The Supernaturals (70 page)

John’s breathing would go shallow one moment and then he would gasp for air the next. Jennifer and Leonard were both becoming worried that he was too far under. The way Lonetree and Gabriel had explained the Dream Walks, he never went so deep that his own movements wouldn’t wake him. But now he was thrashing, screaming and whimpering.

“Maybe we should try to wake him?” Leonard said.

Jennifer swallowed and bit her lower lip. There was a chance they would have to do just that.

John stood in
the middle of the brightly lit ballroom watching men and women in formal attire roam the room with drinks while a string quartet played. People coursed in and around the rows of chairs that had been set up in front of the small stage. There were close to a hundred people of varying ages, and their dress was obviously from the twenties or thirties. John quickly stepped back as a small woman in a maid’s outfit walked right through him. He gasped as he felt the woman’s thoughts and feelings. When he turned around she was offering a glass of champagne to a couple who accepted without a thank you. She was angry that she had to perform two jobs during the night. As he watched, the small woman headed toward the crowded bar and placed the tray of filled glasses on the end. Then she wiped her hands and made her way toward the large double doors.

“Leanne, what has become of Mrs. Lindemann? She needs to be down here with her guests.”

The man was the same one whom John had seen at the factory in New York. It was F.E. Lindemann, and he looked none too pleased. His tuxedo was of the finest cut and he grinned as he asked the girl the question, but John could see he was seething underneath. Now he knew now who the girl was. She was one of the maids from the nearby village, and was also the spitting image of Eunice Johansson. He thought a moment—Leanne Cummings, if he remembered right. She was the last person to see the German opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt, alive.

“Yes, sir, she had a last minute alteration to her dress. She is in the sewing room, she shouldn’t be but a moment.”

“And Miss Gerhardt?” Lindemann asked.

“The staff re-ironed her dress and I am on my way to deliver it now, sir.”

“Be off, then, and tell them both to hurry. Our guests are waiting.”

The girl half bowed and made her way quickly from the ballroom. John followed.

As he stepped aside to avoid two guests who nearly passed through him, he saw the girl disappear through the kitchen’s swinging doors. Looking from the moving doors to the staircase, he played a hunch and started to climb the stairs. In the wink of an eye, John found himself on the third floor landing, and then across the hallway to the far side of the house where he was looking straight at the master suite and the sewing room. Both doors were closed. He stopped and looked at the wall where almost a century later Gabriel’s student would disappear. This wallpaper was different than the current wallpaper in the hallway. He felt the wall and found it just that: a wall, normal and cool to the touch.

Suddenly a door opened down the hallway. A woman stuck her head out and scouted down the hallway before stepping out so that John could see her. She looked right at him, and then through him. She was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, and her hair was coiffed to perfection. John could see her stocking as she stepped from the room. Her eyes seemed to meet his for the briefest of moments before she started across the hall. She moved like a cat, with her eyes firmly placed on the sewing room and the master suite next to it. She stepped into the room across from hers, and then quickly closed the door behind her.

John didn’t have to follow. One moment he watched the woman disappear into the bedroom, and the next moment he was standing next to the bed in that very same room. He watched the robed woman go to her knees and look under the neatly made bed. She straightened onto her knees and crawled to the closet, then stood, pulled open the door and quickly rummaged inside. It looked as if the woman were looking for something. While John watched the woman’s strange behavior, he kept feeling his stomach. He could still feel the pain from the previous Walk. John found he was still shaking from the pain of the murder he had endured.

The woman stepped from the closet and then stopped cold as if she had heard something. She went to the bedroom door and cracked it open. She then quickly hurried out into the hallway. John followed this time as she made her way to the next room and tried the knob, but at that moment the maid came around the corner. She was carrying a dress in her hands, held out as if she were carrying a baby. The black sequined gown shimmered brightly in the lights lining the hallway.

“Oh, I was just looking for you,” the woman in the dressing gown said. She released the handle of the door to the next bedroom she had been about to search. Her words were spoken in a heavy German accent. John knew then who he was looking at—the opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt. The diva was about to disappear from Summer Place and John’s Dream Walk had placed him right at the center of the action.

“Yes, Ma’am, Mr. Lindemann has requested that you join the party as soon as possible,” the young maid said as she went to Gerhardt’s room and opened the door. The diva moved into her bedroom, followed by the maid carrying the dress. John stepped over but didn’t enter the room, he just watched from the hallway.

“Just lay the dress on the bed, please, and tell Mr. Lindemann I’ll be down momentarily.”

The maid did as she was ordered and then half bowed and left, turning to the right she walked toward the master suite. John watched her knock. She knocked again and then moved over ten feet to the door on the left—the sewing room—and knocked, looking uneasy to John’s watching eyes.

“Yes,” came a voice through the door, just as soft music was turned down.

“Ma’am, your husband is anxious for you to join him in the ballroom.”

At first there was no answer, but then the sewing room door opened a few inches. Though John tried, he couldn’t hear what was said. Then the door closed and the young girl hurried away down the hallway and past John. The soft music started again inside the sewing room. He started walking toward it, but movement from the opera star’s room caught his eye. She stood at the open closet. John felt something, or maybe he felt what Gwyneth Gerhardt was feeling; he couldn’t be sure. He moved easily into the room and watched as the woman removed a fur stole and tossed it onto the bed, then stepped further into the closet. She was feeling around at the back of the closet. Occasionally, she would stop and listen, and then feel around some more. Then John heard it—the same music he had just heard coming from the sewing room.

