The Supernaturals

TWELVE

The meeting room had been sectioned off for Gabriel Kennedy, John Lonetree, Leonard Sickles, and George Cordero. It had taken Gabriel two hours over drinks to assist George in making up his mind to see the project through. Kennedy could have cut that time down to two minutes if he had given him his certified check for two hundred thousand dollars immediately. Cordero’s eyes lingered on the check for the briefest of moments, and then he quickly snatched it from Gabriel’s hand.

“Before we start, may I ask Professor Tilden’s condition?” Lonetree asked. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

Kennedy set his small black bag on the tabletop and then smiled at the large Indian. He had known even before John and Jennifer had ever met that there would be an immediate connection between them. As distant and quiet as John was, Gabriel had known he would feel a need to protect Jenny from any harm that may befall her — and that had been his number one reason for bringing Lonetree here. The number two reason was about to be revealed.

“Doctor Tilden is sleeping soundly upstairs. She is in deep REM sleep,” he looked at John and then away as quickly as he could. “I just checked on her. Thus far, Bobby Lee is keeping his word. Now, Professor Tilden is someone we need to discuss at length. Before I allow our last guest to come in with the items he has brought for John, I want to ask your opinions on something that has been festering ever since the meeting this afternoon. I’ll start with Jennifer. George, your opinion on the episode in the meeting, regarding her…” Again Kennedy looked around at the three men sitting at the table. “…possession?”

“Damn, you know my opinion on it. It goddamn near chased me out of the fucking room. I have never in my life seen anything like that. If she’s not the greatest ventriloquist in the world, that girl has one big ass problem.”

“Then you believe what you witnessed?”

Cordero tilted his head to the right, widened his eyes and took a deep breath. “My talent is getting into people’s heads. Number one, Doc, I couldn’t get into Professor Tilden’s head because it was too damned crowded. It was like I was being kept out by something stronger than me. Number two, while I didn’t feel this McKinnon guy inside of her, I did feel her thoughts. And let me tell you,” he looked at John, “she is close to insane.” He looked down at the polished table. “Sorry, but she is.”

John nodded his head. He told himself it was just sympathy for a fellow human being that made him care so deeply, but he knew he liked the small professor and had known it from the moment he saw her helped into the conference room at UBC.

“Good. Now, Leonard, your impressions?”

Sickles raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“I agree with this guy, Doc, that b — lady, is off her fuckin’ rocker.” He quickly looked at Lonetree. “No offense, Red Cloud.”

Lonetree said nothing, but from his look the small gang banger knew he had better tread the Indian line far more carefully in the future.

“John, there’s no reason to ask you. I could see that you felt McKinnon’s presence when Jennifer came into the room.”

Lonetree continued to look at Leonard, who had started studying the ornate wallpaper. He nodded.

“Okay, I think I know where Leonard stands on my next question, so I’ll ask you, John. What about the second presence, the incident of invasion?” Kennedy asked, turning his back on the small group.

“Clever trick, but I felt no presence from your Summer Place,” John said.

“George?”

“Didn’t have the same feeling as with Professor Tilden. In other words, I wasn’t scared at all.”

“Leonard?”

“Fake. The wood on the left side door was different than the wood on the right. It would take me a minute of study, but I would venture to guess someone tried to bullshit the intrusion — hydraulics maybe. Good, but anyone capable of installing hydraulics on a car could do the same thing.”

“I agree. Someone faked the door bending in and out — Ms. Delaphoy more than likely, or all of them, for the CEO’s benefit. So, that leads to my point: we trust only those of us in this room and Professor Tilden upstairs. Ms. Reilly, Kelly Delaphoy, that prick Peterson, or the director, Dalton — no one from UBC is to be let into our circle. They still believe that even after the loss of the host and engineer that the place isn’t haunted. They all suspect one another of some kind of duplicity, and what’s worse is the fact that they don’t care. They may think this is a joke they are playing for ratings, but let me tell you, that damnable house has no sense of humor.” He looked at each man again. “It will kill us all if we don’t find out what it is and what it wants.”

The three men were silent. Cordero felt for the check in his front shirt pocket, wondering if he had submitted to this thing a bit sooner than he should have.

“Leonard, I don’t want to keep our guest waiting. Would you let him in please?”

Sickles stood and opened the meeting room door. An angry Wallace Lindemann stood there, his face scrunched into a ball of twisted flesh at having been kept waiting.

“Mr. Lindemann, would you join us please.” Kennedy walked to the front of the room and held out his hand.

Instead of taking Gabriel’s hand, Lindemann turned and waved two men inside. They were pushing two bellman’s carts loaded with items that had been covered by a red tarp.

“I do not like being summoned like a delivery man. I do not like removing items from my house and I most assuredly will not be taking orders from you.”

Gabriel lowered his hand and smiled as he turned back to the rear of the room.

“The delivery and use of these items will be the last favor I ask from you, Mr. Lindemann.”

“You’re goddamned right it will. And I hold you personally responsible for the items now in your possession. They are to be returned to Summer Place the day before Halloween.”

“You have my word.”

“A lot of good that is. The last time I signed something over to you the house was damaged and my reputation suffered the indignity of having to explain your mess. As a matter of fact I ought to—”

“You ought to leave now and lay off talking to the Doc like that, you silver spoon up-the-ass mother—”

“That’s good, Leonard,” Gabriel said. He tried hard to fight back laughter. “Your items will be returned in pristine condition, Mr. Lindemann, I assure you.”

Wallace Lindemann, with one last look at the small black man standing in front of him, stormed out of the meeting room with the two bellmen.

John Lonetree was smiling at Leonard also. It seemed that Sickles disrespected everyone, and some of them deserved it. Lonetree was good with that — you always knew where you stood with the kid. Earn his respect and you’d be in.

Gabriel watched the double doors close and relaxed when they were finally alone again.

“Leonard, I am fully capable of handling Wallace Lindemann. You’ll find out the little bastard is mostly hot air.”

“Ah, Doc, the guy’s a—”

Leonard stopped short of his name calling when he saw Kennedy staring at him.

“Okay,” Gabriel said pointing at Sickles, “dim the lights a little and we’ll start with John and George.” Kennedy paced to the bellman’s cart and pulled the red sheet from the items.

Several items were immediately recognizable from the pictures they had seen of the interior of the house. The largest was the family portrait of the Lindemanns. Gabriel lifted the four-foot by five-foot frame and hefted the portrait to the easel he had brought in earlier. When Lonetree saw the professor was having a hard time lifting it, he jumped from his chair and assisted. As soon as his large hands touched the gilded edges of the frame, an electrical current seemed to course through John’s hands, arms, and then his entire body. As much as the large man tried not to react, he couldn’t help it. He let go and stumbled backward from the massive painting, almost making Kennedy lose the portrait to the carpeted floor.

As John grabbed for the back of a chair, George and Kennedy went to him. Leonard stood next to the long table, laughing at the look on Lonetree’s face.

“Man,” he said as he approached the painting, “you would think this thing was wired or something,” he said, reaching toward the frame.

“Don’t!” John said.

Sickles jumped at the loudness of Lonetree’s voice. He turned and looked at the Indian as if he had lost it.

“Cool it, Geronimo, I just—”

“You’ll interfere and block my feelings.”

“Leonard, take a seat,” Kennedy said as he helped John straighten up.

“Look, I’m getting bad vibes from this thing.” George took to a chair next to Lonetree. “Something is coming off of that painting in waves. I didn’t start picking it up until John touched the damn thing.”

Kennedy looked from Cordero to Lonetree, who was looking at the portrait as if he were taking in every nuance of the artist’s brush strokes. The sepia tones of the background, the bright colors of the skin tones, and last of all, the smiling faces of the family.

“What did you feel?” Gabriel asked. He was tempted to go to his own chair to write it down in his notebook, but was unwilling to move in case he broke John’s concentration.

“Something came through the portrait…but it wasn’t the painting itself. It was like—”

“The house is here with us.”

Everyone looked at Cordero who was now leaning his head on his crossed arms on the tabletop.

“He’s right,” John stood, stepping closer to the portrait. “It may not be the portrait itself, but its attachment to the house. It has eyes on us.”

Kennedy patiently listened.

Lonetree touched the old oil paint. He ran a finger over the faces of the small children, and then up to the older features of F.E. Lindemann. The fingers touching the face lingered for a moment and then slowly went down in a zigzag motion toward the beautiful face of Elena. When he finally touched the brush-stroked features, the reaction was quite different from the initial shock he had felt. There had been nothing when he touched the other members of the family, but now John sighed as a feeling of safeness came over him. At the same moment Cordero raised his head and started to shake.

“John…get away from there, I feel…like, hell, just get away until I can sort this out.”

George stood up, knocking his chair over. He was rubbing his hands together, almost as if he wanted nothing more than to tear the skin from the bone. Leonard backed away from the table uneasily.

Lonetree didn’t move. He felt like he was a child again — no, even younger. He felt as though his mother’s hand was caressing his face, while she smiled down at him in his crib.

“Gabe, pull him away from that damn thing. It’s not what it seems. The fucking thing is…is tricking him. He feels safe around it, but it’s taking something from him.” George stepped around the table and approached John, still wringing his hands together. “It’s like the picture is learning from him.”

“You mean like a Vulcan mind-meld or somethin’?”

Cordero started to reach out to touch Lonetree’s arm but he hesitated, and then went back to wringing his hands.

“John?” Kennedy said, stepping closer to Lonetree and the portrait.

John tilted his head and then nodded like he was answering a question only he could hear. “Mama—”

John blinked several times and then he removed his hand. He continued to stare at the portrait for a long time, and then, as if coming from a faraway place, he blinked and looked at Cordero.

“She said that we are all welcome into the Lindemann home. Summer Place has been waiting for all of us.”

“Elena said that to you?” Gabriel asked. He took John by the arm and led him back to the table.

“I think, uh, yes, it had to have been,” Lonetree said as he slowly sat down.

Kennedy looked up at George, who was watching Lonetree with a worried look on his face. Then his eyes went to Gabriel and he slowly shook his head. Gabriel tilted his head, not understanding what Cordero was trying to convey.

“That thing,” he said pointing at the portrait, “does not want us in that house. If it does, it’s because…because—”

“What a bunch of bullshit. You buying this crap, Doc?” Leonard asked. He still stood his ground, far away from the rest of the group.

“Do you feel it?” John asked, sounding more like his old self. Far deeper, far stronger than when he was touching the face of Elena Lindemann.

“What?” Sickles asked looking around the dimly lit room.

“I do,” Kennedy said.

“What?” Leonard asked again, losing the bravado he had been feeling a moment before.

“Get your thermal laser, Leonard,” Gabriel said. He ran his hand back and forth through the air, still looking at the portrait. “Now!”

Sickles jumped as if he had been goosed. He rummaged through his small back bag and came up with a pistol shaped instrument. He turned on its red laser light and started pointing it in all directions.

“74 degrees, 74…74…75,” he said as he pointed it toward the double doors. He swung it toward George and John. “73, 73…74…” Then he pointed it at the portrait. “Jesus Christ! 38 degrees, 37, 36…” He pointed it back at the interior of the meeting room. “Temperature dropping. 35, 35, 31, shit,” he said. His breath had started to particulate into a fog.

“It’s here, Gabriel. Goddamn it, it came into the room with everything Lindemann brought over,” George said. Sickles returned to his black bag and started throwing things out of it, searching for something.

“What is it?” Gabriel asked. Leonard had found the object he was looking for, and now held a black box up and outward toward the center of the room.

“The electromagnetic field is off the freaking chart, Doc. This room should only have an.02, or maybe.03. we’re at.09 and the damn thing’s climbing. There’s enough electricity in this room to start cooking our brains.”

“Does that account for the temp drop?” Kennedy asked, his own breath coming out in a fog.

“I don’t know, it’s as if—”

Suddenly the portrait flew from the easel, barely missing George Cordero. It landed on the conference table and slid to the end, stopping just before it tumbled to the floor. Then the bellman’s cart with the remaining items on it tipped and was literally thrown, sailing only inches from Gabriel’s head. It smashed into the wall.

“Fuck me!” Leonard shouted. He hit the floor, the magnetic resonance counter flying from his hand.

Kennedy looked around as calmly as he could. Then he smiled and looked at Lonetree and Cordero.

“It’s gone,” John said. He stood and helped Leonard to his feet.

“Yes, he’s right, the house has withdrawn. It got what it came for,” George said, wiping his brow. The temperature had already started rising back up.

“Doc, I don’t know if I’m built for this,” Leonard said. He looked around wildly as if expecting something to charge at him.

Gabriel smiled.

“Would it help you to know that whatever was here was afraid of you and your toys, Leonard?”

Sickles pulled his arm free of Gabriel’s grasp and looked around at the disheveled room.

“Yeah?” he said as he finally looked back at Kennedy. “It sure doesn’t seem like it’s afraid of anything.”

“Well,” Kennedy said patting Leonard on the back, “of anyone we’re taking into Summer Place, you’re the one it will fear, because of what you can bring inside to help defeat it.”

Sickles blinked, and then his bravado returned. He stepped away from the professor and strutted back toward the table.

“John, why don’t you take a few of the smaller items to your room tonight and see what you can come up with? The same for you George.”

Both men nodded. It was back to business, and they appreciated it.

“I’ll keep the portrait and everything else in my room tonight. We wouldn’t want anything disappearing on us.”

A knock sounded at the door. When Leonard, who was nearest, pulled it open, a man in a red blazer stood in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably.

“Yes?” Gabriel said as he stepped forward.

“Uh, sir, I’m security. I was sent from the front desk. Are you related to the woman in 523?”

Kennedy frowned with concern. “Ms. Tilden, Jennifer Tilden?”

“Yes, sir. Small woman, red hair?”

“Yes,” Kennedy answered.

“She’s in the Astor Salon and is making quite a scene. She hasn’t become a problem yet, just a little confusing, and rude perhaps to the group of gentlemen she’s sitting with, perhaps—”

Gabriel and the others shot out of the room with the shocked security man turning and following.

It seemed Bobby Lee McKinnon was awake and had forgotten all about the deal.

As the four men hurried from the meeting room, Julie Reilly, Kelly Delaphoy and Jason Sanborn walked through the ornate front doors. They caught sight of Gabriel and the others cutting across the ostentatious lobby at a quick pace and knew immediately that trouble was brewing. Julie exchanged a quick look of concern with Kelly and Jason and then started after the men as they made their way to the lounge.

Gabriel and the others entered the Astor Lounge and came to a sudden stop. Jenny was dressed in what looked like a very expensive evening gown. It was emerald green and glittered brightly in the small spotlights that lined the ceiling. She was sitting and looked to be conversing in soft tones at a table with four older men, all dressed in two thousand dollar suits. The men looked amused by everything Jennifer was telling them. They watched the woman before them with smiles and rapt fascination. Kennedy nudged John Lonetree in the ribs. Standing not three feet behind Jenny were three large men in black blazers; both Gabriel and John both smelled bodyguards. They didn’t look as amused as their employers at what Doctor Tilden was relaying to them.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked. She nudged George Cordero’s arm.

George only shook his head, but Leonard volunteered what he knew.

“Our crazy lady has something to say to these crackers at the table,” he said. Julie looked at him, confused. “I mean the gentlemen she’s speaking to, with the stuffed Armanis.”

