Poltergeist II - The Other Side

by James Kahn

  Taylor continued staring at the sky.

  Steve said, “See somethin’?”

  “No,” said Taylor. He wasn’t looking to see; he was looking to feel.

  “Well, uh . . . what’re you doin’, then?”

  “Seeking power,” said Taylor.

  Steve held his bottle high, letting the starlight glitter through its golden shadows. “Me, too,” he said, and took another long swallow. The worm at the bottom of the bottle bounced along the undercurrents. “They say a real man drinks to the last drop—only a chicken’s afraid of swallowing the worm.”

  “It is a strange measure of cowardice and bravery, I think.”

  “Yeah, well—I save the worm for breakfast.” He tried to impress the Indian with false bravado. “Hair of the dog that bit ya, I always say.” He smiled what he supposed was a brash smile and chugged again at the bottle in what he supposed was a devil-may-care manner.

  Taylor smiled sadly at him. “You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don’t you?”

  Steve was taken off guard. He first impulse was to wisecrack; but something about the stars and Taylor’s voice and the liquor and the strain made him feel suddenly melancholy and open to his own truths. “Yeah, I do, sorta,” he said softly to the ground.

  “Since the day you were born, one way or another, someone has been doing something to you.”

  Now his feelings suddenly flip-flopped, and he became annoyed at this dime-store Indian for making him feel weak. “Hey, I don’t know about that,” he protested.

  “And they have been doing something to you against your will. And by now you’re helpless, like a leaf in the wind.”

  Steve was confused. It was the tequila making him sluggish. “Hey, Chief—why don’t you say what’s on your mind so I can understand it.”

  “You understand,” Taylor replied with the patience of the earth. “No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to change that.” He locked eyes with Steve in order to make him hear. “I am a warrior. A warrior would rather be defeated and die than act against his nature. You are here with me because you want to be here. You should assume full responsibility.”

  “Responsibility for what?” The Indian was beginning to sound like his wife.

  “Everything in your world,” said Taylor. “Everything. Your thoughts, your children, your drinking, your house, this tree, this table, the stars—it’s all alive and part of you, and you are part of it. Part of the pattern.”

  “Okay, I’m responsible for the stars,” Steve said glibly. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Ceremonies help.” Taylor spoke with a knowledgeable flatness, but he was getting peeved by this fool’s disrespect.

  “Ceremonies,” said Steve. “I gotta say I’m not much into ceremonies.”

  “You are irresponsible, then,” Taylor reprimanded. “Warriors and Wise Ones know their own natures, which are contained in the nature of all things, and they perform ceremonies to preserve this order.”

  Steve was feeling sullen in the shadow of this pompous, imperious Indian. He raised his bottle slightly. “I do okay with this little ceremony. Maybe you oughta stop yours and try mine.”

  Taylor sighed. “If the ceremonies stopped, the world would come to an end.”

  Robbie was in his room practicing sitting cross-legged when Carol Anne entered to get her toy phone and guardian angel doll, Katrina, to take downstairs to the makeshift collective bedroom Diane was setting up in the den.

  “Supposed to come downstairs to sleep now,” Carol Anne said to him on her way out the door. When he ignored her, she paused and said, “Robbie . . .”

  “From now on, call me Iron Jaw,” he ordered.

  “Robbie, come on,” she said, trying to sound like Mom. “And Mom says don’t forget to clean your braces.”

  “Yeah, okay, okay.” He glowered at her.

  “Don’t ‘okay’ me,” she said in a snit, leaving the room.

  Robbie gave her a parting shot—“You little pest”—and went into the bathroom. He walked past the mirror over the sink, sticking his head out the door to make certain Carol Anne wasn’t around.

  And in that moment a dozen ghoulish faces stared out at him from the depths of the mirror.

  But when he turned back to the looking glass, the faces were gone.

  He opened his mouth at his own reflection, grimacing at his braces, picking at them here and there, his face inches from the glass. That’s when he saw, in the mirror, the bony, rotting hand come up behind him and grab for his shoulder.

