The Supernaturals (33 page)

As Detective Damian Jackson lay in bed, he studied the case file he had opened on Gabriel Kennedy seven years ago. His eyes were locked on the photo taken of Kennedy back in his USC days, before that night here in Pennsylvania. His beard was gone now, and the eyes without his glasses on looked far more...how would he put it? Dark.
Yes
, he thought. They were darker now.

Jackson closed the file folder and placed his large hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. It had been six hours since he had requested background checks on the people Kennedy had assembled for his foray into that damnable house. Thus far his superiors hadn’t asked the dreaded questions about why he wanted these people checked out and the far more worrisome question as to why he would want them checked out while he was on vacation. Jackson had been specifically warned about not pursuing anything having to do with Professor Gabriel Kennedy on his personal time. The State of Pennsylvania wanted to keep distance from the goings on in Bright River. They were trying to live it down, while Jackson was busy tearing away at the old wound in his effort to reopen it.

As he lowered his eyes away from the bland ceiling of the room that had been his for the past two weeks, Jackson reached out to turn off the bedside lamp. As he reached the old pull chain, he felt his bed vibrate. He stopped and wondered how many of the motel’s old pipes ran right under his bed, and if one of those pipes were about to give way. He shook his head at the thought of drowning thirty-six miles away from any appreciable body of water, and again reached for the light. Another tremor shook his bed. This time it was powerful enough to make him throw back his covers and stand up. The bed was indeed moving. As he placed a hand on the mattress, the movement stopped as suddenly as it had started.

He watched the bed closely and was about to place his hand on the mattress again when the loud blaring of a car horn made him jump almost out of his pajamas. Jackson cursed himself for being so skittish. He looked out into the dark night but all he saw was the single stop light at the intersection. It was blinking yellow—its normal green to red operation ended at nine o’clock every night. His eyes moved from the light to the diner across the street. The road and sidewalks were empty and for some reason Jackson felt exposed as he stood in the window.

“Goddamn ghost town,” he mumbled. He was just getting ready to let the curtain fall back when a flash of lightning streaked across the sky, followed closely by a loud clap of thunder. Looking back at the bed, he shook his head. That was the vibration he had felt—the far-off sound of thunder. A storm had not been forecasted for the area. He had heard the weather reports all night long on the cable access channel on TV. “Goddamn good detective.” Out of curiosity, he turned back to the darkened street outside.

Rain had started to fall. With its coming, something settled into the small berg that happened to be the nearest settled town to Summer Place. It was like knowing you’re about to have company for no other reason than you just knew. Jackson shook his head. He had been reading the report on Kennedy too long, and it was starting to creep him out. That was all. As he let the curtain go, he saw movement across the street just in front of the old diner. He grabbed the curtain and pulled it back once again. A man was standing right in front of the twin glass doors. He was haggard, that Jackson could see, but the rest of the man was darkened by shadow and distance. Damian narrowed his eyes. When the traffic light flashed yellow, he saw something at the man’s feet. His heart froze in his sizable chest for a moment; the man was standing over a downed body. His heart pounded loudly. He knew the man was looking right in his direction.

Jackson let the curtain go and started dressing. He threw on his pants over his pajama bottoms and slipped into his shoes. He slipped his trench coat on and then his hat. He found his holstered gun on the nightstand. Pulling his door open, he was met with a cold blast of wind-driven rain. He hesitated. The man was still there, still looking right at him. Jackson pushed off from the door and leapt into the arms of the gathering storm. He splashed his way to the parking area directly in front of his room. In the flashing of the lone traffic light he saw that the man had raised his arm and was beckoning Damian forward. With gun in hand, Jackson crossed the street.

Damian raised the gun but was careful not to aim it. He stopped fifteen feet from the man’s back-lit form and shielded his eyes as the rain blasted past his fedora.

“Who are you?” Jackson shouted. He glanced momentarily from the standing man to the body at his feet.

The man said nothing. Jackson could see scraggly long hair silhouetted against the light, but not the man’s face. He raised the gun a little more.

“What are you—?” Jackson started to shout, but the man stepped forward, moving easily over the person lying under the diner’s awning.

“An offering,” the man.

“Your name, give me your name!” Damian shouted against another roll of thunder.

“We are an offering, that’s all I know. I’m hungry, we’re both hungry.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll take care of that, but I have to know who you are first,” Jackson shouted, becoming nervous as the man kept walking toward him.

“It was dark, and we didn’t know. It won’t allow what is to happen, to happen. Its home…don’t defile its home. It won’t allow that. We are meant as a warning.”

“All right, you have to stop right there.” Damian cocked the nine millimeter and aimed. “Who are you?”

The dark, bedraggled figure slowly turned and went back underneath the awning, where he stood like a sentinel over the prone figure at his feet.

“I have to go now, but you are left this as a reminder not to return to my soil.”

Damian Jackson saw the figure stoop low to the ground and then swipe at the figure lying on the sidewalk. The gesture was quick and the detective had very little time to react. As the dark figure raised his hand once again, Jackson saw the gleam of a knife in the flashing yellow from the traffic signal. At the same moment, lightning streaked across the sky and thunder ripped apart the rain-laden darkness. Jackson fired his weapon. The bullet caught the man in the right shoulder and spun him around. He flopped against the front doors of the closed diner.

Damian cursed as he hurried forward, still training his gun on the slumped man. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, lights in the surrounding buildings started to come on. He held the nine millimeter close by the head of the fallen man, who was writhing in pain. With his free hand, he pried the large kitchen knife from the man’s tight grasp. He then allowed his eyes to shift quickly to the body that had never once moved. He saw the pool of blood running from around the neck area and knew that the rate of that flow was too great for the person to survive. The man he had shot was trying to rise to his elbows. He slapped the barrel of the gun onto the top of the man’s head, and the longhaired man grunted and fell onto his face.

