“Never mind, just take her below and dispose of her. Give me the child. No, no, watch its poor head. There, there,” the Russian voice said, “it’s all right now.”
John felt his legs rise into the air and then he was being pulled across the tiled floor.
“You’re dragging blood all across the kitchen!” the voice said angrily. Somewhere, the cry of a baby started.
There was silence from whoever was dragging him. His legs were tossed down and then heard the sound of a door opening. He was once more pulled away and into the semi-darkness of another room. Then, with searing pain coursing through his body, he was dragged down a flight of stairs. His head hit every one of them. Then he was dragged onto a concrete floor. He tried to scream, and this time he did. It came out not as his voice, but the voice of a young woman.
“Stop it, please stop it. Please, I cannot stand the screaming!”
John recognized the voice that had spoken, even though his host body kept screaming. Through the pain-seared voice of the girl he heard the click. It was loud and he knew exactly what the noise was. The gunshot sounded and John felt the impact of the bullet as it sunk deep into his skull, and then there was blackness. When he screamed next, it was his voice. The sudden scream nearly took ten years off the life of everyone in the ballroom, and those who were watching on national live television.
The Dream Walk continued as the battle upstairs began.
Lionel Peterson bumped the cameraman at the banister on the third floor landing. According to the string of motion sensors and laser designators, the dark mass vanished as it made the turn into the second floor hallway. That meant the next time they would have any indication of where it was, would be when it came to the base of the third floor staircase. Peterson, for one, didn’t relish waiting until then to make a decision on what to do. After all, the staircase was their only avenue of escape.
“Kennedy, I hope you have a backdoor to this floor.” Peterson stared fixedly at the base of the staircase.
“I have a better idea, Professor. Why don’t you just call off your dogs? Enough is enough,” Detective Jackson said. He turned from the banister and saw that Gabriel wasn’t even close enough to hear. He was a few feet away, using his small penlight to examine the wall. He was running his hand over the flowered print wallpaper. In frustration, Jackson moved toward the small light.
“See it?” Gabriel asked, tracing a bulging outline along the wall.
“Yes,” George answered, and swallowed. His heart beginning to beat faster.
“This wasn’t here when we first stepped onto the landing. I remember looking this way.” Kennedy straightened. “Ms. Reilly, can you place your hand right here?” Kennedy ran his fingers along the wall about four and half feet up from the carpet runner. “Tell me what you feel. George, you do the same, then allow our intrepid detective to do so.”
“Shit,” the soundman muttered.
Julie made sure the cameraman had turned and zoomed in on her. She didn’t know what the professor was angling toward, but for dramatics, she nodded. She slowly reached out and placed her small hand on the wall.“Higher,” Gabriel said. He took a step back so the large cameraman could get closer with his night vision lens.
Julie looked at Kennedy but did as he asked. She moved her hand up the wall about a foot, then suddenly froze. She felt the chills course down her spine as she pulled her hand away and took a step back, her eyes never leaving the bulging area of the wall.
“Professor Kennedy has just pointed out an anomaly in the plaster of the third floor hallway, the very same spot where his student reportedly vanished over seven years ago. When I placed my hand on the exact spot, I felt…I felt a…beating heart.” Julie swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She wiped her hand on her slacks, trying to get the feeling of the beating heart off her skin.
George decided he didn’t need to feel the wall. However, Damian Jackson roughly shoved his hand against the wall as if by mere bravado he would dispel the truth of what was there. After all, this was the part of the story that had made him Kennedy’s enemy seven years before.
“This is foolishness. In case you forgot, you have two people down in a very dangerous and darkened basement, I suggest we—”
Damian Jackson froze just as his hand came into contact with the wall. At first he thought he was only feeling his own pulse, but he quickly realized that it was indeed coming from the wall. He wanted to pull his hand away just as Julie had, but it was because of the temperature difference that he kept his large hand in place—the wall was growing warmer.
As Damian felt the heartbeat in the wall, the soundman suddenly turned, pressing his right earphone into his head. He swung the boom mic around, searching for a sound that at first was flitting, and then constant. The others watched the soundman as the boom swung first one way and then the other. Finally he moved a few feet down the hallway and raised the mic toward the old iron grill. Gabriel swung his light up and the small beam illuminated the ornate grill work where the special effects man had disappeared over two weeks before. The soundman looked at his audio gain. The noise was growing stronger. He took a step back.
“Jesus, what could be in there?” he muttered.
“What are you hearing?” Julie asked. Her eyes locked on the grill. Now she could hear the sounds coming out of the vent. It sounded like someone crawling inside, their weight moving toward the grill. “Come on, what did you hear?”
“Listen,” the soundman hissed between his teeth. The camera zoomed in on the black painted grill.
“Run.”
“Oh shit,” the cameraman said, panicked. He wanted to do just what the voice ordered.
Damian Jackson turned around. He had stood in front of this grill just after the disappearance of the special effects man during the broadcast test and had never felt a thing—at least nothing as strong as some of his troopers had felt that night. Now he was hearing something for himself. This voice, coupled with the beating heart in the wall, was adding up to him starting to believe Kennedy had every right to believe in ghosts. The evidence seemed to be piling up right before his eyes and ears.