The table was only ten feet away, but Gabriel couldn’t hear what was being said. He watched the reaction of the four men and saw that the smiles were fading.

“The rest of you, stay here. John, let’s see what our lady friend has in common with these astute-looking business men.”

Lonetree followed Gabriel to the table. Jennifer stopped talking and looked up at the two men with a dazzling smile. She tilted her head and John could see the her eyes had been enhanced by makeup and she even had a dusting of glitter on her skin. Her appearance was nothing short of angelic as Lonetree smiled down at her.

“Jenny?” Gabe reached down and, with all of his acting skills, took her hand and kissed it, as though he was just stopping by to say hi. “How are you?”

“Gabriel! Funny running into you here, of all places.”

The five piece band on the stage wound down a slow rendition of an elevator muzak classic and then prepared for another.

“And Mr. Lonetree…The first face you look for and the very last you see,” she said. She pulled her fingers lightly from Gabriel’s so that John could take her hand and kiss it awkwardly.

“Ms. Tilden,” Lonetree stumbled.

“Who are your friends, Jenny?” Kennedy asked, taking a step back and looking at the four heavyset men with expensive suits.

Gabriel knew immediately that he was looking at men who usually would not tolerate having their evening interrupted by anyone. The man Jenny had been talking to had designer glasses and his black dyed hair curled under both ears in one of those European haircuts that old men got to make themselves look younger. The man’s three companions were of the same ilk, and Gabriel took an immediate dislike to all of them.

“I can answer that for you, Doctor Kennedy,” Julie Reilly said, stepping up to join them and shrugging out of her leather jacket. She had broken away from the group at the lounge entrance when she recognized the man at the center of Jenny’s attention. “This is Stephan Martin, the CEO of Griffin Records. Of course, when he first started out in the music business in the early sixties as a twenty-one-year-old producer, his name was Steven Markovich, from the Bronx.”

“I’m afraid you have the advantage of me. As well as this lovely young lady,” the fat man said. He nodded toward Jennifer, who smiled demurely and tilted her head to the left. A very worrisome move — Gabriel saw that her eyes remained fixed on Martin, and they weren’t showing the kindness of her smile.

“My name is Julie Reilly. This is Doctor Gabriel Kennedy, police chief John Lonetree of Montana, and this young lady is Professor Jennifer Tilden.”

“Julie Reilly of the UBC Nightly News,” Martin said as flatly as the words could be spoken. He nodded toward one of the bodyguards as an indication that the conversation was drying up.

“Jenny, if you’re finished with these gentlemen, maybe you can join us for a drink,” Gabriel said.

“Mr. Martin and I haven’t finished our conversation yet Gabe,” Jenny said. She smiled even broader than before. “Now, if you and your friends here would fuck off, I’ll say what I have to say to this fat pig bastard.”

That was it; Martin waved the bodyguard over to the table.

Gabriel reacted first by taking Jennifer by the arm and standing her up. She easily shook off Kennedy’s grip and then placed her hands — clad in elbow-length white gloves — on the table.

“November 21^st, 1963. Remember that night, Mr. Martin?”

The man’s face drained of color. He looked up at the small woman and a questioning look crossed his acne-pitted face.

“A night long before you were squirted out of your mother. What of it?” he hissed.

Gabriel eased his hand over and stopped Lonetree from slamming the man’s fat jeweled face into the white lined tablecloth. He looked at John and slightly shook his head.

“It was rainy and cold on the lower east side. My apartment at the time had a hot water heating system and three radiators more musical than my piano. They clanked and vibrated and put out very little warmth. They were singing loudly that night in November. Remember, Stephan?”

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, tossing his napkin onto the tabletop.

“Remember the song?”

“All right, I don’t care to listen to this any longer. This woman is obviously mad.”

“That word isn’t exactly descriptive, nor adequate for the way I am, man,” Jenny said, hissing the words. Her voice became deep and man-like. “Maybe if I sing it for you?”

Gabriel tried to stop her, but she turned and made her way to the front of the lounge, bumping into several men and women who were dancing slowly to the non-descript music being played by the house band. She went directly to the stage and hopped up on it, tearing the expensive dress as she did. She wobbled at first, and then straightened as the lead singer of the band steadied her. The music stopped one instrument at a time. She exchanged a few words with the singer and then placed a gloved hand on his chest and pushed him away.

“That’s it. Call security,” Martin said to the bodyguard next to him.

On the stage, a confident and gorgeous Jennifer Tilden adjusted the microphone stand. At the table the four men, Martin included, turned to see what was happening. Two of the three bodyguards walked past the group still at the salon’s door.

The small lights lining the stage went from gold to light green. Jennifer looked up. Her features had become harsher, but at the same time even more feminine. He had the feeling that for the first time since he had known Jenny and her traumatic state, Bobby Lee McKinnon was actually sharing the stage with her. This show belonged to both of them. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, Kennedy smiled.

“I would like to dedicate this song to a long-time producer friend of mine who gave me a start in the business. He’s in the back of the room where he can sit in judgment of people, and make deals behind their backs.” She lowered her gaze. “I co-wrote this with a longtime friend of mine you all know as Sonny Bono and Jack Nietzsche in 1962. I played it for this young man in the audience, and he told me it wasn’t good enough.”

Stephan Martin slowly started to rise but John stepped up and placed a hand on his ample shoulder, making the remaining bodyguard take a step forward.

“Why don’t we hear what the lady has to say?” John said into the ear of the record executive.

Jenny raised her face to the lighting above her. Closing her eyes, she started to sing a song that was immediately recognizable. It was always played as an up tempo song by later groups covering it, but Bobby Lee McKinnon had always meant it to be a slow ballad. It had been recorded first by the Searchers, and covered many times afterward even more famous bands.

“I saw her today, I saw her face, It was the face I loved…and I knew, I had to run away and get down on my knees and prayaaay…That they'd go away…But still they begin…Needles and pins…Because of all my pride…The tears I gotta hide…Hey, I thought I was smart…I wanted her…Didn't think I'd do, but now I see…She's worse to him than me…Let her go ahead, take his love instead…And one day she will see…”

The band caught on and the drums rolled and joined in with the slow way Jenny and Bobby Lee sang the old song, Needles and Pins. The rhythm guitar and bass joined in, and even the displaced lead singer started a slow melodic backup to Jenny.

On the floor in front of the stage, every person watching her on stage was enraptured by the slow way the old ballad was sung. Hands tapped out the slow beat on tables. Several men and women rose to their feet and started clapping, as if this beautiful song were a surprise gift from the management at the Waldorf.

John Lonetree slowly removed his hand from Martin’s shoulder and took and involuntary step toward the stage as Jenny started winding down.

The blood had drain from Stephan Martin’s face. He seemed to shrink in his chair and as the bodyguard reached out he angrily shoved his large hand away.

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 correlate 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, 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 the 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.

Damian cursed as he hurried forward, still training his gun on the slumped man. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, lights in the surrounding buildings started to come on. He held the nine millimeter close by the head of the fallen man, who was writhing in pain. With his free hand, he pried the large kitchen knife from the man’s tight grasp. He then allowed his eyes to shift quickly to the body that had never once moved. He saw the pool of blood running from around the neck area and knew that the rate of that flow was too great for the person to survive. The man he had shot was trying to rise to his elbows. He slapped the barrel of the gun onto the top of the man’s head, and the longhaired man grunted and fell onto his face.

“Goddamn it,” Jackson hissed. He looked around him for some sort of assistance. Then he saw that a light had come on inside the diner. A man appeared at the doorway, tying a rope around the waist of his old robe. Jackson waved the man out. Then he looked down and rolled the prone man at his feet over onto his back. In a flash of lightning, the man’s face became visible. Paul Lowell stared back at Damian with dead eyes. His throat had been cut so deeply that Jackson could see the whiteness of bone in the wound. Damian gasped and removed his hand, standing slowly. The heaving rain was staring to wash most of the standing blood into the gutter, but the flow was heavy and would soon cover the protected part of the sidewalk.

Jackson leaned over the man he had shot, grasped him by his filthy hair and raised his head. As the world flashed with lightning and the traffic signal flashed yellow once more, the face of Kyle Pritchard remained slack and unconscious.

“Good God almighty, what in the world did you do?”

Jackson let Pritchard’s head fall back to the wet sidewalk and then he looked up into the shocked face of the diner’s owner.

“Call the local police,” Damian said and held out his State Police identification. He knew everyone in the small town already knew exactly who he was and why he was there.

The old man didn’t move. He stood in the half-open doorway, almost as if he were preparing to run back inside.

“Move, old timer,” Jackson said. He placed his gun in his raincoat pocket and slapped handcuffs on Kyle Pritchard. “And you better put on some coffee.”

When Damian looked up, he saw the man had left to comply with his orders. Jackson placed his hands on his hips and looked from the murdered co-host of Hunters of the Paranormal to the just-awakening sound technician. He stepped back out into the rain and looked up, letting the cold wetness strike his face. When he looked back, he raised his brows.

“Now that, I didn’t expect,” he said, as lightning flashed across the sky once again.

Gabriel Kennedy stood just inside the doorway to room 1809, looking at John and Jennifer. John sat on the end of the large bed and Jennifer was at the desk, writing. Her energy level was almost off the charts now that Bobby Lee McKinnon had disappeared. She had changed out of the evening gown and had simply tossed it to Kelly Delaphoy with an apologetic look, and then had replaced the two thousand dollar dress with a pair of white Levis and a purple turtleneck. To Kennedy’s pleasure, Jenny had kept the make-up on to cover the dark circles under her eyes. As he watched, she sprang from her desk chair to the bell cart. She moved a small vase, and then counted something and wrote it down on her pad. She was following John Lonetree’s instructions to the letter about the way in which his part of the program would be conducted, numbering each item that she would place in John’s hands after he had gone to sleep. She would then record his reactions as his Dream Walk went through its paces.

“Be sure that you write everything down, and record the whole session too,” Kennedy said.

“I think she’ll keep everything in line,” John said, kicking off his cowboy boots.

Jenny smiled but didn’t look up from the notes she was writing. “What if Bobby Lee’s not really gone?” she asked, as matter-of-factly as she could.

“Tell him he’s had his moment in the sun, and then put him to work helping John.” Kennedy smiled, but saw that Jennifer wasn’t very appreciative of his sense of humor. “Sorry. I don’t know, Jenny. I don’t have any answers for you. All I can say is that if he does, end the experiment and call me. I don’t want him mixing it up with John while he’s under.”

The slight woman nodded. She walked to the door and kissed Kennedy on the cheek, then placed her thin fingers on his chest and pushed him out of the door. She closed it without another word and then turned to John who was stretched out on the bed with his large hands behind his head, watching her.

“I thought he would never leave,” he said with a smile.

“Now, am I supposed to sing you a lullaby?” she asked, not appreciating his sense of humor either.

“Maybe just a bedtime story,” John said, his smile growing wider.

“You wouldn’t care for my bedtime stories at all Mr. Lonetree, I assure you.” He flipped off the light switch at the wall, and then the desk lamp. She slid into her chair and looked toward the bed in the total darkness of the room. She hoped and prayed that Bobby Lee McKinnon would leave her be and stay away. She truly wanted to help the team — and most importantly, she wanted to help John Lonetree.

Before long, she felt that John had slid off to sleep. She would give him twenty minutes, as his instructions had stated, and then she would slide the first item he had requested into the bed beside his sleeping body.

Looking at her notes, she could barely make out the first item’s name: Portrait number one — F.E. and Elena Lindemann, wedding portrait.

Kennedy went over each team assignment one last time and then tiredly adjourned the meeting. He and Julie Reilly would be leaving at six in the morning, and the others soon after. He wondered how John and Jennifer were doing. He was tempted to enter the room and eavesdrop, but he knew that John’s Dream Walking was like a tightrope walker attempting a wire act in a high wind: any disturbance at the wrong time could send Lonetree falling out of whatever realm he was in. To Gabriel that could be dangerous, it would be like startling a sleepwalker out of his slumber while in motion.

As he returned his paperwork to his briefcase, he saw Julie Reilly waiting for him by the door. She had a curious look on her face and in a split second he saw the reason why. She pushed the door open and standing in the hallway was a rumpled looking Lionel Peterson. He was wearing a white shirt and black sport jacket, but that was where the neatness ended and the haggardness began. He was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot. Kennedy could see the aftereffects of a long night of drinking. He pushed past Julie, making her step aside.

“I think you better slow down on your alcohol intake,” Kennedy said as he snapped his briefcase shut. “I know the look — I’ve been there.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn where you’ve been, Kennedy.”

“Can you tell us why you’re here and what you want?” Julie asked. “We’re tired, and we have an early day tomorrow.”

At that moment Kelly Delaphoy stepped into the room, followed by the CEO himself. Abe Feuerstein still had on his customary bowtie and his brown suit. He slid easily into a chair at the table. He was looking directly at Kennedy as he pushed a chair out for Kelly to sit. When she did, the CEO placed a hand her shoulder and squeezed.

“I sure as hell will tell you, Ms. Reilly,” Peterson answered smugly. “Although, you being the ace reporter here, I believe you should have had an inkling of what was happening right under your nose.”

The CEO of UBC watched, letting it all play out without comment, but still he kept his aged hand on Kelly’s shoulder.

“I was awakened an hour ago by the Pennsylvania State Police, I immediately called the CEO and he suggested we get here and sort this mess out.”

“And that mess is?”

“Your intrepid detective shot and wounded Kyle Pritchard tonight in that small town out by Summer Place. He shot him, after the man cut the throat of Kelly’s other conman, Paul Lowell.”

Shock settled on Julie’s face as the news sank in. She sat hard in the chair she was standing near and placed a hand over her face. It was when she looked over at Kelly Delaphoy that her anger seethed to the surface.

“You stupid fool, what have you and your people done?”

“I don’t know what the hell anyone is talking about. I had nothing to do with this. Those two have been missing since the night of the test. I had no idea they were still near the house!” Kelly looked to Gabriel for some sort of help, but immediately saw that there would be none there.

“Can you explain in detail what happened, Mr. Peterson?” Feuerstein asked, patting Kelly on the shoulder in a calming gesture.

“All I know is what the detective told me over the phone. He wants to talk to Kelly. He suspects, and rightly so, about her connection to Pritchard. I think she has something to do with this.”

“Are you kidding me? Murder?” Kelly stood so suddenly that the CEO’s hand flew from her shoulder. “In case you didn’t realize, Lionel, you just told me one of my best friends in all the world just had his throat sliced!”

“I didn’t think sharks had any friends,” Peterson spat back.

“Most sharks are loners, Peterson. That’s why you travel as a singular entity yourself,” Gabriel said. “I doubt very much that Ms. Delaphoy’s imagination would go to that extreme. I mean, to kill another human being for high ratings…”

“Now you listen to me, you crack—”

“Professor Kennedy is right, where would the gain be for Kelly?”

Peterson stopped in midsentence and looked at the CEO. He was attempting to get Kelly to sit once more.

“Obviously Kyle Pritchard was insane. He more than likely abducted the poor man, and did God knows what to him. And then, in the end, he snapped and killed him. Sad, but I think all we can accuse our little producer of is extremely poor judgment.”

“Did Jackson say anything more?” Julie asked. She changed targets, shifting her glare from Kelly to Peterson. “Did Pritchard say anything at the scene?”

