The Supernaturals (41 page)

“I am sick and tired of death.” George looked at Jenny. “Do you understand?”

“George, I apologize for bothering you. I know what it’s like to have an ability you hate absolutely having. Whether you stay or go, we will respect any decision you make.”

Jenny slid off the barstool and squeezed George’s shoulder. She turned to leave him to think things through, but he quickly reached out and grabbed Jenny’s hand. John Lonetree stood and started forward, but she shook her head no. John, observant as ever, stopped and watched from the distance. George squeezed Jenny’s hand without looking at her.

“Don’t go into Summer Place. Leave the east coast and go anywhere but Pennsylvania. Hell, come away with me. Just don’t go into that fucking house.”

Jennifer reached up with her free hand and placed it over his.

“I have to go. I have to help my friend, just like he would help me. I know you’re scared. You go, George, and no one will think worse of you for it, please believe me. I think you need to—”

“It’s you, goddamn it.” He turned and faced her, his bloodshot eyes bearing down on her. A fire had grown in him and he was allowing it air to breathe. “I had a vision that you would be killed. You’ll walk in to Summer Place and you will never walk out. It wasn’t clear, but I saw a part of you staying in that house and never leaving. Don’t go!”

John Lonetree started forward and pried George’s hand from Jenny. As he moved her behind him, Cordero deflated. He tossed a large bill on the bar and then got up and left without looking back. John started to go after him but Jenny stopped him.

“Let him go. He needs to go, John.”

“What did he say to you?” Lonetree watched George Cordero disappear out the front doors of the Waldorf.

“Nothing.” Jenny looked away. “Can we go? I need to sleep some more.” She looped her thin hand through John’s thick arm. “And I need you to watch over me, so I hope you like the floor.”

“No place I would rather be,” John answered. He knew Jenny was holding back the truth, but he didn’t press about it.

As for Jenny, she suddenly wished that more than just John was with her. She also wished in a small way for Bobby Lee McKinnon—he would have understood what they were facing far better than any of the rest of them could.

Maybe Bobby would know what was stalking Summer Place.

At seven o’clock
, not long after the city of New York came alive, seven large tractor-trailers pulled out of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard where UBC had leased space for its production facility maintenance and technical field support. The trucks carried all the elements that would make the live broadcast from Summer Place possible. Cameras, sound systems, production vans, back-up generators and even a portable commissary for the production crew. This was to be the largest live production in the history of UBC and it would only fall short of the Super Bowl for total coverage.

Several of the early risers who worked inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard watched the seven large trucks pull out with mild curiosity. Never had they seen such activity from the UBC buildings before. It was almost as if the network were mobilizing for war. As the string of trucks pulled out and onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, they were followed closely by twenty UBC field vehicles, all starting their journey to a single place.

Tomorrow was Halloween, and their destination was Summer Place.

fifteen

Bright Waters, Pennsylvania

Detective Damian Jackson walked out of his room at the “Come As You Are” motel. The day was bright and the weather mild after the heavy thunderstorm the night before, as if the small town had been cleansed of the sordid events of the late night. Jackson was freshly shaven and wore his newest suit. He was in an exceptional mood because of the phone call he had just received from his contact at the NYPD. A convoy of UBC vehicles had just left Brooklyn on their way to Pennsylvania, and that meant Kennedy would be coming with them. It seemed that UBC was attempting to take possession of the summer retreat before the contracted date. He was curious to see how Wallace Lindemann took the news.

He stopped just outside of his door, slowly placed his hat on his head and whistled an enthusiastic tune. His quest to nail Professor Gabriel Kennedy to the proverbial wall was close to an end; one that he had foreseen many years before. He decided he would pay a visit to his guest at the constable’s office—Kyle Pritchard might have thought things over during the night and come to the decision to throw his fellow conspirators under the bus. Jackson would take Kennedy, the Delaphoy woman and everyone involved in the hoax the night of the test broadcast, tie it all into the disappearance seven years ago, and package things up with a nice little bow. Then he could finally move on with his life—a life that had been on hold since the cold case labeled “Summer Place” had stalled out his career.

Hands in his pockets, he stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street, careful to avoid the large puddles of water from the rain the night before. He hopped the puddles with a lightness to his step, as if he could just as easily have floated over them—yes, things were starting to come together since the reappearance of Kyle Pritchard. Jackson couldn’t imagine what the Delaphoy woman was thinking and feeling since her little scheme had taken the unexpected turn. He knew his arrival and the murder of her co-host had not been part of the plan, she had just chosen to bring in the wrong schizoid to be a part of it. Still, it was a good day to be in Bright Waters.

The small town and its people were just starting their day. At the diner, he could see the curious faces as he strolled by the very spot where the murder had occurred. He could still see the outline of the blood stain and made no effort to skip out of the way of it. He knew the townspeople were frightened of him, and that was all well and good to him. He turned to the large window, catching those watching him off guard. He winked and smiled.

Half a block down the street, he stopped in front of the small office of the township’s constable. He paused, straightened his coat and hat, and then opened the door.

“Good morning,” he said to the heavyset man at the desk. It was obvious that the old man had not gotten as much as a wink of sleep. These kinds of things didn’t happen all that much in small towns, and most people were not used to the reality of murder.

