“Hello?” he called out. He felt stupid for doing so. The voice did not echo the way that he thought it would have. It was like his words went down and were captured and consumed by the darkness below. He stepped onto the landing and shined the light downward. He tested the first stair and then the second. They creaked and moved uncomfortably beneath his feet, and he stopped. The light illuminated the dust at his feet, and he saw the fresh footprints. He leaned over, careful to keep one hand on the railing, and examined them. It looked like three sets. One set was brave in nature as they traveled down the center of the stairs while the other two sets hugged closely to the railing on each side. He smiled as he suspected the brave one was the boy he was hired to find—Dylan Hanson. His father had detailed how the boy was brash and arrogant and was afraid of nothing.
He straightened as he knew his missing boy most likely had indeed come this way. The small set of prints had obviously been laid down by a girl. That also fit. He started down the stairs. Halfway down, he saw that the staircase took a sharp right and continued into oblivion. He made the junction, and as he did so, he felt the stairs shake under his loafers. He stopped. He shined the light around to make sure the whole thing wasn’t coming down around him. There was nothing. No movement.
“Calm down,” he muttered to himself. He shined the light downward as far as he could see, but the bottom stairs were still hidden from the weak light. He would have sworn the movement he felt was as if someone had stepped onto the stairs from below, ventured up a few steps, and then stopped. He swallowed as he felt like he were being watched—no, examined was more the word he was looking for.
“Dylan, are you down there?” he called out. The last two words faltered as he said them. He felt ridiculous for being so nervous. Still, what if it wasn’t Dylan and his two companions? What if he had stumbled into a nest of homeless people who liked their privacy? Not uncommon in Southern California, as almost any abandoned building could be called home to many of the transients of the state. As the scurry of some sort of furred creature moved below through the water he was smelling, the detective leaned over and raised his right pant leg and brought up a lightly weighted .32-caliber pistol.
The stairs became oppressive. It was as if the oxygen were being usurped by an unseen force, and he was starting to feel dizzy for the lack of it. He steadied himself and was about to openly rebuke his faltering bravery of the dark when the stairs moved again. This time, the movement was accompanied by loud footfalls. The steps became heavier and more insistent.
He brought the pistol up and aimed into the darkness below what was still hidden by the turn of the stairs as they reached the bottom. He did not like his point of view and knew that whatever it was coming up those stairs would be hidden from him until it and he were nearly face-to-face. That wasn’t a good proposition for the former police officer. He took a step backward and up, as he wanted to give himself time to react.
“Dylan, if that’s you, you’d better let me know before you get a bullet in your face!” he said as his words once again faltered.
Two more pounding steps, and then they stopped. Kilpatrick backed up three steps and he also stopped, mimicking the action from below. His gun was still pointing down into the dark. Then the wooden steps started shaking and moving once more, this time more insistently. The detective swallowed, only this time, his throat movement stopped, as there was nothing but dryness there. He used the flashlight in his left hand to keep the beam pointed at the stairs in front and below him. The light showed nothing but the dust falling from the low ceiling as the heavy bass drumbeat of footfalls built to a booming crescendo. The movement below ceased.
As the detective let out his breath, the light bulb in the flashlight slowly dimmed. He banged on it with his pistol barrel, and the light flickered and then went out once more. He cursed and then banged the light again. This time, it came to life and remained that way. He smiled, relieved to be seeing again when he brought the light up. He saw what had come up the stairs to greet him—the entity stood right in front of him. The face was a mass of churning grays and blacks, looking as if it were nothing more than a swirling hive of insects. The darkness curled and swirled into itself as it stood over eight feet in height. As he looked into the blackness, he felt his extremities go numb. The gun slipped from his right hand, but the light remained frozen on the thing in front of him.
The detective’s eyes widened when the blob of blackness moved closer. Another step up, and he knew he had disturbed something that was meant to be left alone. It was breathing. The entity moved slowly as it examined the man before it. Kilpatrick felt his bladder let go, and all thought of his duties as a detective fell away along with all the other accumulated knowledge of his life as the blackness slowly wrapped its mass around him.
Private Detective Kilpatrick was torn limb from limb just as the scream of rage and forlorn hatred shattered the stillness of the old theater.
As the door to the basement slowly closed up above, half of what troubled Moreno was now coming to full wakefulness and was gaining strength.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The First Lady of the United Sates waited outside of the family quarters as the team of doctors finished with the president. She sat in a chair and read over the legalities of taking over the family investments, which had come as a surprise benefit of having an insane husband. If things continued as they were, she wouldn’t need any signatures; there would be no court battles and no accusations from both parties of infidelity. She allowed a hint of a smile to cross her lips. It turned out that after the small fortune she had spent as seed money to Avery and his cronies in the intelligence field, all Dean had needed was a little shove from his past. If it weren’t for the financial gain she would receive, she might actually have been interested in who this girl was who had haunted the man.
