The Supernaturals (51 page)

A knock sounded at his door, but Peterson kept his eyes on a particular stain that he found entertaining. The stain was in the shape of a man’s head, and its wide mouth was open in a scream. The water stain (or was it something far fouler than water?) looked like a painting from a Salvador Dali nightmare. The tongue was extended from the wide open mouth and its eyes were closed so tightly that they were nothing but mere slits with wrinkles. Peterson tilted his head as the knock sounded again. He could hear one person speaking to another outside of the flimsy door. He finally closed his eyes to block out the hypnotizing effect of the filthy carpet. He slowly stood from the chair and small table where one glass and one nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels sat looking dejected after being ignored for most of the morning. Peterson made it to the door, removed the security chain, and cracked it open a few inches.

The priest stopped talking and turned. He looked shocked at Lionel’s unkempt appearance, but held back any rebuke he might have had.

“You do realize it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon?” Father Dolan said, wrinkling his nose.

“Of all the fools in the world, I believe I know how late in the day it is,” Peterson said. He stepped back and pulled the door all the way open.

Dolan looked at the two women who had assisted him in cleansing Summer Place the day before, and then nodded that they could go.

“Goodbye, ladies, I’ll hitch a ride to Summer Place with Mr. Peterson later.”

Lionel raised his eyebrows and then moved as father Dolan stepped in.

“The company you keep are rather suspect in their abilities as ghost hunters,” Peterson said as he closed the door behind Dolan. “As a matter of fact, you’re not that hot yourself, Father.”

Peterson bypassed the chair and sat on the edge of the still-made bed.

“Has something happened at the house?” Dolan asked as he placed his black hat on the small table, making sure to miss the spilled whiskey. He sat down and watched Peterson rub the tiredness from his face.

“The phone has been ringing all morning, so in answer to your question, yes—several things.” He looked up at Dolan with bloodshot eyes. “One, I guess your ghost cleansing isn’t what it’s advertised to be. Things happened last night that more than a dozen people witnessed, including Harris Dalton and Julie Reilly. Two, it seems thirty or more people were attacked outside the gate this morning by deer who thought they were commandos or something. Injuries were sustained, and some of it was actually caught on tape.” He looked away at the closed curtains. “Not exactly a good start for a show that has to fail, would you say?”

“All I can tell you, Mr. Peterson, is that Summer Place was either cleansed yesterday, or it was fooling us and laying low.”

“Now that’s a great explanation.” Peterson stood and made his way to the bathroom. Before he went through the door he turned and looked at the Father. “The house went dormant on you, is that what you’re saying?”

“Didn’t you hear those people yesterday? The house felt empty to them, so I wasn’t the only one fooled. I would say that you have real trouble on your hands tonight, especially if I can’t get back in there and try again.”

“You’ll get your chance.” Peterson turned and slowly started to close the bathroom door. “They’re almost done with the equipment placement, so they’ll begin their final walk through and dress rehearsal in about two hours—you’ll be on that tour and in the rehearsal.”

Father Dolan watched Peterson close the door and waited until the water was running before he reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels and the glass. He poured himself a glass and then made his way to the window. He pulled the curtain back and saw the heavy, dark clouds far off to the east. It looked as though they were in for rain. As he sipped the whiskey he couldn’t help think that Summer Place was behind the weather buildup. Dolan had become convinced that the house had set him up, and worse than that, he felt that it knew it would be in the spotlight tonight.

As Father Dolan drained the glass, the first flash of distant lightning illuminated the window, and ten seconds later he felt the rumble of thunder through the soles of his black shoes. He turned and looked at the bottle of Jack Daniels, and then quickly turned away. One drink was enough.

As he let the curtain fall back into place, the room once more became dim and dreary. He stood motionless for the longest time, listening to the shower run. For the very first time in his many years in the priesthood, he was frightened. Frightened because of the man he knew Gabriel Kennedy to be. Kennedy was a man that feared nothing in the normal, everyday world. So if Summer Place frightened him, he knew there was something in that house that he himself should be very afraid of.

Not since he had been a first year priest in Vietnam, had Father Dolan been so afraid to do what he knew was the right thing.

Summer Place

At nine o’clock in the morning, after forcing down a breakfast of cereal and coffee, Gabriel and his people entered Summer Place. Kennedy stood just inside the doorway with his eyes closed, taking in the smell of the large house. It was as if he was getting reacquainted once more with an old foe, or, Jennifer thought, an ex-wife—one whose marriage had ended horribly.

Gabriel took the others on a tour of the first floor, where it seemed he was most comfortable. He didn’t seem frightened of the memories of that night seven years before; not until they started to climb the grand staircase to the second floor. His demeanor changed, then—it was like listening to a recorded voice as he explained the second floor to the group. As they climbed higher, Jennifer left John’s side to step up to Gabriel. Halfway up the stairs, he had stopped, unable to move another step toward the third floor. Jennifer took his hand. He swallowed and looked down at her face, filled with the early morning sunlight streaming in from the windows. Gabriel nodded his head and then took a step up. Then another and another, until he realized the house wasn’t going to do anything about their presence for now. He showed the others the room where the diva had vanished, and the wall where his student had disappeared. He was shocked to see the sewing room door standing wide open, as he had never seen that particular door unlocked before. He only gestured to the sewing room before turning away, stating that they had a lot of work to do.

As the team moved away, John and George lingered, looking at the sewing room from about ten feet away. They were trying to get an impression of it, just as they had done the wall and the opera star’s room. They looked at each other and shrugged, then turned and followed the others back down the stairs. As they moved, the third floor hallway darkened, the window at the opposite end shut off from the sunlight outside. The clouds had started to move in.