“Detective Jackson didn’t go into any detail. He just wants to speak with Kelly.”

“Well, he can do so, but in the presence of our team of criminal defense attorneys,” Feuerstein said, rising from his chair.

“Sir, it’s obvious we have to cut this program from our lineup. I mean, we have to use a little bit of taste and common sense.”

“Common sense, yes, yes we do, Lionel. We have already spent a tremendous amount of money in advertising. Common sense is indeed needed. Good taste, however, is something that reality television left out of the equation many years ago. No, the show goes on. We will turn this Pritchard thing into a beneficial part of the show.” He placed his hand back on Kelly’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough to elicit a wince from the blonde woman. “You’ll see to that, won’t you, young lady?”

“Yes, sir,” she said shrugging away from him.

“Good,” the CEO said as he moved to the door. “Professor Kennedy, I would appreciate it very much if you would be present at any questioning. It seems Detective Jackson may have some preconceived notions regarding Ms. Delaphoy here.”

“He won’t be the only one there. I want a crack at Detective Jackson, also. How convenient that all of this happened right in front of him,” Julie said. Kennedy stood and, without a word, bypassed the CEO at the door and left the room.

“It seems we are fast becoming a disappointment to our good professor,” Feuerstein said, surveying the people still inside the room. “Lionel, please attempt to follow up and get as many details about this incident as you can,” he said. Then he turned and followed Kennedy out the door.

“Goddamn you two, you’re going to go down and you’re going to take everyone with you.”

Julie grabbed her bag and took a menacing step toward Peterson.

“That just may be worth it, you little prick.”

Kennedy walked down the hallway in silence. Julie glanced back and saw that Kelly was waiting on the CEO and Peterson. She would like to have stayed and listened to Kelly try to explain the sudden reappearance and then death of her co-host, but she knew Kennedy wasn’t going to allow this incident in Bright Waters to pass by without doing something.

“I’m coming along,” she said as she caught up to Gabriel. He looked tired.

“No, you have the assignment; you don’t need me to go to the Lindemann historical society. I’ve got business.”

“I know, and that’s why you need me along.” She stopped suddenly and took Kennedy by the jacket sleeve. “Jackson’s not going to allow you to talk with a murder suspect, not when he thinks you’re one also. He not only believes you killed your student, he thinks you’re possibly in on this, too. Professor, you need me.”

Kennedy shook free of her grasp and looked around. His eyes traveled to the ceiling as he thought about leaving John and Jennifer alone upstairs.

“I’ll get Jason Sanborn to sit outside Lonetree’s door for the night. If anything happens we can be back here in a few hours. Look Kennedy, if this is a part of Kelly’s little plan that got away from her, we need to know that. If she was, she’ll never admit to it and you know that. You need to know what you’re dealing with here. The only way you can do that is by speaking to Kyle Pritchard, and I’m sorry, but you need me for that.”

“Goddamn it,” Gabriel hissed, finally sparing Julie a look. “What are you after? Tell me the truth. Do you believe what happened to us seven years ago, or are you just playing along until you can pull your 60 Minutes spring-trap on us?”

“I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t know. I think that maybe you have good reason to fear that damn place and that maybe you have justifiable reasons in your own head for what happened that night. But there is one thing I will tell you, Professor. Even after all the hocus pocus I’ve seen today, there are no ghosts in that house. There are just people. People are capable of creating the true horror stories of our day, I’ve seen it time and time again. Kyle Pritchard is one of those — a part of the mystique of a wooden and concrete house, that makes up a whole puzzle. If this is a fake, I will report it as so.”

Gabriel nodded his head. “Okay. Report things as you experience them, tell people the truth after Halloween, I’ll be satisfied with that.”

“And Pritchard?” she asked.

“I’ve told you before; I’m not a big believer in coincidence. Why would Pritchard do what he did?”

“Maybe he’s just crazy, did you ever think of that?”

“That’s a very clinical analysis Ms. Ace Reporter, and I’ll even grant you that and counter with my own clinical report — yes, his cheese has slipped his cracker. Now that that’s taken care of, why did Pritchard wait until now to kill Mr. Lowell? Why did he travel that distance to do it at that particular place and in front of the one policeman linked to that damn house? And here’s one you’d better burn into that notebook of yours, Ms. Reilly: just where the hell have Pritchard and Lowell been for the last eight days?”

Julie had posed the same question to herself in the meeting room, but it hadn’t made her stop and think like it did now, spoken in the light of the hallway.

“But you’re right. I will need you to get through Detective Damian Jackson,” Kennedy turned and started for the immense lobby of the Waldorf.

“Damn right you do,” she said as she caught up with Kennedy once more.

“And it’s just not for the reasons I just mentioned.” He reached the front doors and stopped. “For some reason, that house knows Jackson is involved with what’s happening on the 31^st. It tracked him down to deliver UBC’s missing people to him.”

“Yeah?” She switched her large bag to the other shoulder.

“They were sent to deliver a message.”

The light finally dawned in Julie’s eyes. “We need to know what Summer Place communicated to him.”

“Now you’re starting to get just what may be crazy here, Ms. Reilly.”

Julie smiled as Kennedy turned and went through the doorway. The doorman took Kennedy’s valet ticket.

Julie shook her head. “My bet is still on the human factor.”

“Yeah?” he said with a larger than normal smile.

“Yes, it is.”

“Mine’s on Summer Place.”

Jason Sanborn yawned, leaning forward and pressing his head lightly against the door. He heard nothing but the hiss of air by his ear, and so he pulled away and leaned against the wall. He pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket, looked from it to the “no smoking” sign, and frowned. He placed the pipe back into his jacket and then leaned his ear to the door once more. He was rewarded with a mumbled shout, and then sudden silence.

“No horrific sounds, no blood curdling screams yet?”

Jason’s heart almost jumped from his chest. The voice caught him totally unawares. He turned and saw the smiling face of George Cordero. “Oh, God. You scared the living hell out of me.” Jason grabbed his chest.

“Calm down old boy. This is the Waldorf, not the House on Haunted Hill.”

“What are you doing up here? It’s nearly two in the morning.”

“Ah, the lounge died down to nothing after Jennifer’s magic trick, so I thought I would cruise the hallways looking for adventure and hijinks.”

Jason rummaged in his pocket, fumbling for his pipe once more. He placed it in his mouth and tried to look as if he wasn’t on edge. “Well, you’re not missing anything up here, so I guess you’ll have to find your hijinks and adventure somewhere else.”

“Boy, everyone’s just as friendly as hell tonight.” Cordero leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Still, I think I’ll wait and see if our resident medicine man gets a line on anything.”

Jason removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at George. He studied him for a moment and then looked at his empty pipe.

“You don’t care for Mr. Lonetree, do you?”

George smiled as he looked to his left down the long and empty hallway.

“I don’t care for most people, Mr. Sanborn. If you had the talent,” he looked at Jason with serious eyes, “or curse, you would find that the basic human being is a piece of shit. Always out to screw someone over.”

“Then why are you here?” Sanborn asked.

“Kennedy. That man is tenacious. I was a patient of his many years ago; he hadn’t been out of school very long. He found me in an alley in Pasadena. When he pulled me out of there and started talking to me, I would have never known he was a shrink. Then he took me to his house and I saw his diploma on the wall. At first I thought he was a freak or something — you know, out to doodle a kid off the street. But instead of being a perv, the man actually tossed me his house keys and told me where the food was, and then he left. I didn’t see him for two days. You see, Kennedy had a feeling too. He knew I wouldn’t rip him off. After that, we spoke for weeks. He taught me that it was okay to be bitter about my talent.”

“Did you ever use your talent on Kennedy?” Jason asked.

“No, if I did that, it would open a two way street and exchange of information, and I don’t need Gabriel Kennedy that far into my head. He did test my clairvoyance, though, and he did verify what I had wasn’t natural. He believed me right off the bat, and didn’t try to give me the full battery of medical testing that most doctors would do. You know, looking for the grapefruit-sized tumor on my head, or the dark past that had me killing my immediate family. He knew it was a gift and never doubted that or tried to cloud it with medical terminology. That, Mr. Sanborn, is why I’m here.” He stared Jason for a few uncomfortable seconds. “Gabriel Kennedy is my only friend in the world, and I suspect if he doesn’t get answers this time around, it will kill him. Maybe physically, maybe mentally, but it will certainly damage him beyond repair. I won’t let that happen.”

“Well, that proves you have some humanity in you. So why don’t you respect Mr. Lonetree’s talent?”

Cordero chuckled and then examined the hallway. The elevator chimed, a hundred feet away. He heard the doors slide open, and then closed. He watched, but no one came from the elevator landing.

“I don’t go looking for the feeling. My curse is the mere touching of someone, or something. Our Indian friend goes in search of trouble. He wants to connect with his gift, and that can be very dangerous. It’s like inviting a vampire into your house. Once done, it can’t be undone. Mr. Lonetree is fucking with something that, once in his head, may not want to leave.”

“That sounds ominous,” Jason said as he once more bit down on his pipe.

“I guess that’s why we’re both standing in this freaking hallway in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, Mr. Sanborn, very ominous.”

Jennifer checked the last item off her list, frowning in frustration when John groaned and pushed the latest and last item away in his sleep. The small silver framed photo of the Lindemann children, taken around the pool at Summer Place sometime in the early summer of 1932, hadn’t sparked anything in Lonetree’s sleep colored world. She laid the silver frame on the bell cart and then examined the sleeping man. His sleep wasn’t what she would have called restful. He turned his head to the left and then to the right, and then became still again. He had released his long black hair and it was splayed out on the pillow. He shook, and then his body calmed once more.

“Well, that’s it for the house items,” she said softly. She leaned over, listening as John mumbled in his sleep. The words were of his native language; Jennifer couldn’t understand them, but she found it all to be fascinating. She reached out and touched John’s hair and he immediately calmed. She smiled and straightened. She would keep her little secret to herself. She didn’t want John to know how she was starting to feel about him, so early. She knew most men would shy away from her, but she felt the goodness in Lonetree and she clung to it like a drowning swimmer hugging a buoy.

She returned to the bell cart and the items Wallace Lindemann had brought from Summer Place. She felt frustrated that John had shown no reaction to any of the items on the cart. From the large framed painting of the family Lindemann, which she thought for sure would elicit some response, to the small household items such as the doilies from the sedans and arm chairs. Even the bottles of very aged whiskey, which she thought may have been left there by accident by Wallace Lindemann, had no effect on John’s sleep patterns. While some of them caused a stir, nothing seemed to make him Dream Walk.

Jennifer shook her head. She took the cart by its large frame and started pushing it toward the corner of the room. Something on the floor became entangled in the small wheels of the cart, stopping her. She knelt down, thinking that maybe her sweater had fallen from the desk chair. In the darkness, she felt the material. It wasn’t her sweater. She pulled, and felt the fabric tear. Pulling the cart backward, she tried again. The material came free into her hand and she held it close to her face. It was a dress. She felt the straps and the length as she stood and walked toward the desk. With one look at John, who was still sleeping peacefully, she turned the desk lamp toward the wall so as not to wake him, and switched it on. holding the dress close to the light. It was a black sequined gown. Jenny froze. She scrambled to find her list of items that Lindemann had brought, scanning it one line at a time. She turned and looked at the bell cart. then at the old and dusty dress again. She knew she had not seen the dress at any time, when she had been inventorying, removing or replacing the items on the cart.

“How did this get here?” she asked herself. She turned toward the bed, watching John’s chest raise and lower in peaceful sleep. A few of the black sequins had fallen off, onto the desk. She closed her eyes and made a decision. Easing up to the large bed, she sat on its edge. The recorder on the desk still showed its red light; the small device was recording. She slowly brought the evening dress up and placed it over John’s exposed hands as if she were covering a baby with a blanket.

John’s reaction was immediate. He sat straight up in bed and his eyes flew open, staring straight ahead. Jennifer eased herself from the bed and backed away, her heart racing at a thousand miles per hour. John took the dress into both hands and then twirled it into a knot, it was if he were wadding up a set of papers. Jennifer swallowed. His haunted eyes still remained fixed on something straight ahead, it was if he were seeing something that scared the hell out of him.

The temperature in the room suddenly fell by thirty degrees. She could see the vapor of her breath as she breathed in and out. She absentmindedly reached for her sweater on the back of the desk chair, but fumbled it as she watched John’s eyes. Summer Place was here and in this room.

The house was here, and John Lonetree was seeing it.

John looked around frantically. He knew, without ever having seen the house, exactly where he was. He was standing in the corner of a room. The bedside table lamp was on but it was like seeing the room through a wet coating of gauze, or a double thick layer of mosquito netting. The light was diffused and gave the large room a brownish, darker tint.

In his dream state, he felt another presence in the bedroom. No, he thought, two others. One was a young girl standing at the foot of the bed, the other a tall and striking dark-haired woman standing next to her. The smaller girl nodded her head and left the room. The other turned and looked down at the item the girl had left on the foot of the bed. Lonetree looked from that blurry, hazy thing on the bed, to the black sequined dress knotted in his hands. He saw the woman lift the dress up and look it over. The black sequins shined brightly in the lamplight from the table. John watched as the tall woman held the dress up to her front and looked it over in the full length mirror by the dressing screen. He could feel, not see, the woman snap the thin black strap. She played with the dress a moment, and then lowered it in thought.

In the haze of the diffuse light, John looked down at the dress he held in his own hands, and then shook it out. He saw the broken strap on the left side and wondered if that was what the woman was seeing. He looked up just as the tall woman opened the bedroom door. She stepped through and looked left, and then right.

“Hallo, die junge Dame?” the woman said in thick German. John though she was asking for the young lady. “Mein Kleid scheint gerissen zu werden…” The tall woman was frustrated. “Young lady, my dress seems to have been torn…Young lady?”

John felt himself move from the shadows and the woman seemed to have felt the movement. She half turned and looked around the room, but seeing nothing, she turned back to the hallway, then stepped out with the black dress in her hands. John followed with the ever present veil confusing his vision. He saw the woman slowly make her way down the third floor hallway. Lonetree knew he was in Summer Place, and he also knew he was in the presence of the German diva Gwyneth Gerhardt. She seemed to be examining doors as she went to the right down the hallway. She turned when John came out of the bedroom, almost as if she were feeling Lonetree close to a hundred years after the fact. She looked at the spot where he stood for the longest time, and then turned away and continued toward the end of the long hall.

John tried his best to get a bearing on exactly where he was, so that he could relay this information to Gabriel later. He started to get the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t alone in his pursuit of the German opera star. There was another presence not far away from him. No, it was more than one, he thought. He didn’t feel threatened by the multiple entities, but he knew that they were most curious as to what the diva was up to. John wondered if maybe he was only expressing his own thoughts outwardly to the point where he was flashing back on himself.

Suddenly the atmosphere changed dramatically, just as the diva approached a large set of double doors at the end of the hallway. John stopped in his tracks. He felt a warning shudder from his own body. He could sense concern from the other presences. Try as he might, John couldn’t connect with whatever was there with him, but he knew that whoever it was feared for the diva. Suddenly the warm and inviting temperature changed in the hallway. From the end of the corridor to where he stood, the glass fronts of picture frames frosted over, and he even saw the Diva’s breath mist from her mouth. She placed an ear up to the large double doors. He wanted to warn her that something had changed, but found — as usual — that he was merely an observer with no voice or ability to affect his surroundings. He did, however, the multiple presences in the hallway move forward, stop, and then move again, as if hesitant but wanting to warn the diva.