The news of the president’s illness had made the papers and cable news shows. The White House damage control teams were kept busy by saying the president had a minor cold and that fever kept him isolated for the time being. It had been ten days since the events inside the Oval Office. Thus far, the secret that the president had been ready to resign from office had been kept strictly between those staff members and the vice president, who had also been there to witness the events.
The office area was still cordoned off as engineers and every intelligence agency in the nation went over the damage to the Oval Office inch by inch. It had been this way since the attack days before. Thus far, they could find no connection to an outside hostile source that could have caused the damage to the office and the assault on the president. Just in case, Herb Avery had managed to get the old photographs and the glasses out of the office immediately after the assault. Confusion had been his ally.
First Lady Catherine Hadley had not the faintest care how or why it happened; she was more concerned with the timing. Her placement of the items from his past had been a little too effective, if somehow it turned out that was the cause.
This may actually work against her. Had she pushed too hard on her husband? It cut short his fall from grace. It was now possible she would have to wait for him to get better before he could resign. Herb Avery said this could only go on for so long before the change at the top would be necessary. This was something unexpected in her plans. Instead of walking off with half the familial proceeds and fortunes through an uncontested divorce no one in the country could ever deny she had earned, she sat here with an uncertain diagnosis on a man who had clearly gone insane. The time was ripe for her views to be made public. Avery had been right on another, very unexpected point—this episode may just earn her 100 percent of Hadley Corporation, not a mere piece.
The team of United States Army and United States Navy doctors, everyone from psychologists to neurosurgeons, had gone in soon after the CIA and FBI made their official reports to the generally nonresponsive president. They had reported that they could find no external influences responsible for the attack in the Oval Office. The CIA suspect
ed the Russians, while the FBI still hoped for an inside job. Both theories weren’t holding much water since the wording left behind, smashed into the ornate walls of the office, were found not to have been accomplished by any action that required engineering. In layman’s terms, the damage was not accomplished through any blunt-force delivery. The psychologists, on the other hand, suggested the episode had been caused by the president himself—his mind possibly doing the damage. This theory was scoffed at and disregarded by every physician outside the field of neurology. Even so, as a purely cautionary measure, the FBI had done background checks on any staff member within the White House that may or may not have issues in any form of mind control.
“Are the doctors still in there?”
Catherine looked up and saw the face of the man she could not wait to get rid of when all was said and done. The chief of staff for the sitting president slowly sat next to the First Lady without invitation.
“Look,” she said as softly and silently as she could with a wary eye toward her Secret Service protection, “apparently, everyone in the Oval Office knew what that fool was going to do; you told me yourself. You were about to be roasted over a spit in there, and then we would have been exposed. Dean may be a very bad man and a womanizer, but he has never been anyone’s fool, Herb.”
“Look, I know I screwed this up. I just want you to know—”
“Although the doctors can’t get much out of him because he comes in and out of consciousness, he ordered that his resignation from office be concluded.”
“Excuse me?” Avery said, astounded that this had not been passed on to him.
“The vice president is being sworn in this afternoon. The chief justice of the Supreme Court arrives in four hours. Every news organization in the world will soon learn the truth. Not the real reasons, but they all know the Washington rumor mill and will be watching everything about me and you for the foreseeable future.” She looked directly at Avery. “A future of mine that no longer includes you. That’s the way it has to be.”
The look on the chief of staff’s face was priceless, and like her husband, she had a perverse fascination about making people hurt and could coldly rejoice at their failure. That failure was what she was seeing at the moment, and that made her mood a little better.
“But—”
“You’ll still get what you want the most, Herbert. You’ll have your money.” She leaned even closer to the man. “But now you’ll have to be patient, as the situation is too unstable, and too many people have hints as to why he was resigning. Some in that office know the truth about you and me, but decorum keeps them from saying anything since they all want to hop on the new ticket with the vice president. I have to wait to conclude our business with his companies and other assets.” She smiled. “I hope you’ve been saving your money, because it may be a while.”
The door opened to their private quarters, and the ten doctors stepped out to greet the First Lady. With one last look of disdain directed at Avery, she got up with a smile.
Avery winced as he stood to leave. It was all falling apart. He now knew he had been used to undermine the president for the gain of the First Lady. He now knew who the real rat in the White House was. The First Lady had played her cards, and him, very well.
* * *
Catherine Hadley joined the group of military doctors with the appropriate concerned face of a shocked and grieving wife. She made a show of twisting her handkerchief in her hands as she listened to the seven male and three female military officers. The group was joined by the vice president, who was now in silent if not total charge of the nation.
“First,” said a tall, silver-haired commander who served as the chief resident of psychiatry at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, “we have agreed that we need to bring in Dr. Haslam Assad from Johns Hopkins for a consult. He’s the top man in the field of psychosis. The president only had very brief moments of clarity before he drifted off in what we think is a deep REM sleep, almost a memory state.”
