A man named Charles Fort, who died in 1932, spent much of his life studying poltergeist phenomena and similar mysteries. Fort wrote four fat books which so far I’ve only skimmed. They’re full of newspaper accounts of strange things like the sudden appearance of several young crocodiles on English farms in the middle of the nineteenth century, and rainstorms in which the earth was pelted with snakes, frogs, blood, or stones. He collected clippings describing instances of coal-heaps and houses and even human beings suddenly and spontaneously bursting into flame. Luminous objects sailing through the sky. Invisible hands that mutilate animals and people. “Phantom bullets” shattering the windows of houses. Inexplicable disappearances of human beings, and equally inexplicable reappearances far away. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I gather that Fort believed that most of these phenomena were the work of beings from interplanetary space who meddle in events on our world for their own amusement. But he couldn’t explain away everything like that. Poltergeists in particular didn’t fit into his bogeymen-from-space fantasy, and so, he wrote, “Therefore I regard poltergeists as evil or false or discordant or absurd…” Still, he said, “I don’t care to deny poltergeists, because I suspect that later, when we’re more enlightened, or when we widen the range of our credulities, or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is called knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they’ll be as reasonable as trees.”
I like Fort. He was eccentric and probably very gullible, but he wasn’t foolish or crazy. I don’t think he’s right about beings from interplanetary space, but I admire his attitude toward the inexplicable.
Most of the poltergeist cases on record are frauds. They’ve been exposed by experts. There was the 1944 episode in Wild Plum, North Dakota, in which lumps of burning coal began to jump out of a bucket in the one-room schoolhouse of Mrs. Pauline Rebel. Papers caught fire on the pupils’ desks and charred spots appeared on the curtains. The class dictionary moved around of its own accord. There was talk in town of demonic forces. A few days later, after an assistant state attorney general had begun interrogating people, four of Mrs. Rebel’s pupils confessed that they had been tossing the coal around to terrorize their teacher. They’d done most of the dirty work while her back was turned or when she had had her glasses off. A prank. A hoax. Some people would tell you that all poltergeist stories are equally phony. I’m here to testify that they aren’t.
One pattern is consistent in all genuine poltergeist incidents: an adolescent is invariably involved, or a child on the edge of adolescence. This is the “naughty child” theory of poltergeists, first put forth by Frank Podmore in 1890 in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. (See, I’ve done my homework very thoroughly.) The child is usually unhappy, customarily over sexual matters, and suffers either from a sense of not being wanted or from frustration, or both. There are no statistics on the matter, but the lore indicates that teenagers involved in poltergeist activity are customarily virgins.
The 1874 Clarke case, then, becomes the work of the adolescent daughter, who—I would guess—had a yen for Mr. Bayley. The multitude of cases cited by Fort, most of them dating from the nineteenth century, show a bunch of poltergeist kids flinging stuff around in a sexually repressed era. That seething energy had to go somewhere. I discovered my own poltering power while in an acute state of palpitating lust for Cindy Klein, who wasn’t having any part of me. Especially that part. But instead of exploding from the sheer force of my bottled -up yearnings I suddenly found a way of channeling all that drive outward. And pushed…
Fort again: “Wherein children are atavistic, they may be in rapport with forces that most human beings have outgrown.” Atavism: a strange recurrence to the primitive past. Perhaps in Neanderthal times we were all poltergeists, but most of us lost it over the millennia. But see Fort, also: “There are of course other explanations of the ‘occult power’ of children. One is that children, instead of being atavistic, may occasionally be far in advance of adults, foreshadowing coming human powers, because their minds are not stifled by conventions. After that, they go to school and lose their superiority. Few boy-prodigies have survived an education.”
