Gabriel had been drawn to the basement of the Grenada. The old theater was still decked out in all its antique glory. The walls looked freshly painted, the gargoyles sconces lining them looking as if a dust rag had been recently run across their scowling faces.
“It feels like an impression, like this is to make us feel more at ease,” Damian said as he followed Gabriel. He leaned over and examined the candy on display in the half-circular concession stand. He saw the old standards—the hot dogs spinning bottom to top in the hot dog machine, the buns resting in a small doorway, catching steam from the hot dogs, the Jujubes and Junior Mints, the ice cream compartments displayed at both ends of the snack bar. But the popcorn smelled delectable. He even heard and saw a fresh batch being made—without so much as an attendant present. The magnetic lettering above the snack bar told them that the large boxes of candy and cups of ice cream were twenty-five cents. Popcorn was ten cents. He shook his head in wonder at the rate of inflation in this country. That is the real horror, he thought bravely just to get his mind off where he was. Then came the sounds from the auditorium. Damian turned and looked at Gabe, who stood behind him. He cocked his head, trying to place the jingle.
Let’s all go to the lobby … let’s all go to the lobby … let’s all go to the lobby, and get ourselves a treat!
Gabe and Damian remembered the jingle from their younger years; it was the dancing soda cups and popcorn boxes showing their wares as if they were the Rockettes. As they smiled at each other, the distant music dwindled to nothing.
In the silence, they heard the door creak open. They turned and saw that the red curtain had been drawn back, and an open door was just finishing its swinging arc. The light switched on just inside the doorway.
“This is like being politely invited to join your own execution,” Damian said as he watched Gabriel head for the open doorway. He followed only because he didn’t want to be left alone inside the deserted lobby.
They went down into the basement.
* * *
The basement was clean and orderly. There was no water on the floor, and everything was upright. The smell was dank but not overpowering. As they eased past old chairs that needed to be reupholstered in the gaudy red of that golden era, boxes of cups, and folded popcorn boxes, they saw it. The vault. They knew exactly what they were looking at.
“The famous Savings and Loan bank vault, I presume?” Damian asked, not expecting an answer.
The lights flickered for the briefest of moments, and they froze, expecting the worst. But they steadied. Gabriel realized that this was it. Whatever was behind all of this wanted them to be able to see the end results of man’s meddling where it should not have been.
They froze again when they heard movement from inside the vault.
“Oh, shit,” Damian said. He never felt so helpless in his life while holding a powerful handgun. The barrel moved to the tarp-covered vault but was not in the least steady.
Gabriel felt the presence. It was right behind them. Somehow the children had come into the basement as they had been studying the vault. It stood there. It was massive. They heard the breathing of all twenty-seven children as the black mass stood by the bottom step and stared at them, unmoving except for the sparkling elements that swirled and eddied like a tornado flecked with gold. Damian and Gabriel jumped back as the black tornado moved past them, knocking them from their feet. It approached the vault, and then a giant hand reached out and pulled the tarp away. The jumbled mass of water, dust, and human life quickly stepped away with a roar of pain, and the mass started to come apart. First one, and then another, then another of the children fell free of the hurricane before them. One by one, they appeared out of the funnel cloud of motion. Each child stood and stared at them as they came back into singularity one soul at a time. The wind inside the basement picked up and then stopped as the last few children formed.
“Well, there goes your newest theory about how most hauntings are faked,” Damian said, his bladder almost letting go as he watched the children staring at the two men. The smell was starting to get to them as well as the sight of their emaciated forms. The horror of seeing the skeletal bodies of mere children was enough to drive a good person insane.
“This isn’t a haunting; this is something that has never happened before. The evil here isn’t like what we ran into inside Summer Place—this is man. This was perpetrated on these innocents. Their evil is nothing but a reflection of us.”
Damian half turned and looked at Gabriel. “Is that your professional opinion?” He snorted out of fear, not levity. “I see twenty-seven ghosts that appear very real.”
“Ghosts? No, not ghosts. They’re still with us because they are being kept here for some reason. As much as they want their freedom, they can’t leave. Something is holding them here.”
“Okay, that’s it; you can’t spend any more time with John. He’s starting to affect you in some weird ways.”
“Look,” Gabe said as the children started raising their small hands. They were pointing to something. Gabriel bravely stepped forward, and the children stepped farther back. Gabriel stepped up to the vault’s door. His brow furrowed when he saw what remained of the mercury that had been spread fifty-five years before from the fire extinguishers Robert had used to trap the entity back in 1962.