  He yelled as he whirled . . . and Carol Anne jumped back; it was only she standing behind him.

  “Don’t do that, jerko!” he snapped at her. She was really being a royal pain.

  “I didn’t do anything, tinsel-teeth!” she retorted. She was still scared from his turning on her so fast. “Anyway, Mom says you’re supposed to hurry up.”

  Robbie just gave her a look, so she left again and went downstairs.

  Downstairs it was like a sleepover—pillows and blankets on the floor, paper plates on the furniture.

  Taylor wanted them all to sleep down here; Carol Anne was glad.

  Diane tucked her in next to the couch, right beside Katrina, and kissed her good night.

  “Good night, sweetheart.”

  “G’night, Mom.”

  “Where’s Robbie?”

  She shrugged with supreme disinterest. “He’s still playing up in the bathroom. Says he’s coming.” She decided to do Robbie a favor and not tell Mom about him wanting to be called Iron Jaw. “Kiss Katrina, too.” Diane kissed the doll good night. “Good night, girls.”

  “Taylor says Katrina is really Kachina, and that’s why she’ll protect me, because Kachina is a spirit from the sky, and I have my own special one, and this is her.”

  “Honey, I’m sure Taylor means well, and I know this is your special doll, but just don’t get carried away, okay?”

  “Carried away?” Carol Anne looked worried.

  “No . . . no . . . that was a bad choice of words. What I mean is . . . Katrina’s a nice name, but that’s all.”

  “Kachina, Mom. This is her.”

  “This is she,” Diane corrected.

  “Yeah!” Carol Anne was glad her mother finally got it

  Steve entered from the garden, bottle in hand, staring at Taylor, who still sat in the middle of the yard, watching the heavens.

  Diane yelled upstairs. “Robbie—brush - your - teeth -and- get - down - here in - five - minutes—it’s - time - for - bed - and - I’m - not - going - to - say - it again!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” he shouted back from his room, as if to say it should have been obvious to anyone but a certified mother that he was on the very verge of the way down.

  Suddenly Carol Anne sat up, looked at her toy phone as if it had just rung, and picked up the receiver.

  Diane looked at her suspiciously. “Now don’t you start, young lady, just because your brother . . .”

  Carol Anne wasn’t listening to her mother, though. She was listening to the phone. “Okay,” she said tentatively into the mouthpiece, then held the receiver out at arms’s length toward her father. “Dad . . .” she began.

  Steve turned toward her.

  Diane turned toward her.

  In the backyard, Taylor turned toward her—for he’d heard something, too.

  Carol Anne looked at her father with a scared and curious tilt of the head. “It’s for you,” she said.

  Steve smiled and took the phone from her, eager to play a brief child’s game with his daughter before bedtime. “Hello . . .” he said gaily.

  There was a moment of silence, and then a voice blasted out so loudly—from the phone, from the very substance of the house—that a neighbor two doors down glanced out his window and hoped this wasn’t the beginning of a raucous party.

  It was no party, though.

  The voice bellowed: “I . . . am . . . not . . . dead!�
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  CHAPTER 4

  Steve slammed the phone down on its hook; Carol Anne began to cry; and Diane held her, comforted her. Taylor, in the garden, chanted.

  Only Robbie didn’t hear the voice. He was up in the bathroom, with the door to the hallway shut. And the voice didn’t want to be heard in the bathroom.

  Robbie was staring in the mirror, fiddling with his braces, trying to cover them with his finger, to see what he might look like without the hardware, when for no apparent reason the door from the bathroom to his bedroom slammed shut.

  Couldn’t have been the wind; he knew he’d closed the windows. Couldn’t have been Carol Anne; she was downstairs.

  He suddenly wished he had his Louisville Slugger Hopi Snake Priest baseball bat with him, but it was in his bedroom, and the door to that room was now closed, as was the door to the hall.

  He felt something in his mouth. He looked into the mirror again.

  His braces were coming alive.

  Alive and writhing.

  And before he could move, he watched them send steely tendrils from his teeth out of his mouth, to spread onto his face—clutching his jaws together.