I feel reassured, knowing I’m just a statistic in a long-established pattern of paranormal behavior. Nobody likes to think he’s a freak, even when he is a freak. Here I am, virginal, awkward, owlish, quirky, precocious, edgy, uncertain, timid, clever, solemn, socially inept, stumbling through all the standard problems of the immediately post-pubescent years. I have pimples and wet dreams and the sort of fine fuzz that isn’t worth shaving, only I shave it anyway. Cindy Klein thinks I’m silly and disgusting. And I’ve got this hot core of fury and frustration in my gut, which is my great curse and my great supremacy. I’m a poltergeist, man. Go on, give me a hard time, make fun of me, call me silly and disgusting. The next time I may not just knock you on your ass. I might heave you all the way to Pluto.
An unavoidable humiliating encounter with Cindy today. At lunchtime I go into Schindler’s for my usual bacon-lettuce -tomato; I take a seat in one of the back booths and open a book and someone says, “Harry,” and there she is at the booth just opposite, with three of her friends. What do I do? Get up and run out? Poltergeist her into the next county? Already I feel the power twitching in me. Mrs. Schindler brings me my sandwich. I’m stuck. I can’t bear to be here. I hand her the money and mutter, “Just remembered, got to make a phone call.” Sandwich in hand, I start to leave, giving Cindy a foolish hot-cheeked grin as I go by. She’s looking at me fiercely. Those deep green eyes of hers terrify me.
“Wait,” she says. “Can I ask you something?”
She slides out of her booth and blocks the aisle of the luncheonette. She’s nearly as tall as I am, and I’m tall. My knees are shaking. God in heaven, Cindy, don’t trap me like this, I’m not responsible for what I might do.
She says in a low voice, “Yesterday in Bio, when that chart hit the blackboard. You did that, didn’t you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You made it jump across the room.”
“That’s impossible,” I mumble. “What do you think I am, a magician?”
“I don’t know. And Saturday night, that dumb scene outside my house—”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“I would. How did you do that to me, Harry? Where did you learn the trick?”
“Trick? Look, Cindy, I’ve absolutely got to go.”
“You pushed me over. You just looked at me and I felt a push.”
“You tripped,” I say. “You just fell down.”
She laughs. Right now she seems about nineteen years old and I feel about nine years old. “Don’t put me on,” she says, her voice a deep sophisticated drawl. Her girlfriends are peering at us, trying to overhear. “Listen, this interests me. I’m involved. I want to know how you do that stuff.”
“There isn’t any stuff,” I tell her, and suddenly I know I have to escape. I give her the tiniest push, not touching her, of course, just a wee mental nudge, and she feels it and gives ground, and I rush miserably past her, cramming my sandwich into my mouth. I flee the store. At the door I look back and see her smiling, waving to me, telling me to come back.
I have a rich fantasy life. Sometimes I’m a movie star, twenty- two years old with a palace in the Hollywood hills, and I give parties that Peter Fonda and Dustin Hoffman and Julie Christie and Faye Dunaway come to, and we all turn on and get naked and swim in my pool and afterward I make it with five or six starlets all at once. Sometimes I’m a famous novelist, author of the book that really gets it together and speaks for My Generation, and I stand around in Brentano’s in a glittering science-fiction costume signing thousands of autographs, and afterward I go to my penthouse high over First Avenue and make it with a dazzling young lady editor. Sometimes I’m a great scientist, four years out of Harvard Medical School and already acclaimed for my pioneering research in genetic reprogramming of unborn children, and when the phone rings
to notify me of my Nobel Prize I’m just about to reach my third climax of the evening with a celebrated Metropolitan Opera soprano who wants me to design a son for her who’ll eclipse Caruso. And sometimes—
But why go on? That’s all fantasy. Fantasy is dumb because it encourages you to live a self-deluding life, instead of coming to grips with reality. Consider reality, Harry. Consider the genuine article that is Harry Blaufeld. The genuine article is something pimply and ungainly and naive, something that shrieks with every molecule of his skinny body that he’s not quite fifteen and has never made it with a girl and doesn’t know how to go about it and is terribly afraid that he never will. Mix equal parts of desire and self-pity. And a dash of incompetence and a dollop of insecurity. Season lightly with extrasensory powers. You’re a long way from the Hollywood hills, boy.
