The Supernaturals Page 3

  “As for her claim that her horse had unearthed the skeletal remains of a woman long dead, searchers returned to the scene and found no trace. Our producers attempted to gather more information, but sources in the small town refused to talk to us. It may seem ridiculous to us now, but thoroughly understandable when you see the faces of the locals. They are still haunted by the mention of Summer Place.”

  Again, the gorgeous view of the giant house dominated the screen.

  “The property has many familiar sides to it, as described by the author Shirley Jackson in her famous story. Ms. Jackson claimed never to have laid eyes upon the house, and extensive research by our producers has shown no evidence that she was ever on the property.”

  The slide changed to the winding roads and forested slopes of the Pocono Mountains.

  “Several weary travelers have reported eerie happenings on the roads surrounding the estate. Blood-curdling screams in the night, deer and other animals lying dead along a roadway that no one travels. There are even rumors of missing cross-country skiers who may have happened upon Summer Place in the season that sees the grounds shrouded in a white veil of snow. Ski tracks lead up to the property, but no tracks ever leave.”

  The portrait of the sewing machine magnate again flashed upon the screen.

  “With the death of F.E. Lindemann in 1940, Summer Place closed its doors. The only other time it received guests, save for the Lindemann children’s burials, was during the lease in 2003 to the now famous—or, infamous—Professor Gabriel Kennedy. The true details are hard to come by. All that is known about the event comes directly from official state police reports. The state of Pennsylvania reports in triplicate that the professor walked into Summer Place one spring night with six students. A day later, he and only five others walked out alive.”

  Kelly finally looked directly at the head of entertainment. His brow was furrowed, and she knew that he had just figured out what the meeting was about.

  “Since 2003 and the Professor Kennedy incident, the house has truly remained empty except for the Johanssons—a local family hired as caretakers in 1940 and paid handsomely by the Lindemann estate. The house continues to sit in the peaceful valley, and anyone traveling the lonely roads in the Poconos may still happen upon Summer Place. Its gabled roof still stands tall against the blue summer sky, and if you happen by in winter, smoke still billows from her main chimney like a talisman against the freezing onslaught of the season. Eunice Johansson still changes the bed linens in the twenty-five bedrooms and suites religiously every other week. She polishes the wood floors every month. The felt on the billiard table is brushed, and the table itself is leveled. The pool is drained every fall and refilled promptly the second week of spring. Though there are no horses at Summer Place these days, the straw inside the stables is still tossed bi-monthly. Fresh water is still changed out daily for animals that will never drink it.”

  Kelly started to gather a few items from her case, unnoticed. The presentation continued under the deep, soothing voice of the narrator.

  “Summer Place stands and waits, still looking like a home from a fairytale. It pays no mind to the ghostly rumors that permeate the valley, spoken in hushed whispers in the nearby small towns. The rumors sometimes attract the curious, as rumors of a house that is supposedly haunted will, but those wishing to test the myths find Summer Place as well guarded as the castles of olden days. From the road, the upright lines and warm glowing windows of Summer Place and its benign atmosphere lend no credence to the ghost stories. It is a beautiful estate, with a foundation strong and sound, the walls and doors upright and tight, and always sensibly shut, just like Ms. Jackson’s story says they should be. And when you look at Summer Place, always from a distance, a line from The Haunting of Hill House may come to mind: “Whatever walked in Hill House, walked alone.” This was the heart of her terrifying story, and it may also be true of Summer Place—the resemblance is just too strong to ignore.

  “Whatever walked there, walked alone.”

  Jason Sanborn raised the lights and paused to survey the faces around the table. They looked confused, but also interested. He moved to his seat as Kelly passed sheaves of paper around the conference table, saving the last for the silent man at its head.

  “The following transcript is the last journal entry of Professor Gabriel Kennedy, Head of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California. It was found on June 19, 2003 by the Pennsylvania State Police, and entered as evidence in the official state report.”

  Each person studied the paper before them.

  NOTE: The enclosed memo is for Entertainment Network Management only.

  June 19, 2003—03:35 AM

  The search for Jessica and Warren was halted fifteen minutes ago on my orders. Sarah Newman and John Kowalski were the only two students to return from the third floor. Pete Halliburton and Francis Dial are here with me in the ballroom. At this point, I must note that Pete is angry and close to becoming violent since I ordered everyone out of the house. He only calmed down when Jessica arrived at the bottom floor, terrified but very much alive.

  Three witnesses reported that Warren was pulled into the third floor wall, but as a rational man, I cannot accept this version of events. I checked the plaster underneath the wallpaper and found it to be sound. I admit to chills when I found his glasses and class ring at the wooden baseboard, at the very spot where this event is said to have occurred. And there was something else that I shoved in my coat pocket before any of my students could see it. At first, the small pieces of metal confounded me. But when I examined them outside later, they looked like fillings, quite possibly from Warren’s teeth. Could this be clinical mass hysteria? Regardless of what I think, this house—or my students’ perception of it—has become dangerous to the point that we must leave. We will return with qualified people to search for my student. I will make an entry once we have left Summer Place.

