The Supernaturals (19 page)

Gabriel sat back in his chair and looked at what the last twenty years of his life had become. The story of how he came upon Summer Place and the research behind it. Since that fateful night, he had lacked the courage to delve back into the historical research of the house and the family Lindemann. But now there had been more disappearances at the mansion. The house, he knew, wasn’t done with him. Or, perhaps, he wasn’t finished with it. He had realized it even before the newspapers had started reporting on it again.

The journals chronicled the experiment he had been conducting that night, long ago. He wasn’t interested in rehashing what happened to him and his students; he was concerned with the research that had led him originally to Summer Place. The interviews, the research on the property, the numerous face-to-face talks with what living Lindemann relatives were left. The answer, the very key to what the house was about, was here in his research files—somewhere.

He was responsible for that night. He knew that and never denied it, not even to himself. Before that night, he had been a skeptic himself. Never a believer in the paranormal world, his only faith was in the science of the mind; his fascination had been with how static objects could instill such inherent fear into ones psyche. How the influences of rumor and innuendo had the power to change the reality of perception, thus creating the human ability to literally scare oneself into a state of unrest. A person could end up with a broken mind merely because the mind had believed in the impossible, and thus made it real to them.

Kennedy had to smile at the memory of the theory. He pulled on his beard.
Yeah, scare yourself into a state of unrest and broken mind—that was what I surely did.

He spread the journals and folders out onto the desk and found the file he wanted. Absentmindedly removing his corduroy jacket, he began reading about the history of the Lindemanns one more time.

Eighteen hundred miles to the north, Summer Place waited. Kennedy suspected that whatever was in that house knew its history was being studied once more.

The following day
, Gabriel Kennedy entered his classroom and placed his briefcase on the desk. The Summer Place materials he had removed from the desk drawer were still sitting out. He rubbed his face. He had shaved his beard off for the first time in years. Now he didn’t recognize the man who faced him in the mirror. His blue eyes were better served without the growth of beard, though, and he had even garnered the gracious looks of several students as he briskly strolled across campus.

He gathered up the journals and files and placed them back into his drawer, then locked it. Not for fear that he would be tempted to revisit that damnable house as before, but because he wished to protect what he knew now were some of the most valuable writings in the field of paranormal study. He had realized their importance only after worrying all night at his apartment about having left them unsecured on his desk.

He looked up at the clock behind his desk and decided he would move the damn thing back to the opposite wall, the first chance he got. Time, he suspected, was no longer an enemy.

The door at the topmost tier of the classroom opened, admitting Harrison Lumley. His friend stood there looking down at him, amazed. “Well, the ice-man cometh,” he said as he started down the aisle. “Why the sudden change in personal imagery?”

“What change? You mean being early? Well, the simple answer in our field is always best: I never went to sleep.”

“Although that’s a nice breach of your recent habits, I do mean the beard.”

“Oh, you noticed?”

“Yes. I must say it takes ten years off of your face—and, apparently, your demeanor.”

Kennedy gave Harrison the briefest of smiles.

“I want to discuss something with you, if you have a moment.”

Gabriel pulled up the cuff of his blue shirt and looked at his watch. “It’s your dime for the next eight minutes.”

“What would you say to tenure here at Lamar?”

Kennedy had turned to pull his weekly lesson plan out of his briefcase. He stopped and looked at his old friend, and smiled. “The beard was that much of a hindrance to my career potential?”

Lumley laughed. “No...you know these things take time.”

“I know that I’ve only been here for four years. It should take considerably longer.” He closed the briefcase with a loud pop. “Especially with my, let’s say, sordid past.”

“Well, having the chairman of your department as a friend can be beneficial.”

Kennedy pursed his lips and then smiled. He walked to his blackboard to erase the lesson from the day before, but stopped and turned to Lumley.

“The one benefit of being a clinical psychologist, Harrison, as I’m sure you know, is the ability to smell a rat.” His smile didn’t reaching his blue eyes. “Have anything to say to that, Mickey?”

“I should have known you would smell me out,” Lumley said, slapping the desktop lightly. “There is a catch. And Mickey Mouse was…well, a mouse, not a rat.”

“A rodent is a rodent is a rodent. Who said that, Tennyson? Anyway, I digress. Continue, I’m listening,” Gabriel turned back and resumed erasing his blackboard. His humor was limited when he was being led around the proverbial mulberry bush.

“What would you say if you were responsible for the psychology department receiving a one and half million dollar grant?”

“I’d say I gave you too much. I want at least one million, four hundred thousand of it back.”

“You
have
actually changed, and overnight. Did you meet a woman, or something?”

“Stay the course, Doctor Lumley, and explain your fantastic statement.” He picked out a piece of chalk and started to write the day’s lecture topic on the blackboard.

“I received two visitors to my home late last night.”

Gabriel tossed the chalk back into the tray and slapped his hands together. A soft cloud of dust rose from his fingers. “You know, most universities have dry erase boards. Maybe with the department’s newfound windfall, you can get me one.” He paused. “Who offered you the money, Harrison?”

Lumley took a few steps back from Gabriel’s desk and gestured toward the door at the top of the classroom. Two figures stepped in and looked down.

Gabriel Kennedy recognized the woman from a few days before, the young producer from UBC. With her was a face he had never wanted to see again. Julie Reilly still had an arrogance about her that only seemed to have intensified over the years, and its aura travelled from above to inflict itself upon Gabriel.

