“I don’t trust anyone, Professor Kennedy. That’s why I’m a director, and that’s why I’m good at what I do.” Dalton looked up from his notes and gestured for Kennedy to have a seat. He looked around the large tent and saw only one set of eyes on them: Kelly Delaphoy.
Gabriel sat down and leaned toward him.
“I’ll tell you something up front, Mr. Dalton: if my team catches Kelly laying her special effects gags in the house, we’ll expose her and the network for fraud.”
Harris Dalton spun his pencil between his fingers, looking Kennedy over.
“Professor, this is my last assignment. I don’t give a flying fuck if you catch her, don’t catch her, or chuck her out of a third floor window. There something wrong with this place, and as much as I hate that woman and her silly show, I really don’t care to find out what it is. I want to get through these eight hours and then take my grandkids fishing for the rest of my life. So, you have at it, Mr. Kennedy. This is your show, not mine.”
Gabriel nodded and stood to return to his own table. The conversation had been enough to tell him that Harris Dalton would not try to whitewash any of the experiments’ findings to suit what the network wanted.
Lionel Peterson and Wallace Lindemann came through the commissary tent’s wide opening, in the middle of an argument. Lindemann was gesturing wildly in the air with an empty glass; it was obvious the alcohol had long since disappeared. Gabriel looked from the scene to his companions. They watched Kelly Delaphoy advance on the two men. When Peterson spoke to her it was with a short hiss. He moved off to a table where he sat alone.
“Ignore me if you want, you can’t stay in the house overnight,” Lindemann said, glaring at Peterson.
Kelly smiled. She followed Peterson to his table, where she leaned over and said something as he took a bite of his salad. He grimaced, using a napkin to cover his distaste for the commissary meal. He looked up at Kelly and then nodded his head. The producer of Hunters of the Paranormal straightened and returned to her production table, issuing orders that sent many of her team members scrambling out of the tent. Then she turned toward Gabriel’s team.
As he stepped up to the table she was writing on her clipboard and tried to act nonchalant.
“It seems there’s been a large accident with a few of our trucks. They were hauling the trailers we were going to use as dressing rooms and bedrooms. Well, they’re nothing but splinters on the roadway now. Mr. Peterson said he wants everyone to bed down in the house tonight.”
Gabriel looked at Kelly in silence.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at all,” John Lonetree said.
Kelly lowered her clipboard and looked at the group, including her own producer. He was sitting next to Jennifer, shaking his head.
“Oh, we’re not using the bedrooms. I just sent all of my assistants out to Bright Waters to get the hardware store owner to open up. They’re going to get all the cots and air mattresses they can find. The rest of us will sleep with blankets on the floor, inside the ballroom—one central location for all.”
“My team will sleep out here or in the barn. We’ll not be stepping into Summer Place until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Look Professor, this gives us a chance to get our equipment in place and maybe even enough time to have a dry run of the show.”
“We have nothing to do with that. Your cameras will either follow our lead, or you can run around Summer Place all night long on your own, something I would not recommend.”
Harris Dalton was watching from his corner table. Kelly grimaced at him, and that told Gabriel that she was also leery of Dalton watching her every move. Yes, he thought, Dalton would be an asset to the experiment. He wouldn’t let Kelly get away with anything.
“You do what you want, Professor,” she said with a strained smile, “but I, for one, am not sleeping in a barn.”
Gabriel stood and walked away without saying anything more. John, Jenny and finally even Jason Sanborn stood. John and Jenny followed Gabriel from the tent, and Sanborn gave Kelly a pointed look.
“Look, I know we need a hit, and I’m all for being enthusiastic, but please don’t take this extra time inside the house to lay any tricks,” Jason said as he pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket. He placed the cold pipe in his mouth and rubbed the two day growth of beard on his cheek. “If you do, Kelly, I’ll expose you myself.”
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked, her smile widening. “Have you become a disciple of Professor Kennedy?”
Jason Sanborn turned away and then stopped. He slowly turned and faced his fellow producer. “Maybe not a disciple, but I’ve learned that, while Kennedy may be a lot of things, he is not a liar. What he says happened that night, I believe happened. I’ll be sleeping in the barn with them. And if I were you, Kelly my dear, I would also.”