  As I write this, I have learned that until further evidence is recovered, I am to be held for questioning in Philadelphia. Members of the constabulary are not buying my students’ story and they look at me as if I was a roach that crawled out of their kitchen cabinets. I feel horrified. The longer they look at me in that way, the longer it will take to find out what really happened to Warren. I will leave my notebook on the table in the ballroom so that my students may find it. If the worst happens, I trust them to take it back to the university.

  “The second page of the memo is of most importance,” Kelly said. She found she couldn’t even face the people around the room now. Instead she focused on the large window.

  The man at the head of the table watched Kelly’s back for a moment, and then looked at his people around the table. His left brow rose. They were interested in the strange tale Kelly had related to them. He watched them as they read the addendum to the memo.

  Addendum to memo for network eyes only—

  Note: Pennsylvania State Police Sergeant Andrew Monahan recovered the notebook inside the ballroom that had been left by Kennedy the night before. After the last entry by Professor Kennedy, and scribbled on the lower half of the same page, was a cryptic note that has since proven not to be in Kennedy’s handwriting. The same message was written on the wall where the student vanished. The message had not been there when the police conducted their search, but was discovered after the house had been vacated and taped off for the night. In effect, someone had written the passage and the wall graffiti while the police were still present but posted outside the house. It is worthy of note that Kennedy was under observation by two state troopers at that time. Two days later, the Pennsylvania State Crime Lab examined the substance used to write both entries and declared it “an unknown material.”

  A facsimile of the entry depicted in Kennedy’s journal was obtained by a network contact inside the Pennsylvania judicial system. (name withheld for security purposes)

  The message written in the journal and on the wall was:

  THEY ARE MINE

/>   PART ONE

  THE PITCH

  one

  Burbank, California

  Kelly Delaphoy waited for her presentation, and the accompanying memo, to set in like rainwater soaking into dry, barren earth. It was exactly what she thought of their minds: barren. She continued watching their faces. Maybe her words, along with those of the former anchorman, would sink in slowly, or maybe the tale would just run off like rainwater against hardpan soil. She hoped it would spark thought and planning, but knew their unimaginative minds only saw dollar signs in everything they considered—which, she noted with reluctance, was why they were all in the positions they were in.

  “As you can see in the folders before you, I was sent a copy of the investigation by a network contact at the Pennsylvania State Police. It was verified by a court clerk who filed several injunctions after rulings in the Kennedy case.”

  The men and women sat around the large conference table and eyed the beautiful young woman with suspicion as she stood smiling an arrogant smile. Only her producer, Jason Sanborn, pretended to read the package she had painstakingly pieced together and placed before them, although he knew the contents almost as well as Kelly did.

  “I assume you know that possessing this report is a criminal offense, since the case hasn’t been closed yet.”

  Kelly looked straight into the eyes of Lionel Peterson, who sat motionless at the head of the table. She refused to rise to the challenge of a remark laid out like bait to a starving fish. Peterson thought she feared him, or was at the very least intimidated, as he intimidated so many others in this room. However, she had the hottest show on the network and was personally responsible for bringing in countless millions of advertising dollars. The smug president of the UBC entertainment division was helpless to do anything about her small legal transgressions unless she was caught by the authorities, and that would never happen. She eyed Peterson, which she knew irritated him to no end. The thought that the former stock analyst, with his slicked back black hair and his Armani suit, could make her cower in fear was almost laughable to her. He had the reputation of being a shark, and everyone at the network from Los Angeles to corporate in New York knew he was after only one thing: the position of network president. There was only one thing standing in Lionel’s way, and that was the seventy-two-year-old chairman and CEO.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t done fifty times for this show, as far back as when we were a mere half-hour throwaway on basic cable in Cincinnati. I never use these types of items in our case studies, so no one is ever the wiser. And you have never once questioned my research, as long as the advertising money comes in.” She continued to challenge Peterson, staring directly at him. “Should I have also not accepted the notebook and police entries?”

  “Okay, let’s put the legalities aside for the moment.” Jason stood and moved to the small refrigerator, removed a bottle of sparkling water and then returned to the conference table. “Did you get a chance to talk with this Harvard educated—” he leaned over and looked at his notes for show as he opened the bottle, “Professor Kennedy?”

  For the first time in a production meeting of this nature, Kelly lowered her head, looking defeated just minutes into the expected confrontation. She would corner Jason later about embarrassing her with his question.

  “He won’t see me. He wants nothing to do with us,” Kelly finally said.

  “You mean you’ve finally come across someone with a little dignity?” Peterson smirked.

  “We don’t need him.” Kelly smiled broadly, and then looked around the room for effect while biting her lower lip. It was the best little girl being attacked face she could muster. “I have the sole owner of the estate, the great-grand nephew, Wallace Lindemann.”