The loud slam made John jump. It was if a cannon ball had struck the wall next to him. The diva didn’t seem to hear anything. She reached for the handle on the left side door. John held his hand out, wanting to warn her away. He saw the dress in his outstretched hand and his attention was drawn to it momentarily. The German woman disappeared into the sewing room. John felt the other entities in the hallway all gather around the double doors, and he sensed wailing, crying; a horrible crucible of anguish from all around him. He tried to single out the voices, but could only make out five or six. The rest were lost, as if coming from a further distance. Gwyneth Gerhardt started screaming inside the room. John took three quick steps toward the sewing room but stopped as a door to his left opened. A man stepped out in a long-tailed tuxedo. He adjusted his tie and looked around the hallway. John wanted to grab the mustachioed man and shake him, awakening him to the fact that a woman needed his help in the sewing room. The man looked around as if sensing something, and then he shrugged his shoulders and stamped his feet. He was feeling the cold also. Gwyneth screamed, pounding on the giant double doors of the sewing room. The feminine voices cried out with her, sharing her anguish.

John watched the man in the tuxedo leave for the stairs. He tried to grab the man but his hand passed right through him. John yelled, “Stop!” But the man continued on his way.

The entities ceased their wailing and crying. John sensed panic, terror, pure animal fear. Something was coming down the hallway from behind him. He slowly turned as all of the entities vanished in a sudden rush of warm air. Then the hallway grew even colder than it had been a moment before. The footsteps sounded like a hollow ball striking the carpet runner. They shook the house as they came toward John. He closed his eyes, forcing his body to turn. As he did, the giant footsteps came to a stop. He felt its breath as it leaned in close to him. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was a misty blur. But he knew that hiding underneath the trick of light was a living, breathing human being. The evil rolled off it in waves that almost made John sick to his stomach. All the while, Gwyneth Gerhardt kept pounding on the doors and screaming for help. Her voice was breaking, losing all of its womanly humanity and becoming animalistic and desperate. Lonetree was reminded of a deer caught in a trap.

The thing came mere inches from his face. He heard the sniffing sound as it smelled him — first up, and then down. He felt the severe cold as it leaned in close. The thing turned toward the sewing room door, then it leaned down and close to him once more. He felt triumph from the cold, evil-smelling entity as it studied him. He knew the thing was smiling, satisfied about something.

“They are mine, Shaman, mine forever,” it said in a husky, deep voice. “You are so easy to disperse, so easy to kill. You will never make it to your gathering. Stay out!”

With the last words John felt the thing push him into the wall. It suddenly moved away, the blur of its camouflage acting as a bubble of disguise as it approached the sewing room. The screaming stopped as the thing pressed against the double doors. John’s eyes widened when he saw the oak press inward. He even heard the cracking of the thick wood. Then the doors snapped back and all of the air was sucked out of the hallway. He heard one last scream.

“You should have not followed!” came the thick, horrible voice from the sewing room. Then it was over.

John opened his eyes and saw the dress in his hands. He tried desperately to throw it off, but he had twisted it so thoroughly that it wouldn’t free itself.

Jennifer, wide eyed and in a state of terror at what John had been shouting aloud, reached out and tried to unwind the dress from Lonetree’s hands. She finally managed to remove it and tossed it across the room just as the door opened. Jason and George had been trying to get in since the moment John’s screams and shouts of warning had reached them in the hallway.

“What the hell—?”

Jennifer held up a hand. She splayed her fingers as she watched John. Finally, he reached up and ran his fingers through his long hair. He looked up and saw Jennifer.

“Where’s Gabriel and the others?”

Jennifer turned to Jason for the answer.

“He and Julie Reilly left for the Poconos. It seems Kyle Pritchard and Paul Lowell have turned up. Paul’s very dead.”

Jennifer sat on the bed and took John’s hand. “Did you learn anything?” she asked him. As the two men stepped further into the room, John turned and planted his feet firmly on the carpet. He was careful not to move his hand out of Jenny’s.

“I think so,” he said, looking into her concerned face. “I don’t think we can beat whatever’s in that house. It’s been killing for a very long time.”

“It seems the house has allowed at least Kyle Pritchard to live,” Sanborn said as he fumbled for his pipe.

“That was its plan all along,” John said. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

“I’m not following.”

“It’s attacking us even now. It doesn’t want us to go to Summer Place, so it’s reaching out for us.”

“And?” Cordero asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

Lonetree looked up past Jenny and found Cordero’s eyes.

“You know the reason. I can see it in your face.”

Sanborn removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at the man next to him as if he had suddenly grown two heads.

“Tell them what you think,” John said, holding his eyes on Cordero.

“Gabe and Julie have left. Kelly has been dragged off by Peterson and their boss, and we’re heading out in the morning to pursue information about the house.”

“Vulnerable,” John said. “It will hit us when we’re weakest, before we gather to fight it.”

“Come on, you’re speaking like a bad horror book. What are you saying?”

Cordero looked at the open door and the bright light in the hallway, grateful for the brief respite from darkness. Then he turned to the others.

“Summer Place wants us separated.”

FOURTEEN

Julie tried to answer her cell phone once again, but for the tenth time in as many minutes she failed to get a clear signal. She looked at the screen in frustration and tossed the phone into her bag.

“Goddamn dead zone out here,” she said. She watched the windshield wipers and their hypnotic rhythm as they swept the heavy rain away.

“Could you tell who was calling?” Kennedy asked. He leaned forward, trying to see through the water that covered the glass between wiper pulses.

“Jason Sanborn.” She glanced at her watch, using the dashboard lights for illumination. “It’s about four hours past his bedtime, which is worrisome in itself.”

Kennedy was worrying more about John Lonetree. If something had gone wrong during the Dream Walk and he wasn’t there, he would never be able to forgive himself. It was his experiment and things seemed to be pulling away from him. In this line of research, that could be deadly.

“Are you thinking about Lonetree?” Julie asked, turned to look at Kennedy through the green and blue reflection of the dashboard lights.

“Yes. I should have been there. This Kyle Pritchard act could have waited.”

“Act?” Julie asked, raising her left brow. “So, you do think the test broadcast was some kind of a put-up job?”

Gabriel spared the reporter a look, and quickly turned back to watch the twisting road. “No, not the ending of Kelly’s little game.”

“Just the beginning — the disappearance?” Julie asked.

“I think it may have started out as a prank, but the house one-upped Kelly and her friends, took it to the next level.”

“The house?” Julie said with a skeptical look.

“Look, if you open a doorway and allow the house into your head, it will take the advantage — it will attack.”

“You’re going off on a tangent. Either you’re advancing a theory that has yet to be discussed with UBC, or you’re holding back historical information from us. Which is it?”

Kennedy shifted in the seat. Through the heavy downpour, he saw the road sign for Bright Waters. “Jesus,” he said as they entered the town.

“Damn Jackson. Little does he know, he’s playing right into the network’s hands with this circus.” Julie leaned over the seat and brought out a camera case and a digital recorder. She started filming the ten state police cars, flashing their blue lights outside of the small constable’s office. There was still an ambulance out front, along with several news vans from Philadelphia with lights blaring. Julie saw that one of them was an affiliate station of UBC, so she stopped filming and put the camera back in its bag.

“Lieutenant Jackson is ever diligent, isn’t he?” Kennedy asked. Julie tried her cell phone again as Kennedy pulled to the curb behind a news van.

“Finally, a signal,” she said, punching numbers on the phone.

Kennedy turned off the car and watched the comings and goings of the police as they made their way from the diner across the street to the constable’s office.

“No wonder you have a signal. You have enough microwaves emanating from this little town to light up Cape Canaveral.” Kennedy opened his door and stood, letting the rain pummel his head as he watched the scene before him. He would let Jackson come to him. He needed coffee.

“Jason, what’s up?” Julie said as she opened her door to follow Kennedy.

Gabriel didn’t wait on her; he made his way through the rising water toward the brightly lit diner. A group of state policemen were standing over something on the concrete. He swallowed when he saw it was the taped outline of a man’s body. Several of the policemen looked up and eyed him with suspicion. Kennedy averted his eyes and walked into the diner.

Julie came in close behind Kennedy and turned as the door closed. She watched the policemen as they noted details. One of those details was the brownish stain that had soaked into the concrete of the sidewalk.

“Okay, I’ll pass along the message. Now inform the news division that I’ll be filing a live report from Bright Waters on the murder, using the affiliate that’s already here. Tell whoever you need to pull some strings and threaten whoever needs to be bullied, and get me that affiliate crew’s cooperation.”

Kennedy removed his coat and shook out the rain as he sat at the counter. He eyed the three policemen sitting further down the counter and the four others in a booth eating breakfast. An old man in cook’s whites placed a cup of steaming coffee in front of Gabriel and then started to move away.

“Quite a bit of excitement,” Kennedy said. The man stopped and turned.

“Don’t know how folks can eat after seein’ things like that,” he said. He placed a cup and saucer in front of Julie when she sat, and poured her coffee without asking if she wanted any.

“Did you see what happened,” Gabriel asked as he poured sugar into his cup. Julie placed her bag on the stool next to her and watched the exchange.

“You bet I did. I never want to see anything like it again.” The old man turned and disappeared behind the swinging doors.

Julie sipped the hot coffee and then turned to look at the policemen, who were in turn eyeing her. She turned back and removed her own coat, laying it over her large bag.

“Jason said that John Lonetree had quite the experience; Sanborn’s about to have kittens. He wants you to call him as soon as you can.”

Kennedy held out his hand, indicating that he needed the phone. Julie started to place the cell phone into his hand, but when the door opened she pulled it back and raised her cup to her lips instead.

“Mr. Wonderful is here. That didn’t take long,” she said, hiding her moving lips behind the cup.

“It seems your cast of characters is fast coming together. Well, minus one of the players. Paul Lowell won’t be making the cast party,” Damian Jackson said as he removed his soaking raincoat. “Why don’t we grab a booth so we can talk.”

Kennedy sat motionless and Julie sipped her coffee. Then they slowly rose and walked over to the nearest booth. They sat, both on one side to face the grand inquisitor. Jackson watched them sit. He eyed the state policemen sitting at the counter, and then the four in the booth at the back of the diner.

“I think we have a prisoner almost ready for transport,” he said to them. “Or do you want the local constable to handle it?”

As Kennedy and Julie watched, the three policemen at the counter and the four in the booth all rose.

“And leave the man a sizable tip. I have to eat here today and tonight.”

The policemen started tossing dollar bills on the counter and booth table. They didn’t meet the large detective’s eyes as they placed their Smokey the Bear hats on and left the diner. As they did, the old man stepped out of the kitchen with his coffee pot, but Jackson waved him off. He sat down across from Julie and Gabriel. This was the first time that either of them had seen Jackson without a tie and not looking as if he had just stepped out of a GQ magazine ad.

He smiled at the two people across from him as he laced his fingers together.

Silence hung between the three like an invisible wall. Gabriel knew he was the focus here, even though he had nothing to do with Kyle Pritchard or Paul Lowell.

“I would liked to have seen Kelly Delaphoy sitting there. I have a few pointed questions to ask her about tonight’s events.”

“She’s conferring with the network legal department at the moment,” Julie said. Kennedy remained silent and kept his eyes on Jackson.

“I imagine she is.”

“Detective Jackson, why would two missing men show up after eight days, and then one kill the other with a state police detective as a witness?” Julie asked. She pulled out her small digital recorder, which Jackson immediately covered with a bear paw-sized hand.

“This is not your interview, Ms. Reilly. It’s mine.”

Julie pulled her hand and recorder out from under Jackson’s palm and clicked on the device. “Then I’ll forward you a copy. It will save us all a lot of time. Otherwise, you know what you can do with your questions.”

Damian smiled, the expression falling short of his brown eyes. He pulled a sugar dispenser toward him and started rolling it. Kennedy recognized the sleight of hand gesture as a way policemen had of distracting the person they were questioning — a trick that only worked on people who were scared to begin with.

“Now, what condition is Kyle Pritchard in?” Julie asked, pen poised over her notepad.

“Okay Ms. Reilly, quid pro quo. I’ll play along and then I would like something answered.”

“Fair enough,” Julie said.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Jackson said. He was eyeing Kennedy.

“What questions could I answer that would cast light onto something only you witnessed?”

“In answer to your question, Pritchard is in shock. He looks emaciated and he’s dehydrated.”

Julie wrote down Jackson’s answer.

“His last words to me, after he slit the throat of your network personality,” he said looking from Kennedy to Julie, and then back, “were, they’re mine. Does that sound familiar, Professor?”

“In the spoken word, no. Not familiar at all; however, I’ve seen those words written on paper.”

“Don’t play games with me, Kennedy. You did that once before and you paid dearly for it.”

“Yes I did. Both of you saw to that. Let me add that a closed mind, coming from either you or Ms. Reilly here, is a very dangerous thing to have when you’re facing something like Summer Place. I suspect however neither of you will realize it until that house jumps up and bites you both on the ass. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call to make.”

Jackson started to reach out and take Kennedy’s arm, but stopped short. Gabriel looked at him with an intensity the detective didn’t remember Gabriel having before. The professor leaned over and looked the detective in the eyes once more.

“And I would expect my antagonist to allow me an even playing field. Let me speak to Pritchard before you cart him off to Philadelphia for your own inquisition.”

“Of course. That’s why I’m happy to see you here, Professor. I want your take on his state of health and well being.”

Kennedy held Julie’s cell phone up and waved it. “Excuse me.”

Julie watched Kennedy leave. She jotted her observation down in her notebook and then looked up, smiling at the detective. “He seems to have grown a set of balls since the last time you confronted him.”

“No comment,” Jackson said. “I take it you are seeing things quite differently nowadays too, Ms. Reilly?”

“Let’s just say, I have a little bit more of an open mind than I used to have.” Julie turned off the recorder and gathered her things. “I’m going to give you some time to think about my question, Detective. Just where the hell were Pritchard and Lowell all this time? I mean, you searched high and low for them, and then all of a sudden they come strolling into Bright Waters to demonstrate to you personally their culpability in a hoax, and then one kills the other. And please don’t stick with a pat policeman’s answer. This is damn strange and you know it. So think hard, Detective, because in just two days Kennedy may have a point to ram home to you.”

“And that is?” Jackson asked as Julie rose.

“The point is, that house is beginning to look like it just may be capable of reaching out and biting us both in the ass, just like it may have done to Pritchard and Lowell. And you know what else I’m beginning to believe?”

“What?”

“I think that house may have enjoyed scaring the hell out of you personally, and I can see by your eyes you don’t like being scared. So now I guess you know how Kennedy felt all those years ago.” Julie raised her brow as she said the words. “After all, the house may have just sought you out…on a more intimate basis.”

Julie moved off to join Gabriel outside. Jackson watched her go, then turned and slid the sugar dispenser away so hard that it broke against the wall fronting the booth. He closed his eyes. The tables had been turned on him by both Reilly and Kennedy, and he knew exactly why. The reporter’s theory had been spot on.

He was indeed scared, for the first time in his career.

