The CEO pulled up his coat sleeve. He had goosebumps. He didn’t even believe in this crap, but that beautiful old house scared the shit out of him for some reason. His Jewish blood remembered all the stories he had heard about the old country, and the strange things that happened there before the war brought the tales to an end — to be replaced by the real-life horrors of the Holocaust.
The door opened and Julie Reilly, the news division’s number one field reporter, walked in. She kneeled in the dark beside the CEO.
“So, has our intrepid producer produced?”
Feuerstein reached over and touched Julie’s cheek softly.
“Right now, it’s in doubt. They seem to be having trouble with the electronics, but we’ll see. You just may be off the hook if it keeps going the way it is.”
“Thank God,” she whispered. The testing droned on around them.
Feuerstein gave Julie a closer look. He wasn’t sure if she was relieved that she might not have to do the show, or relieved that she wouldn’t have to relive ruining the career of Professor Gabriel Kennedy. He suspected some of both. He also suspected that old tough Julie regretted her reports on Kennedy, even though they had bought her the fame she needed as a small time reporter back in the day.
The other executives, when they snuck glances toward their boss, saw that he was actually watching the debacle with interest. They sat quietly in the darkened screening room, watching the man who signed their paychecks.
As Paul reached the second floor landing, he saw that Kyle was on the stepladder looking into the large ornate iron heating vent midway down the long hallway.
“Hey, Harris is pissed. He said to get the hell off this floor. Remember, you’re not even supposed to be here.”
Kyle tuned and looked at Paul and his two-man camera and sound unit. His face didn’t look all that healthy.
“The sound isn’t coming from here, it’s—”
Suddenly all the power went out, including the battery operated sound equipment and camera. The static video camera at the entrance to the long hallway went out and the four men were cast into darkness.
“Oh, shit.” Paul inched closer to his large camera operator.
Suddenly the still camera, which was battery operated and equipped with a bright flash and attached motion sensor, started popping off bright flashes of light, creating a strobe effect. Then it stopped as suddenly as it started.
Harris Dalton lowered his head in frustration. He couldn’t believe they had lost all power.
“Do these people ever check their batteries? And please tell me the electrical for this house has been upgraded since the turn of the GODDAMN CENTURY!”
“Damn it, Harris, everything was charged before the test began. We’re not amateurs here!” Kelly said angrily. “Now, you tell me what the statistical odds are that when the power goes out, our battery backup also goes on every piece of equipment. Huh, smartass?”
Harris backed off when he realized Kelly was right.
Paul was breathing heavily. There were sounds ahead of them in the hallway.
“Kyle, I suggest you take it easy coming down that ladder,” he said. He felt the comforting shoulder of his ex-marine camera operator.
“Man, I can’t move. I swear to God there is something right on the other side of this grate. I can feel hot breath on my face and I smell roses. Jesus—”
The camera operator looked over at Paul’s dark outline. The co-host was actually grabbing his arm for some sort of comfort.
Inside the production van, they heard snatches of conversation from the recorders on the second floor — it was as if the battery packs were being shorted out by something, and they could only hear when they connected.
“We have battery power on some of our equipment coming back online. We have something — not much — but it’s definitely our people’s voices,” the sound technician said from his stool.
“Bring it up as high as you can get it, full gain!” Harris switched out his headphones for another set. “Paul, get your team closer to whoever it was that was talking just a moment ago. Or was that just you?”
There was no answer, just a mewling sort of crying.
“Paul, goddamn it, what the hell is that?” He then turned to face Kelly. “For the live feed, if there is one after this technical nightmare, I want stationary, parabolic microphones placed throughout the damn house!”
“There’s something — Kyle — on the ladder…Jesus, he says — right — front — him.”
“You’re breaking up, Paul, goddamn it! This tech was your and Kelly’s idea. Now get in there and pull his ass out. We have a power problem to fix!”
Paul closed his eyes and tried to adjust his sight to the pitch-blackness before him. He had never in his life seen such utter and total darkness. It was like looking into a bottle of India ink. Even his hearing was faulty — he could swear he could hear whispering coming from all around him.
“Look, guys, batteries are working now. I’m picking up noise on every microphone in the house. It’s like this place has just come alive.” The soundman pressed his headphones harder into his skull and held the mic-boom further into out the hallway. His faintly illuminated gauge told him he was at full gain. “This is a closed system. I shouldn’t be picking up the microphones on other floors.”
“Kyle, you still with us?” Paul asked nervously.
“Shit, man, I can’t move. This thing is right in front of me and it smells to high heaven. It’s not roses anymore, it’s a rotten smell. God, please…You guys have to pull me off of this ladder.”
“We can’t even see you,” Paul said. He hoped beyond hope that Kyle was doing some sort of act that he and Kelly had cooked up.
“Why?” Kyle asked from the darkness.
“Wake up, open your eyes. The power is out, damn it. Even our camera light is dead.”
“Oh, man. The goddamn lights are blazing in here. I can see you — you guys are only about five feet away. Oh, God, the screws are coming out of the damn grate — turning by themselves!”
“All right. If you’re screwing with us, that’s enough. You get—”
There was a loud crash, followed by a blood curdling scream that Paul had only heard in the movies. It was a sound he thought no man was capable of producing.
That was it — the three men turned and ran for the stairs. Paul caught his right foot on the camera strap and tripped. His voice caught in his throat as he heard the two others pounding down the staircase. They were gone, and he was alone on the floor, sprawled on the expensive Persian carpet runner.
“Damn you guys, get back up—”
He heard the footfalls behind him. Kyle’s ladder hit the floor near his head and then rebounded into the wall, knocking wallpaper and plaster into his face. Paul tried to get to his feet, but stumbled and fell. The footsteps sounded as if whatever was in the hallway with him was walking on hollow planks. They reverberated, shaking the landscape pictures on the wall. It was as if a giant was pursuing him. The pounding footfalls were beginning to sound more and more like the beat of a heart.
Shaking, he tried once more to push ahead with his feet, actually bunching up the Persian runner. He rose to his knees, ready for a sprint into the dark, when something closed around his ankle so hard that he heard the bone snap. Screaming in pain and terror, he was yanked backward so hard he found himself airborne.