The Supernaturals (72 page)

“Look!” Julie Reilly
called out.

Gabriel, still helping to hold closed what was left of the door, looked up in time to see the large closet door slowly swing open. Warmer air permeated the cold room. He knew immediately it was John.

“George, put that chair down and get inside that closet. Feel around. I think Lonetree is trying to tell us something!”

Cordero slammed the chair against the window one more time. As it bounced off, he turned and ran for the closet. He also felt the large Indian’s presence, and shoved aside the aging black sequined gown on its lone hanger. As George struck the back wall of the wooden closet, he felt something give. He heard a squeak and then he felt a draft of even colder air. He reached out just as a loud boom sounded from the bedroom.

“George, we’re running out of time here!” Kennedy shouted. “I think old F.E. Lindemann wants this bedroom!”

“In here! There’s a passage of some sort.”

“Julie, go!” Gabriel shouted. The door gave another two inches inward.

The reporter scrambled over the bed and hit the closet and without hesitation. She ducked inside.

“Peterson, get in there and follow,” Gabriel said. He grimaced with the effort of keeping the entity out.

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Good luck!” Peterson scrambled to his feet and vanished into the dark closet.

“Don’t even say it, Kennedy. You get out of here!” Jackson screamed over the grunting and roaring of the beast outside of the bedroom.

“I wasn’t going to say anything. Neither of us can leave without Mr. Wonderful coming inside and chasing down the others. I’m afraid we’re pegged to be the heroes here.”

“You could have at least argued for me to leave,” Jackson said with a snarl.

The entity crashed into the door, and this time it gave way.

John moved back
out into the hallway. He didn’t know exactly how to get the mass of darkness to pay attention to him, but that became a moot point as he felt the black mass back away from the door. It had finally succeeded in cracking the wood to splinters. It turned toward John and roared. Forgetting all about the bedroom, it turned and came forward. John backed away. Then the beast roared in anger and came at him in earnest.

“Now, Gabe. Run, get to the sewing room, the answer is in there!” he shouted as he ran for the staircase.

Gabriel pushed broken
shards of wood off his hurting body and turned his attention to Damian, who was covered in the remains of the door. When they both heard the call for them to run, they didn’t hesitate. They covered the floor to the closet in moments and smashed inside the dark space that was their escape.

Once inside the passage, Gabriel searched his pockets for his penlight. “Damn it, the flashlight’s back in the room!” he hissed.

Jackson pushed by him in the tight passageway.

“Well, go back and get it, but don’t mind if I don’t go with you.”

Kennedy had to smile as he turned on his heels and followed the detective.

They traveled along the passage until Damian, not being able to see clearly in the dark, bumped into Peterson, who let out a scream.

“This door or that one,” George asked in the darkness as Gabriel caught up.

“John said the sewing room. If I have my bearings straight, that’s the one to your right.”

George tried the panel in front of him. It didn’t move.

“Try sliding it,” Julie said at his shoulder.

George placed both hands on the panel and pushed to the left—nothing. Then he tried to the right and the panel moved. He pushed it all the way open and then slowly and cautiously stepped into the sewing room.

As they all joined George, Gabriel brushed a small table and bumped against something. He picked it up to examine it and some liquid splashed in his hands—kerosene.

“Anyone got a light, a match, anything? I have a storm lamp.”

Suddenly the room flashed brightly as Lionel Peterson lit his lighter. Gabriel raised the glass chimney on the storm lantern and Peterson lit the wick. Kennedy closed the chimney and adjusted the flame.

The sewing room was laid out neatly. There were three sewing machines, half body mannequins and old bolts of materials of all colors and make, strewn across the room. All covered in a thick layer of dust. This was one room Eunice Johannson never touched in her daily cleaning of Summer Place. The dust and disarray made the room seem frozen in time. The many closets in the room were all locked with small padlocks. Damian Jackson noticed them just as Gabriel did.

“I guess Mrs. Lindemann took the security of her wardrobe seriously,” Jackson said. He walked up to one and grasped the old brass lock with his uninjured left hand. The big state policeman pulled down as hard as he could. The lock held, but he heard a small cracking of the wood that the hasp was attached to. He pulled again and this time the old wood gave way and the lock and its hasp came off in his hand. “Oops.”

Gabriel came forward with the lamp as Damian pulled open the closet door. Several items hung inside. Jackson took a step back in stunned silence. Julie mustered all of her courage to keep the sickness she felt from exiting her stomach.

“My God, what are those?” Peterson asked. Now they knew who they were dealing with, and what was walking the hallways of Summer Place.

John had made
it to the second floor landing, but he felt the entity close behind. The flashing of the motion sensors and the beeping of the laser grid told him the beast had gained the second floor and was just across the house from where he was. He knew beyond a doubt that if the entity could catch him in his dream state, it could kill him just as surely as if it was confronting his real body.

John held his ground on the landing, waiting for the black mass to reach the corner of the hallway, baiting it away from Gabriel and George. The black force rounded the corner, and John knew he could lead it away successfully—his bait had worked.

Suddenly, as he turned to run down the stairs in his dream, a cold splash—or flash, really—struck his face. It was so cold that he gasped for breath. Then, to his horror, he opened his eyes. The entity roared in pure animalistic anger and turned back the way it had come. John knew it had figured out where Gabriel and the others were.

“No, it’s going back to the third floor—it’s going to the sewing room!”

He tried to scream at the retreating entity to regain its attention, but just as he opened his mouth in his dream state, another splash of freezing cold struck him. Like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, he began to dissolve.

