David Golemon - The Supernaturals

“Don’t do that! That door’s barely strong enough to—” Peterson started. The entity struck the door again, creating not only a dent in the wood, but a boom as if it had been struck by a cannonball. In the blackness of the room, they all gasped each time the mass struck the door. Damian was slowly backing away.

“Jesus, that thing wants to actually kill us!” the soundman screamed.

“Listen!” Gabriel said.

Out in the hallway, just as the entity struck the door a tremendous blow, they heard the deep and booming footsteps moving back down the hallway — in both directions.

“George?” Gabriel asked. He stared at the door as the beast outside hit it once more, shaking the thick wood in its frame.

“It’s still there…No; wait…Part of it is going to the sewing room, and…and—”

“What goddamn it?” Peterson screamed.

George tilted his head and closed his eyes. “Part of it is going to the ballroom…and another part is going outside!”

“Good God, it’s going for John and the others,” Gabriel said.

“But why outside?” Julie asked.

“The production van,” George said, his face draining of all color. “It wants to stop it all.”

Julie once more put the static filled earpiece into her ear and started calling a warning out to Harris Dalton and the production team outside.

“Use the camera to warn them,” Gabriel shouted, “and pray it’s still transmitting a live feed!”

Just as the words escaped Kennedy’s mouth, the door cracked straight down the middle.

The entity laughed, and then began screaming a single word that was heard all the way into the ballroom and the production van two hundred feet away.

“ Mine, Mine, Mine !”

John’s breathing would go shallow one moment and then he would gasp for air the next. Jennifer and Leonard were both becoming worried that he was too far under. The way Lonetree and Gabriel had explained the Dream Walks, he never went so deep that his own movements wouldn’t wake him. But now he was thrashing, screaming and whimpering.

“Maybe we should try to wake him?” Leonard said.

Jennifer swallowed and bit her lower lip. There was a chance they would have to do just that.

John stood in the middle of the brightly lit ballroom watching men and women in formal attire roam the room with drinks while a string quartet played. People coursed in and around the rows of chairs that had been set up in front of the small stage. There were close to a hundred people of varying ages, and their dress was obviously from the twenties or thirties. John quickly stepped back as a small woman in a maid’s outfit walked right through him. He gasped as he felt the woman’s thoughts and feelings. When he turned around she was offering a glass of champagne to a couple who accepted without a thank you. She was angry that she had to perform two jobs during the night. As he watched, the small woman headed toward the crowded bar and placed the tray of filled glasses on the end. Then she wiped her hands and made her way toward the large double doors.

“Leanne, what has become of Mrs. Lindemann? She needs to be down here with her guests.”

The man was the same one whom John had seen at the factory in New York. It was F.E. Lindemann, and he looked none too pleased. His tuxedo was of the finest cut and he grinned as he asked the girl the question, but John could see he was seething underneath. Now he knew now who the girl was. She was one of the maids from the nearby village, and was also the spitting image of Eunice Johansson. He thought a moment — Leanne Cummings, if he remembered right. She was the last person to see the German opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt, alive.

“Yes, sir, she had a last minute alteration to her dress. She is in the sewing room, she shouldn’t be but a moment.”

“And Miss Gerhardt?” Lindemann asked.

“The staff re-ironed her dress and I am on my way to deliver it now, sir.”

“Be off, then, and tell them both to hurry. Our guests are waiting.”

The girl half bowed and made her way quickly from the ballroom. John followed.

As he stepped aside to avoid two guests who nearly passed through him, he saw the girl disappear through the kitchen’s swinging doors. Looking from the moving doors to the staircase, he played a hunch and started to climb the stairs. In the wink of an eye, John found himself on the third floor landing, and then across the hallway to the far side of the house where he was looking straight at the master suite and the sewing room. Both doors were closed. He stopped and looked at the wall where almost a century later Gabriel’s student would disappear. This wallpaper was different than the current wallpaper in the hallway. He felt the wall and found it just that: a wall, normal and cool to the touch.

Suddenly a door opened down the hallway. A woman stuck her head out and scouted down the hallway before stepping out so that John could see her. She looked right at him, and then through him. She was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, and her hair was coiffed to perfection. John could see her stocking as she stepped from the room. Her eyes seemed to meet his for the briefest of moments before she started across the hall. She moved like a cat, with her eyes firmly placed on the sewing room and the master suite next to it. She stepped into the room across from hers, and then quickly closed the door behind her.

John didn’t have to follow. One moment he watched the woman disappear into the bedroom, and the next moment he was standing next to the bed in that very same room. He watched the robed woman go to her knees and look under the neatly made bed. She straightened onto her knees and crawled to the closet, then stood, pulled open the door and quickly rummaged inside. It looked as if the woman were looking for something. While John watched the woman’s strange behavior, he kept feeling his stomach. He could still feel the pain from the previous Walk. John found he was still shaking from the pain of the murder he had endured.

The woman stepped from the closet and then stopped cold as if she had heard something. She went to the bedroom door and cracked it open. She then quickly hurried out into the hallway. John followed this time as she made her way to the next room and tried the knob, but at that moment the maid came around the corner. She was carrying a dress in her hands, held out as if she were carrying a baby. The black sequined gown shimmered brightly in the lights lining the hallway.

“Oh, I was just looking for you,” the woman in the dressing gown said. She released the handle of the door to the next bedroom she had been about to search. Her words were spoken in a heavy German accent. John knew then who he was looking at — the opera star, Gwyneth Gerhardt. The diva was about to disappear from Summer Place and John’s Dream Walk had placed him right at the center of the action.

“Yes, Ma’am, Mr. Lindemann has requested that you join the party as soon as possible,” the young maid said as she went to Gerhardt’s room and opened the door. The diva moved into her bedroom, followed by the maid carrying the dress. John stepped over but didn’t enter the room, he just watched from the hallway.

“Just lay the dress on the bed, please, and tell Mr. Lindemann I’ll be down momentarily.”

The maid did as she was ordered and then half bowed and left, turning to the right she walked toward the master suite. John watched her knock. She knocked again and then moved over ten feet to the door on the left — the sewing room — and knocked, looking uneasy to John’s watching eyes.

“Yes,” came a voice through the door, just as soft music was turned down.