Jackson stood to the side in the one-cell constable’s station. Kennedy stood in front of the bars and as Julie tried to join him, Gabriel gently pushed her back. She held up the recorder and Gabriel reluctantly nodded his head in agreement. Julie placed the recorder on the locking mechanism on the cell door and then backed away to stand beside Jackson in the dark. Outside, the last of the storm was passing by and all that could be heard was the gentle falling of the rain. The lightning was now far off to the east.

“Kyle, can I speak to you a moment?” Kennedy asked.

Pritchard was sitting on the lone uncushioned cot that occupied the cell. His long hair was a tangled, wet mess. His head hung low, buried between his raised knees. Kennedy could see the shaking of his shoulders.

“Mr. Prichard, Mr. Kyle Prichard, my name is Kennedy. I would like—”

Pritchard’s head shot up and he scrambled into the corner, as if he wanted to crawl up, around, or through the wall.

“I had no message for you!”

Gabriel didn’t miss a beat. “That’s why I’m here, Kyle, to understand the message you brought to—”

“Jackson, big, strong buck nigger!”

To Damian’s credit, he didn’t react to the racial slur in the slightest. He raised his right brow at Gabriel, wanting him to continue. These were the only words that Damian had heard the man utter since he was taken into custody.

“Yes, that’s the man,” Gabriel said. Kyle Pritchard lowered his head and started weeping again.

“Who gave you the message to give to the detective?”

“I…don’t…know…”

The answer was almost an extended whine.

“Why was it necessary to kill Paul Lowell?”

Pritchard looked up just as if he had been given a reprieve from his execution. His eyes were wild and he actually smiled.

“It….it…said that I would free myself if I allowed Lowell to escape. I did, didn’t I? I kept my part of the bargain. Now I don’t have to go back there, do I?” Prichard jumped from the cot and slammed himself into the bars, striking his head hard enough to get a good flow of blood running down his forehead. Jackson took a step forward but Gabriel held out a hand, staying him before he reached the bars. “I… don’t…have…to…go…back…there — right?” he yelled into Kennedy’s face. “You know it, Kennedy. You know it better than anyone. It keeps its word, right? I don’t have to go back?”

Julie saw a man who had gone totally insane. She knew that Gabriel would receive no useful information from Pritchard.

“No, Kyle, you never have to go back. Not ever.”

“I knew it. I knew as soon as you said your name. It’s satisfied,” Pritchard slid down the set of bars until he was on the cold concrete of the cell.

Kennedy was about to turn away when Pritchard spoke again.

“They tried to protect us, but that…that…thing would have none of it. It found us and…and…” he turned, twisting his neck until he could see Kennedy, “and…and…Paul was the lucky one. I wanted to be the message, but it chose Paul. It wasn’t fair. Now Paul will never be afraid again. It’s just…not…fucking fair.”

Pritchard lowered his head and sobbed.

“He’s not making any sense at all. He’ll be away a long time before he goes to trial for murder.”

Gabriel shook his head. “You didn’t understand a single thing this man said, did you? All you heard was the rambling of a terrified man, just as you didn’t hear me all those years ago. You stupid bastard, he told us everything.”

“For instance?” Damian asked.

“Show up on October thirty-first. Summer Place can explain it to you better than I ever could.”

Kennedy walked out of the cell area. Julie started to follow, but then remembered her recorder. She reached back to pick it up and stopped in front of Jackson.

“I guess Summer Place is the place to be, huh?”

“I’ll be there, all right. You bet your ass I’ll be there. I guarantee all of this bullshit will be laid to rest.”

Julie turned at the door.

“Let’s just pray that’s all that’s laid to rest on Halloween.”

Julie laughed as Damian glared at the empty doorway.

“You don’t believe all of this shit, do you?” he yelled after her.

“No,” she called back, “but it sure is going to be good television, one way or the other.”

When Jackson turned back around, his heart fell through to his stomach. Kyle Pritchard had stood up and was staring right into the detective’s face, smiling a maniacal grin that made Damian step back another foot.

“Don’t worry, Detective. If it has its way, they won’t be showing up for any TV special. It’s hungry now.” A blank look crossed Pritchard’s features. It was as if something had reached out and switched him off.

“These fucking people,” Jackson hissed as he turned away from the cell. “I’m going to nail them all!”

Outside the last of the lightning and thunder faded from the small valley as the storm worked its way toward the place that was calling the shots — Summer Place.

Gabriel listened to the call from New York and the dire warning from John Lonetree. The rental car was pulled off to the side the road while Julie Reilly made her field report with the assistance of a very disgruntled affiliate team from Philadelphia. Their own field reporter glared from underneath an umbrella. Kennedy could understand the affiliate’s distaste for Reilly; it seemed the UBC woman was used to stealing the spotlight from people. As he watched, he came to the realization that Julie didn’t even know she was doing it. Gabriel didn’t know if that was a factor of her arrogance or if it was from a natural ability to lead. He watched her wrap up the report outside the diner. Maybe she had been climbing the ranks of reporting for so long that she had become insensitive to others trying desperately to do the same thing.

“Well, maybe we should get Leonard to break a few laws and get the information through the historical society database. We can do the same with the New York and Pennsylvania state records on the deaths of the children. Then we can do the research from Summer Place, if need be. I’m inclined to take John’s warning seriously, if he thinks we’re being separated for an attack. Listen, Jason, keep everyone together at the Waldorf, Leonard is the only one allowed out of the hotel to work with the UBC engineers. He needs access to their equipment, but see what you can do about getting a guard on him.”

Gabriel listened and then closed the cell phone. He watched through the misting rain as Julie thanked the UBC affiliate crew. Then he saw Reilly take the frustrated young woman reporter by the arm and walk with her, steering her toward the covered entrance of the diner. It looked as though they were in serious discussion. Julie smiled, and when the Philadelphia reporter lowered the umbrella, she was also smiling. Julie handed her a business card and the younger reporter looked not only grateful, but outright giddy. Julie shook her hand and then made her way back toward the car. Kennedy shook his head as he started the vehicle. Reilly opened the door, tossed her bag inside and then followed, snapping her seatbelt and looking straight ahead. Kennedy watched her a moment before placing the car into gear. The reporter was tired. He could see that much through the dim dashboard lighting.

“Oh, look, Detective Jackson looks downright sad that we’re leaving him,” Julie said, nodding her head toward the small motel across the street.

Kennedy saw Damian Jackson standing in the shadows near the ice machine, watching their car turn for the road out of Bright Waters.

“You know the look of a lion when he’s surrounded by a pack of hyenas?” Julie asked.

“If I recall, you and he were business acquaintances.”

Julie looked over at Kennedy with a curious slant to her features. “Professor, just because we were non-believers, never made us allies. I particularly don’t like that man. As for you,” she raised her voice just a little, making him glance toward her, “you seem to be just as unforgiving. Have you ever tried to consider my point of view, or Jackson’s? No, it’s always your point of view, because the rest of us don’t have a Harvard-educated slant on the paranormal, so our perspectives don’t count. To let you in on a little secret, Professor Kennedy, I have done my research and over seventy-five percent of all Americans believe in some form of activity, paranormal or scientific. I went into your investigation seven years ago with my eyes wide open. I never do anything half-assed. Give both of us — Jackson included — a break. He sees the fucked up side of things in his line of work. He’s a skeptic, but all he’s saying is that he knows it doesn’t take a ghost to be evil. Maybe he knows that over ten percent of all people in the world are insane. As for me…” She looked away. “Nothing fucking surprises me anymore. But I do know when to admit that I need to reexamine something, and maybe Summer Place, for one reason or another, needs to have its doors opened again.”

Kennedy was silent as he steered the car out of town. Then he smiled.

“What did you say to that reporter from Philadelphia?”

The question caught Julie by surprise. She shook her head.

“You thought I would steal her crew and make a report using her field team and not apologize for it? If you must know, I told her I liked the way she and her news crew made it to Bright Waters so fast after the fact, and that I will see what I can do about getting her some light work out of New York, you know, weekend stuff. That should help her.”

“But you’ve never seen her work, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Isn’t that a leap of faith on your part?”

“Oh, so it boils down to you analyzing me about my conclusions seven years ago?” she asked angrily.

Gabriel spared her a look and laughed. “No, it just shows me that you’re capable of not being a bitch all the time.”

Julie raised her eyebrows, and then she laughed.

As the car moved down the small road leading down the mountain, Kennedy didn’t see the black shroud as it moved along behind them. It vanished into the tree line to the left, heading for the large bend in the road three miles away.

Summer Place was reaching out.

The limousine was quiet as Kelly Delaphoy worked on her laptop. She had thus far ignored the hateful looks from Lionel Peterson, who was sitting across from her. Abe Feuerstein sat sipping a drink, watching Kelly work. It was as if the old CEO was studying her.

“What do you think about placing your team on site a day early?”

Kelly looked up from her computer, the light from the monitor casting her face in a wash of colors and shadow. Feuerstein took another swallow of his drink.

“I mean, if we’re on the property, the state police would find it that much harder to have us removed if they were so inclined, wouldn’t you agree, Lionel?”

Peterson looked from Kelly to his boss, sitting next to him. “That raises more concerns on expense for the show. Having the entire production crew onsite is an expense not budgeted for. Lodging, tent rental, commissary, and the overtime, all of that would run us over an already extended budget,” Peterson looked at Kelly. “Plus, with the police now so interested, it may not be wise to rock the boat at this juncture.”

Feuerstein smiled and placed his crystal glass in a small holder on the wet bar in front of him.

“I see your concern on the budget. I have spoken to marketing and sales and they say we can push the envelope just a little further.”

“The contract with Lindemann only covers one night in the house; I would anticipate him throwing a fit about the added—”

“That’s enough about Lindemann and quite enough about budget concerns, Lionel.” The CEO looked out of the darkened widows as the limo pulled into the underground parking garage at UBC. “You are not just the president of programming for this show, you are also its producer. And let me put it another way and make this absolutely clear, Lionel: your job is on the line, so you better damn well get on board. Kelly here deserves the benefit of the doubt, at least to this point.”

“So, you’re a believer in this crap, too?” Peterson asked.

“Believer? No, I’m not. The scariest thing in the world to me is our stockholders, Lionel; they should be the scariest things in the world to you, also. They believe in their quarterly reports, and that’s all they believe in. Now, inform the legal department that since Kelly was not present at the murder scene, I don’t want her disturbed as long as she’s in New York. They can have at her on the thirtieth when she arrives in Pennsylvania.”

As the limo came to a stop, Feuerstein looked at Peterson and waited for a confirmation of his orders, which the president of entertainment finally gave by a quick nod of his head.

“Good.” The CEO reached for the door handle when the driver failed to open it for him. Another employee he would have to straighten out.

Kelly closed her laptop and started gathering her bags. She watched the CEO pull on the handle twice, then a third time. He reached for the lock on the door and pulled up on it, but it slipped through his fingers. Feuerstein angrily slammed his hand down on the intercom to the driver’s compartment.

“Unlock the goddamn door!”

The slim locks popped up, down, up and then down again in a rapid movement that made them all flinch.

Peterson reached over and used the electric lock mechanism to pop the door locks, but the same rapid movement repeated. “What the hell is going on?” Lionel leaned over near Kelly and slammed his palm against the glass partition. “Open the fucking door, you moron!”

Kelly flinched at the loudness of Peterson’s voice. She half turned in her seat. Through the glass, she saw the driver’s shadow sitting motionlessly. Then without preamble the car’s interior temperature dropped by about thirty degrees, frosting all the glass.

“What kind of fucking idiots do you employ here?” He slammed his hand on the glass, then repeated the move again. This time it was answered by the large black limousine rocking hard to the right, and then the left. Kelly grabbed for the seatbelt that she hadn’t bothered to use. Feuerstein lowered his hands to the seat, bracing himself against the violent rocking.

“Jesus Christ!” Peterson screamed. He was thrown against his door just as the glass partition cracked. The break zigzagged downward and disappeared into the seat frame.

The glass broke free, showering them with tinted shards, and the radio came on. The electronic numbers scaled up and then down, far faster that the radio was capable of. Soon they started catching words from different stations. Although they had to be random, they came through as a full sentence.

“…they are mine….they are mine….they are mine….they are mine….”

“What the fuck?” Peterson said. The rocking of the car increased.

Kelly closed her eyes, praying for the assault on the car to stop. The radio volume increased, lowered, and then increased again, enough so the all three put their hands over their ears.

“Mine….mine….mine….mine….THEY ARE MINE!!!”

Suddenly everything stopped. Then the door next to Feuerstein opened and he was helped from the car. Peterson slid over and followed the CEO. Then Kelly slapped the laptop from her lap and got out as fast as she could. All three stood shaking and looking at the now normal limousine.

“Why the hell didn’t you unlock the fucking doors?” Peterson advanced on the driver, who was looking around as if he were lost.

“What? I just did.”

All three of them looked at the driver as if he had lost his mind.

“Was there a problem?” the driver asked, noticing the terror in their faces.

It was Kelly who started laughing first. The CEO turned and started for the elevator. Peterson watched them both as if they had truly lost their minds.

“What the fuck are you laughing about?” he asked as Kelly reached into the car to gather her things.

“I’m laughing at the fucking look on your face.” Kelly stepped up to Peterson, looking at him closely. “Suddenly just about anything is possible, isn’t it?”

“Why, because we have a bad driver and a malfunctioning car? That just falls in line with every other aspect of this fucked up special.” Peterson reached into the limo for the crystal cut decanter of whiskey and uncorked it.

“Keep thinking that way, Lionel, but you know and I know that house is building power. It’s starting to reach out to everyone involved.”

Peterson watched Kelly hurry to catch up with the old man. He took a quick swallow of the whiskey, and then he looked over at the driver, who still looked totally lost and confused. Peterson offered him the bottle. The driver looked taken aback, but then he accepted the offer.

“Yeah, what the fuck’s the difference? You may be working here long after my ass is fired.”

Peterson accepted the bottle back from the driver and took another long pull from the crystal decanter. Then he kicked the limousine, startling the man next to him.

“Yeah, they may be yours, you motherfucker, but this,” he splashed whiskey onto the limo, and then showed off the decanter, “is mine… MINE!”

Jason Sanborn, George Cordero and John Lonetree stood at the door and watched Leonard Sickles pace back and forth in his long white boxer shorts and t-shirt. His baseball cap was turned sideways on his head.

“You woke me up to tell me Professor Gabe wants me to break into state death records and the Lindemann historical society? I thought you dudes were going out into the world to get this information tomorrow. What do you need me for?”

“John thinks the house is trying to separate us and attack us piecemeal,” Jason said. He placed his pipe in his mouth and then rolled his eyes at Lonetree.

Leonard stopped in his tracks and turned to the three men at the door.

“What do you mean, attack? Are you serious?”

“Look, kid, Gabriel wants you to do this; so can you do it and still complete your other electronic work, or not?” Lonetree said.

The look on Leonard’s face changed. He turned and grabbed a robe. They had been joined by Jenny Tilden, who stood next to George Cordero.

“Sorry, I didn’t feel like being alone in my room,” she said. She looked much better than she had earlier in the evening.

“I’m sure we all quite understand, my dear,” Sanborn offered. He wished he could light his pipe.

“Damn man, doesn’t anyone sleep around here?” Leonard asked as he came back to the door, tying off the hotel bathrobe. “Yeah, I can do both jobs,” he said. “I can farm out the computer theft through a friend of mine in LA. But if he gets caught, it’s going to cost someone a lot of money.”

