Damian Jackson smiled as Lindemann stormed past him. He looked at Julie, who had also lost her brief sense of humor.
“Maybe the house isn’t happy that Kennedy is coming back.”
Jackson looked at her, then looked around him at the ostentatious ballroom.
“Maybe not.” He smiled again. “But I surely am.”
SEVEN
The sun had set and the heat of the day had finally drained from the air in the classroom. It was now cool enough that the windows could be opened and Kennedy could catch some of the breeze that found its way between the old buildings.
He watched the silent campus through one of those windows and wondered if he was the only faculty member still there. He turned and walked with purpose to his desk, producing his set of keys as he went. There were only four keys on his key ring — one to his studio apartment, one to his classroom, one to his mailbox, and the last and smallest opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He sat heavily into his chair and took a deep breath.
The drawer and its contents had eaten at him all day. He stayed after everyone had left, finally deciding to breach the vault that held the combination to that night in Pennsylvania. He inserted the key and opened the lock, and then he pulled open the largest drawer. He pursed his lips and scratched his beard. Before he could lose his nerve, close the damn thing and once more hide the truth, he reached in and removed the five journals and ten file folders. He slammed them on his desktop as he kicked the large drawer closed with his foot.
Gabriel sat back in his chair and looked at what the last twenty years of his life had become. The story of how he came upon Summer Place and the research behind it. Since that fateful night, he had lacked the courage to delve back into the historical research of the house and the family Lindemann. But now there had been more disappearances at the mansion. The house, he knew, wasn’t done with him. Or, perhaps, he wasn’t finished with it. He had realized it even before the newspapers had started reporting on it again.
The journals chronicled the experiment he had been conducting that night, long ago. He wasn’t interested in rehashing what happened to him and his students; he was concerned with the research that had led him originally to Summer Place. The interviews, the research on the property, the numerous face-to-face talks with what living Lindemann relatives were left. The answer, the very key to what the house was about, was here in his research files — somewhere.
He was responsible for that night. He knew that and never denied it, not even to himself. Before that night, he had been a skeptic himself. Never a believer in the paranormal world, his only faith was in the science of the mind; his fascination had been with how static objects could instill such inherent fear into ones psyche. How the influences of rumor and innuendo had the power to change the reality of perception, thus creating the human ability to literally scare oneself into a state of unrest. A person could end up with a broken mind merely because the mind had believed in the impossible, and thus made it real to them.
Kennedy had to smile at the memory of the theory. He pulled on his beard. Yeah, scare yourself into a state of unrest and broken mind — that was what I surely did.
He spread the journals and folders out onto the desk and found the file he wanted. Absentmindedly removing his corduroy jacket, he began reading about the history of the Lindemanns one more time.
Eighteen hundred miles to the north, Summer Place waited. Kennedy suspected that whatever was in that house knew its history was being studied once more.
The following day, Gabriel Kennedy entered his classroom and placed his briefcase on the desk. The Summer Place materials he had removed from the desk drawer were still sitting out. He rubbed his face. He had shaved his beard off for the first time in years. Now he didn’t recognize the man who faced him in the mirror. His blue eyes were better served without the growth of beard, though, and he had even garnered the gracious looks of several students as he briskly strolled across campus.
He gathered up the journals and files and placed them back into his drawer, then locked it. Not for fear that he would be tempted to revisit that damnable house as before, but because he wished to protect what he knew now were some of the most valuable writings in the field of paranormal study. He had realized their importance only after worrying all night at his apartment about having left them unsecured on his desk.
He looked up at the clock behind his desk and decided he would move the damn thing back to the opposite wall, the first chance he got. Time, he suspected, was no longer an enemy.
The door at the topmost tier of the classroom opened, admitting Harrison Lumley. His friend stood there looking down at him, amazed. “Well, the ice-man cometh,” he said as he started down the aisle. “Why the sudden change in personal imagery?”
“What change? You mean being early? Well, the simple answer in our field is always best: I never went to sleep.”
“Although that’s a nice breach of your recent habits, I do mean the beard.”
“Oh, you noticed?”
“Yes. I must say it takes ten years off of your face — and, apparently, your demeanor.”
Kennedy gave Harrison the briefest of smiles.
“I want to discuss something with you, if you have a moment.”
Gabriel pulled up the cuff of his blue shirt and looked at his watch. “It’s your dime for the next eight minutes.”
“What would you say to tenure here at Lamar?”
Kennedy had turned to pull his weekly lesson plan out of his briefcase. He stopped and looked at his old friend, and smiled. “The beard was that much of a hindrance to my career potential?”
Lumley laughed. “No…you know these things take time.”
“I know that I’ve only been here for four years. It should take considerably longer.” He closed the briefcase with a loud pop. “Especially with my, let’s say, sordid past.”
“Well, having the chairman of your department as a friend can be beneficial.”
Kennedy pursed his lips and then smiled. He walked to his blackboard to erase the lesson from the day before, but stopped and turned to Lumley.
“The one benefit of being a clinical psychologist, Harrison, as I’m sure you know, is the ability to smell a rat.” His smile didn’t reaching his blue eyes. “Have anything to say to that, Mickey?”
“I should have known you would smell me out,” Lumley said, slapping the desktop lightly. “There is a catch. And Mickey Mouse was…well, a mouse, not a rat.”
“A rodent is a rodent is a rodent. Who said that, Tennyson? Anyway, I digress. Continue, I’m listening,” Gabriel turned back and resumed erasing his blackboard. His humor was limited when he was being led around the proverbial mulberry bush.
“What would you say if you were responsible for the psychology department receiving a one and half million dollar grant?”
“I’d say I gave you too much. I want at least one million, four hundred thousand of it back.”
“You have actually changed, and overnight. Did you meet a woman, or something?”
“Stay the course, Doctor Lumley, and explain your fantastic statement.” He picked out a piece of chalk and started to write the day’s lecture topic on the blackboard.
“I received two visitors to my home late last night.”
Gabriel tossed the chalk back into the tray and slapped his hands together. A soft cloud of dust rose from his fingers. “You know, most universities have dry erase boards. Maybe with the department’s newfound windfall, you can get me one.” He paused. “Who offered you the money, Harrison?”