As Kelly stumbled from the van, she saw the house illuminate so brightly she thought there had been an explosion. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she thought they were failing her. The house expanded, as if taking a deep breath, and then all went quiet and the lights went out one by one, floor by floor. A loud sigh echoed in the valley around her, just as Paul’s sound and camera operators came running from the house and down the steps. The soundman took a misstep and tumbled onto the drive with his mic boom flying into the air. There seemed to be another sigh and then a sudden wind sprang up, swirling around the house for mere moments before it vanished. Then the sound of terrifyingly loud footsteps resonated from the interior, as if whatever it was began retreating back to where it came from.
Inside the van, Harris Dalton sat so hard into his chair that the headphones fell from his head and went crashing onto the control panel. The rest of the production crew stared silently at their monitors.
“Someone…” Dalton cleared his throat. “Someone...” He patted his jacket, looking somewhat lost. “Does someone have a cell phone?”
The assistant director held her phone up. At the same time, Wallace Lindemann’s cell phone fell from his hand. He was staring at the monitors in shock.
“Call 911 and get someone, anyone—out here.”
four
In the hour it took for the Pennsylvania State Police to arrive, Harris Dalton took it upon himself to search the house. Kelly was sitting on the porch questioning the soundman and camera operator, but not getting anything useful. These two had been part of countless incursions into houses and situations far more menacing than Summer Place, yet they were still shaking from their experience on the second floor. The only thing Kelly was getting from them was the fact that they had not actually witnessed a thing.
Wallace Lindemann had been furious at Harris Dalton for calling the State Police before they knew what was happening. He paced on the large covered porch, smoking a cigarette as he spoke to one of his high priced attorneys in New York. He evidentially didn’t like the advice he was receiving. Angrily, he tossed his cigarette off the porch.
Harris Dalton and his assistant Nancy Teague, stepped from the open double front doors just as the first unmarked police cruiser honked at the front gate. Mr. Johansson was there—Lindemann had called him—and he allowed the first of four cars through. Soon, red and blue lights colored the landscape and the front façade of Summer Place, just as they had after the Kennedy debacle, years before.
Kelly stood when she saw the large black man step from the unmarked car. He examined the house as if he was seeing a scourge upon the streets of Philadelphia. He shook his head, buttoning his coat as he came around his car.
Kelly recognized the officer from her file on Gabriel Kennedy. Lieutenant Damian Jackson was the man who wanted to pin murder on Gabriel’s lapel so badly that he had knocked UBC star reporter Julie Reilly on her ass, bumping her as he passed her in the grand jury hearing. Even though they both had fought for the same cause and had supplied most of the rope to hang Professor Kennedy with, they still hated each other.
“All right, is someone going to explain to me why I was pulled from my bedtime glass of milk?” The man’s eyes were locked on the soundman, who wiped his face and lowered his head. “And don’t start off with anything like ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’” Jackson added with a scowl.
“Lieutenant Jackson, these people are with me. It seems we’ve had…had some trouble.”
The state detective looked up at the man bounding down the stairs, taking in his three-thousand-dollar suit. His brows rose.
“Mr. Lindemann, I would have thought you’d learned your lesson after the last time.”
“I assure you, I thought I was dealing with professionals this time around. They are, after all a major network.” Lindemann held his hand out to Jackson in greeting.
Jackson stepped past Wallace Lindemann without shaking his hand. He looked at Kelly Delaphoy, studying her for a moment as the bearded Harris Dalton and his assistant approached.
“I take it you’re the man in charge here?” Jackson asked him. “Maybe you can explain why I’m not in my robe and slippers right now.”
“Actually, I’m only the director. The producer is right there,” he said, pointing at Kelly.
“I’m Lieutenant Jackson; it seems I can make a living coming out to this place. Now Miss, please enlighten me.” Several more uniformed state troopers joined the group at the foot of the stairs.
“It’s Ms., Detective, and if I may ask, aren’t you part of the state police barracks in Philadelphia? I would’ve thought they would just send us local troopers.”
Jackson watched the woman rise to her feet. She gave the soundman a comforting pat on the back.
“You may ask.”
From the look he gave her, Kelly knew she could indeed ask as many times as she wanted, but she wouldn’t get an answer. The man must have been close by, perhaps at one of the two motels in Bright Waters. The word had spread quickly that the “television people” were here in force, and she figured the detective still had a stake in Summer Place. More than likely, he had assumed Professor Kennedy would be mixed up with the production, and had decided to spend the night nearby. The man was watching her, no doubt waiting to see if she had anything else to say so that he could show her how in charge he was.
An old station wagon pulled into the driveway, but it had not come from the main gate. Mr. Johansson was there to meet it. As all of them watched Eunice Johansson stepped out. She was agitated, and it looked as though she were arguing with her husband about something. She turned toward the house and pointed a finger directly at them. When she started toward them, Mr. Johansson reached out and tried to take her arm, but she shook him off and strode determinedly to the base of the front porch.
“Is he with you? Please tell me if he is. He won’t be in trouble, I just want him to come home,” she said to Kelly.