“Oh, come on—”
“And one last thing. This is my last show.” He placed the pipe into his mouth once more. “After this, I think I’ve had enough of ghosts and ghouls, on both sides of the camera.”
Kelly looked stunned and couldn’t hide it from the men and women watching her. She attempted to smile and then pretended to write something on her clipboard. She tried to figure out where she had lost one of her best friends.
Summer Place was starting to cost far more than she ever thought it would. When she looked up as Jason disappeared through the tent’s opening, she actually did smile, and this time it was genuine. She would go through with her dream and all would be well. They would all sip champagne and declare that they had produced the most watched television event in history. When that happened, she would forgive everyone who had doubted her.
She turned and saw Lionel Peterson looking at her.
“With the exception of a well chosen few,” she mumbled.
Gabriel pulled open the large barn door and found the power box. He turned on the bright overhead lights and looked around the immaculate barn. It was far nicer inside than most of the homes in the rural countryside.
“You feel safe here?” Lonetree asked. He walked over to one of the large stalls and looked inside at the freshly tossed hay.
“No, but there’s no history of anything bad happening here.” He looked up past the loft toward the towering roof of the barn. “So this is as good a place as any to sleep.”
Julie Reilly approached them, carrying her large bag. She had a blanket wrapped around her right arm.
“Common sense tells me I should be crawling in the barn with all of the PhDs, but my inner voice is also telling me not to leave Kelly alone in that house. Harris Dalton will have to fall asleep at some point. He can’t watch her all night long.”
Gabriel nodded. He had also worried about the reporter sleeping inside the house. And the thought that she might tamper with the house had also crossed his mind.
“Stay on the ground floor and around people. If Kelly sneaks out of the ballroom, let her go. Do not try and follow her. If she tricks out one of the floors, we’ll find out tomorrow night—there’s no need to take chances in there.”
“You got it, Doc, no chances,” Julie said. She half-smiled in a nervous way and then looked at Jenny, as if envious of the fact that she now had a real man to watch over her, not just her inner ghost. She finally turned and went toward the house.
Jennifer had never been inside of an actual barn before, and she had decided on the spot that she wasn’t made to be a country girl—even though her profession had kept her in the country wilds most of her career. She had an inkling inside her mind that she was no longer cut out for field work, and that after Summer Place she would officially call it quits. Instead of trying to uncover the mysteries of the collective minds of tribes and peoples, she would learn about Jennifer instead. For the first time in her life she just wanted to be Jenny and nothing more. She looked from the roof above to the men and they were both watching her.
“I think Dr. Tilden has made a decision on something,” John said, smiling at her.
“You think you can figure anyone out, don’t you, Mister Lonetree?” Jennifer asked.
“Yes, eventually,” he answered.
It was obvious to Gabriel that they were forming some sort of attraction, and Gabe didn’t know if it was a good thing or bad. He did, however, decide that it wasn’t up to him to approve or disapprove.
“Jenny,” he said, “since your friend Bobby Lee has vacated the premises, why don’t you take the money the network gave you and get the hell out of here? We can manage fine without you.”
John Lonetree swallowed. Gabriel had voiced just what he had been thinking, but he hadn’t wanted to say the words. Part of him wanted Jenny to stay—not with them, nor even the experiment, but because he just wanted her near.
“Trying to spare the little woman of the horrors of Summer Place, Gabe?” she said, and turned to John. “And you? Is that your opinion?”
“No,” he said, quietly enough that Jenny took a step toward him.
“What was that?” she asked.
“No. I want you to stay. You know, to at least observe. We don’t have very many people around here that we can trust.”
“I see.” She turned to Gabriel. “There you have it. I’m needed, so I’ll stay. Afterwards, I’ll go learn to bake cookies and pick flowers, but for now you’re stuck with me.”
John looked from Jennifer to Kennedy and nodded. He removed his cowboy hat and placed it on the gate to the first stall.
“Well, it ain’t the Waldorf, but it’ll do, I guess,” John said. He opened the polished wooden gate. “I’m calling this stall; it’s closest to the door.”
