“It’s gone,” George said from his knees. “Fuck me, it’s gone.” He reached out for Jenny. “You okay?” When she reached out to take George’s hand, he flinched away as if afraid to touch her. Jennifer didn’t notice the strange look on Cordero’s face. She shook her head, while holding her throat, and tried to sit up.
Leonard sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “This is one bad motherfucker. Look at that,” he said, pointing at the door.
It was cracked from top to bottom, straight down the middle.
“I thought ghosts couldn’t form that kind of power,” Sanborn said. His pipe was hanging upside down in his mouth.
John turned away from the door and went to Jenny’s side. He looked back at the large crack.
“We’re dealing with more than your ordinary ghost. We have something here that can reach out and crush the life right out of you.”
Sanborn reached out and touched the crack in the door.
“Just as Professor Kennedy has said all along.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t do this,” George Cordero said. He watched the door warily, as if he expected the entity to start up again.
“You promised Gabriel you would see it through,” Lonetree said.
“I didn’t promise to stay here and die, and that’s exactly what will happen if we stay.” He looked pointedly at Jenny.
“What do you know that you’re not telling us? What did you perceive when that thing was at the door?” Lonetree persisted.
Cordero went to the desk chair and sat down hard. He placed his hands over his face and then slowly looked up.
“I had the distinct feeling, when we were holding that door open, that this thing was just playing with us. It was enjoying it, because deep down it likes scaring people, because it’s not afraid of us. It’s showing off. And we propose to walk right into its lair and try and kill it?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we are going to do,” Lonetree said as he looked from face to face. “And I think you’re wrong. At the end of that encounter, it was angry. We beat it by sticking together and fighting it together.”
“It’s waiting for us in that house, John, do you understand?” Cordero said. He lowered his head. He couldn’t look at the others any longer, especially Jenny.
“Yeah, well if that motherfucker wants me, it better bring a lunch for the long night ahead, because Too Smart Sickles don’t run from nothin’,” Leonard said with as much bravado as he could muster.
“That’s what I mean, you stupid little bastard. We’re the lunch.”
That quieted Leonard’s bravado. George stood and looked at the others.
“I’m sorry. Tell Gabe I just couldn’t do it.” He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed the envelope that held UBC’s check onto the nightstand. He held Jenny’s gaze as he left the room, not even hesitating at the cracked and broken door.
Summer Place had just eliminated one of its antagonists. Now it was going after two who were a little closer to home, just a ways up the road from Bright River, Pennsylvania.
Professor Gabriel Kennedy and Julie Reilly were about to meet the entity that lived in Summer Place face to face.
The car clung to the depressions in the road like some fairytale gone horribly wrong. Kennedy could barely see the road in certain spots, and that made him slow to a crawl. It wasn’t until they moved past the bends and drops that he was able to speed up. The rain had vanished and was replaced by a heavy mist that allowed the wipers to go intermittent, but the covering of water on the windshield was still significant. Every time the car vanished into a dip in the road, the fog seemed to climb back out with them, and John Lonetree’s warning kept echoing in their heads.
“Are we still on Route 6?” Julie asked when Kennedy slowed the car to ten miles an hour at the bottom of a small hill.
“Well, I don’t remember turning anywhere, so I imagine we’re still on course.”
Julie’s cell phone was equipped with a global positioning system. She moved it around, but the signal that she had received back in Bright Waters was gone.
“I can’t get a damn thing on this,” she said as Gabriel brought the car to a stop. Outside the windshield was a wall of swirling, solid white fog. “Please tell me we’re still a long way from Summer Place?” she said with a nervous smile.
“You, the non-believer, are asking me that?” Kennedy moved his foot off the brake and started forward again.
“The conditions are conducive to my question.”
“Summer Place is thirty-five miles back in the other direction.” Kennedy turned on the emergency flashers. “I’m more concerned about some farm boy coming along and plowing into us in this soup.”
“Look,” Julie said, squinting into the fog, “I’m going to take things as they come, through Halloween. A clean slate. Can we stop the jousting until we get through this?”
“I think right about now is a good time to lay down the weapons and at least get through this.” Gabriel chanced a look over at Julie. He wanted to say something about the fear on her face, but decided to let it slide.
They reached the bottom of a large dip in the road and were both relieved when the car started to climb out of the depression. But the relief was short-lived. Without warning, the car jerked and then sped up, then jerked again. The lights dimmed and then the car stalled.
“No, no, not here…” Kennedy brought the coasting car to a stop. He shut off the dim headlights and then tried to start the car again. They both heard the clicking of the solenoid, and then even that sound vanished, swallowed up by the thickening fog.
“Oh, this is good,” Julie said. “What did you do?”
Kennedy stopped trying the ignition and turned toward Julie. “What the hell do you think I did?”
“Well, we’re not out of gas, are we?”
Kennedy looked away and shook his head, but still turned on the light switch to check. “Yes, there’s gas.”
Julie watched as the fog outside of the car swirled and eddied. It was growing thicker by the minute and she wasn’t liking it at all.
“Maybe that farm boy you were talking about will come along.”
Kennedy looked at his wristwatch. “Not likely, at four in the morning.”
“I know…The news van from Philadelphia will be coming by,” she said with the hope of a drowning woman reaching for a life buoy.
“They would have turned off on Highway 17, six miles back.”
“Why didn’t we turn off at the same place?” she asked accusingly.
“Because we’re going to New York and they’re going to Philadelphia.”
“Oh, sorry, it’s just that—”
Something slammed into the car from behind, sending them four feet along the road with the locked tires screeching. Julie’s head slammed against the backrest and Kennedy lost his glasses.
“What the fuck?” Gabriel quickly opened his door and stepped out. Julie, rubbing the back of her neck, reached out to try and stop him, but she was too late.
Gabriel looked around the car to see who had come up behind them blindly and struck them. The road, as far as the fog would allow him to see, was empty. The damage to the back of the car looked light. The trunk was sprung, so he reached out and slammed it down. It didn’t catch and he slammed it again. As it closed and locked, he saw that the lights inside the car had gone dark once more.
Julie opened the car door and stepped out. A breeze picked up, moving the fog in strange eddies and swirls. It rustled the large trees that lined the two-lane highway, and at the same time the air grew colder. Julie looked over at Kennedy, who held up a hand to stop her question before she could voice it. The wind slowly died, but the current of cold air stayed with them.