They were just outside of Bright River, near enough to Summer Place that Julie was starting to feel an apprehension she hadn’t felt before. It was what she imagined traveling through Indian country used to feel like for the settlers crossing the plains — a warning of hidden dangers ahead of you. Kennedy mumbled once more, this time mentioning the summer retreat by name, and Julie turned her head. Her eyes only left the road for a moment, but when she turned back she nearly ran over a large carcass in the road. She hit the brakes and swerved. The tires caught and she avoided the dead animal by mere inches, but that was just the start of the gauntlet. There were three more dead deer strewn across the roadway, along with several other smaller animals. She struck one of the smaller deer and then swerved off the side of the road, finally bringing the car to a stop.
As she sat staring wide-eyed out the windshield, she felt Gabriel move beside her.
“Now, that was exciting. Did you manage not to hit something?” he asked sarcastically as he rubbed his eyes. Julie was breathing heavily, still gripping the steering wheel tightly. Kennedy turned in his seat and saw the dead animals lying in the road. There were even more carcasses off to the sides of the road. He counted seventeen. “I take that back, no one has aim that good.” He opened his door and stepped out into the bright early afternoon.
“Fuck,” Julie said under her breath. Her heart was finally starting to slow back to its normal pace. When she thought she could manage, she peeled her hand away from the steering wheel and opened the door. She swallowed, and then stepped out. Gabriel kneeled beside one of the many deer.
Thinking quickly, Julie reached into the car and grabbed her small camera. She started videotaping what had to have been the most bizarre scene she had ever seen.
“Were they hit by other cars?” she asked, slowly walking to join Kennedy on the right side of the road.
“Not a mark on it.” He turned and moved a foot away, to a small squirrel. “This one either. No blood, no damage to the outer skin. It’s like they just dropped dead. They’ve been dead eight to twelve hours, would be my guess.”
“But why wouldn’t they die in the woods? Why cross into the road like that?” Julie taped Kennedy as he checked the animals. She focused in on the dark eyes of one of the dead deer, and felt cold chills along her spine.
Kennedy raised his head and looked around. A soft autumn breeze had come to life and was rustling the pine trees lining the road. He looked back the way they had come and saw the steep incline they had just traveled.
“Have you noticed where we are, Ms. Reilly?”
Julie panned the camera around. She could only focus on the animals. The corpses extended far back into the shadows of the trees. She shook her head.
“Look at this, over here.” Kennedy crossed over to the opposite side of the road. Julie followed and looked around, but didn’t see whatever it was that he was trying to show her. “Look down at the grass,” he finally said.
There were tire marks in the grass. She looked from them to the tires on the car, then it hit her; this was the exact spot where their car had stalled the night before, when the dense fog bank had closed in on them.
“Are you saying these animals may have been dying around us when we were stuck here?” she asked, lowering her camera.
“The time of death is about right. Hell, maybe they continued dying after we left. When we get to Summer Place, I’ll have the police check this out. They may want to bring the fish and game people in on it. This is just too much death for one spot in the road, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at her with a creepy little grin.
Julie gave him a go to hell look and then moved away from the spot where their car had sat the night before.
“You know, for an award winning investigative reporter, you seem to be closed minded about the obvious. Do you think all of these animals walked out of the wood and then had heart attacks?”
“I admit that it’s creepy, but a few dead animals are all we have here, Professor. I’m not going to go running off like a frightened schoolgirl when the boy in her class hands her a frog.”
“Even if the frog is dead, and the boy has twenty to thirty more just lying around? I think whatever is in that house was angry that it didn’t get us last night, so it took it out on the local wildlife.”
“I get your point. Do you feel up to driving? I don’t think I’m ready yet. Besides, I want to get this footage off to the network through my cell phone.”
“For some reason, I don’t think we’ll be running into any more dead animals past this spot.” He moved toward the car. “Also, if you notice, we have cell phone service now when we didn’t last night in the exact same spot.”
She looked at the dead animals one last time, and then followed Kennedy.
The morning show co-hosts for UBC’s highly rated wake-up show were only minutes from their eleven AM sign-off when the CEO of the network and its parent company showed up in the wings. Everyone on the set became nervous when they saw the old man in his legendary bowtie, sipping a cup of coffee complete with china cup and saucer. He was speaking with the morning show’s producer and talent coordinator, and the two co-hosts looked on nervously during an extended commercial break. Then they watched as a videotape was handed over to the producer and a gaffer ran a new script over with only thirty seconds to spare.
“Bob says to run the script and then hand it over to the morning news desk.”
“But what about our last guest?” the male host asked.
“He’s been cut. Do it. The CEO brought down this segment himself.”
Both hosts looked over at Abe Feuerstein, who raised his china cup toward them and smiled. They nervously returned the smile. Off stage, they could see the bad news being delivered to the New York Times bestselling author, who wasn’t happy about being bumped from the show.
“Okay people, we’re back in 3, 2,” the producer held his fingers up and stopped counting at two. On one, he pointed to the male host.
“We’re back, and we’ve had a change in the program. We’re delighted to bring you a tag-along segment coordinated through our primetime ratings juggernaut Hunters of the Paranormal. As you know, tomorrow night here at UBC, an historical event is taking place at eight PM Eastern Time. The Halloween special, scheduled for a record-breaking eight hours of coverage, is one of our network’s proudest achievements in programming. For more details on an ever-changing situation, we go to our news desk and Connie Towers. Connie?”
The producer cut off to camera four and the news desk. The desk was in the foreground, but viewers could still see the two co-hosts in the background. Then the camera switched over to number five — a head-on view of the dark-haired news lady.
“Thank you, Richard. As you know the special holiday presentation of Hunters of the Paranormal has been the topic of conversation, from this famous building to other programming rooms across the city. The special, which airs tomorrow night at eight, is the talk of the town and is expected to capture not only the top Wednesday night ratings crowd, but bring in record rates for its lucky advertisers. And now we actually have our first video coming in, not only of the house where the special will be taking place, but of the roads leading up to the famous summer retreat. The video was taken this morning by UBC reporter Julie Reilly, who is on assignment all this week at Summer Place. She will be hosting the live broadcast tomorrow night, and on her way to the assignment she came across a rather bizarre incident not far from the retreat, which many suspect to be haunted.”