Pipeline by Christopher Carrolli

“My
father is Paul Leeds.”
    “It is an extreme pleasure to meet you,”
Susan said, and began to say something else until the girl
interrupted.
    “You saved my father, and I don’t know how to
begin to thank you.” Susan was overwhelmed at the grace of her and
those unmistakable, transfixing eyes.
    “There’s no need to thank me, dear. I would
never have been able to help him had it not been for Sidney.” She
glanced over at him, his jaw agape in surprise at the connection to
Leah, one she’d failed to mention in her history.
    Paul Leeds became a patient of Susan Logan’s
right around the time that she had declared her questionable
interest to the hospital in patients traumatized by paranormal
experiences. She came to know the entire story of the Cedar Drive
house through Paul. He had suffered from acute anxiety disorder and
what most believed were hallucinations, as well as violent
nightmares that led to sleep deprivation. His final thoughts of
suicide were prevented only by the picture of his little girl that
he kept in his wallet. Now she spoke of Paul as a survivor, a man
who had faced the devil and won.
    “Paul is okay now,” Susan said. “He has
himself to thank for that, and you.” She touched Leah’s shoulder
and smiled, then turned to the others.
    “I would like to stay, but that is up to you,
Tracy.”
    “Sure, of course,” Tracy said, mumbling a
soft tone of embarrassment.
    This awkward silence served as Dylan’s moment
to resume control, which he did. A look of uncomfortable
apprehension toward Susan wore on his face like a Halloween mask.
He stood at the spot that Tracy indicated earlier.
    “Just before you arrived,” he said to Susan.
“Tracy told us that she had seen David standing, right here. We
were also discussing the chill in the room because the temperature
had dropped, and I think it’s even colder now.”
    Tracy had paid no attention, but the house
did seem to be getting colder. Leah checked the thermostat—69
degrees. Dylan began explaining to Susan the role that temperature
change played in manifestations, when it all began.
    All the lights in the house flicked on and
off, beaming brighter than usual, flaring up a gulf of hot, white
light. The TV had been kept on, but the all news channel reporting
in the background had been ignored, until the crashing sound of
static recommenced. The clamorous, mechanical roar was a call to
attention, rising in volume with an incessant, maddening rush that
diverted all eyes to its command. Then, six people stepped slowly
towards the gray, snowy field that absorbed every inch of the
screen.
     

Chapter Ten
     
    Brett knelt down in
front of the set, and Dylan crouched alongside him, while Leah
looked around the room and Sidney shut his eyes in concentration,
hoping to hear some faint trace of anything other than the static.
Tracy nibbled on dwindling fingernails, her chest heaving faster
with each passing moment. Susan surveyed the scene with eyebrows
arched upward in attention.
    A warbled, twisted sound spoke through the
static.
    “Identification,” Brett said, “vocal pattern:
unidentified.”
    “It’s a voice,” Leah said.
    The voice spoke in a drawl, the sound of a
vinyl record playing on the slowest speed of a vintage turntable.
The recorder reels were spinning pinwheels undeterred by the noise
they would later represent, a deformed melancholy attempting escape
from the crashing static.
    Tracy wriggled her nose and sniffed as
something familiar swept the air. The well remembered pungent musk
of him, thick and oily with its royal scent, had returned from a
heartbreaking absence. It was his favorite cologne: a Swiss scent
ironically named, “Good Life.”
    “Can you smell it?” she asked, whiffing the
tainted air.
    “I smell it,” Susan said.
    The others looked at her in agreement; the
smell of men’s cologne wafted through the room, an unmistakable
calling card attached to a life that was no more.
    “Neither of you guys are