The deer made no move to come forward from the tree line or recede into its protection. It watched the man as he stretched, yawning and shaking his head to clear it of sleep. As it watched, two more deer joined it inside the tree line. At first they playfully brushed the male, but when the play wasn’t returned, they too looked across the way, first at the slumbering men and women, and then at the man who walked around the two police cruisers. Then the eyes of all three deer settled on the house. The large buck’s eyes moved as a light came on in the large tent not far from the swimming pool. The chef and his two assistants the network had hired for the catering stepped from the large enclosure and looked around. As the two assistants fired up the stoves and ovens at the back of the large commissary tent, the chef made a beeline for the port-o-potty fifty feet away. Three more deer joined the group watching the house. Far off, an owl hooted and then settled back down to silence.
The male deer stepped free of the tree line and advanced four steps onto the shoulder of the road. The movement caught the attention of the man as he turned the corner of his police cruiser. He froze, but made no move to frighten the buck away. The male was soon joined by a female, cautiously stepping free of the trees. It sniffed the gravel lining the road, and then the male, before looking across the street at the man who stood next to the driver’s door with his thumbs in his gun belt.
The trooper moved his left hand slowly away from his body and tapped on the glass of the driver’s side door. Not enough of a tap to frighten away the beautiful creature across the way, but enough to get the driver’s attention. He pushed his hat back up and out of his face.
“Sid, look at this,” the man standing outside the car said. Two more deer moved forward to join the first two.
“What?” the driver asked, irritated at being awakened.
“The damndest thing I’ve ever seen. Look at these deer. They’re just standing there staring at us.”
“Jesus, Jessup, let me sleep, I don’t need a nature lesson right now.”
Three more smaller deer exited the woods and joined the others. Now he counted seven deer. A little unnerved, the trooper slowly removed the large-handled flashlight from his belt. He brought up the instrument and clicked it on as fast as he could, knowing the sudden flare of light would frighten the deer away. It didn’t. The deer just stood there, watching him. The most frightening thing, and the trooper had decided that it was indeed frightening, was the way they made no move, other than to keep chewing on whatever it was they were chewing on.
“Shit,” the trooper whispered. “Sid, wake up and look at this.”
“Shit. I guess you’re not going to let me sleep.” The driver threw open his door and stepped from the cruiser. He adjusted his gun belt and then looked at his younger partner. “We’re not out here to watch the animal population, we’re here to—”
The driver stopped as a raccoon passed directly in front of the deer as it sniffed its way out of the trees. The trooper reached in and pulled on the headlight switch. The bright beams of light caught the deer and raccoon dead on, but the animals didn’t so much as flinch in the bright lights.
“Damn. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” the first trooper asked.
“They must be, you know, like deer caught in the headlights or something. You know, too scared to move.”
“Yeah, too scared. Is that why that larger male keeps coming, because it’s scared?”
As the two troopers watched, the male advanced two slow steps forward. As it moved it lowered its antlers, and one actually scraped the roadway as it moved off the shoulder of the road. The two troopers took an involuntary step backward.
“You men have to get those people out of there.”
Both policemen jumped at the sound of the deep voice behind them.
Standing at the gate were four men and a woman. They were watching the scene through the heavy slats of the wooden gate. The woman looked worried, rubbing her hands together.
Gabriel Kennedy had been awakened from an uneasy sleep by George Cordero five minutes before. He had gestured to the next stall where John Lonetree and Jennifer Tilden slept. As Kennedy came awake, George placed his right index finger to his lips, shushing Gabe before he could talk. A questioning look crossed Kennedy’s features when George pointed to the stall across the way. As Gabriel listened, he could hear John moaning and stumbling, and then the stall door had shot open and Jennifer came through, supporting John, who staggered. It was obvious the large Indian had been Dream Walking.
“What is it?” Kennedy asked as he shook free of the blanket.
“John says something’s going to happen outside,” Jenny said.
“What is it, John?” Kennedy assisted Jenny with some of John’s weight.
“Don’t remember. Something was in the woods earlier, but it’s no longer there. It’s watching people and growing angrier by the minute.”
Kennedy had led the way from the barn and had immediately seen the headlights of the police cruiser come on near the front gate.
As the two troopers had turned and saw the strange looking group of people watching them, the second cruiser’s doors opened. They were joined by the other two men.
“What’s going on?” one of them asked.
“Don’t know. The animals are acting strange.” The deer had come forward another three feet, and was fully in the road. The other six moseyed out with it, heads swinging from side to side.
“I’m going to get the key to this gate so you can get those sleeping people behind it,” Kennedy said. He fumbled with the large chain that was wrapped around the main beams of the wooden gate.
“We don’t have a key, and Lindemann isn’t here,” Jennifer said.
“Damn it!” Gabriel hissed.
“Wake those people up and tell them to wait it out inside their cars until the sun comes up,” Lonetree said. He had regained a little more of his strength.
“Hey, cut out those damn lights!” someone shouted from the darkness of the grass quad in front of the gate.
