Rollie Tyler had paced in his new suite at the Jefferson for over an hour. Angie had quickly gone to bed as had Aidan. Mrs. Gallagher had returned at 11 PM that night, cutting her last eight hours of her day off short, after Rollie had called her around ten that night. He had thanked her profusely for being so flexible. Seeing that Angie and Aidan were both safely tucked in for the night, he would now be able to act on his own suspicions.

He drove back to the set at Eventyn. At almost one in the morning, it was deserted. Cast and crew had gone home for the evening. As he parked and sat for a moment, he looked over to Eventyn, leaning back in the driver’s seat.

There was more to this than ghosts, he told himself. Hunter Eventyn had practically written this script as an enticement to Tyler F/X talents. Gary Sanderlin had told him earlier that day that the script had been personally walked into him by Eventyn in New York City during a fund raising dinner.

Rollie also did not trust Stu. Angie’s chip friend had suddenly become an expert on ghostbusting and detection in the midst of a personal delivery. It was interesting to note that Angie had been solicited over three months prior to the contract award for the film by Logitech and Stu, over the advancement of the Jasper Chip for resistance to high temperature design operations and diverse programming commands. An article the New York Times had done on Rollie and his creature designs at the loft had preceded this. The photo that the Times had chosen to run was of him standing next to Manny’s dragon headpiece.

Again, to Rollie, all these coincidences were beginning to merge toward some very interesting events. The fact that over the past couple of years both loved ones as well as strangers had fooled him, lied to him and had invested his life as well as Angie’s and their son’s into danger- well, that was the trigger for his deep distrust now of the current situation.

He watched the stately plantation house, all lights out except for the front and back double porches. It was quiet, almost too peaceful, he thought. He stood up, looking then westward toward the famous Seven Pines Hill. With a gnawing in his stomach, he got out of the van and began to walk. He walked slowly, methodically with flashlight in hand as he scanned the brush and tree line making his way up the hill. The sound of whip-o-wills echoed around him. Without a moon, he was left to the occasional star and his flashlight.

"Come on, you Will-O’-Wisp!" he called out, in a challenge with a sneer on his face as he wiped his brow in the humid night’s air. As he made it to the top, he looked around, his flashlight dancing between the trees and reflecting on the river below. The Chickahominy river flow could be heard just above the sound of normal nightlife in the woods. No flashing lights were flashing around him, no mad hordes of ghostly fighting men, and no icy cold penetration of ‘flux densities’.

He turned back toward the plantation house, looking down the hill and began to laugh softly. This is madness! He told himself as he closed his eyes for a moment and then began to descend the hill. He stumbled slightly and flashed his light downward to his feet, feeling something barring his way, large and heavy. The light suddenly cast the dark, bulky shape into human form. It was someone lying on their side. Rollie knelt down; his flashlight bouncing in his hand as he slowly rolled the body over, belly up.

Angie woke up, startled and immediately looked over beside her. The bed was empty. She had felt that incredible cold hand run right through her, as if he had grabbed her heart in his icy fingers and was squeezing it tightly, laughing at her with a gaping hole for a mouth in a grotesque, rotting corpse of a face.

"Oh God…" she moaned, running a trembling hand through her hair as she stood up. She grabbed her robe and opened the suite door, thinking Rollie was sleeping with Aidan but was surprised to find Mrs. Gallagher snoring softly in bed next to her son. She frowned, wondering where Rollie had gone off to, as she looked down at Aidan, sleeping peacefully enough, rolled up against his border of pillows.

"What’s your dad up to?" she whispered to her sleeping son, as she pulled a curling lock away from his forehead, kissing him softly on his cheek. Aidan moved slightly, fanning an imaginary dream fly away as Angie chuckled slightly. It was times like these, early morning hours, when her most precious memories occurred of both Aidan and Rollie for that matter. When she looked at Aidan, her heart ached as she thought how much he looked like Rollie. He had his father’s zeal for activity, even his charm was like Rollie’s when he told his little whoppers to her.

