“Test pattern is up and New York is receiving,” Kelly said. She placed a set of headphones on her head.
“Cue intro.”
Peterson watched the test pattern from Pennsylvania go from the old Indian head to the Hunters of the Paranormal ghostly logo. Then their theme song began; Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper came through the speakers loud and clear while the opening credits and pictures of the hosts and their team rolled. Peterson shook his head. He had never understood why people — viewers or sponsors — would waste their time on this sort of programming.
“Well, the signal’s good and clear, at least,” his assistant said as she handed him his drink.
“Great. A good signal is what I live for.” Peterson frowned and looked at his watch.
The sun outside his office window had yet to set, and that didn’t help his suspension of disbelief in the ghost show coming from three time zones away — another problem for west coast viewers that they would have to solve for a live broadcast. Maybe they could push back the show’s normal starting time until at least dusk. “Peterson, are you watching this?” a voice said over his phone’s open speaker.
“Yes, sir, we have a crystal clear picture here,” he answered CEO Feuerstein in New York.
“Good, looks like everything’s up and running. It is a beautiful house.”
“Up, running, and beautiful,” Peterson mumbled. He sipped his drink. “Terrific.”
Jimmy Johansson became still. There was a presence in the room — it was behind him. His breath came in sharp, short gasps of air that he could clearly see in front of him. The temperature in the room dropped below freezing. The glass knob had frosted over.
Light peeked through the drapes from the floodlights outside. The television people were starting their test. But the light didn’t reach him — he saw it being absorbed by a swirling blackness that appeared before the window. The glow in the break between the curtains was dispersing, bending and then darkening, and something large seemed to be assembling before him. It resembled smoke being sucked out of a powerful vent. His body felt limp and he slowly slid down the door to the floor, the skin of his back making squeaking noises as his shirt hitched upward.
The black mass formed into a shape, and then just as quickly spread apart, only to reform once more. The light from the window was completely gone, but Jimmy was seeing the impossible in front of him. A tendril of inky blackness reached out and tentatively caressed his face. Everywhere that the tendril touched, frost formed, producing long streaks of ice across the boy’s cheek and jaw. The mass silently dispersed, blowing apart softly as a dandelion, and then it slammed into the floor almost as if it had become liquid. Then the darkness curled past Jimmy and slithered under the doorframe.
“Hold it, Greg, we have a malfunction on infrared number five on the second floor,” Harris said. He ordered Camera Six to take its place.
“What was that?” one of his people asked, watching the monitor at his station.
“What was what?” Harris shifted angles. “Greg, hold the intro a sec, we have—”
The color monitor showed the multicolored view from the forward-looking infrared camera, or FLIR. The screen flared bright blue and green as if the air in the hallway suddenly froze, and then it flashed quickly back to its normal hue.
A garbled, deep sound reverberated through the speakers mounted on the van’s interior walls. The crew listened, and watched the gauges on all the sound monitors peg out in the red. Kelly leaned back and smiled at Kyle, who was looking up at the speaker. Then Kyle looked Kelly’s way, and she didn’t like the expression on his face at all. He slowly shook his head and mouthed that’s not us. He held out the small device that was meant to trigger his sound effect remotely, and she could see the instrument was dark. He had not even turned it on. She slowly turned away and backed toward the bank of monitors and the angry director. The sound still droned, halfway between a moan and garbled speech.
Harris Dalton angrily pushed his right headphone into his ear. “What the hell is that? Latin?”
“New York is picking it up also,” his assistant said.
“No, not Latin…something…wait. It’s English, but it’s being spoken so deep that we can’t understand it,” the audio technician said.
“Harris, are the recorders working?” Kelly asked. She stood and brushed past Wallace Lindemann, who was sitting wide-eyed and listening to the eerie sounds coming from inside of his house.
Harris looked over at the video feed from the second floor. “I can’t tell from here. Now, what’s wrong with that camera? What kind of equipment are you people using?”
“The FLIR has returned to normal function on the second floor, normal heat signature. The flare-up was more than likely electronic,” the assistant director called out.
The infrared camera poised next to the low-light stationary camera suddenly went fuzzy around the edges.
“There it is again, the same thing as before,” Harris’ assistant said, pointing to the monitor.
It looked as if part of the viewing angle went inky black, while the rest stayed normal green.
“We have a serious degradation problem on that damn floor. Jesus Christ, turn that noise down!”
“New York wants to know what the problem is,” the assistant director called from her workstation.
“Tell New York that when I know, they’ll know.”
Kelly looked back at Kyle, who was watching with bemusement. She nodded toward the house and raised her eyebrows — a gesture that ordered him to find the problem with his equipment before the whole test was blown. He stood and leaned toward her.
“I’ll go check it out, but that’s not the recording I used. Mine is just incoherent mumbling. This crap is actually saying something,” he whispered to her. He parted the black curtain and left.
Kelly watched on the monitor as he bounded up the steps and into the house, carrying his toolbox and ladder. An astonished Greg quickly stepped out of his way. Then he held his hands up in the air in a what the hell is happening? gesture.
Before the audio engineer inside the van could turn the incoherent noise down, the sounds stopped just as suddenly as they had started. Harris looked from monitor to monitor but could no longer see any malfunctions at all. He shook his head just as Kyle came into the grainy picture on the second floor.
“What is he doing?” Harris asked as he ran his hand through his hair. “Paul, you’re on the main floor. Get your ass up there and pull that asshole out so we can get these kinks worked out.”
On Camera Two, which had the benefit of bright lighting, they saw Paul shake his head as he turned and ran up the staircase, his sound and camera people close behind.
“No, damn it, just Paul!” Harris yelled, but the camera and soundman bounding up the large staircase ignored him. “These people better start using some freaking common sense!” he said through clenched teeth as he watched the three men continue on their way.
Kelly closed her eyes, knowing that every single word was going out live to New York and LA. She could picture the brimming smirk on Lionel Peterson’s face.
At New York corporate headquarters, Abraham Feuerstein watched the test. The other executives stared at the large screen where the fiasco in the Pocono Mountains was unfolding. However, Feuerstein was seeing something very different from the rest of them. He was watching a lot of network money being spent, for sure, but he could also smell even more money coming in. Advertisers — after a little creative editing of these test sequences — would see the potential of this special. One corporate sponsor, possibly GM or Chrysler, would pay handsomely for a show that would guarantee a forty percent share on Halloween night. Halloween was a far different day now that people didn’t particularly trust trick-or-treating any longer. They stayed home and did family things. And that was just the way this show would be pitched: a family time styled ghost story.