“Ladies, will you join us please?” Lumley called out. “Gabe, listen, they have an offer for you to consider. I wouldn’t ask if it was only for the grant, you know that. I’m asking it of you because you’re a friend, and this is your one chance to redeem your credibility.”

Kennedy looked from the two women walking slowly down the steps to Lumley.

“I’m sure Judas had something similar to say—that he only did it because he was a friend, and it was all for the best. That makes your betrayal justified in your mind?”

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

“No—but this may be.” He pulled out his keys and opened the bottom desk drawer. Out came all his research on Summer Place. He closed his briefcase and, with everything under his arms, walked past Lumley.

“What are you doing?” Lumley asked.

“Harrison, you can kiss my ass, and shove your tenure up your own.” He brushed past Kelly Delaphoy and Julie Reilly.

“What about your class? What about my offer?”

“I already told you what to do with your offer. The lesson plan is by the blackboard.”

With that, Gabriel Kennedy left his classroom for the last time.

“I’ll give him at least that much credit,” Julie Reilly said. “He does have his standards. Which is far more than I can say for you,” she added to Kelly, “or the Professor, here.” Frowning, she started back up the risers and left the classroom.

“Fucking great!” Kelly said, glaring at Lumley.

Gabriel Kennedy chose
not to return to the studio-sized prison he called home. Instead, he found the nearest sports bar. There were a few that stayed open round the clock, catering to the students who found themselves wanting diversion at any hour.

The server didn’t even flinch when he ordered a bourbon and water. Her reaction, or non-reaction, was what was nice about college towns across the nation; no one gave a damn what you did with your personal time.

“Can I join you for a minute?”

Gabriel looked up and could not believe the woman had actually followed him. It wasn’t everyday that you could look into the beautiful face that had ruined, or helped to ruin, your professional life—twice. For him, that face was Julie Reilly’s. He had hoped never to see it in person again.

“Once wasn’t enough for you? You had to track me down to zap me one more time?” He snatched his drink from the server’s tray. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand on ceremony.” He took half the glass down in one swallow.

“I’ll have the same as the Professor,” Julie said. She removed her bag and squeezed in beside Gabriel. She unceremoniously bumped him over and settled in. “And bring my friend another.”

Kennedy shook his head and raised the glass to finish off his drink, but instead reined in his temper and eased the glass down to the booth’s tabletop.

“Friend...Is that what they call victims nowadays?” he asked.

“That’s what they call someone who’s in the same boat, which we are.”

“I don’t follow, Ms. Reilly,” he said, stringing her name out.

“You lost your job over Summer Place, and now my career is hanging on that same damnable house.”

“I don’t see how one connects with the other, especially since I don’t give a flying fuck about your career. Here’s to your health.” He finished his drink and then, again, grabbed the next before the server could place it on the table. Julie did the same and downed hers without hesitation.

“One more please. I have a rather long and disheartening plane ride back to New York with company I really don’t care for.”

“Where’s your little friend—being punished for failing to land the big one?”

“Professor, don’t give yourself too much credit. No matter what you may think of yourself, Summer Place will always be the star of your story.”

Kennedy was taken aback by the strange comment.

“So you actually believe the house is at the center of it all?”

“Of course. Now ask me if I’ve changed my view about you being guilty of negligent homicide?”

Gabriel didn’t say anything, he just waited.

“Why am I to blame for you losing your student, Professor? Can’t you admit that you took them into that house, and then afterwards there was one less than before?”

“I was always able to admit that. However, I will never admit to being a part of his disappearance. As I remember, the other participants backed me on that. Hell, it was they who reported it to me. There is a difference between being responsible for a thing, and being
the
cause of it.”

“From a man who, before he went into that house, didn’t really believe the bullshit he was researching, you just can’t get past that story about the house taking him and ruining you, can you?”

Kennedy downed half of his second drink and looked into Julie’s green eyes.

“That’s your problem, Ms. Reilly. I always believed in what I taught. The lesson of Summer Place was a lesson of the mind—how one inanimate object, and how it’s perceived, can influence the thinking pattern of a viable and otherwise intelligent person. It was never about haunted houses. But then again, my ancestors never thought the world was round, either.”

“One million dollars, Professor,” she said, swirling the ice in her glass.

“Excuse me?”

“Eight hours of your time. I host, and you are, well...the color, so to speak.” She didn’t smile at her obvious joke.

“I know you’re not asking me to return to Pennsylvania.”

“No, I’m asking you to fight for what you believe in—or once did, anyway. And I’m offering you one million dollars to do it. You get what the university was offered, plus a chance to show the world on live television what you couldn’t show them years ago.”

“You are out of your fucking mind!” He stood suddenly, almost knocking Julie out of the booth. He dug in his pocket and threw two twenties on the table, then thought a moment, reached out and took the money back. “You can use part of that million to pay for the drinks—I’m unemployed.”

Julie opened the
passenger door and climbed into the rental car. The air conditioning felt like heaven as the morning gave way to the early afternoon.

“God, I forgot about the humidity here.”

“Well, I saw Kennedy leave in a huff, so I guess your charms failed to sway him,” Kelly stated flatly as she buckled her seatbelt.

“My charms, as you put it, had nothing to do with it. I planted a seed and now we’ll see if anything grows. Let’s head over to Kennedy’s apartment building. This is the part where he figures out he’s in deep trouble. Fertile ground will encourage the seed, and make my offer a little more attractive.”