  That created the buzz she was hoping for. People started talking all at once. Her show, Hunters of the Paranormal, would indeed air live in two months on Halloween night from the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania; she knew it by the excitement in the room. They had already forgotten about her not being able to obtain the reclusive psychiatrist, Gabriel Kennedy.

  As she looked from person to person, her eyes finally fell on Lionel Peterson. He was looking at her with his left eyebrow raised once more, in that maybe you have us hooked, and maybe you don’t way of his. Peterson had been overruled two years before by the man who had previously sat in the entertainment president’s chair, and so a small cable series that had shown promise in the ratings had become a network franchise that was now a juggernaut according to the television God, Nielsen. The man just would not, could not, let go of his failure and embarrassment at the way Kelly had outmaneuvered him years ago.

  Peterson slapped the table twice. His entertainment people quieted, returning to some semblance of a professional group.

  “I can’t help but think we’ll look like Johnny-come-latelys on this, Kelly. I mean, so many ghost hunter shows have investigated the Lindemann summer house and found absolutely nothing since this Kennedy fiasco—they couldn’t even air the footage they had in the can.”

  Kelly was actually stunned that Peterson knew of the summer house and its television history. She tried not to show her surprise.

  Peterson looked down at the conference table and thumbed the thick pages Kelly had placed before him, and then looked up with a smirk.

  “Kennedy won’t see you because he probably made a deal with his missing student to take it on the lam so that Kennedy could get a book deal out of his disappearance.” He again thumbed through her proposal and pulled a sheet of paper from the binding. “In addition, devoting four primetime live hours, and another four live hours into late night, well, that may cost us too much. The advertisers would run for cover. As you said, there’s not much of an ‘evil owner’ angle here. Even I’ve heard about the philanthropic Lindemanns.”

  Kelly pulled out her chair and sat down. She had done the interviews herself, everyone from Philadelphia television news reporters who had covered the Kennedy story, to a few of the cancelled ghost hunter shows that couldn’t keep up with hers in the ratings. They all claimed the same thing: the place was so beautiful and charming and so very much not haunted. After listening to them all, she even started having her own doubts. Then she’d heard what happened there in 2003. It was something the other shows never touched on because of legalities, or they claimed never to have even heard of the Kennedy incident. Her research had taken her from USC to the Poconos; from Beaumont, Texas—where either USC or the Pennsylvania authorities tried to hide Kennedy from the rest of the world—to this very boardroom, pitching the greatest live event since Orson Wells and his War of the Worlds broadcast in the thirties. The one difference that emerged from her research was the one thing the other shows lacked, her imagination.

  “That’s true, those shoddy shows and news reporters didn’t find anything, but they don’t have our experience. Even if the place is benign, which I know it isn’t, we have the official Kennedy account from the great-grand nephew of F.E. Lindemann himself, sole heir of the great sewing machine magnate, that says something horrible did happen there in the summer of 2003, contradicting the official state police report. We tell that story along with the others we have related to you in the slide show, and then, if we have to, we’ll make our audience believe. And there’s one thing the other shows refused to touch on: whatever is in that house was triggered into action by Kennedy and his team. He awoke something in that house that had lain dormant for over three-quarters of a century. With a cast of ‘experts,’ I can get the house to awaken once more. Only this time, it will be on my cue and on live television.”

  “Am I hearing you right?” Peterson asked, staring straight at Kelly. “You want to fake events at that house if it proves not to be haunted? I want to hear you say it, Kelly. I want everyone here to understand it clearly.” He pointed a finger from her to the others around the room. She only wished she could reach out and snap that prissy little manicured finger right in half.

  “That’s a rather hard turn
of phrase, Lionel. All I mean is that since we don’t have Kennedy, we push the boundaries a little. That’s all.”

  “And your above-board hosts, writers, and other producers are good with this?”

  “They will be, yes. They’re troopers. They’ve been through thick and thin on this show for five years and they’ll do anything to keep Hunters of the Paranormal on top of the ratings. I have a line on two of the students that walked out of that house with Professor Kennedy.”

  “What of the other three?” Peterson asked.

  “They have never spoken to anyone about Summer Place. Their parents wouldn’t even tell me where they were currently living. It’s like they dropped off the face of the earth.”

  Lionel Peterson clearly did not like this. She could see it on his face. As much as he would have liked to see her fail and take her show down with her, his advertising revenues would plummet and never recover, no matter what show they replaced her with. No, his fate was tied to hers. She suspected that prospect gave him far more chills than her ghost hunting show ever could.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “The largest expense is the house rental itself. That will run one million dollars.”

  “For just one night?” Peterson asked, loud enough to startle a few of the more timid people around the table. His eyes bore into Kelly’s and she could tell that this time he wasn’t putting on a front.

  “The nephew, Wallace Lindemann, is rich beyond measure, but is also a cutthroat little bastard. He won’t take a penny less than the one million for the two weeks we need the house. That’s one week for signal testing and setup two weeks before, and one week for the actual broadcast on Halloween night.”