A man and a woman had popped free of their sleeping bags and were shading their eyes from the harsh glare of the cruiser’s headlights.
“What’s going to happen, John?” Jenny said.
George Cordero stepped closer to the gate and placed his hands through the wooden beams. He splayed his fingers apart and closed his eyes.
“Jesus, I’m not picking up the slow thoughts of animals over there. Whatever is approaching is something totally different.” He opened his eyes and pulled his arms back through the gate as if he had touched a hot stove.
The first state trooper to have seen the deer turned to the men and women who had come awake.
“Uh, can you people wake those next to you and move to your vehicles, please? Please move away from the area.”
“Oh, come on Jessup, they’re deer for Christ’s sake,” the second policeman said.
That was when the seven deer charged. The buck moved so fast that the man standing next to his wife never saw him coming. The antlers struck the man just below the buttocks and lifted him high into the air, then struck him again before he came to rest on the man lying on the ground next to his sleeping bag. The other deer made for the astonished state troopers. The four men scattered as the rest of the protesters and fans came awake to a melee of sight and sound. Soon their screams and shouts were added to those of the state troopers as they ran to avoid the deer stampede.
John Lonetree climbed the fence and held his hand out toward the scrambling men and women on the ground below. As one of the state troopers reached up to take the offered help, one of the smaller deer plowed into his back, twirling the large trooper like he was a doll. He came to rest at the base of the fence, alive but badly bruised. Another, a woman, screamed as a male deer with large antlers charged from behind one of the parked state cars. She scrambled and dove for cover underneath the wheel base of the car, narrowly escaping the sharp antlers which missed her leg and punctured one of the tires.
Suddenly several bright lights flared to life behind Kennedy and the others. Two film teams and Julie Reilly approached the fence. The cameras lights froze the deer in place, some skidding and sliding to a halt as the camera lenses zoomed in on the animal attack outside the gates. Harris Dalton pushed through the two cameramen and past Gabriel. He raised a set of bolt cutters to the chain and snapped it into two pieces. Gabriel pushed the right side of the gate open while the deer were frozen like statuary, shouting for everyone to get inside.
Men and women who had taken refuge further away from the gate saw their opportunity to scramble to their cars, while the closest ran, stumbled and tripped their way inside. Lonetree had hopped down from the gate and was in the process of helping the injured trooper to his feet. In that split second, the deer all came out of their startled trance. The large buck saw John and Jennifer and charged. Two others saw the slow moving trio and they also lowered their heads and came forward at a run.
Gabriel shouted a warning but he knew he was too late. The buck was almost on them. Suddenly, a brighter than normal set of headlights swerved off the road and into the short drive. While the truck didn’t strike any of the deer, it made them veer away at the last, most horrifying second. The buck turned and actually hit the large wooden gate as John and the others dove through. Gabriel and Dalton slammed the gate closed before any of the deer could recover.
The deer seemed to settle down once the gate was closed and the people safe inside. The large buck looked around as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The other deer started to wander around, sniffing at this and that. Then, as if they realized for the first time that they were no longer in the covering blanket of trees, the deer looked startled and bounded away. Only the buck stood for a moment, chewing, and stared at the gate and the humans watching it. Then it shook its large head and slowly moved away, past the large truck with the headlights that had saved John and Jennifer.
“What the fuck was that about?”
Kennedy smiled when he saw Leonard Sickles looking out of the open passenger side window.
“You piss off the Bambi family or what?”
An hour later, with the Bright Waters police on hand, the fans and protesters were treated for scrapes and bruises. The injured state trooper was the worst case as he had his ass punctured with one of the bucks lethal antlers, and that seemed to be fine by his partner and the other two troopers as they laughed and teased the man to no end as the network first aid man applied tape and gauze to the wound. After the strange attack by the local wildlife, the police had no trouble moving the protesters and fans off of Summer Place property, while Wallace Lindemann, who had been alerted in his motel room, warned everyone that they couldn’t sue him because they had officially been trespassing on his property.
Gabriel stood next to the members of his team near the front gate. John Lonetree was responsible for saving a few lives, but if you saw him he looked more worried than relieved.
“What is it?” Kennedy asked as he made sure Julie Reilly and her camera people were far enough away as not to hear.
“The warning I received in my dream.” John looked through the gate at the mayhem. There were sleeping bags and tents strewn all around the ground; people had not had time to care about their belongings. “It was a woman’s voice, Gabe. She said that there was trouble in the woods. She said get to the main gate, and that was it.”
“A woman’s voice, you say?” Jennifer asked.
“With a German accent.”
“Well, that may help us in the long run.”
“How the hell is that helpful?” Leonard asked.
“The boy, Jim Johansson, he may have been helped by the same…” Gabe looked around again at the faces watching him, “entity.”
“You mean we’re dealing with more than one?” Leonard asked.
“Possibly, and that’s where you and your computer friends at USC are going to come in handy, Leonard. We need to know what the connection between the German opera star and Summer Place really is. We need to know why her entity is helping us.”
“You’re kidding, right?” the small black man asked.
Kennedy smiled as he turned and looked at the house.