“Run!”
This time the voice was more insistent and far closer. If Gabriel were tall enough, he would have aimed the light into the vent and tried to get a glimpse of the owner of the voice. He knew it was Kyle Pritchard warning them to get the hell out of there.
“Oh, damn, what in hell is that?”
Everyone, including the camera and soundmen, turned toward the landing and the banister where Lionel Peterson was staring down.
“What in God’s name—” Damian Jackson started to ask.
“God has nothing to do with that, Detective,” George said. They looked down upon the large black shape standing in the light of the sensor at the base of the third floor stairs. The laser cast a red glow to its inky darkness. “Gabe, it’s grown in power, I feel its…hatred…no, his hatred.”
Kennedy looked at the entity and knew it was looking directly up at them.
“Is it Lindemann, George?”
“I…I…think so…no…Yes, it’s a man, definitely a man.”
Damian raised his gun but Kennedy placed a hand on the detective’s and lowered it.
“Come on, what the hell do you think you’re going to hit with that?”
Jackson was breathing deeply, hearing Kennedy’s words but also hanging onto the gun and its aim, simply because it was real, it was solid, and he could believe in it.
“Oh, man, listen to it,” the soundman said. He swung the boom mic over the edge of the banister.
Below them, the black shape stood its ground. It rolled like a thundercloud, turning its midsection into a jumble of mass, and every time it moved its chest area, they heard the ragged breathing. It was a deep, foreboding sound. They could make out the neck and the head. They all knew it looked up at them with extreme hatred; they could feel it.
“Temperature reading is twenty-five degrees and falling,” Gabriel said a
s he checked the thermometer on his digital watch.
“May I suggest that we move away from the landing,” Peterson said. He took a step backward, brushing by a frozen Damian Jackson. “I think Professor Kennedy has proven his point.”
As Julie Reilly stepped back from the railing, she heard a crack and the wall gave way, hitting her hard and pushing her forward into George Cordero. The cameraman turned just as the skeletal remains of Warren Miller fell across Julie’s backside. She screamed and George, who had turned, also froze just as Jackson just had at the landing. Gabriel moved first and pulled Julie out from under the body of his former student. He was shaking and almost screaming. As soon as Julie was free, he angrily turned back to the third floor banister. He gripped the rail, moving slowly at first, then faster, to the stairs.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted at the thing staring up at him. The movement sensors flashed upward as the entity took a step up. “Is that what you’re good at, scaring and killing kids?”
“For God’s sake, you fool, what are you doing?” Peterson yelled, trying to pull the professor back from the stairs.
“MINE!” came the roar from the second floor as the thing took another two steps upward. The sensors illuminated brightly as it moved.
Gabriel shook himself and then looked at the faces lined in the green, red and blue laser grid. They were looking at him for an answer. For the first time, he knew he had a house full of believers. He turned back to the stairs.
“F.E. Lindemann, we know who you are!” he shouted.
The laughter came immediately—thick, full of spite, and accompanied by the smell of putrescence, as though a graveyard had opened and spilled forth its corpses.
“You’re mine!” the entity bellowed. The sound boomed, as if it had originated in hell and not twenty steps just below them.
Julie was trying to keep the bile down as she stared at the skeleton of Kennedy’s lost student. The voice called from the grill again.
“RUN!”
Only Julie and George Cordero heard, and then saw, the door three rooms down slowly open.
“The room…” Julie actually spit some of the bile from her mouth as the cameraman swung to his right from the entity to Julie as she spoke. “The room where the German opera star vanished close to a century…ago, has opened.” She quickly pushed George forward, and then the soundman. Then she screamed for Jackson and Peterson. Gabriel turned, and with one last look at the entity roiling and shifting three steps up from the bottom, turned and followed the others into the lost diva’s room.
“NO!” the entity screamed. The sensors illuminated the mass as it shot toward the third floor landing. The boom of footsteps sounded inside Summer Place and the house was shaken on its foundation.
As Gabriel and Jackson slammed the thick door home and bolted it, the entity slammed into the opposite side. The door bent inward but held. Jackson didn’t care any longer—he again pulled the gun and quickly fired two bullets through the door.
“Don’t do that! That door’s barely strong enough to—” Peterson started. The entity struck the door again, creating not only a dent in the wood, but a boom as if it had been struck by a cannonball. In the blackness of the room, they all gasped each time the mass struck the door. Damian was slowly backing away.
“Jesus, that thing wants to actually kill us!” the soundman screamed.
“Listen!” Gabriel said.
Out in the hallway, just as the entity struck the door a tremendous blow, they heard the deep and booming footsteps moving back down the hallway—in both directions.
“George?” Gabriel asked. He stared at the door as the beast outside hit it once more, shaking the thick wood in its frame.
“It’s still there…No; wait…Part of it is going to the sewing room, and…and—”
“What goddamn it?” Peterson screamed.
George tilted his head and closed his eyes. “Part of it is going to the ballroom…and another part is going outside!”