“Ten thousand dollars for the information we need,” Sanborn said, sucking on his empty pipe.

“Excuse me, but can we discuss this inside the room? It’s getting cold out here,” Jennifer said, crossing her thin arms over her chest. At the moment, the hallway lights and the room lights started flickering.

“She’s right. Did someone leave open a window or something?” Sanborn looked around the empty hallway.

Lonetree and Leonard saw it first — a large transparent shadow that closed in behind Jenny and Sanborn. It seemed to rise up through the expensive carpet. John tried to react as the hallway lights dimmed, but he and the other men were pushed forward into the room and the door slammed, closing them inside. Whatever it was had completely sealed them off from Jennifer, who was still outside in the hallway. John tried desperately to disentangle himself from the three other men. Leonard was on the bottom of the fallen pile, screaming for everyone to get off.

Outside Jennifer screamed and a loud thump smashed into the closed door. Then the door rattled as Jenny tried to turn the handle. She started pounding and slapping at the wood.

“Get off. It’s out there with her!” Lonetree screamed. He literally lifted Cordero and Sanborn off of him and dashed for the door on his hands and knees. The room was warm, but when John touched the wooden door he felt the extreme cold emanating from the hallway. Jenny was crying and still slapping her hand against the door. Then she screamed again and the pounding and slapping stopped.

“What the fuck is happening?” Leonard shouted. He finally gained his feet and ran for the door to help Lonetree.

John managed to pull the door partway open, but whatever was on the far side pulled it closed again. Leonard threw his own minimal weight into the battle and this time the door opened a foot. A large, black hand made of mist reached inside and pulled the door closed with a hard slam. Both men screamed and fell back, wide-eyed.

“Goddamn it, help us!” Lonetree shouted to Cordero and Sanborn.

Outside they heard Jennifer scream and then heard a choking sound. The men grabbed for the door again.

“No, no, no…” John was saying over and over as they cracked the door once more. This time, with all of their strength, they had it almost all the way open. None dared to remove their hands while they had the advantage. A flood of freezing air rushed through the opening.

“Jenny, can you get inside?” John yelled.

Jennifer Tilden’s arm snaked in through the doorway. Leonard freed one of his hands and grabbed for it. He was slapped back by an invisible force that knocked him against the bed, and the small black man somersaulted against the wall. George watched, stunned, but he quickly recovered and took Leonard’s place. He reached out and pulled as hard as he could. He was hit by an electrical discharge that made his eyes widen and his body shake, but his strength had proved the difference. Jennifer tumbled through the opening and a moment later the men lost control of the door. It slammed shut and bodies went flying. As Jennifer rolled over, holding her throat, she saw the door frost over. It started bending inward, cracking the material as the thing on the other side pushed.

“Jesus!” John stood and slammed his large body against the bulging door. Once his weight seemed to be doing the job, the room started to warm up. Just as they thought their visitor was done, ten loud blows sounded against the wood of the door. The blows were struck so hard that John Lonetree’s head was thrust forward with every strike. Then the room fell silent and the lights stopped flickering.

“It’s gone,” George said from his knees. “Fuck me, it’s gone.” He reached out for Jenny. “You okay?” When she reached out to take George’s hand, he flinched away as if afraid to touch her. Jennifer didn’t notice the strange look on Cordero’s face. She shook her head, while holding her throat, and tried to sit up.

Leonard sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “This is one bad motherfucker. Look at that,” he said, pointing at the door.

It was cracked from top to bottom, straight down the middle.

“I thought ghosts couldn’t form that kind of power,” Sanborn said. His pipe was hanging upside down in his mouth.

John turned away from the door and went to Jenny’s side. He looked back at the large crack.

“We’re dealing with more than your ordinary ghost. We have something here that can reach out and crush the life right out of you.”

Sanborn reached out and touched the crack in the door.

“Just as Professor Kennedy has said all along.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t do this,” George Cordero said. He watched the door warily, as if he expected the entity to start up again.

“You promised Gabriel you would see it through,” Lonetree said.

“I didn’t promise to stay here and die, and that’s exactly what will happen if we stay.” He looked pointedly at Jenny.

“What do you know that you’re not telling us? What did you perceive when that thing was at the door?” Lonetree persisted.

Cordero went to the desk chair and sat down hard. He placed his hands over his face and then slowly looked up.

“I had the distinct feeling, when we were holding that door open, that this thing was just playing with us. It was enjoying it, because deep down it likes scaring people, because it’s not afraid of us. It’s showing off. And we propose to walk right into its lair and try and kill it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we are going to do,” Lonetree said as he looked from face to face. “And I think you’re wrong. At the end of that encounter, it was angry. We beat it by sticking together and fighting it together.”

“It’s waiting for us in that house, John, do you understand?” Cordero said. He lowered his head. He couldn’t look at the others any longer, especially Jenny.

“Yeah, well if that motherfucker wants me, it better bring a lunch for the long night ahead, because Too Smart Sickles don’t run from nothin’,” Leonard said with as much bravado as he could muster.

“That’s what I mean, you stupid little bastard. We’re the lunch.”

That quieted Leonard’s bravado. George stood and looked at the others.

“I’m sorry. Tell Gabe I just couldn’t do it.” He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed the envelope that held UBC’s check onto the nightstand. He held Jenny’s gaze as he left the room, not even hesitating at the cracked and broken door.

Summer Place had just eliminated one of its antagonists. Now it was going after two who were a little closer to home, just a ways up the road from Bright River, Pennsylvania.

Professor Gabriel Kennedy and Julie Reilly were about to meet the entity that lived in Summer Place face to face.

The car clung to the depressions in the road like some fairytale gone horribly wrong. Kennedy could barely see the road in certain spots, and that made him slow to a crawl. It wasn’t until they moved past the bends and drops that he was able to speed up. The rain had vanished and was replaced by a heavy mist that allowed the wipers to go intermittent, but the covering of water on the windshield was still significant. Every time the car vanished into a dip in the road, the fog seemed to climb back out with them, and John Lonetree’s warning kept echoing in their heads.

“Are we still on Route 6?” Julie asked when Kennedy slowed the car to ten miles an hour at the bottom of a small hill.

“Well, I don’t remember turning anywhere, so I imagine we’re still on course.”

Julie’s cell phone was equipped with a global positioning system. She moved it around, but the signal that she had received back in Bright Waters was gone.

“I can’t get a damn thing on this,” she said as Gabriel brought the car to a stop. Outside the windshield was a wall of swirling, solid white fog. “Please tell me we’re still a long way from Summer Place?” she said with a nervous smile.

“You, the non-believer, are asking me that?” Kennedy moved his foot off the brake and started forward again.

“The conditions are conducive to my question.”

“Summer Place is thirty-five miles back in the other direction.” Kennedy turned on the emergency flashers. “I’m more concerned about some farm boy coming along and plowing into us in this soup.”

“Look,” Julie said, squinting into the fog, “I’m going to take things as they come, through Halloween. A clean slate. Can we stop the jousting until we get through this?”

“I think right about now is a good time to lay down the weapons and at least get through this.” Gabriel chanced a look over at Julie. He wanted to say something about the fear on her face, but decided to let it slide.

They reached the bottom of a large dip in the road and were both relieved when the car started to climb out of the depression. But the relief was short-lived. Without warning, the car jerked and then sped up, then jerked again. The lights dimmed and then the car stalled.

“No, no, not here…” Kennedy brought the coasting car to a stop. He shut off the dim headlights and then tried to start the car again. They both heard the clicking of the solenoid, and then even that sound vanished, swallowed up by the thickening fog.

“Oh, this is good,” Julie said. “What did you do?”

Kennedy stopped trying the ignition and turned toward Julie. “What the hell do you think I did?”

“Well, we’re not out of gas, are we?”

Kennedy looked away and shook his head, but still turned on the light switch to check. “Yes, there’s gas.”

Julie watched as the fog outside of the car swirled and eddied. It was growing thicker by the minute and she wasn’t liking it at all.

“Maybe that farm boy you were talking about will come along.”

Kennedy looked at his wristwatch. “Not likely, at four in the morning.”

“I know…The news van from Philadelphia will be coming by,” she said with the hope of a drowning woman reaching for a life buoy.

“They would have turned off on Highway 17, six miles back.”

“Why didn’t we turn off at the same place?” she asked accusingly.

“Because we’re going to New York and they’re going to Philadelphia.”

“Oh, sorry, it’s just that—”

Something slammed into the car from behind, sending them four feet along the road with the locked tires screeching. Julie’s head slammed against the backrest and Kennedy lost his glasses.

“What the fuck?” Gabriel quickly opened his door and stepped out. Julie, rubbing the back of her neck, reached out to try and stop him, but she was too late.

Gabriel looked around the car to see who had come up behind them blindly and struck them. The road, as far as the fog would allow him to see, was empty. The damage to the back of the car looked light. The trunk was sprung, so he reached out and slammed it down. It didn’t catch and he slammed it again. As it closed and locked, he saw that the lights inside the car had gone dark once more.

Julie opened the car door and stepped out. A breeze picked up, moving the fog in strange eddies and swirls. It rustled the large trees that lined the two-lane highway, and at the same time the air grew colder. Julie looked over at Kennedy, who held up a hand to stop her question before she could voice it. The wind slowly died, but the current of cold air stayed with them.

They both jumped when the car’s headlights came on, and then went off. The horn blared for a few seconds and then just as suddenly stopped. The radio snapped to life and then went silent.

“Tell me you’ve had an electrical system go haywire like this before?” Julie asked nervously, trying her best to see through the heavy veil of white.

Kennedy didn’t answer. He moved slowly to the right side of the car, nearer to Julie.

“Something is out there, isn’t it?” she asked. Kennedy kept his eyes on the side of the road, where they could barely see the soft outline of the large pine trees.

Gabe tried his best to keep his voice even and reassuring. As much as he would have liked to scare the hell out of this woman a few days ago, he now found he wanted to reassure her that things were fine.

“Ms. Reilly, we’re in the mountains. There’s always something out there.”

A darker shade of fog seemed to break free of one of the larger trees. It passed by both of them and vanished into the whiteness in front of the car.

“Did you see that?” Julie took an involuntary step toward Gabriel.

“It went over there,” he said, pointing.

As they watched the swirling fog, the black mist appeared again. This time it formed in front of the car and stayed. The veil was about thirteen or fourteen feet in height and just about eight in width, and Gabriel could swear he could hear deep, harsh breathing. The mist didn’t move, as if it was studying the two people staring at it.

“Okay, this is the mountains, but this something doesn’t look like it belongs here.”

“Get your camera and recorder — go,” he said, so low she thought she hadn’t heard him right.

Julie stepped toward the car without taking her eyes from the hanging mist that stood its ground ten feet in front of them. “You think now is the time for taking its picture.”

“You seem so sure that it’s cognizant of what it’s doing.”

Julie scrambled around the front seat and found the small camera and recorder. “Well,” she hissed through closed teeth as she brought the camera up, “I say that because I’ve never seen two distinct shades of fog before…and add to that, the goddamn thing is breathing.”

“Point taken,” Gabriel took the small digital recorder from Julie’s hand.

A stream of darkness broke away from the main body of the mist and shot forward, collecting into the shape of a large hand. It seemed as though it was about to slap the camera out of Julie’s hand. She flinched, but the hand pulled back. It came forward again, and then stopped, moving around the camera’s lens as if it didn’t know what it was facing, or whether the camera was a danger to it or not. Julie let out a small cry as the smell hit her nostrils.

“Hold your ground,” Gabriel said. He stepped forward two paces and placed himself between the camera and the mist.

“Professor, I’m about to pee my pants. Believe me, I’m not moving.”

“You’re a long way from Summer Place, and I know you’re not that strong,” he said loudly to the mist in front of him.

The misty hand pulled away from the camera as if Gabriel had shocked it somehow. Then they heard the deep rumble of a laugh. The hand shot forward and slapped the camera out of Julie’s shaking hands. It flew twenty feet into the tree line and smashed against one of the pines.

“Did you take my student? Did you make that young man kill tonight? Who are you?”

The mist backed away as the laugh rumbled again. It was like something clearing its throat from deep inside of hell. The sound seemed to come from all around them.

“I am, that I am.”

The words were clear and made Julie shiver in the increasingly cold night.

“Is quoting God supposed to impress us?”

Just as the words cleared Gabriel’s lips, the mist came forward. This time they both saw the outline of a humanoid form. The hand came up again and struck out at Kennedy, striking him across the face. The laugh sounded again as the hand retreated. Gabriel jerked and then looked back with equal determination.

“Not very impressive. I still say you’re too far from the house to be effective.”

The laugh sounded again. Then the mist formed into a ball and moved. It came straight at Julie and then stopped, reformed and then she heard the sound of sniffing. The thing was smelling her, she realized. She cowered away and closed her eyes. The hand came up and felt her hair. The smell of the mist was penetrating her senses. She managed to open her eyes and look at Kennedy, silently pleading for him to do something.

The mist expanded and the giant hand swept out, brushing the fog aside.

“Oh God,” Julie said.

Summer Place sat in its small, peaceful valley two miles away, brightly lit and inviting. Somehow they had driven in the wrong direction.

“Home,” said the gruff, deep voice. “Come home, Gabriel.”

“Am I yours? Like the others?”

The laughter was deep and loud and this time it didn’t end.

“Stop it, stop it!” Julie shouted and ran to the open car door. Just as she reached it, it slammed closed. Then the driver’s side door slammed shut. The darkened mist shot around Julie and slammed her against the car. Gabriel stepped forward but the mist shoved him out of the way as if he were made of paper.

Suddenly the night air warmed and the sound of birds came through the fog. The mist seemed to hesitate, its laughter fading. It drifted toward the front of the car.

“There’s something else here,” Gabriel said.

“Oh God,” Julie whimpered. She slid down the side of the car until she was seated on the ground with her hands over her face.

“No, don’t you feel it? This thing doesn’t like it, whatever it is. Listen.” Turning away from the mist, he thought he could hear talking — many voices, soft and close by. The black mist seemed to hiss. Then it turned and dispersed into the thinning fog.

Gabriel pulled Julie to her feet just as the car started on its own, making them both yell in fright. Julie smashed her face and body into Gabriel’s and the unexpected force almost made his already unstable knees buckle. He strained to hear the voices, but they were slowly fading away.

“It’s over.” Kennedy stroked Julie’s hair. “Look,” he said, giving her a gentle nudge.

Julie looked up. “What?” she asked.

“Summer Place. It was never there. It tried to scare us. I was right — it doesn’t have the strength to do its magic this far from the house. It can conjure and frighten, but that all.” He stepped back around the car and opened Julie’s door, assisting her in. He then quickly went around to the driver’s side door, looking to his left once again to make sure Summer Place truly was gone. He drove off as the last of the strange fog lifted.

“What happened?” Julie asked.

“Something stopped the house from having its fun. Several somethings, it sounded like. Are you all right?”

“Fuck no I’m not all right, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

Kennedy smiled for the first time in forty minutes.

“Can I ask what is so funny?”

Kennedy held up the small digital tape recorder.

“I just recorded the opening for your television special.”

“I really don’t give a shit about that right now.” She turned away to watch the trees slip by out the window.

“Oh, I think you should open with that, followed closely by your official apology for the seven years of hell you and Jackson put me through.”

“You’ll need more than that to convince Damian Jackson,” she said, carefully not mentioning the fact that she had been convinced.