Two hours later, the sun had completely vanished from the sky and half of the technical crew sat underneath the portico of Summer Place and along its magnificent steps. They were waiting for the argument to settle down so they could move in and get some sleep for the trying day ahead. As it looked right now, it would be quite a while before that could happen. Wallace Lindemann stood his ground like an eagle defending its kill.
“Look, it’s academic until tomorrow morning. I misplaced the keys to the house—I think I left them inside on the bar—and every call I’ve made the Johanssons has gone straight to voicemail. You’ll have to throw your sleeping bags into the tents and trucks, and that’s it.”
“You bastard,” Kelly said, “you’re intentionally keeping us out of the house. All my people want is sleep. Look, Lionel Peterson took thirty of them into Bright Waters—he practically bought the two local hotels out—so it’s only us,” she said gesturing to those men and women sitting and standing on the steps below them. “We’ll stay put in the ballroom and only use the downstairs facilities.”
“As much as I hate to agree with Kelly on anything at this point, I have to say she has a valid point. This group will cause the house no harm. Why would we?” Harris Dalton said. He ran a hand through his hair.
Kelly looked around. Jason Sanborn had abandoned all pretense of being her ally and had vanished with some of the more experienced crew into the large barn and stables with Kennedy and his people. Jason would pay for his disloyalty later; she would make sure of that. Right now, she missed his ability to calm people and force them into making sensible decisions. That was exactly what he had done with a quarter of her tech crew, only that decision had been to trust only Kennedy and sleep in the barn. She frowned.
“Look,” Lindemann said, “there’s nothing I can do about it. Everything is locked up, and when Summer Place is secured like this there isn’t so much as an open window to crawl through. If you’ll excuse me, I have a room waiting for me in Bright Waters, which is where I suggest you go also.”
Kelly shook her head. She knew Peterson had been behind this little maneuver, as well as the house cleansing earlier. She was about to attack again when something caught her eye. She tilted her head.
“I think you may have misjudged the security of Summer Place, Wallace.” She nodded toward the front of the house.
The doors were wide open, and the glowing golden lights of the massive entrance hall shone through them like an invitation to warmth and comfort.
“What the hell?” Lindemann took two steps down the stairs, bumping into Kelly. She watched him like a cat watching a mouse.
“This time, I’m afraid it was not Summer Place pulling a fast one,” Harris Dalton said. He took the remaining steps up toward the house two at a time.
Just as he reached the entrance, a man stepped into the doorway and tossed Harris a set of keys. Kelly smiled. He was an ex-Marine by the name of Howie Johnson—one of the best cameramen in the business and a close associate of Dalton’s.
“Nothing to it, boss. These old window locks are far from burglar proof.” The big man slapped Harris on the shoulder.
Dalton turned and then underhanded the keys to Wallace Lindemann, who stood fuming on the steps. He was angered not only by the break-in to his property, but also because for a moment he had thought the house had somehow opened up on it own. He swallowed and looked at Kelly.
“The downstairs bathrooms and showers, the ballroom, and that’s it. I know how much liquor is in there, so keep your people in check.”
Lindemann pushed past her. She wanted to laugh as she joined Harris at the doorway. The men and women left on the porch were starting to gather their things to join them inside Summer Place.
“That was pretty smooth,” she said to Harris, admiring the large cameraman.
“I didn’t do it to piss off Lindemann, Kelly, I did it because this crew needs sleep. I don’t want anyone to leave the ballroom tonight, and I’m placing two of the security guards on the stairway to make sure no one gets lost or comes up with a sudden desire to explore. Work begins in the morning.”
Kelly tried her best not to react to the thinly veiled insult. She placed a hand in front of her mouth, pretending to cover a yawn.
“You’ll have no argument out of me, Harris.” She made her way past the two men and into Summer Place.
Harris watched her and then looked at Howie, who was grinning. “Don’t snicker. Lindemann is right, this house is dangerous in more ways than one. Your job is to keep an eye on that woman. She’s slick, and she will attempt to get a jumpstart on equipment placement. And one more thing: It’s not that I don’t want this goddamn place to eat her, I just don’t want it to eat her until after this thing goes straight to hell tomorrow night. This damn place can swallow her up, as long as she humiliates herself on national live TV first.”
