Harris looked around and saw the empty spaces where a half hour before Lionel Peterson and Wallace Lindemann had been sitting. Kelly’s chair was also empty and he smiled, breathing a sigh of relief. He was alone with complete control and no one looking over his shoulders. He would now go on his gut instinct, which was telling him this was his moment in the sun — the once in a lifetime event that would send his name into the stratosphere. He smiled again and spoke into his microphone.
“Julie, this is now Professor Kennedy’s show. You had your chance to put your monkey wrench in the works, and so did Peterson. Now we become believers. I think that damnable house has something to say.”
Julie Reilly knew Harris was right; this was now Kennedy’s show. She made her way back to Kennedy and pointed at his back, indicating to the camera and sound men that they should lock onto him and not leave.
“George, anything?” Gabriel asked, pulling Cordero away from his work on Father Dolan.
“I am getting conflicting thoughts, Gabe. Although we know something from up there,” he pointed toward the ceiling, “is active as hell and mean as a snake, I’m getting the feel of massive activity from below, possibly the root cellar. Not the basement, but deeper.”
Kennedy bit his lower lip. He had been expecting activity on a large scale, but not from two very different directions.
“John, how about you?” he asked Lonetree.
“You mean besides the fact that whatever is up there is strong as hell?”
“Yeah, besides that,” Gabriel said with a smile. He was aware of the camera and sound boom hanging over their heads but did his best to ignore them.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go with what George is feeling for right now. I have nothing. If I could close my eyes for a while, I may be able to get a grasp on what’s happening.”
Gabriel patted John on the arm and then looked at Jennifer. She just shook her head, telling him without voicing it that Bobby Lee had not rejoined her.
“Professor Gabe, maybe you better see this.”
“That is the voice of Leonard Sickles, whom our viewing audience met earlier in the evening. Leonard, as you recall, is in charge of the technical side of things for the Supernaturals,” Julie explained as she followed the camera and soundmen over to Leonard, who was standing next to the large bar. He heard the name of Kennedy’s group as dubbed by Julie and smiled. He was the only team member who actually liked the comicbook-sounding moniker.
“What do you have?” Gabriel asked as the camera joined them.
With the thump of thunder and the flash of lightning outside the windows, the camera zoomed in tight on the small black man’s face. He pulled out the contents of the yellow envelope that had been delivered by his friends from Philadelphia. Gabriel could see they were photographs.
“What we have here is the photo history of the Vilnikov family,” Leonard said. He spread the stolen photos out on the bar for Gabriel and the camera to examine.
“For the benefit of our viewers, Mr. Sickles, could you explain just who the Vilnikov family is?” Julie asked.
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Leonard looked into the camera with his eyebrows bunched up, trying his best for that Clark Gable look. “The Vilnikovs are third cousins to the former Romanov dynasty from Russia. They were the family of Elena Lindemann, or so we were led to believe.”
“Explain the phrase, led to believe?” Julie asked. The camera looked over Kennedy’s shoulder as he examined the pictures.
“Put simply, we can’t find any evidence that Elena Lindemann, or Elena Vilnikov, ever existed.”
“You mean to say that there is no evidence of Elena in any of these family photos?” Julie asked. Kennedy raised one of the pictures and examined it closer. It was a father and mother, both of stern visage, and two daughters — each the wrong age to be Elena — and a son. No older daughter was apparent in any of the photos.
“The boy in the pictures is Vasily Vilnikov. There is no Elena.”
Gabriel laid the photo down and looked at Leonard, not saying anything. As he turned, the camera stayed on him, but before he could say anything to Julie, the house lights went out completely and didn’t come back on.
They were now cut off and in the dark.
Gabriel ordered the double oak doors to the ballroom closed and locked. Through his twenty years of research, he had learned that the worst thing that paranormal researchers could do was let an entity control the situation. When entities struck, they did so brazenly and with little tact. After a supernatural encounter, most people preferred to move on and not attract any scrutiny. Yet those encounters were exactly the ones that needed to be researched, analyzed and documented. Gabriel excelled where others had failed because he made those shy individuals want to tell him their stories. And now this was what they were working with tonight — his and others’ experiences.
“Okay, let’s get some battery powered lighting up and running,” Kennedy said as he surveyed the large ballroom. The Number One camera and sound crew that had been assigned to his team kept the camera on him and him alone. “We’ll use the ballroom as our starting point, and with our battery-powered lights, we’re declaring this room out of bounds to whatever is out there.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jackson said, moving the camera’s lens from his face.
“Again, you have heard the voice of a Pennsylvania state policeman as he questions the Professor on his tactics,” Julie Reilly said into her personal microphone.
“If what’s out there is what you think it is, why the hell would it follow your rules of conduct?”
Kennedy smiled and tried his best to ignore the constant hum of the camera as it zoomed in on him. The first set of small Krieg lights came on in the corner, adjusted to shine light on Father Dolan and his injuries.
“It won’t follow the rules, but this is the best spot in the house in which to work, at least for the time being. This is where we have Father Dolan, and I don’t think it’s wise to try and move him. This is where we start.”
Damian Jackson looked taken back. He hadn’t been expecting Kennedy to have such a clear and concise answer to his question — and one that made sense.
“Professor Kennedy, why the sudden shift in the power of Summer Place? I mean, why would it come alive so fast?” Julie stood next to Kennedy, watching as he placed a rolled up jacket underneath Father Dolan’s head.
“To start with, the attempt of Father Dolan and Lionel Peterson—”
“All right, you have nothing that shows I was involved with that,” Peterson interrupted, forgetting that his denial was going out live to forty million viewers. He looked toward Wallace Lindemann who was pouring himself a drink at the bar. The small man caught the accusing look and started to protest, but he saw the camera turn his way and decided to fight for his defense another day.
“We already have his confession, Peterson,” George Cordero said. He stepped up beside Wallace and opened a bottle of water, not so gently moving the owner of Summer Place to the side with his elbow and a stern look.
“Regardless, all we’ve seen here is that the man who admitted to placing the speakers down in the basement was involved in another hoax that went wrong, and now that man is hurt.” Peterson finally realized that the camera was following him. He dipped his head and decided he may as well start fighting for his job right then and there. “There are several people in this room and in New York who have far more to lose than I.”
Kennedy shook his head. “These are all things that the network can take up tomorrow in the daylight. Right now we have something upstairs, and it became active as soon as Leonard here was brought the information on Elena. That’s the starting point. Why would the house care whether there’s history of Elena Lindemann as a child or not?”