Gabriel turned toward the root cellar door, moving forward so that Lonetree, George, and the camera crew could step onto the concrete flooring.
“The voices and the weeping have started to fade down to almost nothing,” Kennedy said as he listened.
Damian Jackson joined them on the floor and looked around. He was only able to make out the camera crew in front of him. He pressed his earpiece into his right ear and listened to what the professor was saying to the live audience. He shook his head. Kennedy was having a field day with this fiasco.
Gabriel finally switched on his small light and shined it toward the far side of the basement, illuminating the trapdoor. He started forward.
“Gabe, I’m registering a massive temperature fall-off on the digital thermometer,” Lonetree said. He moved the small device around, taking readings. “It’s colder around the center of the room.” John stepped toward Kennedy. “Okay, it just dropped another ten degrees.”
George joined them with the thermal imager. The camera zoomed in on the screen of the handheld box-like device. The blue wave it caught seemed to be flowing freely from the cracks around the edges of the sub-basement door. George held the imager out for Kennedy to see.
“Professor, could this image be caused by much colder air rising from below, as would be natural for a deep root cellar?” Julie asked in a whisper.
“A normal drop-off would be a three to five degree difference. But as you can see on the thermal imager, we have a massive drop of over thirty degrees. Unless the root cellar is refrigerated, no, this is not normal.”
Julie heard a small snicker of laughter from behind her. When she turned, Damian Jackson held up his hand in apology.
Julie knew that Kennedy was scoring points off her. She was starting to understand that he was out to get her now.
Gabriel squatted and examined the old lock.
“The owner of the property gave the professor the key to the lock earlier, with the dire warning that no one has been down in the root cellar since the Lindemanns last stayed at Summer Place back in 1940. Whatever we see down there hasn’t been seen in over seventy years,” Julie informed the viewing world.
From somewhere up above them a loud bang sounded. Then another, and then another.
The ballroom doors had been standing wide open, and then they both slammed shut. They opened and then slammed again, then yet again. Leonard Sickles looked up as everyone in the room fell silent. Even the injured Father Dolan came up on one elbow and looked toward the doors. Jennifer Tilden took Leonard’s arm and nodded in the light of the computer monitors. Leonard nodded in return. The camera team joined them just as Leonard pushed the mic button on his belt.
“Professor Gabe?”
As Kennedy answered from below, the camera zoomed in on Leonard’s face. Then it caught Jenny as she leaned in with a small device, the same one that was being used down in the basement. She held it so Leonard could see.
“We have a temperature drop of nearly twenty-five degrees up here. The ballroom doors just slammed closed three times on their own. We also—”
The computers shut down without warning and they lost the light from their monitors. The camera man immediately switched to his ambient light camera.
“Stay with the ballroom,” Harris Dalton said from the production van.
“Okay, we lost power in here,” Leonard said as he started checking the connections.
As they waited for Gabriel to comment, a pounding started from upstairs somewhere. Everyone in the ballroom turned their heads to look at the ceiling above.
“It sounds like its coming from the third floor,” Jenny whispered. The camera had her framed, and all the world could see that Jennifer was frightened as the pounding started to take on the sound of footsteps.
At that moment in the production van, Harris Dalton looked over at preview monitor five and his blood froze. Everyone around him stared at the ambient light picture coming from the third floor hallway.
“Okay people, we have activity up on the third floor. Both the sewing room and the master suite doors are standing wide open. I suspect that’s where the pounding originated.”
Indeed the heavy pounding sounded as if it were moving from the far end of the third floor toward the center of the hall — toward the landing.
In the cellar, the temperature was rising and the voices and crying had disappeared completely. Kennedy pressed his earpiece in tighter just as Jackson had done just a moment before. He shook his head and straightened and then started moving for the stairs.
“Something is happening upstairs and team one is now moving to investigate,” Julie said. She scrambled to keep up with Kennedy, who was taking the dangerous steps two at a time. Jackson, who had stepped out of the way to allow everyone to pass by him, shook his head at the dramatics.
“This is getting good,” he said as he turned to follow.
“Go to Two,” Harris said as he watched the monitor that showed Preview, and then he switched to the live shot of Kennedy running up the darkened stairs. “Okay, back to One.” The shot moved from Kennedy’s camera team to the ballroom just as the camera moved from face to face. The soundman was picking up the heavy pounding heading toward the third floor landing. Harris thanked God they had left a team inside the ballroom.
“Camera One, great job. Now turn eighty degrees to your left and get that little shit Lindemann in the shot.”
The cameraman zoomed in on the owner of Summer Place, who had stood from his seat at the bar and was watching the doors, the drink in his hand forgotten. He didn’t know he was on the air live, but the man next to him did. Lionel Peterson shook his head and tried to move away from the live shot.
“Don’t let Peterson slip away. Get him!” Harris said excitedly into his microphone.
The camera caught Peterson and he froze. He tried his best to look as if he was the man in charge, placing his hands on his hips. He stood stock still, watching the ballroom doors. Even in the blackness around him, he could see the camera frozen on him.
“Okay, get a shot of the ballroom doors. Audio, you’re doing real good, but move over into the shot and get your mic boom close to the door. Camera one, make sure you get him doing it.”
In New York, most everyone was impressed with the way Harris Dalton moved from shot to shot with the same kind of quick thinking that had won him all of his Emmy awards. Abe Feuerstein smiled and took a deep swallow of his whiskey. On the large screen, the greenish image of the soundman placed the sound boom as close to the door as possible.
The footsteps moved to the third floor landing and then they stopped. The silence was even more frightening than the noise had been. The cameraman caught the Father crossing himself.
“Great job, One, that was a once in a lifetime shot there.” Harris said.
Kelly Delaphoy moved over toward Lionel Peterson. Although it was dark, she could feel the anger radiating off of him in waves.
“Convinced yet?” she whispered.
“Fuck off,” he hissed, not really caring if the sound equipment heard him or not.
“Go to Camera Two. Kennedy is at the top of the stairs,” Harris said quickly.
The camera view switched with a fluidity that made Harris proud.
Gabriel slammed into the door that lead back into the kitchen. The camera lost him for a moment as the technician pushed past George and Lonetree, but finally focused on him just as he turned the cut glass doorknob. Nothing happened. Kennedy tried it again.