Is there some way I can harness my gift for the good of mankind? What if all these ghastly power plants, belching black smoke into the atmosphere, could be shut down forever, and humanity’s electrical needs were met by a trained corps of youthful poltergeists, volunteers living a monastic life and using their sizzling sexual tensions as the fuel that keeps the turbines spinning? Or perhaps NASA wants a poltergeist-driven spaceship. There I am, lean and bronzed and jaunty, a handsome figure in my white astronaut suit, taking my seat in the command capsule of the Mars One. T minus thirty seconds and counting. An anxious world awaits the big moment. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Lift-off. And I grin my world-famous grin and coolly summon my power and open the mental throttle and push, and the mighty vessel rises, hovering serenely a moment above the launching pad, rises and climbs, slicing like a giant glittering needle through the ice-blue Florida sky, soaring up and away on man’s first voyage to the red planet…
Another experiment is called for. I’ll try to send a beer can to the moon. If I can do that, I should be able to send a spaceship. A simple Newtonian process, a matter of attaining escape velocity; and I don’t think thrust is likely to be a determining quantitative function. A push is a push is a push, and so far I haven’t noticed limitations of mass, so if I can get it up with a beer can, I ought to succeed in throwing anything of any mass into space. I think. Anyway, I raid the family garbage and go outside clutching a crumpled Schlitz container. A mild misty night; the moon isn’t visible. No matter. I place the can on the ground and contemplate it. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Lift-off. I grin my world-famous grin. I coolly summon my power and open the mental throttle. Push. Yes, the beer can rises. Hovering serenely a moment above the pavement. Rises and climbs, end over end, slicing like a crumpled beer can through the muggy air. Up. Up. Into the darkness. Long after it disappears, I continue to push. Am I still in contact? Does it still climb? I have no way of telling. I lack the proper tracking stations. Perhaps it does travel on and on through the lonely void, on a perfect lunar trajectory. Or maybe it has already tumbled down, a block away, skulling some hapless cop. I shot a beer can into the air, it fell to earth I know not where. Shrugging, I go back into the house. So much for my career as a spaceman. Blaufeld, you’ve pulled off another dumb fantasy. Blaufeld, how can you stand being such a silly putz?
Clickety-clack. Four in the morning, Sara’s just coming in from her date. Here I am lying awake like a worried parent. Notice that the parents themselves don’t worry: they’re fast asleep, I bet, giving no damns about the hours their daughter keeps. Whereas I brood. She got laid again tonight, no doubt of it. Possibly twice. Grimly I try to reconstruct the event in my imagination. The positions, the sounds of flesh against flesh, the panting and moaning. How often has she done it now? A hundred times? Three hundred? She’s been doing it at least since she was sixteen. I’m sure of that. For girls it’s so much easier; they don’t need to chase and coax, all they have to do is say yes. Sara says yes a lot. Before Jimmy the Greek there was Greasy Kid Stuff, and before him there was the Spade Wonder, and before him…
Out there tonight in this city there are three million people at the very minimum who just got laid. I detest adults and their easy screwing. They devalue it by doing it so much. They just have to roll over and grab some meat, and away they go, in and out, oooh oooh oooh ahhh. Christ, how boring it must get! If they could only look at it from the point of view of a frustrated adolescent again. The hungry virgin, on the outside peering in. Excluded from the world of screwing. Feeling that delicious sweet tension of wanting and not knowing how to get. The fiery knot of longing, sitting like a ravenous tapeworm in my belly, devouring my soul. I magnify sex. I exalt it. I multiply its wonders. It’ll never live up to my anticipations. But I love the tension of anticipating and speculating and not getting. In fact, I think sometimes I’d like to spend my whole life on the edge of the blade, looking forward always to being deflowered but never quite taking the steps that would bring it about. A dynamic stasis, sustaining and enhancing my special power. Harry Blaufeld, virgin and poltergeist. Why not? Anybody at all can screw. Idiots, morons, bores, uglies. Everybody does it. There’s magic in renunciation. I f I keep myself aloof, pure, unique…
Push…
I do my little poltergeisty numbers. I stack and restack my textbooks without leaving my bed. I move my shirt from the floor to the back of the chair. I turn the chair around to face the wall. Push… push…push…
Water running in the john. Sara’s washing up. What’s it like, Sara? How does it feel when he puts it in you? We don’t talk much, you and I. You think I’m a child; you patronize me, you give me cute winks, your voice goes up half an octave. Do you wink at Jimmy the Greek like that? Like hell. And you talk husky contralto to him. Sit down and talk to me some time, Sis. I’m teetering on the brink of manhood. Guide me out of my virginity. Tell me what girls like guys to say to them. Sure. You won’t tell me shit, Sara. You want me to stay your baby brother forever, because that enhances your own sense of being grown up. And you screw and screw and screw, you and Jimmy the Greek, and you don’t even understand the mystical significance of the act of intercourse. To you it’s just good sweaty fun, like going bowling. Right? Right? Oh, you miserable bitch! Screw you, Sara!