The lights in the room suddenly went out, and the emergency lighting came on. The two Secret Service agents flinched and then quickly relaxed when light filled the large room once more and then dimmed again.
“This is just like last week,” the vice president said. He saw the faces of the doctors and the First Lady vanish as the light was sucked out. Only the weak light filtering in from the shaded windows made it into the room before even the sunlight slowly faded.
The scream startled all those present. The Secret Service agents moved to the bedroom shared by the president and the First Lady, and when the first man opened the door, he was thrown backward until his body smashed into the far wall, knocking free a painting of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The doctors stood in shock, and the vice president’s eyes widened as the last of the light vanished. It was as if the White House had been knocked into another world with no sun.
The second agent pulled a nine-millimeter handgun. He failed to see anything in the inky darkness, but his feet hit something wet and slippery. He fell to the floor, and his eyes saw the black-against-black movement near the far wall. He hesitated, aiming the gun from his back since he didn’t know if his eyes were betraying him in the dark or if he was actually seeing movement. He couldn’t afford to shoot for fear of hitting the president, whom he couldn’t see lying in his bed with the now-powerless medical monitors around him. He stood and then finally found the bed by waving his free hand frantically. He threw himself on the prone body of the president.
The doctors decided they had to act, and with several Secret Service agents bursting through the door with flashlights waving, they also entered the bedroom. The lights picked out the bloodstained carpet and what looked like a small, thin arm that had been thrown halfway under the president’s bed. Their eyes widened when they saw the Secret Service agent lying atop the leader of the free world with his gun out. And then the four flashlights died at the same time.
The First Lady backed toward the doorway without any chance at seeing into the room. The vice president stood next to her in the dark hallway. Before they could react to the darkness beyond the threshold of the open door, one of the four agents who had entered the bedroom came flying out, and his weight knocked both frightened observers from their feet. The First Lady hit with a crash, and the vice president fell atop her as the agent’s momentum carried him to the far wall. All of this was happening in the dark.
The president’s scream pierced the darkness, and all who had heard it felt their blood freeze. It was like he had seen the true presence of hell. Then three agents were thrown from the room, one right after the other, and then the door slammed closed and they were cut off and in the dark. A shattering boom sounded, and the house located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue jumped on its foundation as if an earthquake had lifted its old brick-and-mortar base. Alarms started sounding as far as the fire station a block away.
As soon as it had started, it ended. The lights flared to life, and the sun once more shined through the expensive drapes. Everyone was on the floor. Then they all looked up as the door to the family bedroom slowly opened on its own.
More Secret Service agents burst through the family quarters and then made for the bedroom. The first three inside vanished, but the fourth stopped and then, with a white face, turned and stumbled out of the doorway. The vice president saw this and then fought to get to his feet and then entered. He saw the three agents lifting the first responding agent off the president. The vice president’s eyes widened when he saw that most of the agent’s back was missing. It looked as if a giant spoon had simply scooped out his spine and ribs. The agents rolled the agent off until they could gently lay him on the floor. They then checked the president.
The vice president’s eyes saw the carnage. The attending nurse that had been assigned to the president was lying in pieces on the carpeted floor of the bedroom, looking as if she had stepped on some antipersonnel mine in a forgotten field of war. Then his eyes fell on the far wall near
the three windows of the east side. As more agents and the doctors entered the room, they all stopped suddenly as the written words once more greeted them. They were smashed into the wallpapered sides of the room and looked as if they had been written in perfect cursive with a gentle hand.
“My God,” the vice president said as he took in the message.
The First Lady stepped inside the room and then quickly brought her hands to her mouth. The doctors even stopped taking the president’s vital signs when they too saw the words that had been carved into the wall as if by giant clawed nails or talons.
You are cordially invited. The vice president read the top line nearest the ceiling. Be there, don’t be square. Now everyone was reading the strange words. The wallpaper and the drywall was strewn across the bedroom and lay in a dusty white mess. Bingo, bobbing for apples, and games to suit the average ghoul, the vice president read as his eyes followed the strange script. Spook show for the teens and treats for the kids. The whole town is talking. Celebrate the ending of the Cuban crisis and party with the ghosts! Start at the factory and work your way to town. A fun night for all!
The vice president stopped reading as the doctors started administering to the president. When the First Lady started shaking and let out a miserable whine, all eyes went to what she was looking at. On the far wall was the conclusion. The same message as before. Only this time, it was a little more personal.
Come home, Dean, we’re waiting for you. And again, the one word that made them all ask if they had lost their minds. BOO!
“My God!” the female lieutenant colonel said as she had unbuttoned the president’s pajama top. They saw her jump back as the other doctors crowded around.
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 7
