Authors: David L. Golemon
“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.
They both jumped when the car’s headlights came on, and then went off. The horn blared for a few seconds and then just as suddenly stopped. The radio snapped to life and then went silent.
“Tell me you’ve had an electrical system go haywire like this before?” Julie asked nervously, trying her best to see through the heavy veil of white.
Kennedy didn’t answer. He moved slowly to the right side of the car, nearer to Julie.
“Something is out there, isn’t it?” she asked. Kennedy kept his eyes on the side of the road, where they could barely see the soft outline of the large pine trees.
Gabe tried his best to keep his voice even and reassuring. As much as he would have liked to scare the hell out of this woman a few days ago, he now found he wanted to reassure her that things were fine.
“Ms. Reilly, we’re in the mountains. There’s always something out there.”
A darker shade of fog seemed to break free of one of the larger trees. It passed by both of them and vanished into the whiteness in front of the car.
“Did you see that?” Julie took an involuntary step toward Gabriel.
“It went over there,” he said, pointing.
As they watched the swirling fog, the black mist appeared again. This time it formed in front of the car and stayed. The veil was about thirteen or fourteen feet in height and just about eight in width, and Gabriel could swear he could hear deep, harsh breathing. The mist didn’t move, as if it was studying the two people staring at it.
“Okay, this is the mountains, but this
something
doesn’t look like it belongs here.”
“Get your camera and recorder—go,” he said, so low she thought she hadn’t heard him right.
Julie stepped toward the car without taking her eyes from the hanging mist that stood its ground ten feet in front of them. “You think now is the time for taking its picture.”
“You seem so sure that it’s cognizant of what it’s doing.”
Julie scrambled around the front seat and found the small camera and recorder. “Well,” she hissed through closed teeth as she brought the camera up, “I say that because I’ve never seen two distinct shades of fog before…and add to that, the goddamn thing is breathing.”
“Point taken,” Gabriel took the small digital recorder from Julie’s hand.
A stream of darkness broke away from the main body of the mist and shot forward, collecting into the shape of a large hand. It seemed as though it was about to slap the camera out of Julie’s hand. She flinched, but the hand pulled back. It came forward again, and then stopped, moving around the camera’s lens as if it didn’t know what it was facing, or whether the camera was a danger to it or not. Julie let out a small cry as the smell hit her nostrils.
“Hold your ground,” Gabriel said. He stepped forward two paces and placed himself between the camera and the mist.
“Professor, I’m about to pee my pants. Believe me, I’m not moving.”
“You’re a long way from Summer Place, and I know you’re not that strong,” he said loudly to the mist in front of him.
The misty hand pulled away from the camera as if Gabriel had shocked it somehow. Then they heard the deep rumble of a laugh. The hand shot forward and slapped the camera out of Julie’s shaking hands. It flew twenty feet into the tree line and smashed against one of the pines.
“Did you take my student? Did you make that young man kill tonight? Who are you?”
The mist backed away as the laugh rumbled again. It was like something clearing its throat from deep inside of hell. The sound seemed to come from all around them.
“I am, that I am.”
The words were clear and made Julie shiver in the increasingly cold night.
“Is quoting God supposed to impress us?”
Just as the words cleared Gabriel’s lips, the mist came forward. This time they both saw the outline of a humanoid form. The hand came up again and struck out at Kennedy, striking him across the face. The laugh sounded again as the hand retreated. Gabriel jerked and then looked back with equal determination.
“Not very impressive. I still say you’re too far from the house to be effective.”
The laugh sounded again. Then the mist formed into a ball and moved. It came straight at Julie and then stopped, reformed and then she heard the sound of sniffing. The thing was smelling her, she realized. She cowered away and closed her eyes. The hand came up and felt her hair. The smell of the mist was penetrating her senses. She managed to open her eyes and look at Kennedy, silently pleading for him to do something.
The mist expanded and the giant hand swept out, brushing the fog aside.
“Oh God,” Julie said.
Summer Place sat in its small, peaceful valley two miles away, brightly lit and inviting. Somehow they had driven in the wrong direction.
“Home,” said the gruff, deep voice. “Come home, Gabriel.”
“Am I yours? Like the others?”
The laughter was deep and loud and this time it didn’t end.
“Stop it, stop it!” Julie shouted and ran to the open car door. Just as she reached it, it slammed closed. Then the driver’s side door slammed shut. The darkened mist shot around Julie and slammed her against the car. Gabriel stepped forward but the mist shoved him out of the way as if he were made of paper.
Suddenly the night air warmed and the sound of birds came through the fog. The mist seemed to hesitate, its laughter fading. It drifted toward the front of the car.
“There’s something else here,” Gabriel said.
“Oh God,” Julie whimpered. She slid down the side of the car until she was seated on the ground with her hands over her face.
“No, don’t you feel it? This thing doesn’t like it, whatever it is. Listen.” Turning away from the mist, he thought he could hear talking—many voices, soft and close by. The black mist seemed to hiss. Then it turned and dispersed into the thinning fog.
Gabriel pulled Julie to her feet just as the car started on its own, making them both yell in fright. Julie smashed her face and body into Gabriel’s and the unexpected force almost made his already unstable knees buckle. He strained to hear the voices, but they were slowly fading away.
“It’s over.” Kennedy stroked Julie’s hair. “Look,” he said, giving her a gentle nudge.
Julie looked up. “What?” she asked.
“Summer Place. It was never there. It tried to scare us. I was right—it doesn’t have the strength to do its magic this far from the house. It can conjure and frighten, but that all.” He stepped back around the car and opened Julie’s door, assisting her in. He then quickly went around to the driver’s side door, looking to his left once again to make sure Summer Place truly was gone. He drove off as the last of the strange fog lifted.
“What happened?” Julie asked.
“Something stopped the house from having its fun. Several somethings, it sounded like. Are you all right?”
“Fuck no I’m not all right, what the hell’s wrong with you?”
Kennedy smiled for the first time in forty minutes.
“Can I ask what is so funny?”
Kennedy held up the small digital tape recorder.
“I just recorded the opening for your television special.”
“I really don’t give a shit about that right now.” She turned away to watch the trees slip by out the window.
“Oh, I think you should open with that, followed closely by your official apology for the seven years of hell you and Jackson put me through.”
“You’ll need more than that to convince Damian Jackson,” she said, carefully not mentioning the fact that she had been convinced.
Kennedy smiled and stepped on the gas. “I think that can be arranged.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I think Summer Place wants everyone to know it’s alive and in charge.”
“It may be in charge, but it sure as hell is not alive.”
In silence, they turned onto the highway heading for New York.
Thirty-five miles away, every door in Summer Place from the front entrance hall to the attic pull-down, creaked, was thrown, or fell open, and the laughter reached every shadowed corner throughout the house. The only door that remained closed was the double doorway at the end of the third floor hallway.
The sewing room was still and silent.
Lionel Peterson perched
on the edge of his desk at the New York office, nearly sliding off the corner but catching his balance just in time. His drink spilled onto his pants but he paid no attention; he was basically covered in alcohol already. In the parking lot a few hours before, Lionel Peterson discovered something about himself that he had hoped never to learn: he was, at heart, a coward. Lionel had failed the one and only test of physical bravery that had ever arisen in his forty-two years, and he hated it. His grip tightened on the glass in his left hand and the phone in his right hand, with the memory of how trapped he had felt inside that car with Feuerstein and Kelly. The two of them had handled the situation far better than he had, especially that damned Delaphoy. Oh, he knew the woman was as scared as he, but she had recovered where he failed to do so. His hand shook as he raised the glass to his lips.
“This better be good,” the voice said on the other end of the phone.