The Supernaturals (50 page)

“Sid, look at this,” the man standing outside the car said. Two more deer moved forward to join the first two.

“What?” the driver asked, irritated at being awakened.

“The damndest thing I’ve ever seen. Look at these deer. They’re just standing there staring at us.”

“Jesus, Jessup, let me sleep, I don’t need a nature lesson right now.”

Three more smaller deer exited the woods and joined the others. Now he counted seven deer. A little unnerved, the trooper slowly removed the large-handled flashlight from his belt. He brought up the instrument and clicked it on as fast as he could, knowing the sudden flare of light would frighten the deer away. It didn’t. The deer just stood there, watching him. The most frightening thing, and the trooper had decided that it was indeed frightening, was the way they made no move, other than to keep chewing on whatever it was they were chewing on.

“Shit,” the trooper whispered. “Sid, wake up and look at this.”

“Shit. I guess you’re not going to let me sleep.” The driver threw open his door and stepped from the cruiser. He adjusted his gun belt and then looked at his younger partner. “We’re not out here to watch the animal population, we’re here to—”

The driver stopped as a raccoon passed directly in front of the deer as it sniffed its way out of the trees. The trooper reached in and pulled on the headlight switch. The bright beams of light caught the deer and raccoon dead on, but the animals didn’t so much as flinch in the bright lights.

“Damn. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” the first trooper asked.

“They must be, you know, like deer caught in the headlights or something. You know, too scared to move.”

“Yeah, too scared. Is that why that larger male keeps coming, because it’s scared?”

As the two troopers watched, the male advanced two slow steps forward. As it moved it lowered its antlers, and one actually scraped the roadway as it moved off the shoulder of the road. The two troopers took an involuntary step backward.

“You men have to get those people out of there.”

Both policemen jumped at the sound of the deep voice behind them.

Standing at the gate were four men and a woman. They were watching the scene through the heavy slats of the wooden gate. The woman looked worried, rubbing her hands together.

Gabriel Kennedy had been awakened from an uneasy sleep by George Cordero five minutes before. He had gestured to the next stall where John Lonetree and Jennifer Tilden slept. As Kennedy came awake, George placed his right index finger to his lips, shushing Gabe before he could talk. A questioning look crossed Kennedy’s features when George pointed to the stall across the way. As Gabriel listened, he could hear John moaning and stumbling, and then the stall door had shot open and Jennifer came through, supporting John, who staggered. It was obvious the large Indian had been Dream Walking.

“What is it?” Kennedy asked as he shook free of the blanket.

“John says something’s going to happen outside,” Jenny said.

“What is it, John?” Kennedy assisted Jenny with some of John’s weight.

“Don’t remember. Something was in the woods earlier, but it’s no longer there. It’s watching people and growing angrier by the minute.”

Kennedy had led the way from the barn and had immediately seen the headlights of the police cruiser come on near the front gate.

As the two troopers had turned and saw the strange looking group of people watching them, the second cruiser’s doors opened. They were joined by the other two men.

“What’s going on?” one of them asked.

“Don’t know. The animals are acting strange.” The deer had come forward another three feet, and was fully in the road. The other six moseyed out with it, heads swinging from side to side.

“I’m going to get the key to this gate so you can get those sleeping people behind it,” Kennedy said. He fumbled with the large chain that was wrapped around the main beams of the wooden gate.

“We don’t have a key, and Lindemann isn’t here,” Jennifer said.

“Damn it!” Gabriel hissed.

“Wake those people up and tell them to wait it out inside their cars until the sun comes up,” Lonetree said. He had regained a little more of his strength.

“Hey, cut out those damn lights!” someone shouted from the darkness of the grass quad in front of the gate.

A man and a woman had popped free of their sleeping bags and were shading their eyes from the harsh glare of the cruiser’s headlights.

“What’s going to happen, John?” Jenny said.

George Cordero stepped closer to the gate and placed his hands through the wooden beams. He splayed his fingers apart and closed his eyes.

“Jesus, I’m not picking up the slow thoughts of animals over there. Whatever is approaching is something totally different.” He opened his eyes and pulled his arms back through the gate as if he had touched a hot stove.

The first state trooper to have seen the deer turned to the men and women who had come awake.

“Uh, can you people wake those next to you and move to your vehicles, please? Please move away from the area.”

“Oh, come on Jessup, they’re deer for Christ’s sake,” the second policeman said.

That was when the seven deer charged. The buck moved so fast that the man standing next to his wife never saw him coming. The antlers struck the man just below the buttocks and lifted him high into the air, then struck him again before he came to rest on the man lying on the ground next to his sleeping bag. The other deer made for the astonished state troopers. The four men scattered as the rest of the protesters and fans came awake to a melee of sight and sound. Soon their screams and shouts were added to those of the state troopers as they ran to avoid the deer stampede.

John Lonetree climbed the fence and held his hand out toward the scrambling men and women on the ground below. As one of the state troopers reached up to take the offered help, one of the smaller deer plowed into his back, twirling the large trooper like he was a doll. He came to rest at the base of the fence, alive but badly bruised. Another, a woman, screamed as a male deer with large antlers charged from behind one of the parked state cars. She scrambled and dove for cover underneath the wheel base of the car, narrowly escaping the sharp antlers which missed her leg and punctured one of the tires.