  He gasped in horror, tried to scream, but all that came out was a muted squeal.

  He tried to open the door to the hall, but it wouldn’t open.

  He tried to open his mouth, but it was clamped even more tightly shut.

  He looked in the mirror again. The braces were wrapping around the back of his head like iron roots.

  He ripped at them, tore his nails, screamed a muffled scream.

  Steve and Diane heard it.

  Anguished beyond expression, they raced up the stairs, down the hall to the closed bathroom door—to Robbie’s shrill whining.

  “We’re coming, Robbie!” shouted Diane.

  Steve tried the door. It wouldn’t open.

  “Steven!” Diane wailed.

  He slammed his shoulder into the door. And again. And again.

  Diane lent her weight to it. Robbie’s screams were getting softer.

  Steve was shaking from the exertion, but he pushed his body still harder against the wood. He would not lose his son the way he’d almost lost his daughter—by God, he would not.

  And once more, harder . . . and the door splintered open, tumbling Steve and Diane into the bathroom.

  What they saw momentarily stopped them, for it was even more bizarre than it was horrible.

  For there was Robbie, pinned to the ceiling, nearly strangulating and completely enmeshed by a mass of curling, twisting wires. Like a crawling vine of braces.

  One of his eyes was still visible through the tangle—wild, gaping—and one arm was still free. He reached down toward his stunned parents, but was caught short as a tentacle of wires tightened around his throat.

  Steve lunged for his son’s outstretched hand, but the meshwork latched onto the man’s wrist, bodily lifting him from the floor. It felt electric where it touched his skin, but also putrid and somehow . . . muscular. He’d never been grabbed by anything so strong.

  “Get Taylor!” he shouted to Diane. If nothing else, the Indian was big—bigger than Steve—and clearly quite strong. Maybe the two of them, pulling . . .

  Diane ran to the top of the stairs and called down frantically. “Taylor! Help us! For God’s sake, hurry! Please!!”

  No response. She ran down the stairs—far enough to see down. What she saw was Taylor sitting calmly, stoically, in the den, unmoving, with Carol Anne in his lap. Carol Anne was whimpering. Taylor seemed to be ignoring both the girl’s cries and Diane’s pleas.

  Diane raced back up to the bathroom to find Steve and Robbie both inextricably entwined in the filamentous net, as if some alien spider had rolled them into its web.

  Not only that; cobralike, a cable of wires was beginning to grope toward the electrical outlet.

  At that moment the handles blew off the faucets, sending geysers of water over the family, the room, and the maniac braces, drenching everything, making electrical conductivity immediate, certain, and lethal.

  “Taylor!” screamed Diane. But then it was too late.

  The thing shoved one of its frayed prongs into the outlet.

  There was a flurry of sparks—blue, white, yellow—and a shock wave that seemed to shake the room, shake the air, shake their bones to the marrow and deeper.

  And then it was gone—the wire mesh, the writhing tentacles—and the three of them were lying soaking wet on the floor.

  There was a moment of demented laughter, an insane noise, the sound of babies shrieking . . . and then that, too, was gone. And it was all over.

  For the time being.

  Robbie started to cry. He was feeling scared and unnaturally mortal for one so young; he was afraid he’d let everyone down as well. Iron Jaw had backfired.

  Steve hugged him, and Diane, too. And then they went downstairs to confront Taylor.

  “Where the hell were you?” Steve almost spat in his face as Diane took Carol Anne into her arms and hugged her as close as possible. “We’re not safe here!” Steve continued. “My son almost died up there, while you . . . just sat here.” He almost took a shot at the big phony, sitting there so smug . . .

  “Steve . . .” Diane sensed the imminent explosion and tried to calm him.

  “What,” whispered Steve. He was furious, he was terrified, he wanted to hit something, anything . . .

  Taylor spoke, though—evenly, yet strongly: “I was protecting the child. It was she the thing was after—not your son, or your wife, or you.”