She yawned, the dream starting to break apart in her memory now as she climbed into the bed beside Aidan and curled up next to his warm little body.

"I love you so much, Aidan…" she whispered into the curls at the nape of his neck. She thought of another neck, fringed with dark, wavy hair and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly; "don’t do anything stupid, Rollie…."

"Bloody fool!" Rollie muttered as he rolled his eyes back from the stench of whiskey and perspiration. Stu Westburn was drooling on his shoulder as he propped the young man up against an old oak tree near to where he had dropped.

At first, Rollie had thought he was dead but the rise and fall of his abdomen was finally detected as well as the almost empty bottle beside him that he must have dropped when he finally collapsed on the hill.

"Whew, what got you in this shape, Stuey?" Rollie asked, the flashlight shining in the dead drunk, Logitech employee’s face.

"Wallie! Good….you saw um too, yeah?" Stu mumbled out, his head dropping then against his chest.

"Yeah, it’s me, ‘Wallie’… Stu? Come on mate, let’s get you up and walking. Some nice black coffee’s what you need now!" Rollie told the stuporous man; "come on, get up…!"

With some effort, and almost a fireman’s carry, he got Stu down the hill and to the van. Strapping him in the passenger seat, he drove off of Eventyn property and down Route 5 to the nearest open convenience store. Four coffees later, Stu Westburn could finally tell Rollie where his hotel was without sliding off his seat.

By the time they stumbled into Stu’s room and Rollie got him in bed, it was almost three-thirty in the morning. Rollie stood in the room, looking around with a yawn at the Super 8 lodging amenities. What made him perk up suddenly, and swallow hard was the amount of sophisticated equipment on the dresser, on the floor, and on tripod in that room. Rollie frowned slightly as he whistled, stroking a large telescope with a laser attachment. Running his hand over the barrel of the scope, he felt the compact image system used for holographic projection.

"Aha…ghosts, I’ll wager…" Rollie proclaimed as he toyed with the controls. With only a snore rising from Stu, Rollie was able to continue his search of the room and equipment. The best was yet to come for in the floor, peeking out from under a silver, quilted coverlet was some sort of contraption that looked like a little round vacuum cleaner, complete with hose and nozzle.

"What’s this? I spy more ghostly phenomena!" he remarked as he pulled up the hose and turned on the machine, noting instantly that there was a temperature gauge immediately to the right of the start button. Before he could move, he had sprayed a mist of liquid CO2 gas directly onto his lower leg and shoe.

"Bloody idiot!" he swore, dropping the hose and limping toward the bathroom. He turned on the tub spigot and immediately doused his trousers and foot in the warm water.

So, this was the penetrating cold that they had felt and poor Angie had come into contact with in the van. The screwdriver had been covered in the stuff, no doubt just before being thrown. This whole thing was an elaborate hoax but why?

Rollie rolled up his trouser leg and checked the skin of his shin, touching it to see if it blanched well enough. Satisfied, he checked over a few more items in Stu’s room, looking for any other clues about why Stu was doing all of this. It made no sense to him.

"You faked the pictures too, didn’t you?" Rollie accused the drunken, semi-comatose man from above, hands on hips.

But Stu was oblivious to his confrontation at the moment and Rollie went for any paperwork he could find, any correlation between Hunter Eventyn and Stu. He found nothing and finally gave up, slapping down the handful of pictures printed from the digital pictures Stu had ‘captured’ from the hill at Eventyn.

Wait…just wait…Rollie told himself as he sank to the floor against the wall, surrounding by all the gadgets and tricks of the trade. Stu Westburn was going to be in for a surprise when he woke up.

Angie woke, finding herself wrapped around Aidan who was awake and playing silently with his stuffed koala bear nestled between them.

"Hey there," she greeted him, yawning as she glanced over at Mrs. Gallagher still softly snoring in the next bed.

"Mommy…let go!" Aidan demanded as Angie smiled, releasing him as he jumped up and slid to the floor beside the bed.