“You take allies where you can find them.”
As they all turned and looked at the façade of Summer Place, the first rays of Halloween morning sun peeked through the gap between two mountaintops from the east, casting the gorgeous house in a warm glow.
Upstairs on the third floor, as the first light of the new day entered the large window at the opposite end of the long hallway, the sewing room door stood open and cold air swirled around the open space. The darkness at that end of the hallway hid the spectral shape that stood motionless, reaching out to feel the fear of those awake downstairs and those meandering after its brief display outside. The small chuckle sounded on the third floor. Satisfied, the darkness moved back into the confines of the sewing room. The door eased closed and a soft humming sounded throughout the third floor hallway.
Summer Place was now resting.
The war was about to begin.
PART FIVE
TRICK OR TREAT
seventeen
All Hallows Eve
Lionel Peterson was putting off shaving and showering for as long as he possibly could. For the moment, he was content to sit in the small, smelly motel chair and stare at the water-stained carpet. He knew his actions against Kelly Delaphoy were taking a toll on his health. Not only had he endangered his career over his hate for the woman, he had become obsessive in his drive to destroy her at all cost. He smiled. If the show flopped, millions upon millions of network dollars would be lost. He would be held responsible and fired unceremoniously. Still, he would have to root for the show to fail. He could always explain to the media that he had warned against such a risky venture as a live Halloween broadcast. On the positive side, if the show flopped, Kelly would never breathe the conditioned air of a network office again.
If the show came away with big ratings numbers for the entire eight hours, Kelly Delaphoy would end up sitting in his chair—as had been her design from the very beginning. That was a thought that almost made Lionel physically ill.
A knock sounded at his door, but Peterson kept his eyes on a particular stain that he found entertaining. The stain was in the shape of a man’s head, and its wide mouth was open in a scream. The water stain (or was it something far fouler than water?) looked like a painting from a Salvador Dali nightmare. The tongue was extended from the wide open mouth and its eyes were closed so tightly that they were nothing but mere slits with wrinkles. Peterson tilted his head as the knock sounded again. He could hear one person speaking to another outside of the flimsy door. He finally closed his eyes to block out the hypnotizing effect of the filthy carpet. He slowly stood from the chair and small table where one glass and one nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels sat looking dejected after being ignored for most of the morning. Peterson made it to the door, removed the security chain, and cracked it open a few inches.
The priest stopped talking and turned. He looked shocked at Lionel’s unkempt appearance, but held back any rebuke he might have had.
“You do realize it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon?” Father Dolan said, wrinkling his nose.
“Of all the fools in the world, I believe I know how late in the day it is,” Peterson said. He stepped back and pulled the door all the way open.
Dolan looked at the two women who had assisted him in cleansing Summer Place the day before, and then nodded that they could go.
“Goodbye, ladies, I’ll hitch a ride to Summer Place with Mr. Peterson later.”
Lionel raised his eyebrows and then moved as father Dolan stepped in.
“The company you keep are rather suspect in their abilities as ghost hunters,” Peterson said as he closed the door behind Dolan. “As a matter of fact, you’re not that hot yourself, Father.”
Peterson bypassed the chair and sat on the edge
of the still-made bed.
“Has something happened at the house?” Dolan asked as he placed his black hat on the small table, making sure to miss the spilled whiskey. He sat down and watched Peterson rub the tiredness from his face.
“The phone has been ringing all morning, so in answer to your question, yes—several things.” He looked up at Dolan with bloodshot eyes. “One, I guess your ghost cleansing isn’t what it’s advertised to be. Things happened last night that more than a dozen people witnessed, including Harris Dalton and Julie Reilly. Two, it seems thirty or more people were attacked outside the gate this morning by deer who thought they were commandos or something. Injuries were sustained, and some of it was actually caught on tape.” He looked away at the closed curtains. “Not exactly a good start for a show that has to fail, would you say?”
“All I can tell you, Mr. Peterson, is that Summer Place was either cleansed yesterday, or it was fooling us and laying low.”
“Now that’s a great explanation.” Peterson stood and made his way to the bathroom. Before he went through the door he turned and looked at the Father. “The house went dormant on you, is that what you’re saying?”
“Didn’t you hear those people yesterday? The house felt empty to them, so I wasn’t the only one fooled. I would say that you have real trouble on your hands tonight, especially if I can’t get back in there and try again.”
“You’ll get your chance.” Peterson turned and slowly started to close the bathroom door. “They’re almost done with the equipment placement, so they’ll begin their final walk through and dress rehearsal in about two hours—you’ll be on that tour and in the rehearsal.”
Father Dolan watched Peterson close the door and waited until the water was running before he reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels and the glass. He poured himself a glass and then made his way to the window. He pulled the curtain back and saw the heavy, dark clouds far off to the east. It looked as though they were in for rain. As he sipped the whiskey he couldn’t help think that Summer Place was behind the weather buildup. Dolan had become convinced that the house had set him up, and worse than that, he felt that it knew it would be in the spotlight tonight.
The Supernaturals Page 36