Gabriel snapped out of the dream-like state.
“As much as you warned us about this fucking place, you start acting like you want to swim at eleven o’clock at night.”
Gabriel shook the water from his face and then turned to see George Cordero. Coming up quickly from the barn were John, Jenny and Jason Sanborn. They all had been calling after him but it had been George, just dropped off by a taxi cab, who had been closest.
“Jesus, did you see that?” Jason Sanborn ran past Gabriel and George and looked into the settling waters of the swimming pool.
“It damn near got you!” George struggled to his feet and removed his soaked suit jacket.
“It was in the water,” John Lonetree said, staring at the pool.
“John dreamt Gabe was being pulled under the water. He woke up just a moment before we heard you, George, the first time you called out.”
George tossed Jennifer his wet jacket.
“Good thing I came back, huh? Mr. Dream Man here was a little slow.”
Jason Sanborn turned away from the pool “If that thing can do this out in the pool, what kind of power does it have inside there?” he asked, pointing harshly to Summer Place.
Gabriel shook his head and cleared it as best he could. He then reached out and took Cordero’s hand.
“Thanks, buddy. I was in a dream state, or hallucinating I guess.”
“My ass. I saw what was coming after you, and it sure as fuck was no hallucination. The goddamn thing had teeth!”
“Teeth?” Jason sat heavily into one of the deck chairs.
“It seems its power was enhanced this afternoon, not cleansed. I guess Father Dolan and the others only pissed it off.”
They all looked at Gabriel Kennedy, then turned as one. The many windows of Summer Place stared down at them, as blank and foreboding as before, but now there was a kind of sheen to the glass that made the house look as if it were smiling.
“What about the others — the ones inside?” Jason asked, concern showing on his face.
“Let’s hope they have their cameras ready. I think this monstrosity likes to fuck with people.”
They looked away from the house. They all knew that Cordero was right.
Kelly watched as the section of her crew that volunteered to stay inside of Summer Place made up their cots and used the five downstairs restrooms. Luckily for the fifteen men and women, there were also four showers located on the ground floor. The commissary kept hot coffee on the long mahogany bar, and several trays of sandwiches were available for those who could not sleep. Kelly chose to stay awake. Although frightened of the house, she knew she had too much work to do.
A small man with glasses and long black hair tied in a ponytail strolled up to the bar and slapped his hand on the top of it. Kelly looked up from her notes with her eyebrow raised.
“Bar’s closed, through the duration of the shoot,” she said as she lowered her eyes to her clipboard.
“Then I’ll just take one of these,” the small man said as he took a sandwich from the tray before him. He took a bite, grimaced and then leaned forward and spoke low so only Kelly could hear. “Harris assigned me to watch you. I see the way you keep looking at the doors. I hope you’re not planning to take a little tour on your own tonight when most of us go to sleep?”
Kelly looked up from her notes. “Howie, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“You’re one of Dalton’s boys from his sports and entertainment division, right?”
“The best field camera jock the network has,” Howie said. He took another bite of the tuna sandwich.
“Then you know what it’s like to get knocked on your ass, right?”
“I’ve been ran over a few times.”
“If I decide to leave this room and you follow me, I’ll yell rape at the top of my lungs. How’s that for getting knocked on your ass, you macho jerk?”
Howie stopped chewing and eyed the woman, who looked at him as if he were a bug under scrutiny. He tossed the sandwich half in the waste basket behind Kelly, sneered as best he could under the circumstances, and turned from the bar.
The producer watched him leave, and then caught sight of Julie Reilly in the double doorway looking right at her. She let her heavy bag and blanket slip from her arms. She nodded at some of the nervous greetings she received from those making up their cots for the night, and then continued toward the bar. She sat at one of the stools, facing Kelly.
“What was that about?” she asked, watching Howie stalking toward Harris Dalton.
“He’s one of Harris Dalton’s spies. He didn’t like the way I would handle a certain situation,” Kelly said. She pretended to make notes on her clipboard.
“I see,” Julie, like the cameraman before her, reached over and took a sandwich from the tray. Unlike him, she turned her nose up at it and put it back. “Howie’s a good jock. Nice to have in a finesse situation if the chips are falling against the house.”
“And now I suppose this is the veteran field reporter warning the novice about treating her people with respect so they’ll respect you. That right?”
Julie didn’t say anything.
“Let me tell you something. I’ve been through so much with this show, I’ve seen things you would never believe, and now because of one incident I’m labeled a fraud.” Kelly placed the clipboard on the bar and leaned forward. “So when the day comes that I take advice from a person who climbed the ladder the same way, you’ll excuse me if I tell you to go to hell. I’m the best at what I do. My show is the number one rated program at the network — most likely, it contributes more than half of that inflated news salary of yours. I have the CEO backing me, and when this is over I’m going to use the popularity of this special to slam those ladder-climbers back down to earth. And Ms. Reilly, you fall into that category.”
Julie smiled and leaned as far forward as she could. “You want me, you take your best shot. I earned my stripes from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Iran to Saudi Arabia. If you think I’m frightened by your little spook show here or your power with the CEO, you’re highly delusional. You can push me down the ladder, but you’ll beat me to the bottom, because I know you’re going to try something to boost your hypothesis of this place, and I’ll catch you in the act.”
“And on the way, you’ll expose Kennedy for the fraud that he is?”
The sudden change in tactic almost stopped Julie from answering, but she gathered her composure.
“If Professor Kennedy is anyway involved with fraud, I’ll bring him down just as readily as you, or the network.”
“That won’t do much for your personal life, will it?”
Julie was stunned at the comment, but Kelly kept her eyes locked on hers. She had never in her life met anyone with as much gall as the woman before her. Julie could now see that Kelly was indeed as formidable as everyone said she was. She could also see that Lionel Peterson was in way over his head.
“You bitch; I can’t believe you would stand there and accuse me of not separating my job from my personal life.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at Kennedy, any blind person could. I bet it took all of your willpower to come into the house tonight, didn’t it? The desire to keep an eye on me pushed you into it, or you would be out in that horseshit barn right now, wouldn’t you, Ms. Field Reporter?”
Julie slid off the stool under Kelly’s glare. She turned and made her way back to the door, where she gathered her things, and then chose an empty cot in the far corner of the ballroom beyond the billiard table, out of sight of the producer.
Kelly watched until she couldn’t see Julie any longer, and then closed her eyes. Her attack on both the cameraman and Julie left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She knew she was gathering so many enemies into Peterson’s corner that they would fall on her like a pack of hungry hyenas if she failed. If the special went down, her entire career would go down with it and would never make it out alive. And that was exactly why she would not, could not, leave anything to chance.