The sewing room door slowly closed and the lock turned on the inside with an audible click.

The technical crew
along with Gabriel, Jennifer, John and George assisted Leonard Sickles with the most bizarre electronics any of them had ever seen before. It took four hours to string what looked like nothing more than Christmas tree lights—small blue LEDs—along every hallway wall and staircase banister. Gabriel made his team reserve their questions for the end of Leonard’s strange run-through. At every point where Harris Dalton, along with Kelly Delaphoy, placed a night vision static camera, Leonard would be close behind to attach a small box with a lens to every stand. He explained that it was a spectral digital device that would not only pick up a color image of something that couldn’t be seen by the human eye, but an image that was etched in color by the variant air temperature, thus eliminating the need for an extra thermal cam placement next to the static night vision cameras.

As Leonard looked over the final spectral placement, he saw Kelly Delaphoy standing nearby. She reached out to touch one of his black boxes and the small black man jumped, startling her.

“That is one sensitive piece of equipment, you break it—you buy it.”

“I already own it,” she said with a smirk.

“The hell you do. Your network may have paid for the parts, but the patent is listed in my name. So, hands off.” Leonard’s eyes blazed a hole through Kelly.

“I don’t see any hookup for a feed to the production truck,” she said, looking from Leonard to Gabriel. Everyone else, technicians and investigators alike, watched the small power play in silence.

“That’s because there isn’t one,” Gabriel said. “The spectral cameras are for my team and their safety. If something shows up on one of these, it will be caught by Leonard down in the ballroom, and he’ll warn us. We would rather not have any surprises coming down the hallways at us if we can help it, and we would rather not be seen running like frightened school children by a national audience.”

“But—”

“But nothing. Leonard will be recording everything the spectrograph picks up. If and when I say so, you can put it on the air. Otherwise, it’s a warning device only.”

Harris Dalton walked up and handed a coil of electrical wire to one of the technicians. “May I ask, why the Christmas lights?”

Gabriel looked at Leonard and nodded.

Leonard looked smug. “This is a special air density meter.” He removed one of the LEDs from the string of lights taped halfway up the wall, and held it up. “This looks like a normal Light Emitting Diode, but it isn’t. At the base is a small chip that measures air density, air temperature and humidity change, particulate matter disturbance, and air velocity.”

“What?” Harris Dalton took the small blue diode from Leonard’s fingers and looked at it.

“If something moves, it creates a disturbance in the air. I don’t give a damn if it’s a ghost or a freight train, if it’s physically in this world, it creates a disturbance. Even if it’s infinitesimal. The laws of physics say it has to obey, and my sensors will pick it up.”

“You can track whatever it is when it moves?” Kelly looked impressed.

“That’s right. If it’s moving down the hallway, or up or down the stairs, we can see it just like tracking runway lights at an airport. As it moves past one of my diodes, it will light up.”

 
Leonard hooked up the connection to the electrical line that was snaked up and around all of the staircases and hallways. He then nodded at John Lonetree, who moved a few feet down the hallway. As he stepped down the center of the carpet runner, the small blue LEDs lit up as he passed.

“It tracks everything. And before you even ask, it’s also patented.”

Everyone, including Kelly and Harris, laughed. Leonard was enjoying showing everyone just how brilliant he was.

“Now, can you explain the four computers down in the ballroom, besides the one you’re using for recording?” Kelly asked.

“Leonard has connections at UCLA and USC in California. The operators out there are going to break into the Lindemann family records in Philadelphia and New York for photo archives and birth records. We have to do it as the show goes out live, since we never had the opportunity to investigate for ourselves. And before you ask, no, Wallace Lindemann does not know about this, and we would appreciate it not being mentioned, since computer theft is a crime.”

“Why is all of that necessary?” Harris Dalton asked.

“The reason why we’re all here tonight is because there is something in this house that is inherently evil, and the reason it is here is in those family records—maybe in the plans for the house, or in the property’s history, or even in the family’s past. Leonard will coordinate with the computer people at the two universities and then feed up information as it becomes available.”

“Will we have access to that information for broadcast?” Kelly asked. She looked worried that Kennedy would keep the juicy stuff all for himself.

Kennedy looked at his team and nodded his head. They agreed that since Julie and the network’s camera and sound men would be in the same danger as themselves, they deserved to hear anything that could be important.

“Yes, Ms. Delaphoy, we’ll hook up a sound box so that Julie Reilly can hear everything we hear.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Now, I need to know about power. Do you have a backup for the electricity coming in from Metropolitan Edison?” Leonard asked.

“Yes. We have three backup generators rated to cover everything on the property, plus the two production vans. They have a non-interruption contact start, meaning that there would be only a split second of light failure before the generators kicked in,” Harris said, looking proud. “It’s the same backup we use for sporting events.”

“Sounds like we’ll have enough power in case that storm seriously hits us.”

Kelly smiled at Gabriel. “As a matter of fact, our network meteorologist says we could be in for one of the largest storms of the year, hitting sometime after we go on the air.”

“And this is good because?” Jennifer asked. She didn’t like the look that came across Kelly’s face at all.

“Ambiance Ms. Tilden...ambiance. What’s better than a haunted house investigation on a dark and stormy night?”

Kelly’s smile deepened and she moved past them. Harris Dalton shook his head but followed along with the technicians, leaving Gabriel and his people alone on the third floor.