Kelly shook her head, then looked at Greg. He had finally joined them after taking some time in the production van to settle himself down, From the smell, Kelly suspected he had accomplished this with a hefty shot of bourbon—or two.
“Is who with us, Eunice?”
The woman was clearly struggling to keep calm. She twisted the bottom hem of her red blouse, which had worked its way out of her jeans. Her husband looked from the production group to the large police officer with worry written on his face.
“Our boy, Jimmy. He never came home this afternoon. My wife, we…well, we figured he would be here. You know, all the excitement...”
Kelly looked from the worried couple to the faces of her team. They all shook their heads.
“We seem to have misplaced two of our own at the moment, so we’re probably not the best people to ask. But this man, that’s what he’s here for,” Harris said, gesturing to the state trooper.
Damian Jackson had met the Johanssons before, during the Kennedy investigation. He shook his head. The cast is almost complete, he thought.
“The last place you saw him was on the property? He couldn’t be in town, whooping it up with the other kids?” Jackson asked the couple.
“Our kids aren’t welcome there, and you know it. No, he would be drawn to something like this. He has to be here.” Eunice looked at him with pleading eyes.
“We’ll look for him. Take it easy. Why don’t you head home, and I’ll send a man over to you as soon as we get in there and check things out.”
“I’ll wait right here,” Eunice said. She shrugged off her husband’s hand once again and started for the steps. “I’ll be puttin’ on some coffee.”
“Ma’am, stay out here until we have a chance—” Jackson started, but stopped with an exasperated sigh. Eunice took the steps at a pace that said she would brook no interference.
Jackson looked at one of his men and then his dark eyes fell on Mr. Johansson. “Well, get after her and make sure she stays in the kitchen.” He watched one of the uniforms and the large Joh
ansson take the steps two at a time to catch up with Eunice. “Damn hicks,” Jackson muttered under his breath. “Now you,” he said, pointing at Kelly, “I assume you were taping…recording, whatever it is you do?
“Both, yes. We have the camera and video footage queued up for you when you’re ready, but the cameras won’t be much good. The batteries were drained. The audio may help...It’s in bad shape, but there’s something on it.”
“That can wait. Right now, we’d better start at the top floor and work our way down, in case one of your people broke a leg or something.” He looked first at Kelly and then Dalton. “My bet would be on someone pulling your leg. If this is a joke, that someone is going to spend the night in jail. Is that understood?”
“If it’s a joke, I’ll turn the key in the lock,” Harris said. He stepped aside to allow Jackson and three of the state officers by.
“That’ll be hard to do from the side of the cell door you’ll be on,” Jackson retorted. He pushed by the director and started up the steps with the officers. Harris sneered at Detective Lieutenant Jackson’s back.
“What a dick,” he said.
“That dick, along with our intrepid reporter Julie Reilly, ruined a man’s life because they got it into their heads that he was lying about this house. He’s not a nice man, from all accounts.”
“Yeah, well he better watch it. I think there’s something in that house that’s equal to the challenge of Lieutenant Jackson.”
Kelly turned and looked at Dalton, watching the man’s eyes roam over the brightly lit house.
“So you’re a believer now?”
“I guess we’ll find that out, if they don’t turn up our two people.” He finally looked at her. “Won’t we?”
“Harris, Mr. Peterson is on the line from Los Angeles. He’s not a very happy camper,” one of the technicians called from the van.
“What are you going to tell him?” Kelly asked.
Harris took a deep breath and started walking away, but then stopped. Without turning, he said, “That we no longer have a show, and that corporate may have one hell of a legal mess to clean up.”
“Shit,” Kelly said under her breath. She hurried to catch up with the director.
Kelly entered the van in time to hear Dalton answer the call from Peterson. She was about to sit down when Nancy, the assistant director, tugged at her sleeve.
“You have to see the—”
“Not now,” Kelly snapped. Hearing this call was more important than anything else right now. The fate of the show hinged on it.
“This is Harris,” the director said angrily into the phone. “Yes, I recognize your voice; you don’t have to be so melodramatic about it, for Christ’s sake. The plug is pulled, so get your blood pressure under control. Yes, yes, she’s right here. Damn...all right.”
Kelly watched as Dalton placed his large hand over the phone.
“Get me an intercom working so Kelly can talk and I can hear. NOW goddamn it!”
The technicians piped the call from Los Angeles into the van.
“Okay, you’re on,” Dalton said into the phone.
“Kelly, are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Peterson, I am most certainly here.”
“You screwed the pooch out there, huh? I mean, if you’re going to pull stunts like this, we expect you to keep police involvement to a minimum.”
“This is not a prank! It’s as real as—”
“All right, knock it the fuck off, Kelly. Wait until the State Police leave, and then get your two missing people the hell out of there and back to LA. Whose bright idea was it to call the state police anyway, damn it?”
“Mine,” Dalton said, rolling his eyes. “Look, we have two missing—”
“Don’t do it, Harris. Don’t start thinking again. I’ll do that from now on. Kelly, get your ass back here. Don’t pass go and don’t collect two hundred dollars. Here, right now. What I have to do with you, I want to do in person. I also want—”
“Mr. Peterson, I have CEO Feuerstein on the line. He wants to sit in on the conference call,” Peterson’s secretary said in the background in LA.