“Good God, it’s going for John and the others,” Gabriel said.
“But why outside?” Julie asked.
“The production van,” George said, his face draining of all color. “It wants to stop it all.”
Julie once more put the static filled earpiece into her ear and started calling a warning out to Harris Dalton and the production team outside.
“Use the camera to warn them,” Gabriel shouted, “and pray it’s still transmitting a live feed!”
Just as the words escaped Kennedy’s mouth, the door cracked straight down the middle.
The entity laughed, and then began screaming a single word that was heard all the way into the ballroom and the production van two hundred feet away.
“Mine, Mine, Mine!”
twenty-two
John’s breathing would go shallow one moment and then he would gasp for air the next. Jennifer and Leonard were both becoming worried that he was too far under. The way Lonetree and Gabriel had explained the Dream Walks, he never went so deep that his own movements wouldn’t wake him. But now he was thrashing, screaming and whimpering.
“Maybe we should try to wake him?” Leonard said.
Jennifer swallowed and bit her lower lip. There was a chance they would have to do just that.
John stood in the middle of the brightly lit ballroom watching men and women in formal attire roam the room with drinks while a string quartet played. People coursed in and around the rows of chairs that had been set up in front of the small stage. There were close to a hundred people of varying ages, and their dress was obviously from the twenties or thirties. John quickly stepped back as a small woman in a maid’s outfit walked right through him. He gasped as he felt the woman’s thoughts and feelings. When he turned around she was offering a glass of champagne to a couple who accepted without a thank you. She was angry that she had to perform two jobs during the night. As he watched, the small woman headed toward the crowded bar and placed the tray of filled glasses on the end. Then she wiped her hands and made her way toward the large double doors.
“Leanne, what has become of Mrs. Lindemann? She needs to be down here with her guests.”
The man was the same one whom John had seen at the factory in New York. It was F.E. Lindemann, and he looked none too pleased. His tuxedo was of the finest cut and he grinned as he asked the girl the question, but John could see he was seething underneath. Now he knew now who the girl was. She was one of the maids from the nearby village, and was also the spitting image of Eunice Johansson. He thought a moment—Leanne Cummings, if he remembered right. She was the last person to see the German opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt, alive.
“Yes, sir, she had a last minute alteration to her dress. She is in the sewing room, she shouldn’t be but a moment.”
“And Miss Gerhardt?” Lindemann asked.
“The staff re-ironed her dress and I am on my way to deliver it now, sir.”
“Be off, then, and tell them both to hurry. Our guests are waiting.”
The girl half bowed and made her way quickly from the ballroom. John followed.
As he stepped aside to avoid two guests who nearly passed through him, he saw the girl disappear through the kitchen’s swinging doors. Looking from the moving doors to the staircase, he played a hunch and started to climb the stairs. In the wink of an eye, John found himself on the third floor landing, and then across the hallway to the far side of the house where he was looking straight at the master suite and the sewing room. Both doors were closed. He stopped and looked at the wall where almost a century later Gabriel’s student would disappear. This wallpaper was different than the current wallpaper in the hallway. He felt the wall and found it just that: a wall, normal and cool to the touch.
Suddenly a door opened down the hallway. A woman stuck her head out and scouted down the hallway before stepping out so that John could see her. She looked right at him, and then through him. She was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, and her hair was coiffed to perfection. J
ohn could see her stocking as she stepped from the room. Her eyes seemed to meet his for the briefest of moments before she started across the hall. She moved like a cat, with her eyes firmly placed on the sewing room and the master suite next to it. She stepped into the room across from hers, and then quickly closed the door behind her.
John didn’t have to follow. One moment he watched the woman disappear into the bedroom, and the next moment he was standing next to the bed in that very same room. He watched the robed woman go to her knees and look under the neatly made bed. She straightened onto her knees and crawled to the closet, then stood, pulled open the door and quickly rummaged inside. It looked as if the woman were looking for something. While John watched the woman’s strange behavior, he kept feeling his stomach. He could still feel the pain from the previous Walk. John found he was still shaking from the pain of the murder he had endured.
The woman stepped from the closet and then stopped cold as if she had heard something. She went to the bedroom door and cracked it open. She then quickly hurried out into the hallway. John followed this time as she made her way to the next room and tried the knob, but at that moment the maid came around the corner. She was carrying a dress in her hands, held out as if she were carrying a baby. The black sequined gown shimmered brightly in the lights lining the hallway.
“Oh, I was just looking for you,” the woman in the dressing gown said. She released the handle of the door to the next bedroom she had been about to search. Her words were spoken in a heavy German accent. John knew then who he was looking at—the opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt. The diva was about to disappear from Summer Place and John’s Dream Walk had placed him right at the center of the action.
“Yes, Ma’am, Mr. Lindemann has requested that you join the party as soon as possible,” the young maid said as she went to Gerhardt’s room and opened the door. The diva moved into her bedroom, followed by the maid carrying the dress. John stepped over but didn’t enter the room, he just watched from the hallway.
The Supernaturals Page 50