Kennedy smiled and stepped on the gas. “I think that can be arranged.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I think Summer Place wants everyone to know it’s alive and in charge.”

“It may be in charge, but it sure as hell is not alive.”

In silence, they turned onto the highway heading for New York.

Thirty-five miles away, every door in Summer Place from the front entrance hall to the attic pull-down, creaked, was thrown, or fell open, and the laughter reached every shadowed corner throughout the house. The only door that remained closed was the double doorway at the end of the third floor hallway.

The sewing room was still and silent.

Lionel Peterson perched on the edge of his desk at the New York office, nearly sliding off the corner but catching his balance just in time. His drink spilled onto his pants but he paid no attention; he was basically covered in alcohol already. In the parking lot a few hours before, Lionel Peterson discovered something about himself that he had hoped never to learn: he was, at heart, a coward. Lionel had failed the one and only test of physical bravery that had ever arisen in his forty-two years, and he hated it. His grip tightened on the glass in his left hand and the phone in his right hand, with the memory of how trapped he had felt inside that car with Feuerstein and Kelly. The two of them had handled the situation far better than he had, especially that damned Delaphoy. Oh, he knew the woman was as scared as he, but she had recovered where he failed to do so. His hand shook as he raised the glass to his lips.

“This better be good,” the voice said on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah?” Peterson slurred the word. “Well, it is.”

“Mr. Peterson, you sound drunk. If this is a social call, let me tell you, I don’t appreciate it,” Wallace Lindemann said from his bedroom across town.

“Social call?” Peterson laughed. “For some reason I don’t think you or I get that many social calls at four in the morning these days. I mean, with you being in financial straits and me being tossed about like a man clinging to a fucking life raft.”

“What is this about? I don’t need commentary on my personal life.”

Peterson drained the whiskey and allowed the empty glass to fall from his fingers to the carpeted floor.

“The matter we discussed this evening, I want you to proceed with it. How soon can you get them out there?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Peterson swayed and placed his left hand on the desk to steady himself. He closed his eyes until the dizzy spell passed. When he opened them again, he looked around the office. He no longer trusted his senses after the events in the parking garage.

“My guess is that they won’t come until the day after tomorrow.”

“Not good enough. They have to be there in the morning. Pay them what they want — my money — but get them there first thing in the morning.”

“Are you nuts, Peterson? These people are professors at Columbia University; they’re only considering this job because they think Kennedy is a nutcase who makes them all look bad. As much as they despise him, they’ll never come at such short notice. I can get them the morning of the show, and that’s it.”

“Get them there in the morning. The crew is going to be there a day early to set up.”

“That’s not in the contract, I won’t—”

“When are you going to understand, Lindemann, that you don’t have a fucking thing to say about it? Corporate will do what they want, and you can sit and suck on it. If you want that house to sell, you better do as I say, because if this special airs and Kennedy proves that Summer Place is what he says it is, we’re both fucked.”

“What’s happened to change your mind about that ridiculous claim of his?”

Peterson fell silent. He knew he had to stand up before he fell over. As he did, he heard a buzzing. His heart pounded until he realized it was the overnight cleaning man, sweeping by his open door with the floor buffer. He closed his eyes and wanted to cry at his failure to keep his composure.

“Just get the cleaners out to the house. Neither of us needs Summer Place to demonstrate what it’s capable of. I want that television special to be a mundane, boring tour promoting the sale of your house, and that’s it.”

“Okay, but it will cost you. These guys, as much as they hate Kennedy, want to be paid.”

“I’ll write you a check as soon as I can sign my name without shaking. Now get that house straightened out. Kennedy and the others will be there tomorrow afternoon.”

Peterson placed the phone on his desk without hanging it up. He walked to the front of the office and stared out of the large window that looked out onto the street far below. He swiped at a tear that coursed down his cheek, slapping it away far harder than he intended to. He was ashamed, and knew he could be possibly ending his career, but after tonight that was a backseat consideration. He wanted to strike back at Summer Place and take Kelly Delaphoy down with it.

Far below, he watched the quiet streets of Manhattan, and knew he could never look at anything so innocent the same way again.

Summer Place had ruined his life.

George sat in the lobby lounge drinking a glass of milk — an order which had drawn questioning looks from several of the businessmen around him, and a not-so-friendly glance from the large bartender. With his tie down and jacket off, George sipped at the chilled milk and stared at the polished bar top.

The speakers, hidden in the corners of the ostentatious lobby bar, played a muzak version of Dirty Deeds by AC/DC. That irritated George even further. Good society could screw up the simplest of pleasures. Cordero shook his head. It was a good way to assist his departure out of the city.

As he took a drink of his milk, he felt the eyes on him from the back of the room. He knew who it was without turning around, only because he and the man watching him were as close as two men could get in ability. He also sensed the woman with him, so he just waited.

As John Lonetree started into the lobby lounge, Jennifer Tilden stopped him. She gently tugged on his coat and then shook her head when he glanced down. She pointed to her own chest, indicating that she would be the one to talk to George. She pointed John to an empty table and went to ease herself onto the barstool next to George’s.

“Yes, ma’am?” the bartender asked. He looked as though he was expecting another strange request from the tired and worn-looking little woman who had chosen to sit next to the milk drinker.

“Double Wild Turkey, please.” She placed both hands on the bar and laced her fingers together. She looked at the mirror above the bar. George continued to stare into his glass of milk.

“I thought you didn’t drink,” he said, giving her a sideways glance.

“No. Bobby Lee McKinnon didn’t drink. I do.”

“A musician who didn’t drink? That’s a little hard to believe,” George said, turning to face her.

She smiled at the bartender when he placed the crystal glass of Wild Turkey in front of her. Jennifer impressed both George and the server, downing the drink. She placed it on the bar and slid it toward the large man. “Another — with ice this time.”

When the bartender left, Jenny turned and smiled at Cordero. “We want you to stay, George.”

Cordero smiled and then turned away. He raised the glass of milk and paused with it in front of his face. Its pure white seemed to mesmerize him for a moment. Then he suddenly set the glass down.

“Do you know what it’s like to just simply touch someone and know — I mean, really know — what is going to happen to them? To see what was in their past, to know who they are in an instant, far better than anyone’s ever known them before?”

“Only with Bobby Lee. Only, I think that I cheated a little. Your ability is what’s called, at least in theory, Electrical Symbiosis Exchange; the exchange of thought and memory through touch.” She accepted the second drink from the bartender, and this time she sipped the cold whiskey. She then looked at George and smiled. “I wasn’t under the whole time Bobby Lee was in possession of me. I was able to continue some of my work. Electrical Memory and Thought Exchange was a pet theory I developed in between assaults.”

George glanced at Jenny and shook his head.

“So,” she said as she raised her glass again, “you touched one of us in the room during the attack and got a bad vibe? Or maybe a sordid vision of one of our futures?”

George watched as Jenny slowly took a drink from her glass. She looked at him with the gentle eyes of someone who knew what true torment was. He also felt he could tell her the truth — the truth about a lot of things.

“When I was twelve years old, after my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, my father put me on tour. You know, the daytime television circuit, Art Linkletter, Mike Douglass, shows like that. They would bring people out of the audience and I would take their hand and tell them the light side of where they had been, and sometimes where they were going. My father would insist, drill it into me, that under no circumstances was I to delve into the darker side of people and their nature. You know, marital affairs, things like that. He insisted it was all for fun.” He looked at Jenny and then just as quickly looked away. “Fun when we were on stage. Off stage, he was a driven man. Money was everything to him. On stage, loving and the pillar of fatherhood; off, he was cold as ice.”

“Is your father still alive?” Jenny asked, pushing her drink away.

“No, he died…alone and unloved.”

Jenny lowered her eyes. George wanted to tell the story, so she just let him venture forth without pushing him.

“I never really questioned my father,” he continued, “as to why there was never any physical contact between us. Oh, he would ruffle my hair on stage and act the part of the proud parent, but every time I tried to get close off the stage, he would be, like I said, cold. He would pat me on my head, at the most. That was as loving as the man ever got.”

Jennifer looked up and into the mirror over the bar. John Lonetree watched them as he sipped a glass of beer. He was watching with curious eyes, it was if he knew Jenny was there to witness George become completed, as if there was a cleansing going on. Jenny thought that maybe a little bit of John — and maybe even a bit of George — had rubbed off on her in the short time she had known them.

“One time, I had flubbed up pretty bad on a morning show in Minneapolis. Afterwards, he drank most of the day. When he came back to the hotel, I really saw who my father was for the first time. He slapped me around pretty good and told me that after my failure on the morning show, three other shows down the line had cancelled.” George drained the glass of milk and then shoved the glass away from him as if it was the bad memory. He rubbed a hand across his face.

“What happened, George?” she asked, draining her own glass.

“After he passed out, I went into his room and watched him sleep for the longest time. I saw his eyes moving underneath his lids, and that fascinated me like no other sight ever has — even to this day. He was dreaming and I knew it, even before I ever heard the theory of rapid eye movement. I knew that son of a bitch was having a nightmare. I couldn’t fathom what could scare this man who so terrified me. I was so curious that, for the first time I could ever remember, I placed my hands on him; one on top of his head, one on his face. I could feel his eyelids moving underneath my touch. The feeling continued to fascinate me beyond reason, even when I was shown what he was dreaming. I closed my eyes and I became him. I was inside of him when he went to visit my mother in the hospital. I was inside when she spoke her last words to him. I heard them with his ears, I saw myself with his memory of me. I heard her say to my father, ‘Love George, he needs you so.’ I wanted to cry, which at the time was at cross-purposes to invading my father.”

George closed his eyes, reliving the memory. Jenny saw the sadness, the terror, and the love for his mother in his eyes as they welled up with tears.

“I watched my father. He slowly took a white pillow from underneath my mother’s head and raised it up. I felt his hands as he placed the pillow over my mother’s face and pushed. It was like while I was inside of him, I was adding my weight to his bulk. We both pushed that pillow as hard as we could. I remember fighting inwardly against the despicable way my father felt as he murdered my mother. There was no peaceful decision to allow her to leave this life with what little dignity she had left. It was a selfish, cold blooded act to rid himself of a drain on time and resources. I screamed for him to stop. Then I could feel him, beneath my hands, becoming aware that I was invading his memories. I remember when his eyes popped open, but I still kept my hands where they were. I pressed as hard as the memory of my father pushing on that pillow — harder, and harder. I saw the panic in my father’s eyes as he realized that I knew. It was a trapped, animal look.”

Jennifer swallowed. She could not imagine what George had gone through, witnessing his mother’s murder at the hands of his very own father. She looked up with tears in her own eyes and saw the concern on Lonetree’s face in the bar’s mirror.

“My father gathered the strength to throw me off. He jumped from his bed and vomited. It was like pure evil was spewing forth from the man. It wasn’t guilt, it was that someone else knew what a coward he truly was.”

“What happened?” Jenny asked. George wiped his eyes with the palm of his right hand, as if he wanted to gouge out the vision from his memory.

“My father killed himself the next day without ever saying a word to me. He stepped off the street in Minneapolis into the path of a car. He died hating me for what I knew.”

“It wasn’t you who killed your mother, George, it was him. You need not feel guilty about anything.”

George laughed, and then slapped the bar with his open hand. He swiped the last of his tears away.

“My mother? No, I didn’t kill my mother. But I wished my father dead, and when I took his hand on that street that day, he didn’t even realize what I was doing. I thought about that small little step off the sidewalk, and that small push of thought ended up being just as physical as actually pushing him in front of that car. No, I didn’t kill my mother, but I killed that man who was my father. And you know what?”

Jenny sat silently, waiting.

“I wanted to do it. I had thought all night and all morning on just how it could be done, but I couldn’t find the answer, or the bravery. Not until the opportunity presented itself. Then I pushed my father with my thoughts as I reached out and took his hand that final time.”

They sat at the bar without speaking, George with his eyes heavy and Jenny with hers locked on the mirror, as if drawing strength from John, who still watched them from his table.

“I am sick and tired of death.” George looked at Jenny. “Do you understand?”

“George, I apologize for bothering you. I know what it’s like to have an ability you hate absolutely having. Whether you stay or go, we will respect any decision you make.”

Jenny slid off the barstool and squeezed George’s shoulder. She turned to leave him to think things through, but he quickly reached out and grabbed Jenny’s hand. John Lonetree stood and started forward, but she shook her head no. John, observant as ever, stopped and watched from the distance. George squeezed Jenny’s hand without looking at her.

“Don’t go into Summer Place. Leave the east coast and go anywhere but Pennsylvania. Hell, come away with me. Just don’t go into that fucking house.”

Jennifer reached up with her free hand and placed it over his.

“I have to go. I have to help my friend, just like he would help me. I know you’re scared. You go, George, and no one will think worse of you for it, please believe me. I think you need to—”

“It’s you, goddamn it.” He turned and faced her, his bloodshot eyes bearing down on her. A fire had grown in him and he was allowing it air to breathe. “I had a vision that you would be killed. You’ll walk in to Summer Place and you will never walk out. It wasn’t clear, but I saw a part of you staying in that house and never leaving. Don’t go!”

John Lonetree started forward and pried George’s hand from Jenny. As he moved her behind him, Cordero deflated. He tossed a large bill on the bar and then got up and left without looking back. John started to go after him but Jenny stopped him.

“Let him go. He needs to go, John.”

“What did he say to you?” Lonetree watched George Cordero disappear out the front doors of the Waldorf.

“Nothing.” Jenny looked away. “Can we go? I need to sleep some more.” She looped her thin hand through John’s thick arm. “And I need you to watch over me, so I hope you like the floor.”

“No place I would rather be,” John answered. He knew Jenny was holding back the truth, but he didn’t press about it.

As for Jenny, she suddenly wished that more than just John was with her. She also wished in a small way for Bobby Lee McKinnon — he would have understood what they were facing far better than any of the rest of them could.

Maybe Bobby would know what was stalking Summer Place.

At seven o’clock, not long after the city of New York came alive, seven large tractor-trailers pulled out of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard where UBC had leased space for its production facility maintenance and technical field support. The trucks carried all the elements that would make the live broadcast from Summer Place possible. Cameras, sound systems, production vans, back-up generators and even a portable commissary for the production crew. This was to be the largest live production in the history of UBC and it would only fall short of the Super Bowl for total coverage.

Several of the early risers who worked inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard watched the seven large trucks pull out with mild curiosity. Never had they seen such activity from the UBC buildings before. It was almost as if the network were mobilizing for war. As the string of trucks pulled out and onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, they were followed closely by twenty UBC field vehicles, all starting their journey to a single place.

Tomorrow was Halloween, and their destination was Summer Place.

FIFTEEN

Detective Damian Jackson walked out of his room at the “Come As You Are” motel. The day was bright and the weather mild after the heavy thunderstorm the night before, as if the small town had been cleansed of the sordid events of the late night. Jackson was freshly shaven and wore his newest suit. He was in an exceptional mood because of the phone call he had just received from his contact at the NYPD. A convoy of UBC vehicles had just left Brooklyn on their way to Pennsylvania, and that meant Kennedy would be coming with them. It seemed that UBC was attempting to take possession of the summer retreat before the contracted date. He was curious to see how Wallace Lindemann took the news.