“Is that—”
“Mercury? Yes.” Gabriel reached out and took a corner of the discarded tarp, wiping the offending heavy metal from the thick steel door just above the dial mechanism combination lock that had been missing since Hadley had it sealed days after the disaster in Moreno. His tracks had been thoroughly covered—or so he thought. When Gabriel had wiped most of it clean, he stepped back. The children still remained toward the far wall, glancing at each other and hoping for an answer.
“They don’t know what to do. Their script in this nightmare has come to an end.” Gabriel looked back at a frightened Damian.
The former Pennsylvania detective really wasn’t concentrating on what these nightmare apparitions were confused about. All he knew was that the so-called innocents they faced had killed two of his friends and many others. The children turned their blackened eyes on the two men as if they expected help from them. Gabriel was nearly convinced that this was what they wanted all along. They wanted someone here who understood. These children had manipulated the natural order of things to end the nightmare they had been in since 1943.
Gabriel stepped to the door of the vault.
“No, she wants me,” came the voice from the darkened area of the basement.
Gabriel and Damian saw the lightly formed shape of a man. He was frail, and he stumbled as he moved. The strangest part was the fact that the area the person spoke from was a wreck; it wasn’t in pristine shape like the rest of the theater. As the form moved forward, so did the real appearance of the basement. The odor of mildew, rot, and rat droppings was prevalent. The basement itself was being brought back to a state of reality, not one of perfect preservation.
Damian jumped back when he saw the familiar shape of President Hadley step from the shadows and into the dimming light. His hospital gown and hair were filthy and covered in mud. His legs were scratched and bruised from surviving the landslide, and he was bleeding heavily from cuts that crisscrossed his body. Damian moved to assist him as the children parted for him. Gabe held the large detective in check before he could get too close.
“This is his show now,” he said, making Damian flinch about the prospect of watching another man torn to pieces in front of them.
Hadley stepped up to the vault and stood still. The children all gathered at his back. The former president stood on shaky legs and lovingly reached out and felt the cold steel of the door. He fell to his knees and started crying.
“I failed her,” Dean said as he kept his hand on the door. He stood with renewed strength and pulled on the lone handle of the vault until his strength gave out.
Hadley was suddenly thrown backward by an unseen force. The door bent outward as the occupant had decided that it was now time to make its move. The children came forward and added their power to the force inside. Damian and Gabriel heard the popping of heavy-duty bolts as the door loosened in its strong frame. It came free and was tossed aside, barely missing Dean’s prone form. The children stepped aside and looked at Gabriel and Damian as if expecting something from them.
Gabe went to the vault, and Damian assisted Hadley to his feet. The man was sobbing uncontrollably.
“She has the right to my soul. I failed her,” he said as Damian tried to get him under control. He nervously stood inside the gaggle of long-dead children holding the sick man up by sheer willpower. The large detective would rather have just dropped the man and gotten the hell out, but like Gabriel, he knew they had been brought to this point by the very entity that started everything.
Gabriel eased inside, taking a cautious step over the damaged threshold of the frame. His eyes quickly adjusted to the semidarkness of the vault’s interior. His shoulders slumped when he saw the mass in the far corner of the vault. He felt a lump in his throat as he recognized a body in a fetal position. He had to grab the frame of the door for support as John’s greatest fear had been realized; Gabriel knew he was looking at Gloria Perry. He had to step out of the vault when the smell of decades-old death hit his nostrils. The body was thin and almost deflated. The old letterman’s jacket collapsed, as if all the air had been let out of a balloon. Then, before he realized it, someone was standing next to him. He smelled clean air. He also smelled perfume. He slowly turned, and his eyes went from the small body inside to Gloria Perry. She stood without her dark glasses, and she was whole. She tilted her head and placed her right hand to her eyes. Then she moved it toward Gabriel. Her hand caressed his face as she examined him. Her fingers ran from feature to feature. It was if she were seeing a face for the first time ever. She smiled. It was a sad thing to see, and Gabriel’s heart reached out for the murdered girl. Then the expression changed as she turned and faced the children. She stepped away from Gabriel, who felt weak in his knees, realizing that Gloria had drained some of the strength from him while touching his face.
“Alley, you have been very bad.” She stepped closer. “This shouldn’t have involved anyone other than the person who left me to his father.” She looked over at Damian, who was holding Hadley upright. Gabriel saw the look in the old man’s face. It wasn’t terror, but it was something he had seen before—it was longing. The man actually did love this girl, far more than even John hinted at. “It’s now time to settle, Dean.” She moved forward, and Damian felt his bladder let go as her face dripped and foundered on her bones. The hair came free in clumps, and her eyes fell back into her skull. Her right hand reached up for Hadley, who closed his eyes and waited for the thing that had controlled his life for over fifty-five years.