  Steve, totally frustrated and knowing suddenly that what Taylor said was true—the Indian had, in fact, saved Carol Anne from the same kind of horrible disappearance she’d suffered four years ago—sat down hard in an overstuffed chair and shouted, nearly crying, “What does this thing want from us!?”

  He was all at once thrown out of the chair and across the room. The cushions he’d been sitting on expanded and contracted as if they were breathing; then there was the decayed laugh again that seemed to come from everywhere; and then, once more, silence.

  Carol Anne and Robbie both began to cry. Diane drew them into her arms, took them to the farthest corner, and put them to sleep.

  Later, Diane stepped out into the backyard for some air. It was chilly, as is the way with desert places at night, so she wrapped her arms around herself as she stared up at the sky.

  The constellation Orion was there—the Hunter, poised over the house; protectively, Diane hoped. How many eons had this star man been waiting there? And for this night, perhaps? To plunge his starry knife into the heart of Diane’s foes?

  She smiled at the fanciful turn of her thoughts—Taylor’s mysticism was beginning to get to her. In fact, Taylor himself . . . was that him? “Taylor?” she said. There’d been a noise behind her. She turned.

  Nothing there.

  Not even the dog, or a night bird. Nothing. It gave her an uneasy feeling.

  “Steven?” she said a bit louder. He played little tricks on her like this sometimes to scare her.

  But he wouldn’t tonight.

  “Taylor?” she whispered again.

  The noise came once more, this time obviously low, near the ground. She looked down just as the hand grabbed her ankle.

  It was a moldering hand, the flesh decayed on the bone, sticking straight up out of the earth, holding viciously on to her lower leg. She pulled back hard, reflexively, and the hand lost its grip as some of its decayed skin was torn loose.

  But suddenly two more hands shot up out of the ground, one grabbing her foot, another her calf. And the first gripped her ankle once more.

  She squirmed, gasping, trying to wriggle free, but it was happening so fast—four more hands now, all grave-rotten, grasping both her legs in the soft, loose dirt.

  And they started pulling her down.

  Underground.

  A little yelp escaped her lips. Her energy wasn’t focused on screaming, though—simply on trying to break fr
ee. But in a second she’d sunk to her knees in the churning soil, and a second after that she was up to her waist.

  It was like quicksand, but worse. And the deeper she was pulled, the more hands she felt on her—on her legs, her hips, her belt, her wrists—pulling her deeper still, pawing at her, tearing at her, wrapping around her and squeezing the air out of her so she couldn’t scream.

  Up to her chest. Hands latched on to her shoulders.

  Up to her neck.

  She looked up for one last glimpse of Orion—he hadn’t moved a muscle—and felt fingers grabbing her jaw, her hair, the top of her head . . .

  And she was gone; sucked into the earth.

  And then the ground sewed back together above her, every blade of grass in place. So there wasn’t the slightest sign anything had just happened, except for Diane’s muffled chokings, now a few feet down.

  Diane sat up with a wrenching gasp on the floor of the den as Steve shook her awake.

  “Diane . . . Diane . . . you were just having a dream. It’s okay now,” he was saying. “You’re okay. It’s all over now.”

  She let her head rest on his shoulder, let herself wake up slowly, though she knew with certainty it wasn’t just a dream. And far from being all over . . . it was just beginning.

  Still later, in hushed tones, Taylor discussed the situation with the people whose home he’d made it his pledge to guard.

  Motioning to Carol Anne, now finally sleeping, he said to Diane, “He feels she belongs to him.”

  “Why?” rasped Diane. Why this innocent child, who’d never harmed a soul?

  “I’m not sure,” Taylor answered, “but he is used to getting what he wants.”

  “Is he a man?” Steve wanted to know. “Or a beast?” Tangina had called him the Beast, though Steve had never understood exactly what that meant.

  “He is a man filled with the demon, lost in a dimension that surrounds our world.” Taylor spoke as explicitly as possible, describing concepts with words—an endeavor that worked only approximately, at best. “This entity believes that our world and his are the same. But his world is . . . a continuing nightmare. It is a land where the dead live. A land we may reach through our nightmares.”