He stopped just outside of his door, slowly placed his hat on his head and whistled an enthusiastic tune. His quest to nail Professor Gabriel Kennedy to the proverbial wall was close to an end; one that he had foreseen many years before. He decided he would pay a visit to his guest at the constable’s office — Kyle Pritchard might have thought things over during the night and come to the decision to throw his fellow conspirators under the bus. Jackson would take Kennedy, the Delaphoy woman and everyone involved in the hoax the night of the test broadcast, tie it all into the disappearance seven years ago, and package things up with a nice little bow. Then he could finally move on with his life — a life that had been on hold since the cold case labeled “Summer Place” had stalled out his career.

Hands in his pockets, he stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street, careful to avoid the large puddles of water from the rain the night before. He hopped the puddles with a lightness to his step, as if he could just as easily have floated over them — yes, things were starting to come together since the reappearance of Kyle Pritchard. Jackson couldn’t imagine what the Delaphoy woman was thinking and feeling since her little scheme had taken the unexpected turn. He knew his arrival and the murder of her co-host had not been part of the plan, she had just chosen to bring in the wrong schizoid to be a part of it. Still, it was a good day to be in Bright Waters.

The small town and its people were just starting their day. At the diner, he could see the curious faces as he strolled by the very spot where the murder had occurred. He could still see the outline of the blood stain and made no effort to skip out of the way of it. He knew the townspeople were frightened of him, and that was all well and good to him. He turned to the large window, catching those watching him off guard. He winked and smiled.

Half a block down the street, he stopped in front of the small office of the township’s constable. He paused, straightened his coat and hat, and then opened the door.

“Good morning,” he said to the heavyset man at the desk. It was obvious that the old man had not gotten as much as a wink of sleep. These kinds of things didn’t happen all that much in small towns, and most people were not used to the reality of murder.

“I don’t know what’s so good about it,” the constable said, removing his feet from his desk.

“No sleep?” Jackson asked. He sat on the edge of the constable’s desk, a move the heavy set man didn’t seem to appreciate.

“If you had to hear that maniac back there — crying one minute, screaming the next — I’d like to see how much sleep you’d get.”

“Our young houseguest was in distress all night, then?”

“Distress, yeah. Being terrorized by any sound he heard, or screaming every time thunder clapped in the distance…I guess you could call it distress.” The constable stood with a ring of keys in his hand. “I suppose you want to say good morning to your boy?”

“You bet,” Jackson said. “Now may be a good time to get some truth out of him.”

“Well, good luck. He’s been quiet for the last half hour. And I hope he stays that way until your state boys come to collect him an hour from now.”

Jackson frowned, concerned.

“Have you checked on him since he calmed down?” He took the key ring from the slow-moving constable and inserted the key in the lock.

“Why, so he could start up again?”

“Goddamn it.” Jackson turned the large key and pushed the door open. He took the three steps toward the double cell setup and then he saw it. The key ring slipped from his fingers as he turned away, fixing the constable with a glare.

“Oh my god,” the constable said.

Inside cell number two, Kyle Pritchard had slammed his head so hard through the six inch gap between the bars that it had pushed through to the other side, ripping off both of his ears and scraping the hair on the sides of his head clean away. The body hung limp inside the cell, with his head on the outside. It was like he had been shoved through with superhuman strength. Jackson flipped on the overhead fluorescents. Examining Pritchard, he came to the quick conclusion that the man had done it to himself. There were bloody footprints on the cell floor, showing the running starts he had made to slam his head through the bars. Jackson could visualize maybe three or four attempts, running from the far wall to the bars, until finally he hit it with enough force to push his entire head through. Damian felt for a pulse. The bones of Pritchard’s neck crunched under his fingers. Then he looked down to the man’s wrists. It looked as though he had tried to chew through the skin and into his veins. Putting his head through the bars hadn’t been the first suicide method he’d attempted.

“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.

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 several 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.

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.

“Brilliant,” he said as he waited for the elevator. He then turned to his assistant. “I want twenty spots added to the show’s promo package.”

‘That will squeeze out most of the primetime ad-time for our own shows,” she said, taking notes as they both stepped into the elevator.

“I don’t care. Every ten minutes, I want the Summer Place on that television screen. Add some more history script if you have to, but get the story out there. I want everyone in the country talking about Summer Place before the day’s over.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I never thought Halloween could be so lucrative. I should have dug up Professor Gabriel Kennedy many years ago. We’re going to piggyback that man right into ratings history.”

Bright River, Pennsylvania

At least a hundred people were gathered before the closed gate to Summer Place. Some were fans of the show, while some were most definitely not. The fans carried signs that read “Hunters of the Paranormal rules,” and others that told the two hosts of the show that they were loved. But they were being pushed and shoved by local folks from the small town of Bright Waters. Kennedy recognized a few of them — some of them had stood in front of the diner that very morning, aiming accusing looks at him and Julie.

In the absence of Eunice and her large husband, the network had brought in five uniformed security men. Gabriel knew immediately that the special was going to call for far more than that if this mess continued.

“This is a fucking circus already.” He honked the car’s horn when they were forced to stop thirty feet from the front gate by the two converging sides of the crowd. ‘This is never conducive to a controlled experiment. The cameras and stuff are bad enough, but this?”

“Professor, when did you ever believe this would be controlled — by you, or by anyone else involved in the production? You were never that damn naïve, were you?”

One of the admirers of the show slammed into the car’s hood. When the man saw that it was Julie Reilly in the passenger’s seat, he turned and called out to the others. Soon the car was surrounded by those trying to get autographs. Some of them even tried to open the car’s doors.

“Don’t say it. You want me to sacrifice myself and get out of the car so you can drive right on through the gate, right?” She leaned away from the glass as a large man pounded on the widow.

“Now that you mention it, that wouldn’t be a bad—”

Before Gabriel could finish his small joke, someone hit Julie’s window so hard that the glass broke. When he looked over, he saw hands reaching through the shattered window. Julie was actually being pulled at by more than one of the men. Gabriel opened his door without hesitation and pushed his way through the crowd, shoving several people out of the way. When he made it to the two men that were reaching inside of the car, he pulled one away and pushed him down. The other turned and hit Gabriel in the face. Julie sprang from the car. Kennedy was on the ground with a rather large man sitting on his chest. She swung her ample bag toward the man’s head and connected solidly. Then she was pushed from behind by an angry woman, and she knew immediately that this one wasn’t an admirer of the show or her credentials as a reporter.

“Jesus Christ!” Kennedy shouted. He gained his feet and pushed Julie into the car once more. As he got back in and threw the vehicle into gear, he saw two of the security men throwing the gate open. Another three kept the crowd back. Gabriel pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor, spun the wheels just to let the people around the car know that he was coming through, then let off the gas and slowly crept through the gate.

“What the fuck was that about?” Julie asked, trying to slow her heart and regain her breath. She looked over at Gabriel and saw blood running from the corner of his mouth. His jacket had been torn at the shoulder and his glasses were hanging down from one ear. The way he looked made her chuckle as she reached over and used a Kleenex to wipe the blood away. “That was one hell of a rescue, Professor,” she said as she finally got the nervous laughter under some sort of control.

Gabriel looked at Julie. He slowly made his way up the long gravel drive.

“So glad you approve. I was about to get my ass kicked back there, until you waylaid that guy with the horse purse you carry.”

“Believe me that was many years of reporting from places like Iraq and Afghanistan kicking in. It’s a self defense mechanism. You have Summer Place, I have assholes the world over that wanted my ass.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” he said.

“No, thank you. I thought those assholes were going to pull me right out the damn window.” She tossed the bloody Kleenex on the floor. “If it weren’t for you I would—”

“What the hell is happening here?” Kennedy said, cutting Julie off as they drove under the large portico.

Stumbling and backing down the steps were several men and women, also being confronted by men who looked even angrier than the ones out front. Among the defensive-looking group was a man they both recognized — Wallace Lindemann. He was pointing and gesturing toward the large double front doors as he backed down the stairs.

“Is that Kelly and Harris Dalton, the director?” Julie asked as she opened her door and stepped out. Gabriel quickly followed, thinking that the world had gone completely mad.

As they both approached the scene of the argument, Gabriel saw all of the vans and trucks on the side of the house where they had been directed to park. The truck drivers, the production and technical staffs, camera and sound men all watched in fascination as the argument progressed from the front of the house to the large stairs that led to the drive.

“I don’t care! You broke our agreement and if nothing happens tomorrow night, we’re going to sue you, Lindemann!” Kelly was shouting. Gabriel removed his sunglasses and watched as the director, Harris Dalton, reached out and pulled Kelly Delaphoy back from the men Lindemann stood in front of, as if he were guarding them. Then Kennedy saw the man in the black coat and recognized him immediately. He stepped up until he was only a foot behind the men as they backed down the steps.

“Yeah, well, sue me for what? Because my house isn’t haunted after all?” Lindemann shouted.

“If you did anything to ruin this for the network, you little prick, you know they’re going to hang you,” Kelly came back.

“What’s going on?” Kennedy asked as Julie stepped up beside him.

Lindemann, the two women and the man in the priest’s coat turned and saw Gabriel and Julie as they stood there.

“Hello Father,” Gabriel said with a small smile creasing his lips.

“Gabriel.” The older man held out his hand and actually smiled back when Kennedy took it.

“Who is this?” Julie asked.

“The Father and I go way back. He’s a professor of Seminary Studies at Columbia, and the only man who ever believed me about Summer Place.” He smiled wider. “Well, maybe a little. His name is Father Lynn Dolan.” Julie nodded at the gray haired man.

“Yeah, and he’ll be named in the lawsuit too,” Kelly shouted. She was trying desperately to shake off Harris Dalton’s restraining hands.

Gabriel looked curiously from Kelly to Father Dolan. “Lynn, what did you go and do?” He climbed the step to get eye level with his old acquaintance.

“The owner of this magnificent property asked us to bless it, before the arrival of this travesty.”

“Professor, he didn’t bless the house. He went room to room, cleansing it. He may have chased off everything we’re looking for!” Kelly shouted. She was wild-eyed and Julie thought she looked insane.

Kennedy shook his head. He removed a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and patted his lip where it had been cut. “You didn’t?” Gabriel gasped mockingly, in a rather good impression of being stunned and shocked, Julie thought.

“I did. And do you know what, Gabriel?”

“Do tell,” Kennedy said as he looked at the blood on his white handkerchief.

“Don’t even speak to this man — this fake — he and Lindemann just fucked us all,” Kelly called, finally shrugging off Dalton’s hands.

“Ms. Delaphoy, would you shut up for a moment? You’re making an ass out of yourself,” Kennedy said as he tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“See? I told you. Now let it go,” Dalton said from behind Kelly.

“As I’ve been saying all along, my house is not haunted. If you decide to continue with this character assassination tomorrow night, the whole world will see it,” Lindemann said, and turned on Kennedy. “And you’ll finally get what’s coming to you for starting this whole messed up story.”

“Pompous little ass,” Julie said, holding her ground behind Kennedy.

“Tell me, Lynn…” Gabriel took the priest by the arm and took two steps up toward the house. “You didn’t feel anything when you were inside?”

“Gabe, I felt absolutely nothing but envy that this house is owned by someone other than me.”

Kennedy smiled and then looked up at Kelly and Harris.

“This man did nothing that will interfere with my experiment. If he did get rid of something that walks in this house, then it wasn’t as strong as I believed it to be, and thus couldn’t be responsible for all the tragedy that’s happened here.” He turned back to Father Dolan. “By the way, who are your two friends?”

“This is Kathy Lee Arnold and her assistant from the Pennsylvania Paranormal Research Society.”

Kennedy laughed out loud, ignoring the heavyset woman’s hand as she reached for his. She lowered it with a distasteful look on her plump face.

“Paranormal Research Society — Ghost hunters, right?”

“That’s right, and for the past three hours we have been conducting our own inquiry into Summer Place. It’s our conclusion that this house was never haunted; or if it was at one time, is not now.”

Gabriel nodded and then turned to Kelly Delaphoy.

“I think you have bigger problems out in the front Ms. Delaphoy. I suggest you take care of that and let these people be on their way.”

“Father, would you mind stating what you did, on camera for the show? I promise no cheap shots will be taken,” Julie said.

“Excellent idea. You’ll get good face time, Lynn — something Columbia University loves for its professors.”

“I suppose I can stay a few minutes longer,” the Father said. Julie led him away, and they were followed by the two ladies from the PPRS.

Kelly Delaphoy bounded down the steps and rounded on Kennedy. “What are you doing? Do you know what he did?”

“Well, I’m guessing Lindemann hired him to cleanse Summer Place before the investigation tomorrow night.”

Lindemann said nothing. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. The smell of alcohol wafted around him like a hovering rain cloud.

“And you’re okay with that?” Dalton asked Kennedy.

Kennedy looked up at Summer Place, even though he couldn’t see the bulk of the massive house from underneath the portico.

“Sure. As a matter of fact, if I were producing this show, I would try and get the Father to be available on Halloween — for his expert opinion.”

They were both dumbfounded.

“Plus, I would try my best to find out who was behind this idea of cleansing the house by purging the spirits out of it before the show,” he said, turning to face Wallace Lindemann.

“I came up with the idea myself.”

“Somehow I doubt that, Wallace. You just don’t have the imagination,” Gabriel countered.

Lindemann, instead of answering, pushed past Kelly and Harris and made his way up the stairs.

“You better watch it, moving that equipment into the house. Nothing gets in before seven in the morning!”

“We can tour Summer Place?” Harris called after him. Lindemann stalked off into the house, probably heading for the well-stocked bar.

“Professor Kennedy, what if they…they…”

He stepped out from under the portico and watched Julie Reilly interview the Father, with the two ladies smiling in the background. “Forget it. That thing in there isn’t going to be frightened away by a few Roman Catholic rituals and words.” He looked up at the warm and inviting house. “Whatever is in there is waiting for its own show to begin. Whatever my old friend did, I’m sure it found it all very amusing.”

“I’m glad you’re so goddamn confident, Kennedy,” Kelly hissed. “It’s my ass on the line here.”

Kennedy laughed sharply. “Summer Place may just avail itself of that ass if you don’t respect it, Ms. Delaphoy.” He started toward the interviewers, to say goodbye to Father Dolan.

“I can handle that, if anything really happens inside that house.”

Kennedy turned back to face her and Dalton, but continued to walk backward.

“I hope you can handle it. If you can’t, you may just end up like your friends Kyle Pritchard and Paul Lowell. They didn’t take this house seriously, and see what that disrespect did for them?”

Kelly and Dalton watched Kennedy go, and then looked up at the looming house.

“He better be right,” Kelly said, looking up at the blank windows.

“For your sake I hope he is,” Harris said. “And then again, I really don’t want to see anything like what happened during the test again.”

“Why? That’s just the kind of show we want. Well, short of getting people eaten, of course.”

“You really don’t believe Kennedy, do you, even after all we’ve seen?”

“Oh, I believe him, it’s just that I’m not as afraid of the house as he is.”

Harris Dalton watched Kelly stride up the steps toward the double front doors.

Summer Place looked down on him like a giant looking at its next meal. To him, the house didn’t look cleansed at all — like Professor Kennedy said, Summer Place looked hungry. For the first time since the 1930s, the house would have a large menu to choose from.

As the large trucks started off-loading the heavy equipment, the clouds started gathering over the westernmost range of the Poconos. Summer Place was preparing for All Hallows Eve.