A shriek from the bathroom. Christ, what have I done now? I better go see.
Sara, naked, kneels on the cold tiles. Her head is in the bathtub and she’s clinging with both hands to the bathtub’s rim and she’s shaking violently.
“You okay?” I ask. “What happened?”
“Like a kick in the back,” she says hoarsely. “I was at the sink, washing my face, and I turned around and something hit me like a kick in the back and knocked me halfway across the room.”
“You okay, though? You aren’t hurt?”
“Help me up.”
She’s upset but not injured. She’s so upset that she forgets that she’s naked, and without putting on her robe she cuddles up against me, trembling. She seems small and fragile and scared. I stroke her bare back where I imagine she felt the blow. Also I sneak a look at her nipples, just to see if they’re still standing up after her date with Jimmy the Greek. They aren’t. I soothe her with my fingers. I feel very manly and protective, even if it’s only my cruddy dumb sister I’m protecting.
“What could have happened?” she asks. “You weren’t pulling any tricks, were you?”
“I was in bed,” I say, totally sincere.
“A lot of funny things been going on around this house lately,” she says.
Cindy, catching me in the hallway between Geometry and Spanish: “How come you never call me any more?”
“Been busy.”
“Busy how?”
“Busy.”
“I guess you must be,” she says. “Looks to me like you haven’t slept in a week. What’s her name?”
“Her? No her. I’ve just been busy.” I try to escape. Must I push her again? “A research project.”
“You could take some time out for relaxing. You should keep in touch with old friends.”
“Friends? What kind of friend are you? You said I was silly. You said I was disgusting. R
emember, Cindy?”
“The emotions of the moment. I was off balance. I mean, psychologically. Look, let’s talk about all this some time, Harry. Some time soon.”
“Maybe.”
“If you’re not doing anything Saturday night—”
I look at her in astonishment. She’s actually asking me for a date! Why is she pursuing me? What does she want from me? Is she itching for another chance to humiliate me? Silly and disgusting, disgusting and silly. I look at my watch and quirk up my lips. Time to move along.
“I’m not sure,” I tell her. “I may have some work to do.”
“ Work?”
“Research,” I say. “I’ll let you know.”
A night of happy experiments. I unscrew a light bulb, float it from one side of my room to the other, return it to the fixture, and efficiently screw it back in. Precision control. I go up to the roof and launch another beer can to the moon, only this time I loft it a thousand feet, bring it back, kick it up even higher, bring it back, send it off a third time with a tremendous accumulated kinetic energy, and I have no doubt it’ll cleave through space. I pick up trash in the street from a hundred yards away and throw it in the trash basket. Lastly—most scary of all—I polt myself. I levitate a little, lifting myself five feet into the air. That’s as high as I dare go. (What if I lose the power and fall?) If I had the courage, I could fly. I can do anything. Give me the right fulcrum and I’ll move the world. O, potentia! What a fantastic trip this is!
Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three Page 30