“Gloria,” Dean whispered in a haunting voice as the rotting corpse came on. He closed his eyes as the skeletal fingers reached for him.
Gabriel and Damian felt the satisfaction of the children as they anticipated the justice of what was about to happen.
“Gloria!” came the shout from the bottom of the stairs.
Gabriel turned and saw John Lonetree being held up by Jennifer and Julie. He was staring at the apparition of the girl he had seen Dean become enamored with.
The deteriorating mass turned and looked at Lonetree. They all felt a change in the room as Gloria, or what had once been the girl, faced John. Lonetree saw the familiar turn and tilt of the girl’s head as she tried to figure something out. Then her form started to come back to her young self again. She recognized Lonetree from her past. Before anyone knew it, Gloria was her old self again as she looked from person to person.
The children, however, looked agitated. They began to move as one toward the former president and Damian.
“Gloria, it wasn’t Dean. Robert did this to you. The boy was stopped from returning by his own father. He did this to you, not Dean. He had nothing to do with his father’s plan.”
Gloria made no move. She stood there and looked at John for the longest time. She didn’t even flinch when Lonetree tossed something that landed at her feet with a small tinkle of breaking glass.
“Dean’s father knocked those from your face when he hit you that night,” John said as everyone in the room saw the dark glasses at her feet. Gloria leaned over and picked them up. “I was there and saw it all. He can’t hide behind the lies anymore, Gloria. You know I was there; you saw me,” John said, almost begging the entity to remember.
Her eyes, the most beautiful blue any of them had ever seen, looked up from the dark glasses to face Lonetree.
“I watched you two fall in love. I saw how you felt about each other. You know that Dean never let you down. He’s been paying for your death for his entire life. He has made his existence one of hatred and malice. He didn’t deserve this any more than you did.” John left Julie and Jennifer and stepped forward. He felt the hatred from the children as they advanced slowly on the newcomers. “Release them, Gloria. Get them to stop.”
The girl looked at John, and then her eyes settled on the old man. Dean stood with the help of Damian, and then he gently pushed Damian away and stood on his own. He watched as Gloria advanced on him. He bravely faced his own death, a death he had wished for since 1962.
The Supernaturals all jumped when Gloria suddenly and inexplicably jumped into the old man’s arms. They watched as fifty-five years of desperate hate dissolved into what it always was—pure love. Hadley began crying as he raised his frail arms and took Gloria into them and they embraced. She was on her tiptoes and crying also.
“Uh, someone isn’t too damn thrilled with this lovely reunion,” Damian said as the children advanced.
They could all feel the rage emanating from the twenty-seven souls murdered long ago. They were feeling betrayed by Gloria; Gabriel knew this as a fact. They had been her guiding influence since the day she had befriended them.
The time had come for their revenge against all.
* * *
Leonard started pointing as if he were crazed. Bob, Linda, Casper, and Harvey started digging into the pile of mud. Over fifty of the FBI and hostage rescue team that had been searching for the president earlier moved to assist. The fear that the people from town showed made them move all the much faster. Leonard only hoped John’s theory was correct.
As lightning flashed and rain pummeled them, the vault was slowly uncovered. Men and women worked to free a large portion of the vault. Leonard let out a sigh of relief when he saw they had uncovered the correct end of the vault.
The rubble of both the old mission and the winery had been carried by the massive mudslide to the back door of K-Rave Radio. As the men and women fought to clear a spot, Leonard waved over the hostage rescue team explosives specialist and pointed down.
“Right there!” he yelled above the din of the storm. He watched as the man in black Nomex placed his breaching charges against the thick steel. “Will that be enough?” he shouted at the man as the FBI moved Bob, Linda, Casper, and Harvey away from the vault.
“No, the charges were never made to break through steel. These breaching charges are for doors and walls.” He unwrapped a detonation cord and attached it to the six charges of explosives. He then attached a timer and looked up at Leonard. “I’ve placed them in what I hope is a soft spot. I think these were viewing ports of some kind. That should be the weakest spot. Now if I were you, I would get the hell back!”
Leonard watched the hostage rescue team explosives expert jump from the exposed corner of the vault. He quickly followed.
Overhead, the storm raged.
* * *
The children once again formed into the giant, swirling mass of hate and revenge. The giant moved toward Gloria and Dean, who stood the ground defiantly. The huge hands reached for the couple.
“God, anytime, Leonard!” John said as the others looked at him in confusion, helpless to stop the entity from tearing Hadley to pieces. They saw Gloria defiantly hold him as his death loomed above them.