“Goddamn it,” Jackson hissed. He looked around him for some sort of assistance. Then he saw that a light had come on inside the diner. A man appeared at the doorway, tying a rope around the waist of his old robe. Jackson waved the man out. Then he looked down and rolled the prone man at his feet over onto his back. In a flash of lightning, the man’s face became visible. Paul Lowell stared back at Damian with dead eyes. His throat had been cut so deeply that Jackson could see the whiteness of bone in the wound. Damian gasped and removed his hand, standing slowly. The heaving rain was staring to wash most of the standing blood into the gutter, but the flow was heavy and would soon cover the protected part of the sidewalk.

Jackson leaned over the man he had shot, grasped him by his filthy hair and raised his head. As the world flashed with lightning and the traffic signal flashed yellow once more, the face of Kyle Pritchard remained slack and unconscious.

“Good God almighty, what in the world did you do?”

Jackson let Pritchard’s head fall back to the wet sidewalk and then he looked up into the shocked face of the diner’s owner.

“Call the local police,” Damian said and held out his State Police identification. He knew everyone in the small town already knew exactly who he was and why he was there.

The old man didn’t move. He stood in the half-open doorway, almost as if he were preparing to run back inside.

“Move, old timer,” Jackson said. He placed his gun in his raincoat pocket and slapped handcuffs on Kyle Pritchard. “And you better put on some coffee.”

When Damian looked up, he saw the man had left to comply with his orders. Jackson placed his hands on his hips and looked from the murdered co-host of
Hunters of the Paranormal
to the just-awakening sound technician. He stepped back out into the rain and looked up, letting the cold wetness strike his face. When he looked back, he raised his brows.

“Now that, I didn’t expect,” he said, as lightning flashed across the sky once again.

The Waldorf Astoria

New York City

Gabriel Kennedy stood just inside the doorway to room 1809, looking at John and Jennifer. John sat on the end of the large bed and Jennifer was at the desk, writing. Her energy level was almost off the charts now that Bobby Lee McKinnon had disappeared. She had changed out of the evening gown and had simply tossed it to Kelly Delaphoy with an apologetic look, and then had replaced the two thousand dollar dress with a pair of white Levis and a purple turtleneck. To Kennedy’s pleasure, Jenny had kept the make-up on to cover the dark circles under her eyes. As he watched, she sprang from her desk chair to the bell cart. She moved a small vase, and then counted something and wrote it down on her pad. She was following John Lonetree’s instructions to the letter about the way in which his part of the program would be conducted, numbering each item that she would place in John’s hands after he had gone to sleep. She would then record his reactions as his Dream Walk went through its paces.

“Be sure that you write everything down, and record the whole session too,” Kennedy said.

“I think she’ll keep everything in line,” John said, kicking off his cowboy boots.

Jenny smiled but didn’t look up from the notes she was writing. “What if Bobby Lee’s not really gone?” she asked, as matter-of-factly as she could.

“Tell him he’s had his moment in the sun, and then put him to work helping John.” Kennedy smiled, but saw that Jennifer wasn’t very appreciative of his sense of humor. “Sorry. I don’t know, Jenny. I don’t have any answers for you. All I can say is that if he does, end the experiment and call me. I don’t want him mixing it up with John while he’s under.”

The slight woman nodded. She walked to the door and kissed Kennedy on the cheek, then placed her thin fingers on his chest and pushed him out of the door. She closed it without another word and then turned to John who was stretched out on the bed with his large hands behind his head, watching her.

“I thought he would never leave,” he said with a smile.

“Now, am I supposed to sing you a lullaby?” she asked, not appreciating his sense of humor either.

“Maybe just a bedtime story,” John said, his smile growing wider.

“You wouldn’t care for my bedtime stories at all Mr. Lonetree, I assure you.” He flipped off the light switch at the wall, and then the desk lamp. She slid into her chair and looked toward the bed in the total darkness of the room. She hoped and prayed that Bobby Lee McKinnon would leave her be and stay away. She truly wanted to help the team—and most importantly, she wanted to help John Lonetree.

Before long, she felt that John had slid off to sleep. She would give him twenty minutes, as his instructions had stated, and then she would slide the first item he had requested into the bed beside his sleeping body.

Looking at her notes, she could barely make out the first item’s name: Portrait number one—F.E. and Elena Lindemann, wedding portrait.

Kennedy went over
each team assignment one last time and then tiredly adjourned the meeting. He and Julie Reilly would be leaving at six in the morning, and the others soon after. He wondered how John and Jennifer were doing. He was tempted to enter the room and eavesdrop, but he knew that John’s Dream Walking was like a tightrope walker attempting a wire act in a high wind: any disturbance at the wrong time could send Lonetree falling out of whatever realm he was in. To Gabriel that could be dangerous, it would be like startling a sleepwalker out of his slumber while in motion.

As he returned his paperwork to his briefcase, he saw Julie Reilly waiting for him by the door. She had a curious look on her face and in a split second he saw the reason why. She pushed the door open and standing in the hallway was a rumpled looking Lionel Peterson. He was wearing a white shirt and black sport jacket, but that was where the neatness ended and the haggardness began. He was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot. Kennedy could see the aftereffects of a long night of drinking. He pushed past Julie, making her step aside.

“I think you better slow down on your alcohol intake,” Kennedy said as he snapped his briefcase shut. “I know the look—I’ve been there.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn where you’ve been, Kennedy.”