“Where is Kelly?” Kennedy repeated more insistently.
“She and Sanborn went down into the basement. She said she would call Harris and let him know what’s going on. Now help us get these doors open.”
“The basement?” Kennedy asked, turning from the two struggling men bent on escape.
“Gabe, feel it?” George asked as he looked around the room.
Kennedy turned toward the staircase. The room had once more gone ice cold, making everyone’s breath fog as if they were deep in a winter frost.
“Detective, tell that madman to get this door open. We’ve had enough of this,” Peterson said. He gave up and turned around, pulling his coat closed around him and shoving his hands under his arms.
Jackson didn’t respond. He was also looking toward the stairs. The coldness almost seemed to roll down them, like a slow moving waterfall. The darkness mostly hid the staircase, but the image was one Jackson would take to his grave. For the first time, he was wondering if Kennedy may have been telling the truth; he could not figure out how Kennedy could have pulled off the sudden freeze without a refrigeration unit the size of Yankee Stadium upstairs.
“Okay people, we have the sewing room door closing and the cold image we were seeing is now gone,” Harris reported from the van. “The lights on three have gone completely out and the night vision and thermal imaging cameras have stabilized. We have a good view of the hallway.”
Kennedy ignored the noise that Wallace Lindemann was making at the double front doors. He pulled up his coat collar and took three steps toward the staircase.
“What about Kelly and Sanborn?” George asked in the dark.
“They’re on their own for now. Harris can hear them in the production van and when they reach the basement he can see them on camera.”
Gabriel took two more cautious steps toward the staircase. He felt Julie step up to his side. The air was actually growing colder.
“Still think your gun’s going to help?” Kennedy asked as he moved by the detective.
This time Jackson had no snappy comeback. He just watched Kennedy move by him as the house grew quiet. Even Wallace Lindemann gave up and turned away from the door.
“Damn you, Kennedy. Tell whoever is helping you to open this goddamn door!” Wallace said, almost in a child’s cry. “I’m going to sue every one of you sons of bitches!”
Kennedy, without turning back around, intent on the steps ahead of him, smiled. He knew Julie was doing the same next to him, but it was George who said it out loud. This, the soundman did pick up, and Harris Dalton hissed a silent curse in the production van.
“God, what a dick.”
Leonard was just starting to feel the coldness as it wafted through the bottom of the doorjamb. He looked back at Jenny, who was on her knees by John Lonetree, who closed his eyes. Leonard looked back at the large double doors and thought about how easily they had been bent inward by whatever walked upstairs. He had tried the French doors twice and failed to open them. The ice had reformed on the glass and was thickening. If he had to, he thought, he could smash his way out — but that would have to be with the largest Indian he had ever seen in his life heaped over his shoulder and the smallest haunted woman by his side. The prospects of breaking out looked dim.
At the couch, Jenny flipped on her small light and brought the beam up until it just illuminated John’s relaxed features. She watched his eyes, but they lay still underneath his eyelids. He had not entered the dream state yet.
Jennifer was hoping the pills would actually keep John from dreaming; she knew she hadn’t dreamed when she used them. Just as she was about to turn off the flashlight, she saw the first movement of John’s eyes. She felt Leonard come up from behind.
“Goddamn it’s cold in here,” he said as he shook his head.
Suddenly John’s body went rigid as a board and his hands clenched into fists. Then his long hair blew up and off the pillow, flowing off the arm of the couch as though he were standing in a strong wind.
“Do you smell that?” Leonard asked, taking a step back.
Jenny nodded. The smell was like dead winter, but there was also an odor of wet woods in the rainy season, and then the smell of a wood fire. On the couch, John moved his head left and then right. An unseen wind still blew his long hair.
Leonard turned away and paced to the static camera that had been set up on Harris Dalton’s orders to catch John’s Dream Walk. He knelt down and made sure his face was framed in the night vision picture.
“Look, if you’re hearing me, we may have to get out of here fast, so we may need help from you people. If you see us moving toward those glass doors, come runnin’.”
Inside the van, Harris smiled. He had just switched to the ballroom camera, and had caught the concern of the small black man.
As Leonard stood and turned, he saw Jenny suddenly stand and back away from the prone John. In the weak light cast by Jenny’s flashlight, Leonard could see that John had sat up and was staring at the ballroom doors. His hair was still being blown by an invisible wind.
“Shit, I sure hope you guys are getting this.”
John was in a brightly illuminated hallway. The smell of a gas lamp wafted into his nostrils as he stood before a door. It was open about a foot and John saw movement inside the dimly illuminated room. He heard the laughter of young children, possibly two girls, and then the booming laugh of an adult. As John maneuvered his head he could see that indeed it was two small girls lying in an ornate, covered bed. A man, possibly their father, was sitting on the bed’s edge and looked to have been reading to them. He had stopped and they laughed together, and John could feel the love of the father for his two daughters. The man spoke, but John didn’t understand the language. It sounded eastern European, possibly Russian. The man was well dressed and had a large beard. He reached out and tickled the two girls, who laughed uncontrollably. They looked about six or seven.
John heard a squeak behind him in the hallway and saw the door had been opened further. The father had turned and the girls fell silent. The man stood from the bed and walked straight at John, raising his hand. Lonetree flinched in his dream as the hand came down and the words exploded from his mouth. John was surprised when the hand passed right through him and struck something he hadn’t seen. When he ducked, he saw the small boy in a long nightgown. The hand connected solidly with the boy’s face and he slid to the wooden floor. The father screamed at him.
John felt badly for the boy. He wanted to reach down and help the dark-haired child to his feet. But as suddenly as the thought struck him to help, it seemed the boy’s eyes moved from the man who was obviously his father, to look right at John. The dark eyes stared at him and through him. They penetrated him. Then the father struck out again, yelling in Russian. The boy was lifted to his feet and then thrown out the door. John looked on, horrified. The girls in the bed were silent as they watched the boy’s punishment, but they both had small smiles stretched across their otherwise innocent faces.
John turned and left the room. The hallway was now dark. He leaned back into the bedroom and saw the light there was also out. The girls were sleeping soundly in their bed. Just as he started to turn, John felt the presence behind him. It was the black-haired, dark-eyed boy. He was looking right at John, and even in the darkness John could see the boy’s eyebrows were raised. The child tilted his head and Lonetree could see the bruises on the boy’s face, and knew for a fact without seeing there were even more, darker, uglier scars underneath the child’s dressing gown. The boy’s head turned but his eyes lingered on John a moment. The cold chills coursed down his spine as he watched the boy reach out and pull the girls’ bedroom door closed. He reached into his nightshirt and produced a key and locked the door. Then he moved down the hallway and inserted the key into another door. When the boy turned around he had a smile stretched across his feminine features. The boy slowly raised his hand to his face and brought his index finger up to his lips, shushing John.