“I’ll suggest just that, but don’t hold your breath. I don’t think Peterson will risk his neck for a job that won’t be there tomorrow.”
The van quieted as they all listened to the sounds. The crying was definitely female, and full of anguish.
Just as Harris was about to order the commercial break from General Motors, incoherent gibberish started to replace the crying, like a hundred voices speaking a foreign language at once. It was joined by another noise: pounding on the trap door to the subbasement.
Each pounding of the wooden door made everyone in the production van flinch.
“Julie, get Professor Kennedy on the line. Tell him to connect his microphone, damn it. And while you’re conducting the interviews, we need someone to check out the basement. We have something happening down there. We’re picking up voices…and what sounds like crying.”
The main monitor showed a man standing in front of a brand new Chevrolet Silverado, explaining why all of America should own one. Harris started counting down the seconds to the fifth hour of the Halloween special. He had been informed by the CEO himself that the show was just now climbing back to the ratings values they had anticipated, but the polls were still showing an overwhelming degree of disbelief on the part of the viewing public. They had lost the test family completely — they had given up on the show, and were now watching reruns of Family Guy on another network.
Inside Summer Place, Cordero, Lonetree and Gabriel stood in the darkened kitchen. The camera and soundman waited anxiously for their cue as Julie started her brief interviews with the men trying to get power to the house, and the fire chief who couldn’t seem to break a pane of window glass or batter down a door.
Julie Reilly was right outside the double swinging doors of the large kitchen, her remote setup complete. She started off directly with the lead mechanic first. He explained how the power was connected to the house, but that it was being lost somewhere between the breaker boxes and the distribution points. Julie asked the question everyone was thinking: was the power being used by something inside Summer Place? The mechanic laughed. It was an impossibility, to put it mildly.
Julie grimaced at the answer. She had hoped the man would be more of a team player. She then started questioning the fire chief from Bright Waters.
“Chief, what problems are you encountering trying to break into the house?”
The cameras cut to the chief, who was standing outside on the veranda of Summer Place, looking up at the house.
“It seems the storm has built up the barometric pressure to a point that—”
“Chief, we need to stop you right there. We can see the shadows of your men from the inside through the ice that has formed on the glass; they don’t seem to be doing much in the way of breaking in. Is it true you have had orders to stand down?”
The question took the chief by surprise. Even Harris Dalton and his productions team looked at one another. Harris picked up the red phone and was connected directly to the CEO in New York.
“Sir, have any orders come from New York to stop attempting to get inside the house?”
Harris listened, and his knuckles turned white on the phone’s handset.
“Damn it sir, we have an injured man inside that house. We need to get him out.” Dalton listened and closed his eyes. “Yes, sir, right now it’s a possible broken leg and a concussion. Yes, sir, a dramatic break-in in the sixth hour, I understand. Now, I also understand that it’s your orders to not get help inside the house at this time?” Harris listened and made a sour face. When he hung up the phone, he rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at the greenish image of Julie Reilly as she ended her remote interview with the two men outside.
“I must admit, you’re damn good, Reilly. I never saw that one coming,” Harris said on cue. The preview monitor switched to the live shot of Kennedy, Cordero and Lonetree as they stood at the basement door inside the kitchen; only she could hear him.
“Yeah, well, what about Father Dolan? Are they going to get him help anytime soon?” she asked. She placed her hand on the kitchen door, wanting desperately to get inside before they started down into the basement. She listened to Harris. “The sixth hour? Has everyone here and in New York gone nuts? The fire chief will be crucified if this gets out.”
“Yeah, and in the end you’ll find out our small town chief just earned five times more in retirement benefits than he would have normally received. I don’t think he gives a flying fuck about getting fired, not after what the network must be paying him to stay out of the house.”
“Harris, maybe we should ask Kennedy to get the Father out of here. I think whatever is in this house may have a hard-on for the good Father.”
“Okay, okay, ask Kennedy if we should get him out through one of back windows or doors, so no one can see.”
“You got it. I’m going with Kennedy to the basement now.”
“Okay. Be careful what you say. They’re live in there.”
Julie pushed opened the double swinging doors, leaving her own camera crew behind. Kennedy had opened the basement door and was getting ready to enter the stairwell leading down. Julie nodded her head at the sound and camera men she had just joined. The camera stayed trained on Kennedy, following his green tinted image down into the blackness of the cellar.
Immediately, Julie started hearing the sounds that had so scared the production team in the van. The cries were getting louder and far more insistent. They were indeed women — a lot of them.
From the van, Harris Dalton informed everyone that the noises and voices were coming through loud and clear. The world was hearing what they were.
“George, are you picking up anything?” Kennedy asked. He slowly moved down the stairs in the total darkness.
“Anguish…yes, anguish. Not physical pain. It’s…it’s like a mental torture.”
Gabriel reached the turn in the wooden stairs and stopped. He could now hear spoken words mixed with the crying.
“I don’t know about you fellas, but I’m hearing German, maybe Polish, some Italian…a few other languages.”
Julie was also hearing what Cordero described.
The cameraman and the soundman, with his mic boom hanging out over Julie and Lonetree, were both nervous. The soundman was of Polish decent and knew the language from his grandmother. He leaned toward Julie and muted his microphone.
“One of them is calling out for Leana, no — begging for Leana,” he said nervously.
“And Magda,” Kennedy said. “German, although I haven’t studied it since high school. The accent is right — Magda.”
“Our sound man, David, off the air, says that one of the voices he understood was in Polish. It’s calling the name Leana. And now Professor Kennedy has confirmed a name being spoken in German — Magda,” Julie explained. She started down again, holding tightly to the handrail. Just as her feet touched the small landing where the stairs turned sharply to the right, the kitchen door above them slammed shut. The sound was like a cannon going off and made Julie almost lose her footing on the landing. She bounced off of one rail and nearly went off backwards on the rebound. George Cordero and John Lonetree reached out in the darkness and grabbed her. John switched on his small penlight and made sure Julie got her bearings.
Julie mouthed, “Thank you.”
The camera had been jostled as it tried to focus on Julie’s face. She grimaced and nodded toward Kennedy as he was nearing the bottom steps. She felt embarrassed at her near misstep and feared she would now be perceived as a klutz by the viewing audience. She would have to redeem herself below.
Kennedy paused at the bottom of the stairs, allowing his eyes to adjust to the pitch black basement. He heard the door open at the top of the stairs, and suspected that Damian Jackson was joining them. He ignored the heavy footsteps that descended the steps slowly and carefully.