and for the one overnight stay for the participants in the Halloween special. Six trailers were on each truck, strapped down tightly for the rough ride. The sun was setting in the west and the lead driver had to drive slowly to negotiate sharp turn after sharp turn.
At a steeply angled downhill grade, the lead driver downshifted to slow even further. As he turned his head suddenly to avert his eyes from the blindingly bright orange ball of the sun at the horizon, he saw that he was no longer alone in the truck. A dark form was sitting next to him in the cab. Reflexively, he slammed on his brakes. As the truck screeched to a stop, the dark form seemed to take a more clarified shape. The head turned toward the bearded driver and the maw of the dark mist opened and then attacked, engulfing him from head to chest.
The second driver in line slammed on his brakes when the first truck’s taillights flared brightly, but it was too late. The second truck, with its load of trailers, slammed into the first, starting a chain reaction that caused the third and final transport to ram the middle truck. The trailers that had been strapped to all three vehicles broke loose. The first truck was pushed over and through the railing, plummeting down the side of the treacherous mountain road. The second driver saw the cab of the first as it left the road, and just before his truck followed the first, he thought he saw the driver screaming and trying his best to fend off something dark and massive. As the first two trucks rolled down the side of the mountain, the third managed to hit an intact section of the guardrail at a slower speed and careen back into the middle of the roadway.
The third truck spun, throwing off its six trailers like a dog shaking off water. The driver started shaking, so shocked at having seen the two trucks slide off the side of the mountain that he didn’t notice the car coming down the road as he stepped out of his truck. Just as his feet touched the roadway, the car saw the stalled vehicle, but it was too late. The car slammed into the driver and then the fuel tank on the side. Both vehicles immediately burst into flames. The trapped driver of the truck screamed, his body on fire. Just before the pain of his shattered legs and the flames sent him into shock, he saw a dark mist ebb and then swirl around his body. As he screamed, he saw a mouth form in the mist, becoming a gaping and foul-smelling pit that seemed to smile just before it closed over his head.
The game had started in earnest. Though Kennedy and his team didn't know it yet, Summer Place had started the murderous rampage that would end on Halloween night.
Summer Place
Inside the commissary tent, Gabriel sat and sipped coffee, watching as Kelly Delaphoy held court with her production team across the large tent. Gabriel could only imagine what the woman was instructing them to do. He suspected she was still upset because Father Dolan had tried to cleanse the house, and wondered if she was inventing new and better tricks to defraud her viewers with. Kennedy knew the type of woman Delaphoy was—driven, the pressures of her job could push her over the edge. Yes, he thought, even now she was showing signs of cracking under the strain. He would have to watch her. Summer Place would sniff out her weakness and use it not only against Kelly, against but all of them.
“I haven’t been a big eater for the last seven years, but that ham and cheese casserole left a lot to be desired.” Jennifer Tilden said as she pushed away her paper plate. It was still half filled with the conglomeration the network cooks had come up with.
“I told you the chicken Kiev looked better,” John said. He drank his coffee.
“Yeah, well I see you didn’t touch
much of yours either,” Jenny shot back, looking at John’s full plate.
“I don’t think this atmosphere is conducive to big appetites,” Gabriel said.
The tent was crowded and the voices mostly carried excitement. But Gabriel thought the party atmosphere went a little deeper. He thought it stemmed from the rumor that Summer Place had somehow been cleansed of the entity, and that all they would run into tomorrow night was a dead and silent house, their frights solely dependent on any gags Kelly could come up with. Kennedy made eye contact with Harris Dalton, who sat alone. The two men looked at each other for the briefest of moments, then Harris averted his eyes and lowered his head to the notes he was studying. Gabriel pushed his coffee away and stood.
“By the way, Jenny, any sign of Bobby Lee?”
“I felt him on the car ride up, but as soon as we entered the front gate, he left. It was like turning off a water tap,” she said, looking from Gabriel to John Lonetree. “I never felt anything frighten my little ghost before, but Summer Place—it’s like he’s afraid it’ll keep him if he shows himself.” She sipped her coffee, her small hands wrapping around the cup as if it were a talisman against what she was thinking. “No, Bobby Lee will be a no-show tomorrow night.”
Gabriel nodded. “Will you excuse me; I have something I want to say to the director?”
John turned to Jenny and smiled.
“To hell with Bobby Lee, huh?” he said looking into her green eyes.
“I think he’s afraid of that, too—hell I mean,” Jenny said with a smile, then lost it almost as soon as it had appeared. “But I think he’s far more afraid of this place.” Her eyes went from John to the house, through the mesh screen opening of the commissary tent.
“I’m a little busy at the moment, Professor,” Harris Dalton said as Gabriel approached. He scribbled a note about a camera placement for the subbasement.
“Kelly—do you trust her?” Kennedy asked.
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