Kelly walked to the opposite wall where a large window looked out and down onto the pool and the grounds beyond.
“So far the only creepy thing around this place is the damn owner, and I very seriously doubt if we could fill eight hours with just him,” Greg said as he opened up one of the ornate wardrobes. He suddenly jumped back from the black sequined evening gown hanging in front of him. For a moment, he thought it was an apparition.
“What?” Kelly and Paul asked at the same moment.
“Jesus. Ah…it’s only a dress.”
“Yeah, I suppose it’s a sequined evening gown?” she asked mockingly.
“As a matter of fact, yeah, it’s black and it’s sequined. It’s also the only thing hanging in here.”
Kelly lost her smile as she stepped in front of Greg and peered inside. Her brows rose as she pulled the dress out of the closet and looked at it in the light. Years of dust fell free of the gown and a small piece fell to the rug at her feet. Moths had had their way with the old dress for nearly a century.
“Why would they leave that here? This can’t be the opera diva’s dress, that’s just a little too farfetched,” Paul said.
“I doubt it,” Kelly answered him under her breath, and then she quickly hung the gown back up. “If it is or isn’t, I want shots of this thing on Halloween. That’s got creep factor.”
She pushed the silk-screened door closed, checked her watch, and moved out into the hallway.
“We’ll try and find the actress’ room later. We’ve got to start the set-up,” she said. She looked up the long hallway, staring toward the sewing room at the far end until a voice intruded on her thoughts.
“Look at this,” Paul said. He was kneeling on one knee and probing the wallpaper with his fingertips. He slid his hand up the wall until he had to straighten. Then he ran his fingers down the wall again.
“What are you doing?” Kelly asked.
Paul finally straightened, then stepped back from the wall and tilted his head. He was still staring when Greg touched his shoulder.
“Are you going to let us in on it?”
“The glue for the wallpaper didn’t adhere in some spots. Look.” He pushed with his index finger, and Kelly and Greg both heard the soft crackle and saw the bulge dimple inward.
“Okay, shoddy paperhanging, I’ll call the union,” Greg said.
Kelly stepped back against the opposite wall and looked at the spot more closely.
“I see it,” she said.
“See what?” Greg asked in frustration as he stepped backward to join her.
“The place where the glue didn’t stick to the plaster? It’s in the shape of a man,” Paul said. He stepped out of the way so that they could see it better.
Kelly could see the torso, arms and legs. The head was slightly too large for the body, but it was there also.
“Okay, now that is creepy.” Greg swallowed.
“We need to get one of the cameras on this and make it look like an accidental finding during the show. We’ll test it tonight. Maybe it’ll get a rise out of New York and LA. We’ll need to side light it, maybe with a standard flashlight…yeah, that’ll do it. We’ll bring it out in relief, use shadow to highlight what the audience will be looking at.”
Paul turned and looked at Kelly.
“This isn’t where that student disappeared, Kelly. Hell, come on; this is just a fluke. Bad workmanship, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but this is something we can use, damn it. I sure as hell wouldn’t have thought of something like that.”
“Okay, point taken,” Paul said. Kelly jotted it down in her notepad.
“Now, let’s check out the sewing room,” Kelly said. When there was no immediate answer, she looked up with her pen poised above the paper. “What?” she asked. She was starting to get annoyed at her team’s hesitation. Then she saw both men looking to their left. Her eyes followed theirs. The door to the sewing room was standing wide open. It looked as if the room was welcoming them.
“That door wasn’t opened a moment ago,” Paul stepped back and brushed against the wall with the outline in its paper. He took two quick steps forward, away from the outline.
“Lindemann must have opened it on his way back down,” Kelly said.
“Lindemann went the opposite way back to the stairs,” Greg said. “We need to get downstairs; we’ll check that room out…later. Maybe during the test.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to grab a sandwich and start helping with the setup. I’m not used to working with an entire production van and a director.”
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Kelly asked. The two hosts shrank from her gaze. But they ignored her the best they could and turned for the staircase as if she weren’t even there.
“Yeah, and of all the directors it has to be Harris Dalton, for Christ’s sake,” Greg added without a backward glance at Kelly.
“Isn’t he the one that started with…like, Monday Night Football or something?”
Kelly finally shook her head at both men’s timidity. They were afraid not only of a wall, but of a room where a mother once darned socks and made dresses for her daughters. She shook it off and followed the two men toward the stairs.
“He’s supposed to be a real prick,” she heard Paul say.
“He’s not God, but we better get going nonetheless,” Kelly said, looking back at the wall and the sewing room one last time. She scribbled another hasty note and then underlined it. The one hundred and thirty-second entry in her notepad read: Check out the sewing room after the test!!!
Paul also looked one last time at the flaw in the wallpaper. He decided he would give the stand-up shot to Greg and one of the assistants. He didn’t want to be too near the strange outline.
As Kelly stepped up next to her partners, she glanced back and her eyes widened. The sewing room door was closed.
THREE
Kelly, Greg and Paul stepped into the large broadcast trailer that sat on leveled blocks behind the Peterbilt truck. They sat in various chairs around Jason Sanborn, who was huddled with the director, Harris Dalton, watching the sixteen screens arrayed on the wall of the trailer — one for each of the cameras throughout the house. For Kelly, this was a reward of sorts, a standard none of the Hunters of the Paranormal production team was used to. Usually they ran control from the back of a Ford van with just enough small computer monitors to cover the live action cameras. Almost everything on their show was run from a small laptop. This van had enough equipment to rival a NASA remote station.
“This shot here, that’s no good.” Harris Dalton tapped the screen with the taped letterhead CAM-RMT-ONE. “You must have placed the camera too close to a wall conduit or something. We have a serious picture degradation issue,” Dalton finished, placing his headphones on.
“Damn, that’s the camera in the opera lady’s suite on three,” Greg said. Static lines coursed through the green-tinted infrared picture. He knew he would have to move it.
“And this one here — Number Twelve — what the hell do you have that aimed at?”
“That’s the first floor ballroom,” Paul answered.
“We’re getting too much of a fisheye effect. The camera is covering far too much space. Either place another one, or only take a partial view with the camera you have. As is, we won’t be able to see anything unless someone walks right up to the lens. In addition, the infrared camera on the second floor landing is cocked at an angle and we can only see the first five or six rooms. I suggest you don’t point it at any of them, but just center it on the hallway. Forget the rooms.”