Howie laughed. “You got it boss,” he said. He wasn’t thinking about Kelly’s broadcast, but about her tight ass. “Wherever she goes, I’ll be right behind her.”
Gabriel watched from the barn as the crew slowly moved from the front lawn into the house. He also watched as Kelly Delaphoy came to the corner of the house and looked back at the barn. In the darkness of the barn’s doorway, he knew she couldn’t see him standing there, but he felt her gaze anyway. With one last look, Kelly turned and walked away. Gabriel took a deep breath and shook his head. All was quiet in the barn, and he knew that the others were already fast asleep. He wanted to stay near John in case he started a Dream Walk. Being in such proximity to the house, he suspected, might greatly influence his sleep. He hadn’t discussed it with John, but they both knew that it was highly probable.
Gabriel spotted Jenny’s bag and heavy jacket on the partially open door to the same stall John had claimed for himself. He smiled. Instead of heading for the small cot that had been delivered earlier by Kelly’s people, Kennedy stepped outside and looked up at the clear night sky. The clouds that had hovered just a short distance away earlier had vanished with the sun, and the clarity of the sky brought Gabriel a calmness he had never felt before on this property. He walked a distance away, avoiding the house and the windows on the second and third floors. He knew Summer Place watched, no matter how dormant it was at the moment. The house would keep a vigilant eye on him.
As he neared the pool, he wondered when the Johanssons would find the time to drain it in preparation for the winter months ahead. Their schedule had, no doubt, been thrown off by their son’s illness — brought on by the very house that sat solidly watching him from above. As he approached the Olympic sized pool and its cluster of old fashioned deck chairs and folded umbrellas, he saw the dark waters. In the daytime, the pool had sparkled. Now it looked foreboding, as if an inky blackness had replaced the chlorinated, clean-smelling waters of the day.
He stepped to the edge and looked into the pool’s depths. He closed his eyes, thinking about everything in his life that had brought him to this point, this place, this predicament. The house had ruined his life, but he knew he had brought it on himself. It had been his arrogance, trying to prove that hauntings were nothing more than people’s fierce imaginations. A haunting usually occurred around families that had financial troubles, or troubles of a far more personal nature. Money, or an uncle who liked to sneak into the rooms after a child’s bedtime. A father that beat a mother, any stress inside a family. The mind, he knew, was the most powerful instrument in the world at producing effects that looked on the surface like a haunting.
He opened his eyes and smiled. All of his theories had come to a crashing halt that night in Summer Place seven years before. Now he knew that his hypothesis of stress-created hauntings had been full of what his students called PhD bullshit. He half turned and looked at the lower floor of Summer Place. Something walked inside of that house; either that something was evil and it was caught, or it chose to stay where it was. He also knew that the very house itself supported the entity and protected it. It was as if the beams, the brick, the wood and the plaster were all a shield for what stood guard inside the house. It all came together as a grand defense for the protection of evil.
Gabriel looked away from the house and placed his hands in his pockets as he remembered that night — the experiment meant to prove that stress brought on by surroundings could manifest a haunting. His students— grounded, academically sound students — were his choice of guinea pigs. They were volunteers from his classes, and the brightest knew what they were in for. The influence of the house would be brought into play by the stories they were told of its history. Stories were relayed slowly in the days leading up to the experiment, with time enough for them to be absorbed, dissected and swallowed. Then when they arrived at Summer Place, it all came home to them. Each scenario had been documented in the stories he told them, from total non-belief to factual, “I was there” eyewitness accounts. Gabriel had known the students would be affected by Summer Place. They would be convinced by the stories they had heard, the darkness that would surround them, and the influence of the actual house that would close around them as the night wore on. Only, he had never suspected that Summer Place was alive. It came at his kids with its full power and scared them all half to death, and had also murdered one as a gift to Gabriel for his doubt. What a fool he had been to mock what he knew nothing about.
Back then it had been about the theory, the book deal and the power. It all seemed so trivial and mundane now that he knew there was a whole other world that most knew nothing about — a world that hated the world of the living, possibly to the point of open warfare.
Gabriel saw movement at the bottom of the pool — a shadow against a dark background, darker than the night. He went to one knee and watched as the darkness flitted and floated out of view. There was calmness to it that held him riveted in place; a ballet of movement that reached his soul. The shadow would dive and then rise, coming tantalizingly close the surface of the still waters, then hover for a brief moment before settling back into the depths. The form never took shape, but in his mind he felt it was female. It seemed to him like a motherly figure moving about the house as she cleaned, never really stopping to attend one thing, but gracefully moving to cover multiple tasks. It would sway left and then gently roll to the right, and then it would do a complete somersault and retreat back to deeper water.
Kennedy smiled. He reached out and touched the surface of the pool. It felt warm and inviting. He swirled his fingers through the water. He knew that if he went for a swim he would feel much better about the house and its surroundings — if only he could cover himself in the warmth of the black water. Soon his entire hand was in the water, not just his fingers, and he felt the warm, gentle grip of the dark form caressing his hand. He smiled again. He had been invited into the water so he could understand what this was all about. In an instant, he would have a clear and concise understanding of what made Summer Place so special.
The dark form brushed against his hand, and once more he felt the warmth of home. When the darkness within the water slowly withdrew to the deep end of the pool once more, Gabriel thought he heard his name being called. The voice was distant and seemed to come from another time, another place. It wasn’t inviting, like the touch of the darkness was. It was harsh and full of concern and warning. Still, Gabriel placed his hand and arm even deeper into the pool.
As his name was called again, this time by more than one person, the blackness that had coiled in the deepest part of the pool seemed to grow agitated. It swirled as if a wind had churned it into a whirlwind of anger and jealousy. It wrapped itself around and around and then finally took the humanoid form of a beast, growing ever larger. As Kennedy smiled and placed his hand deeper, the blackness charged the shallower end of the pool. The voice grew louder and more insistent, and the entity charged toward him. It was coming on with such power that the surface of the pool parted in a wave as the entity plowed through the blackness. Still Gabriel smiled and waited, even as the front of that blackness opened up like a shark ready to swallow its prey whole.
Gabriel was suddenly grabbed from behind and pulled back hard. He fell against the concrete surrounding the pool and a splash of water covered him. He heard a growl and a tremendous hiss as the water settled back into place.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” came the voice.