Now just as curious as the opera singer, John came up behind her. For a moment, John knew she could feel his presence. She stopped probing the back of the closet and turned to look right at him. Then, satisfied she was alone in the bedroom, she went back to feeling the back wall of the closet. John hesitantly reached out. He nearly touched the German star, but withdrew his hand. He wanted to feel exactly what she was feeling, but was afraid to complete a chain that linked the past with the present and that therefore might stop her from doing what she had done in that past. Waves of longing, of missing something, came out of Gerhardt as she finally found the spot she had been seeking. As she pushed in on the back of the wooden closet, it popped open like a small door. Beyond was a darkened passageway that led off into a false wall. She hesitated.

John gathered his courage and reached out and touched Gerhardt on the shoulder. She froze for a second, looking into the dark passage.

Lonetree closed his eyes, feeling what Gerhardt was feeling. She was indeed looking for something. She was looking for…for…her sister. Lonetree moved his hand from her shoulder and she seemed to relax. John watched as the opera star gathered her courage and stepped into the hidden passage. He wanted to shout for her to stop, but another wave hit him from the woman’s mind. She was here to sing, but she had only accepted the invitation because she had wanted to search for her sister. She suspected that the Lindemanns were involved, and suspected her sister was here. John was starting to get a sick feeling in his stomach again.

As the woman felt her way along the passage, the music grew louder. Finally she stopped at another doorway. John knew they were right outside the sewing room. There were two doors almost side by side, mirroring the two in the hallway: the master suite and the sewing room. As the opera star reached out in the darkness, John came close to trying to stop her. He knew that her death, or at the very least the reason for her disappearance, was right behind that thin panel of a doorway.

A sliver of light filled the small tunnel that ran in between the thickened wall of the third floor. Gerhardt stood motionless, peering inside the sewing room. John touched her again, so that he could gauge her feelings and thoughts. Suddenly, he was thrown backward. Gerhardt’s heart lurched in her chest. She panicked and, with a gasp, turned and ran back the way she had come, running right through John. He felt eyes on him, and turned. The small door had opened wider and a face was staring through him. The naked body and fierce eyes penetrated his soul as if he were looking at Satan himself, and then everything about Summer Place became crystal clear. John panicked himself and fought to gain control as he backed away from the figure. He stumbled in his dream and fell to the wooden floor of the passage. He heard Gerhardt up ahead as she gained the closet in her own room. John finally managed to get to his feet. Before he realized what was happening, he was in Gerhardt herself as she squeezed out of her closet.

John could still hear the music, and now he could feel Gwyneth’s pounding heartbeat and her terror as she stumbled to her door. John tried with all of his ability to assist the woman, who was now in a blind panic to get out. She was crying, whimpering, and John was also. She went to her knees as she reached for the crystal glass doorknob. It turned and she used it to stand, then she choked back a scream. The figure from the sewing room was standing at the door when it flew open. Inside of Gerhardt, John screamed in horror right along with her as the knife plunged down and into the opera star. The figure pulled the knife free and slammed it into the German star again.

Lonetree fell backward with Gwyneth Gerhardt. He felt the body strike the hardwood floor just in front of the large bed. She tried to roll over and crawl to safety under the bed, screaming in pain and terror. He felt the large knife plunge into her back. Then all was still as the diva was roughly rolled over. John could see the person standing over Gerhardt clearly. The naked body was sheathed in a fine sheen of sweat and its horrible, hate-filled eyes stared down. John felt his stomach heave.

John felt her heart stop beating at the moment of her death. Gabriel and the team were facing something far more terrible than just ghosts at Summer Place, he knew. The secret of the house was now in his memory and all he had to do was wake up from the Dream Walk to let Gabriel know what they were dealing with.

It wasn’t Summer Place that was evil, it was what walked there that came from hell itself. Lonetree feared it might be too late to stop it.

New York

CEO Feuerstein stood from his chair as the sound inside of Summer Place went down. They could still see the live picture of Kennedy’s team as they ran for the open doorway of the bedroom. The basement camera was dark and had shown nothing since the attack on Kelly Delaphoy. The ballroom camera was blank but they were receiving sound.

“Sir, the ratings are skyrocketing and the advertisers want to extend their time. The phone lines are going down due to overload. Most of the callers want to know if this is on the level or a practical joke. The news division wants more reporters on site, and the Pennsylvania state police want to know why they weren’t informed about the live broadcast,” Feuerstein’s assistant said from his side, “and I have Harris Dalton on line one.”

Feuerstein, without taking his eyes off the screen, reached for the phone and pushed the flashing light connecting him with Harris Dalton in the production van. He placed his hand over the receiver and leaned toward his assistant.

“Inform our sponsors that we are not going to break. They’ll get a scroll at the bottom of the screen.” Feuerstein thought a moment as his assistant scribbled furiously on her notepad. Everyone in the room could hear Harris Dalton at Summer Place screaming into the phone. “Tell the news division to dispatch their news team from Bright Waters, and also please inform the state police that we have a detective lieutenant from their Philadelphia barracks in attendance, and that he is thus far reporting that everything is under control.”

The assistant stopped writing and her eyes flicked to the large screen. The door of the third floor bedroom that had once been used by Gwyneth Gerhardt slammed and locked with Kennedy and his investigative team inside. She looked back to the CEO, and his glare told her she had better get moving at once.

Once the assistant was gone, Feuerstein raised the phone to his ear. “Dalton, you are putting on one hell of a show. The phone lines are going down due to the volume of calls. I want to—”

 
“We need the state police out here in force, and don’t hand me any crap about ratings! We have people in serious danger in that house!”