John opened his
eyes and tried to catch his breath. He was coughing and spitting as the cold water ran down his throat and windpipe. A pair of reaching arms helped him to sit up.

“John, are you okay?”

John tried to clear his head, shaking cold water from him and slinging his long wet hair around. He managed to draw in a deep breath. He finally opened his eyes and looked around. Shaking, he saw Jennifer standing over him. She was holding a large glass that still dripped water.

“You…you woke me,” he said as he rubbed his swollen eyes. “I wasn’t done.”

“You were dying, John. You were breathing too hard and your pulse was racing. You were about to go into cardiac arrest, or have a stroke.”

Before John could say anything, a crash at the door brought his head around. The entity, or the part that took occupancy near the ballroom, had smashed the left side of the door to splinters. Leonard Sickles was still throwing anything he could through the large opening at the roaring beast.

“We’re out of time here!” Leonard shouted as he threw a computer monitor through the door.

“I have to get to the subbasement!” John stood. “Can we get out of one of the French doors?”

Jenny shook her head. “We’ve been trying ever since you went under.”

“Damn it, we’re going to lose them if I don’t get to the basement!”

Jenny suddenly felt weak. She sat on the edge of the couch. At first, John thought the situation was just overwhelming her, but then he saw her eyes roll into the back of her head. Her entire body shook and then she moaned deep in her throat. She suddenly stood and looked down at John.

“I didn’t think that bitch would ever let me squeeze though that hole,” Jenny said, her voice decidedly male.

“Bobby Lee?” John asked.

Jenny looked up at the large Indian and shook her head in wonder. “Well, it ain’t Chuck Berry. Look, you don’t have the time.” Jenny touched her own cheek. “And my Jenny girl doesn’t, and believe me, that’s the only reason I’m turning into Gary Cooper here.”

“What are you—”

“Shut up man. Listen, you tell Jenny I never meant no harm. I loved her and that’s why I chose her. That’s why I stayed and that’s why I made her life hell. This is my make up to her. You’ll know when to run, Tonto. Now get her ready to go, get to your basement and kill this fucking thing. It gives ghosts a bad fucking name.”

Jennifer fell forward into John’s arms. She moaned and started to come around almost immediately. She had tears in her eyes, as if she knew exactly what her personal ghost was going to do for her.

John looked up at the exact moment that Leonard Sickles was pushed out of the way by an unseen force. Leonard hit the Persian rug on his back and watched as a sparkling wave of light shot through the exposed hole in the large door. Suddenly the beast roared in anger and the pounding stopped. The only sound in the ballroom was the crying coming from Wallace Lindemann at the back of the bar.

The doorway on the left side slowly opened. Leonard ran, with John carrying Jennifer close behind.

Bobby Lee McKinnon was giving them the time they needed.

Harris Dalton and
the fifteen technicians, assistant directors, and producers split into groups, hoping to keep the thing they had sought earlier in the television special out of the production van. All of the enthusiasm they had shown in the beginning had vanished now that the scenario facing them was real. If the thing now punching five- and six-foot dents into the trailer’s steel frame got inside, they would be devoured. All of them knew it.

“I think it’s drawing power from our electronics. What if we get outside somehow and kill the generator?” Nancy, his assistant director, asked as she picked herself off the carpeted deck.

“Okay, I’m game. Do you want me to open the door and you just squeeze by whatever the fuck it is that’s out there and make a run for the genny?” Harris shouted. He watched a corner of the steel door pull outward from the trailer’s frame.

“Oh man, look at that,” Nancy said. There was no way past the thing that was outside.

A large flash of lightning illuminated the grounds and they saw a large arm, mist-shrouded and black, reach in and take a swipe at the closest technician, striking him in the chest and sending him flying. Harris reached for the phone and placed it to his ear, trying desperately to punch in the numbers for New York. As the tones sounded, he heard laughter through the phone line.
“They’re mine…they’re mine…they are MINE
!”

The corner of the large door peeled down from the hinge that held it in place.

“Oh, crap,” Harris said.

When the door
to the sewing room bent inward, Gabriel knew that the entity had discovered their whereabouts. Each person took a step back from the discovery inside the closet that had unnerved them all. Gabe turned the storm lamp toward the open closet one last time to absorb what he was seeing.

The door was slammed again. Damian Jackson saw to his horror that the lock was unlatched. He dove for the door and tried desperately to slam the lock home with his good hand, but the door bent inward with such force that the wood cracked and splintered. Julie saw what he was trying to do and reached for the lock herself, finally getting a hold on it and ramming it home. The beast outside seemed enraged that Gabriel and the others had managed to penetrate its inner sanctum. The pounding and thrashing became more intense, slinging splinters of wood off the cracked door into the interior of the sewing room.

Gabriel moved to the closet and ran his hand over the garment at the front. It looked to be a bodysuit of some kind. Made of white cloth, it was knee length and ended at the collar. To his horror, it was complete with breasts—cloth, to be sure, but full and ample breasts. And it had many companions. Some were heavier than others, but all came equipped with breasts. Gabriel quickly counted twenty bodysuits, each one meticulously hand sewn. Worn underneath a dress, no one would be able to tell that they were false forms for a woman who wasn’t a real woman at all.

“It’s all fitting together.” Gabriel hurried from the open closet to the door. He held the lamp high. Jackson, George and Peterson had their weight firmly planted against the wood, trying to keep the entity at bay.