If the show came away with big ratings numbers for the entire eight hours, Kelly Delaphoy would end up sitting in his chair — as had been her design from the very beginning. That was a thought that almost made Lionel physically ill.
A knock sounded at his door, but Peterson kept his eyes on a particular stain that he found entertaining. The stain was in the shape of a man’s head, and its wide mouth was open in a scream. The water stain (or was it something far fouler than water?) looked like a painting from a Salvador Dali nightmare. The tongue was extended from the wide open mouth and its eyes were closed so tightly that they were nothing but mere slits with wrinkles. Peterson tilted his head as the knock sounded again. He could hear one person speaking to another outside of the flimsy door. He finally closed his eyes to block out the hypnotizing effect of the filthy carpet. He slowly stood from the chair and small table where one glass and one nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels sat looking dejected after being ignored for most of the morning. Peterson made it to the door, removed the security chain, and cracked it open a few inches.
The priest stopped talking and turned. He looked shocked at Lionel’s unkempt appearance, but held back any rebuke he might have had.
“You do realize it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon?” Father Dolan said, wrinkling his nose.
“Of all the fools in the world, I believe I know how late in the day it is,” Peterson said. He stepped back and pulled the door all the way open.
Dolan looked at the two women who had assisted him in cleansing Summer Place the day before, and then nodded that they could go.
“Goodbye, ladies, I’ll hitch a ride to Summer Place with Mr. Peterson later.”
Lionel raised his eyebrows and then moved as father Dolan stepped in.
“The company you keep are rather suspect in their abilities as ghost hunters,” Peterson said as he closed the door behind Dolan. “As a matter of fact, you’re not that hot yourself, Father.”
Peterson bypassed the chair and sat on the edge of the still-made bed.
“Has something happened at the house?” Dolan asked as he placed his black hat on the small table, making sure to miss the spilled whiskey. He sat down and watched Peterson rub the tiredness from his face.
“The phone has been ringing all morning, so in answer to your question, yes — several things.” He looked up at Dolan with bloodshot eyes. “One, I guess your ghost cleansing isn’t what it’s advertised to be. Things happened last night that more than a dozen people witnessed, including Harris Dalton and Julie Reilly. Two, it seems thirty or more people were attacked outside the gate this morning by deer who thought they were commandos or something. Injuries were sustained, and some of it was actually caught on tape.” He looked away at the closed curtains. “Not exactly a good start for a show that has to fail, would you say?”
“All I can tell you, Mr. Peterson, is that Summer Place was either cleansed yesterday, or it was fooling us and laying low.”
“Now that’s a great explanation.” Peterson stood and made his way to the bathroom. Before he went through the door he turned and looked at the Father. “The house went dormant on you, is that what you’re saying?”
“Didn’t you hear those people yesterday? The house felt empty to them, so I wasn’t the only one fooled. I would say that you have real trouble on your hands tonight, especially if I can’t get back in there and try again.”
“You’ll get your chance.” Peterson turned and slowly started to close the bathroom door. “They’re almost done with the equipment placement, so they’ll begin their final walk through and dress rehearsal in about two hours — you’ll be on that tour and in the rehearsal.”
Father Dolan watched Peterson close the door and waited until the water was running before he reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels and the glass. He poured himself a glass and then made his way to the window. He pulled the curtain back and saw the heavy, dark clouds far off to the east. It looked as though they were in for rain. As he sipped the whiskey he couldn’t help think that Summer Place was behind the weather buildup. Dolan had become convinced that the house had set him up, and worse than that, he felt that it knew it would be in the spotlight tonight.
As Father Dolan drained the glass, the first flash of distant lightning illuminated the window, and ten seconds later he felt the rumble of thunder through the soles of his black shoes. He turned and looked at the bottle of Jack Daniels, and then quickly turned away. One drink was enough.
As he let the curtain fall back into place, the room once more became dim and dreary. He stood motionless for the longest time, listening to the shower run. For the very first time in his many years in the priesthood, he was frightened. Frightened because of the man he knew Gabriel Kennedy to be. Kennedy was a man that feared nothing in the normal, everyday world. So if Summer Place frightened him, he knew there was something in that house that he himself should be very afraid of.
Not since he had been a first year priest in Vietnam, had Father Dolan been so afraid to do what he knew was the right thing.
At nine o’clock in the morning, after forcing down a breakfast of cereal and coffee, Gabriel and his people entered Summer Place. Kennedy stood just inside the doorway with his eyes closed, taking in the smell of the large house. It was as if he was getting reacquainted once more with an old foe, or, Jennifer thought, an ex-wife — one whose marriage had ended horribly.
Gabriel took the others on a tour of the first floor, where it seemed he was most comfortable. He didn’t seem frightened of the memories of that night seven years before; not until they started to climb the grand staircase to the second floor. His demeanor changed, then — it was like listening to a recorded voice as he explained the second floor to the group. As they climbed higher, Jennifer left John’s side to step up to Gabriel. Halfway up the stairs, he had stopped, unable to move another step toward the third floor. Jennifer took his hand. He swallowed and looked down at her face, filled with the early morning sunlight streaming in from the windows. Gabriel nodded his head and then took a step up. Then another and another, until he realized the house wasn’t going to do anything about their presence for now. He showed the others the room where the diva had vanished, and the wall where his student had disappeared. He was shocked to see the sewing room door standing wide open, as he had never seen that particular door unlocked before. He only gestured to the sewing room before turning away, stating that they had a lot of work to do.
As the team moved away, John and George lingered, looking at the sewing room from about ten feet away. They were trying to get an impression of it, just as they had done the wall and the opera star’s room. They looked at each other and shrugged, then turned and followed the others back down the stairs. As they moved, the third floor hallway darkened, the window at the opposite end shut off from the sunlight outside. The clouds had started to move in.
The sewing room door slowly closed and the lock turned on the inside with an audible click.
The technical crew along with Gabriel, Jennifer, John and George assisted Leonard Sickles with the most bizarre electronics any of them had ever seen before. It took four hours to string what looked like nothing more than Christmas tree lights — small blue LEDs — along every hallway wall and staircase banister. Gabriel made his team reserve their questions for the end of Leonard’s strange run-through. At every point where Harris Dalton, along with Kelly Delaphoy, placed a night vision static camera, Leonard would be close behind to attach a small box with a lens to every stand. He explained that it was a spectral digital device that would not only pick up a color image of something that couldn’t be seen by the human eye, but an image that was etched in color by the variant air temperature, thus eliminating the need for an extra thermal cam placement next to the static night vision cameras.