As Angie sat up, trying to recall the scrambled events of last night, Aidan scampered toward the bathroom and she shook her head, dismayed. Toilet training had been going so well but then again…

"Mommy, come see!"

Aidan could hardly have hit the target, seeing as his smaller version of a potty chair was still in the corner of the other room in their hasty move. Angie got up, groaning, preparing herself for clean-up detail but was stopped at the door of the bathroom, her hand to her chest.

"Aidan!"

Her son had somehow crawled up and was perched on top of the toilet, his feet firmly on opposite sides of the lid. He was pointing down at his amazing product to show her.

Trying not to show her complete horror, she stiffly nodded, trying to smile as she picked him up in her arms and flushed. Aidan’s smile turned to sadness as he felt her arms tighten against him.

"When did you get to be such a little monkey?" she asked him, almost in a scold.

"Daddy…"

"Oh, I should have known he would have taught you this maneuver!" she replied and together, they went back into their adjoining room to greet Rollie.

An empty bed, no note and keys gone meant Rollie had taken the van. But when? Angie fumed, dialing the cellular number. She had a feeling he would try something back at Eventyn or worse, knowing him. She knew that she had scared him last night.

The voice on the other end of the line was a whisper; "Tyler here…."

"And where is here?" Angie asked, annoyed.

"Ange! Listen, sweetie, got lots to tell you and well, bringing in a suspect shortly. He’s just about to get a rude awakening."

"What? Where are you?"

"Super 8…a bit down the road, actually…"

"Rollie! What the hell is going on?"

"Hell!" Aidan repeated her cursing and she sighed, frowning and tightened her grip on the phone.

"Rollie?"

"Ange, I’ve gotten the goods on the ghosts and guess what? They have some very mortal beginnings…"

"Don’t they all? I mean, ghosts were once people, right? What are you rambling about? Have you been drinking?"

"Me? Not a drop…but now, my suspect…now he’s put down a fifth or two…"

"Look, I don’t have time for games, Rollie. We are suppose to be on the set in little over an hour!"

"Tell you what, meet me at Eventyn, okay? Take a cab, please? I’ll explain everything when you get there, I promise."

Angie was silent. Rollie’s voice had that ever-charming quality of wit and adventurous rogue to it. She could just imagine what he had been doing!

"Angie?"

She still was silent, pondering her next comment. Life with Tyler was never dull. She looked over to see that Aidan was no longer playing in the corner of the room and instantly, she dropped the phone.

A sigh of relief came over her as she found him, crawling beside the bed, having slipped into Rollie’s T-shirt, his head partially covered with one arm out of the sleeve hole.

Angie went back to the phone; she could hear Rollie calling her name or rather demanding her attention.

"Angela!"

"I’ll be there Rollie, and one thing…I want you to untrain your son’s new trick of crawling up and perching himself on top of the pot like a monkey!"

Rollie looked down at the phone receiver, perplexed at the annoyance and snap to her voice. He heard the click as she hung up and scratched his head; "Monkey? I’ve got to make a note to show her proper aborigine toilet training…"

He looked over at Stu’s slumbering form and stood up, stretching. It was time to shake him up.

"Stu!" He shook his shoulder, Stu on his side away from Rollie. Stu didn’t stir and Rollie shook harder.

"STU! Get up, you bugger! I’m on to your little game!" Rollie announced, louder. Stu still did not wake up.

Rollie pulled him, rolling him over and jumped back as a cold wave of energy flashed out against him, taking his breath away. Stu’s eyes were open but the lids were rolled back, with only the whites of his eyes exposed.

It felt as if two icy hands were pinning him against the wall as he struggled. Rollie could see the presence, if that was what he perceived, over Stu’s body; it rose and hesitated, the form outlining into a standing form as it moved closer toward him. He felt as if his heart was going to jump out of his chest as he realized he was being held by another force. Barely conscious now, he struggled with his arm, reaching for the soul stone he wore around his neck; the cold penetrating him as it possessed him. His last thoughts were of Angie and Aidan…