* * *
The explosives detonated with a sound that drowned out the raging thunder. The hole was ripped into what Dr. Jürgen Fromm had once described as the viewing ports on section A. The vault then erupted in motion. The stored energy of seventy-five years was released into the storm-driven night. The cloud of fury exited the vault, knocking everyone within a hundred yards off their feet. The cloud of black, swirling hatred rose into the rain-filled sky and then shot off toward downtown Moreno.
“I think that thing’s going to finish the job here in Moreno,” Casper said as he watched the night over their heads explode into massive bolts of chain lightning.
“God, I hope this works,” Leonard said as he turned and started running for town. The entire force of FBI and Secret Service quickly followed.
* * *
The mass of dead children formed into one and picked Dean up, tearing him away from Gloria in the ultimate betrayal. She reached out and screamed as Dean was once more snatched from her.
The basement erupted in bright light. The entity holding Dean stopped its assault as the room filled with swirling blackness that slowly became lighter and lighter. Then everyone saw it. There were dozens of people. They were dressed as the children had been. They were clearly older than them. The group stood surrounding not only the Supernaturals but also the black and swirling entity. Dean was released and fell to the hardened floor with a thud. The apparition that was Gloria ran to him and covered his still body.
Once more, the children dissolved into individual forms. They circled the adults that were in a state of misuse by the men who had tortured them to death many years before inside the borders of Yugoslavia. The children stood facing the parents they had been forced to watch die in the most awful experimentation ever conducted by the Nazis. The Supernaturals watched as the children ran to them. The room brightened just as Leonard came down the stairs, amazed at what he saw.
“That was the real power. Fromm never realized that the fuel that made this particular flame burn was not the children but the parents. Imagine the horror of knowing your children were going to die. That was the real power of the mind, not Fromm’s experiment. It was the human ability to project the entire mind toward the things you hate or love. This was just like our entity at Summer Place. Like in Pennsylvania, this haunting was brought on by the mind and the fear of losing those you love the most in the world. The parents of the children had hate so powerful that even though their vault was sealed, they still managed to project that power.”
Gabriel looked back at an exhausted John Lonetree. “I think you can have my job now.”
“No, thank you.”
Jennifer and Julie gasped when Gloria stood from her spot next to Dean. Her small frame was intact. She looked whole and young. She was crying, not tears of hate as she had done when Hadley Sr. had murdered her but a smile of long-sought contentment. She nodded and faced all of them.
“Thank you.”
Gloria, with one last look at Dean, vanished.
The feeling of joy was felt by all of them as one by one the apparitions of the dead children and their murdered parents faded away to nothing. The lights flickered but remained steady as Jennifer and John checked on Hadley. Lonetree looked up at Gabriel and shook his head. Dean had died during the confrontation, but the look on his now soft features relayed to them in no uncertain terms that he too was now content.
Then the haunting ended. The lights in the basement went out, and it was Damian who broke first. He realized that when the lights went out, he had about the last nerve shocked from his system. The last they heard, he was pounding up the stairs without a word.
* * *
The group came out of the ruins of the Grenada Theater. They looked up at the clearing morning sky. The town was now useless to anyone. Mudslides now covered most of the old tract homes that used to house its citizens. Earth now covered most of the buildings on Main Street on the north side of town. Moreno was fading fast into California history.
“Wait,” John said as the team stood just inside the debris field of the shattered marquee and box office. Lonetree dug through a pile of concrete and wood. The team watched him with interest. He finally stood, and with a smile, he tossed Gabriel a black book. It flapped in the stiff wind as Gabriel caught it.
“The journal.” He looked up at Lonetree. “They hid it in the box office?”
“Yes, it seems that the old theater had everything to do with that night.”
The Supernaturals stepped aside when the FBI and the Secret Service removed the covered body of Dean Hadley. They remained silent as the rescuers moved the former president’s body to a waiting helicopter to be evacuated.
“What are we going to do with the journal?” Lonetree asked Gabriel.
“No one needs to know what happened to those innocent people. I have a friend in Nevada—at least I think he’s still there. He is an archivist, from what I understand; he works closely with the National Archives. He’ll know what to do with it.”
“Who is this?” Lonetree asked.
“Oh, just a man I met many years ago. Name’s Compton—Niles Compton. From my understanding, they’re pretty good at unraveling the truth of things.”
“Well, I hope this mysterious friend of yours has a strong stomach,” Damian said as he kicked at the loose debris at his feet.
With that, the Supernaturals were finished inside the ghost town known as Moreno, California.