Suddenly several bright lights flared to life behind Kennedy and the others. Two film teams and Julie Reilly approached the fence. The cameras lights froze the deer in place, some skidding and sliding to a halt as the camera lenses zoomed in on the animal attack outside the gates. Harris Dalton pushed through the two cameramen and past Gabriel. He raised a set of bolt cutters to the chain and snapped it into two pieces. Gabriel pushed the right side of the gate open while the deer were frozen like statuary, shouting for everyone to get inside.

Men and women who had taken refuge further away from the gate saw their opportunity to scramble to their cars, while the closest ran, stumbled and tripped their way inside. Lonetree had hopped down from the gate and was in the process of helping the injured trooper to his feet. In that split second, the deer all came out of their startled trance. The large buck saw John and Jennifer and charged. Two others saw the slow moving trio and they also lowered their heads and came forward at a run.

Gabriel shouted a warning but he knew he was too late. The buck was almost on them. Suddenly, a brighter than normal set of headlights swerved off the road and into the short drive. While the truck didn’t strike any of the deer, it made them veer away at the last, most horrifying second. The buck turned and actually hit the large wooden gate as John and the others dove through. Gabriel and Dalton slammed the gate closed before any of the deer could recover.

The deer seemed to settle down once the gate was closed and the people safe inside. The large buck looked around as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The other deer started to wander around, sniffing at this and that. Then, as if they realized for the first time that they were no longer in the covering blanket of trees, the deer looked startled and bounded away. Only the buck stood for a moment, chewing, and stared at the gate and the humans watching it. Then it shook its large head and slowly moved away, past the large truck with the headlights that had saved John and Jennifer.

“What the fuck was that about?”

Kennedy smiled when he saw Leonard Sickles looking out of the open passenger side window.

“You piss off the Bambi family or what?”

An hour later
, with the Bright Waters police on hand, the fans and protesters were treated for scrapes and bruises. The injured state trooper was the worst case as he had his ass punctured with one of the bucks lethal antlers, and that seemed to be fine by his partner and the other two troopers as they laughed and teased the man to no end as the network first aid man applied tape and gauze to the wound. After the strange attack by the local wildlife, the police had no trouble moving the protesters and fans off of Summer Place property, while Wallace Lindemann, who had been alerted in his motel room, warned everyone that they couldn’t sue him because they had officially been trespassing on his property.

Gabriel stood next to the members of his team near the front gate. John Lonetree was responsible for saving a few lives, but if you saw him he looked more worried than relieved.

“What is it?” Kennedy asked as he made sure Julie Reilly and her camera people were far enough away as not to hear.

“The warning I received in my dream.” John looked through the gate at the mayhem. There were sleeping bags and tents strewn all around the ground; people had not had time to care about their belongings. “It was a woman’s voice, Gabe. She said that there was trouble in the woods. She said get to the main gate, and that was it.”

“A woman’s voice, you say?” Jennifer asked.

“With a German accent.”

“Well, that may help us in the long run.”

“How the hell is that helpful?” Leonard asked.

“The boy, Jim Johansson, he may have been helped by the same…” Gabe looked around again at the faces watching him, “entity.”

“You mean we’re dealing with more than one?” Leonard asked.

“Possibly, and that’s where you and your computer friends at USC are going to come in handy, Leonard. We need to know what the connection between the German opera star and Summer Place really is. We need to know why her entity is helping us.”

“You’re kidding, right?” the small black man asked.

Kennedy smiled as he turned and looked at the house.

“You take allies where you can find them.”

As they all turned and looked at the façade of Summer Place, the first rays of Halloween morning sun peeked through the gap between two mountaintops from the east, casting the gorgeous house in a warm glow.

Upstairs on the
third floor, as the first light of the new day entered the large window at the opposite end of the long hallway, the sewing room door stood open and cold air swirled around the open space. The darkness at that end of the hallway hid the spectral shape that stood motionless, reaching out to feel the fear of those awake downstairs and those meandering after its brief display outside. The small chuckle sounded on the third floor. Satisfied, the darkness moved back into the confines of the sewing room. The door eased closed and a soft humming sounded throughout the third floor hallway.

Summer Place was now resting.

The war was about to begin.
 

PART FIVE

TRICK OR TREAT

seventeen

All Hallows Eve

Lionel Peterson was putting off shaving and showering for as long as he possibly could. For the moment, he was content to sit in the small, smelly motel chair and stare at the water-stained carpet. He knew his actions against Kelly Delaphoy were taking a toll on his health. Not only had he endangered his career over his hate for the woman, he had become obsessive in his drive to destroy her at all cost. He smiled. If the show flopped, millions upon millions of network dollars would be lost. He would be held responsible and fired unceremoniously. Still, he would have to root for the show to fail. He could always explain to the media that he had warned against such a risky venture as a live Halloween broadcast. On the positive side, if the show flopped, Kelly would never breathe the conditioned air of a network office again.

If the show came away with big ratings numbers for the entire eight hours, Kelly Delaphoy would end up sitting in his chair—as had been her design from the very beginning. That was a thought that almost made Lionel physically ill.