“I don’t know what’s so good about it,” the constable said, removing his feet from his desk.

“No sleep?” Jackson asked. He sat on the edge of the constable’s desk, a move the heavy set man didn’t seem to appreciate.

“If you had to hear that maniac back there—crying one minute, screaming the next—I’d like to see how much sleep
you’d
get.”

“Our young houseguest was in distress all night, then?”

“Distress, yeah. Being terrorized by any sound he heard, or screaming every time thunder clapped in the distance...I guess you could call it distress.” The constable stood with a ring of keys in his hand. “I suppose you want to say good morning to your boy?”

“You bet,” Jackson said. “Now may be a good time to get some truth out of him.”

“Well, good luck. He’s been quiet for the last half hour. And I hope he stays that way until your state boys come to collect him an hour from now.”

Jackson frowned, concerned.

“Have you checked on him since he calmed down?” He took the key ring from the slow-moving constable and inserted the key in the lock.

“Why, so he could start up again?”

“Goddamn it.” Jackson turned the large key and pushed the door open. He took the three steps toward the double cell setup and then he saw it. The key ring slipped from his fingers as he turned away, fixing the constable with a glare.

“Oh my god,” the constable said.

Inside cell number two, Kyle Pritchard had slammed his head so hard through the six inch gap between the bars that it had pushed through to the other side, ripping off both of his ears and scraping the hair on the sides of his head clean away. The body hung limp inside the cell, with his head on the outside. It was like he had been shoved through with superhuman strength. Jackson flipped on the overhead fluorescents. Examining Pritchard, he came to the quick conclusion that the man had done it to himself. There were bloody footprints on the cell floor, showing the running starts he had made to slam his head through the bars. Jackson could visualize maybe three or four attempts, running from the far wall to the bars, until finally he hit it with enough force to push his entire head through. Damian felt for a pulse. The bones of Pritchard’s neck crunched under his fingers. Then he looked down to the man’s wrists. It looked as though he had tried to chew through the skin and into his veins. Putting his head through the bars hadn’t been the first suicide method he’d attempted.

“What is that?”

Jackson removed his hat and looked up. Written on the far wall, in what had to have been his own blood, were Kyle Pritchard’s last words.

“I await,” Jackson read aloud.

“What the hell does that mean?” the constable asked. Jackson turned and left the cell area.

Jackson put his hat back on and stepped outside into the clean morning air, distancing himself from the foul smell inside. Pritchard’s body had voided itself of unneeded material, and the smell hung in his nostrils. The constable followed behind him.

“Jesus Christ,” Jackson mumbled to himself.

“Why did he write something like that?” the constable asked. Damian squinted up into the bright sunshine. He knew it could not restore the good mood he had been in before.

“It’s just the ramblings of an insane man,” the detective answered. He turned back to the constable. “Take pictures, and then get that doctor you use as a coroner over here. Tell him you have more work for him. I want him pronounced dead so we can get the two bodies to Philadelphia for a proper autopsy as soon as possible.”

As the constable turned away, he saw several townspeople emerge from the diner. They watched him with suspicion as he tried to keep down the bile that threatened his throat. He swallowed and crossed the street. When he thought he was far enough away, he turned back . The townies still watching him. An old man in worn overalls stepped forward into the middle of the dead street.

“Why don’t you get yourself to that house and get it over with?”

Jackson straightened and looked the man in the eye.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You outsiders have stirred something up that was meant to be left alone. Now you go and stop what it is those TV folks are up to. No good can come from it.”

The old man turned and joined his mates on the sidewalk. They all turned back into the diner without a backward glance at Jackson.

“Whole goddamn town is nuts,” he said as he moved off toward the motel’s office.

All the same, Damian Jackson of the Pennsylvania State Police was about to do just what the old man had suggested.

His next stop was Summer Place, where he and Gabriel Kennedy would settle things once and for all.

One way or another, this thing was going to end.

Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania

Almost halfway back to New York, Gabriel and Julie had gotten the call telling them that the schedule for taking possession of Summer Place had been moved up two days. Instead of heading all the way back, they had found the nearest motel. Leonard was still at the network working on his equipment and would be the last to arrive later that night; everyone else was in the caravan of network cars following the production vans into Pennsylvania. John had passed along news of George Cordero’s change of heart, and Gabriel had no qualms about letting George go. He had been more high-strung than Gabriel had remembered from seven years before.

Gabriel had tossed and turned for hours, finally dozing off around seven in the morning. It was now close to ten and although he was bone weary, he forced himself to shower, shave, and try and greet the day with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, even though the network was sorely testing his ability to greet anything in a good way. Summer Place wouldn’t react well to a hundred people hanging out on its property for two solid days.

Gabriel opened the door and shielded his eyes from the glaring sun. In the doorway, he removed his corduroy jacket and threw it over his shoulder. Slipping his sunglasses on, he stepped out into the beautiful Pennsylvania day.

“Good morning.”

Julie Reilly was sitting on one of those ancient lawn chairs that were painted green and white, the kind with a back in the shape of a fan. She was sitting with her ever-present notebook open in her lap and pen poised over a clean page.

“Why don’t you use a laptop like everyone else in the world?”