“Very well. Patch him through.”
“Peterson, that you?” came the voice of the CEO from the east coast.
“Yes, sir, I was just trying to straighten out this god-awful mess.”
“I guess you have a big one on your hands. Look, I don’t want this to leak out until you can get another show to back up Hunters, and try and keep the sponsors intact in case we have to go with an alternate show. I would hate to lose them.”
Kelly listened as the two-sided conversation droned on. The assistant director shook her shoulder again. Frustrated she turned and mouthed the word, “What?”
“You better see this before everyone hangs up,” she whispered, pointing toward a monitor with a green-tinted piece of film framed up. She pushed a button on her remote. “Seriously, you’ve got to see this. It’s from Paul’s cameraman and the FLIR.”
“The cameras were dead and there was no power, how could they have recorded anything?”
“I don’t know. It’s only a few frames. I think I’ve wet my pants!” the assistant director hissed, low enough that no one else could hear.
Kelly watched the frames slip by on the monitor. She could see Kyle standing on the ladder with his head half-turned toward the camera. It was dark, and she couldn’t see all of Kyle because the camera wasn’t centered right on him. The special effects man was talking and looking into the grill in front of him. Then suddenly, the grill fell from the wall and a dark cloud-like shape emerged from the vent. It looked like a large hand to Kelly, with tendrils, finger-like, that wrapped around Kyle’s head. And then he was pulled inside the vent, just that simple and just that quick. Kelly looked over at the FLIR footage that was looped at the same time speed as the night vision camera. This time the hand-shaped blur was blue, meaning the image framed up was cold—possibly freezing. It wrapped around Kyle and squeezed, pulling him into the vent.
“Jesus Christ!” Kelly said. Dalton’s tap to her shoulder made her yelp and jump. She spun in the air with her hand to her mouth.
“Well? Are you going to answer the CEO?”
“Excuse me, I’m sorry—what?” It was a moment before she could get her eyes to focus on Dalton.
“Ms. Delaphoy, my question was: is there anything you should be telling us about any hidden agendas for the test, before Mr. Peterson proceeds with what he has to do?” Feuerstein asked from New York.
Kelly made the ‘rewind’ gesture to the assistant director, twirling her fingers. The woman caught the meaning at once and went to work.
“Admit…Well, yes sir, there is.” She smiled and looked at Dalton. “We’re sending some footage to New York and LA. I will abide by whatever punishment you want to give me, or resign at your pleasure, if after seeing this you still believe that I’ve faked it.”
Kelly nodded toward the assistant, then closed her eyes. The tape started again, and exactly one minute and eleven seconds later Harris Dalton sat heavily into his chair.
“I’ll be goddamned,” the CEO said from New York.
“Ms. Delaphoy, this is Julie Reilly. Mr. Feuerstein allowed me to sit in on the test tonight. Is what I just witnessed real, or are you bullshitting all of us?”
“I’m not about to sit here and be grilled. If you think I faked the footage, fire me now. And as for you asking me about credibility? This footage should be one more knot in your hanging rope, Ms. Reilly. After all, aren’t you the one who hung Professor Kennedy for not being able to produce one shred of evidence about Summer Place?”
“Well, I—”
“That’s a profound denial, Julie. You’ll have to excuse me now, I believe Mr. Peterson was just about to fire me. I think I’ll take this footage to CNN and fuck the Halloween special.”
“Now, now, let’s all calm down,” Feuerstein said.
“Calm down, hell, sir,” Kelly said. “Keep her on a chain. I hav
e lost two very close friends, at least for the moment, and we have a missing teenage boy, and now the president of entertainment programming is sharpening his teeth so he can sink them into my neck.”
“Now, Kelly, Mr. Peterson is a smart man. He must realize we were all jumping to conclusions. We weren’t given all the information to make a logical decision, were we?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Mr. Peterson, we are going to hold off on any rash decisions until we know what’s happening. I’m sure our young lady here is just anxious about her crew, and I think it would be in bad taste for anyone to act prematurely upon anything.”
Peterson, near to three thousand miles away, kicked the desk drawer closed where he had his foot propped, making his assistant jump.
“Yes, sir,” he said with all the grace he could muster.
“Now, get Kelly our best legal team in case the state police want a pissing contest over this. I also want you, Kelly—and you, Dalton—in my office for lunch the day after tomorrow. We’ll all have a nice chat and get to the bottom of this thing.”
The connection from New York was terminated, but Peterson didn’t bother to wait on the line for further insult to his authority. He also slammed the phone down.
Kelly bolted from the control van and fell to her knees, scraping them on the gravel driveway. Then she heaved and threw up violently onto the ground. After a few minutes, Dalton helped her struggle to her feet.
“You okay?” he asked.
Kelly wiped her mouth once more and looked at the looming visage of Summer Place. She shivered.
“I can’t go back in there tonight, Harris.” That was the realization that had sent her stomach into a fit. She was terrified of going back inside.
“Well, it looks like we have to.”
The Supernaturals Page 10