Howie laughed. “You got it boss,” he said. He wasn’t thinking about Kelly’s broadcast, but about her tight ass. “Wherever she goes, I’ll be right behind her.”
Gabriel watched from the barn as the crew slowly moved from the front lawn into the house. He also watched as Kelly Delaphoy came to the corner of the house and looked back at the barn. In the darkness of the barn’s doorway, he knew she couldn’t see him standing there, but he felt her gaze anyway. With one last look, Kelly turned and walked away. Gabriel took a deep breath and shook his head. All was quiet in the barn, and he knew that the others were already fast asleep. He wanted to stay near John in case he started a Dream Walk. Being in such proximity to the house, he suspected, might greatly influence his sleep. He hadn’t discussed it with John, but they both knew that it was highly probable.
Gabriel spotted Jenny’s bag and heavy jacket on the partially open door to the same stall John had claimed for himself. He smiled. Instead of heading for the small cot that had been delivered earlier by Kelly’s people, Kennedy stepped outside and looked up at the clear night sky. The clouds that had hovered just a short distance away earlier had vanished with the sun, and the clarity of the sky brought Gabriel a calmness he had never felt before on this property. He walked a distance away, avoiding the house and the windows on the second and third floors. He knew Summer Place watched, no matter how dormant it was at the moment. The house would keep a vigilant eye on him.
As he neared the pool, he wondered when the Johanssons would find
the time to drain it in preparation for the winter months ahead. Their schedule had, no doubt, been thrown off by their son’s illness—brought on by the very house that sat solidly watching him from above. As he approached the Olympic sized pool and its cluster of old fashioned deck chairs and folded umbrellas, he saw the dark waters. In the daytime, the pool had sparkled. Now it looked foreboding, as if an inky blackness had replaced the chlorinated, clean-smelling waters of the day.
He stepped to the edge and looked into the pool’s depths. He closed his eyes, thinking about everything in his life that had brought him to this point, this place, this predicament. The house had ruined his life, but he knew he had brought it on himself. It had been his arrogance, trying to prove that hauntings were nothing more than people’s fierce imaginations. A haunting usually occurred around families that had financial troubles, or troubles of a far more personal nature. Money, or an uncle who liked to sneak into the rooms after a child’s bedtime. A father that beat a mother, any stress inside a family. The mind, he knew, was the most powerful instrument in the world at producing effects that looked on the surface like a haunting.
He opened his eyes and smiled. All of his theories had come to a crashing halt that night in Summer Place seven years before. Now he knew that his hypothesis of stress-created hauntings had been full of what his students called PhD bullshit. He half turned and looked at the lower floor of Summer Place. Something walked inside of that house; either that something was evil and it was caught, or it chose to stay where it was. He also knew that the very house itself supported the entity and protected it. It was as if the beams, the brick, the wood and the plaster were all a shield for what stood guard inside the house. It all came together as a grand defense for the protection of evil.
Gabriel looked away from the house and placed his hands in his pockets as he remembered that night—the experiment meant to prove that stress brought on by surroundings could manifest a haunting. His students— grounded, academically sound students—were his choice of guinea pigs. They were volunteers from his classes, and the brightest knew what they were in for. The influence of the house would be brought into play by the stories they were told of its history. Stories were relayed slowly in the days leading up to the experiment, with time enough for them to be absorbed, dissected and swallowed. Then when they arrived at Summer Place, it all came home to them. Each scenario had been documented in the stories he told them, from total non-belief to factual, “I was there” eyewitness accounts. Gabriel had known the students would be affected by Summer Place. They would be convinced by the stories they had heard, the darkness that would surround them, and the influence of the actual house that would close around them as the night wore on. Only, he had never suspected that Summer Place was alive. It came at his kids with its full power and scared them all half to death, and had also murdered one as a gift to Gabriel for his doubt. What a fool he had been to mock what he knew nothing about.
The Supernaturals Page 33