Poltergeist

by James Kahn

  FROM A DIMENSION BEYOND THE LIVING,

  A TERROR TO SCARE YOU TO DEATH

  POLTERGEIST

  From the imageless eye of the TV set, from the flickering snowy light, it calls to Carol Anne, six years old and innocent.

  From beyond the world of the living, it reaches out in unholy anger, ripping her from the arms of her family into the thrall of the POLTERGEIST.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  A TOBE HOOPER Film

  A STEVEN SPIELBERG Production

  POLTERGEIST

  JOBETH WILLIAMS • CRAIG T. NELSON

  BEATRICE STRAIGHT

  Music by JERRY GOLDSMITH

  Story by STEVEN SPIELBERG

  Screenplay by STEVEN SPIELBERG,

  MICHAEL GRAIS & MARK VICTOR

  Directed by TOBE HOOPER

  Produced by STEVEN SPIELBERG and

  FRANK MARSHALL

  Copyright © 1982 by Amblin’ Enterprises Inc.

  All rights reserved

  Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockerfeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10019

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing; June 1st, 1982

  ISBN 0-446-30222-8

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  “POLTERGEIST:

  A mischievous entity that makes noises, throws objects, causes fires . . . usually occurs in the immediate vicinity of some young person. It is as if this person is haunted or persecuted by some spirit . . .”

  —from The New Steinerbooks Dictionary of the Paranormal

  POLTERGEIST:

  Force from another world, whirling a path of destruction through a peaceful family, wrenching from their midst a small girl, wreaking the vengeance of the dead against the living.

  POLTERGEIST:

  Can anyone ever still the restless animus, save those upon whom it vents its awesome wrath, and rescue the child who is its prey?

  “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

  —Ralph Hodgson

  CHAPTER 1

  “. . . O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

  “This is KTCV, Cuesta Verde Television, ending scheduled broadcast of our programming day. Please join us again at six-thirty for ‘Traffic Watch,’ and until then, have a pleasant Good Morning.”

  The American flag suddenly disappeared from the screen and was instantly replaced by the hiss of static snow shedding an eerie bluish light across the living room. Steve Freeling slept soundly in his recliner, fifteen feet from the set, lot and parcel maps strewn on the floor around him, lease contracts covering his lap. Except for the white noise of the television, the house was dark and quiet.

  Upstairs in the large front bedroom, Steve’s wife Diane curled peacefully around her pillow, undisturbed by dream or doubt. The lace curtains blew gently at the open window, on the quiet nights respiration. Outside, it was autumn, a shadow Of change in the air.

  Down the hall from Diane was Dana’s room. Dana was fifteen, cute, dark haired, snoring, her hand loosely slumped over her own personal telephone. Jeans in a pile by the bed, homework in a pile on the chair, diary stuffed under the mattress, lip gloss poised and waiting on the vanity. She slept like an unself-conscious heiress.

  Next to the master bedroom was the children’s room. Robbie, seven, slept a fitful sleep, wrapped arm-in-paw with his terry-cloth bear. The floor was covered with a profusion of toys, games, clothes, crayons, and the like—the joyous clutter of the very young. A stuffed clown doll sat lopsided in the rocking chair. Across the room, in a matching imitation frontier bed, slept Robbie’s five-year-old sister, Carol Anne. At a few minutes past two-thirty in the morning, Carol Anne opened her eyes.

  Without a sound she sat up in bed, swung her legs to the floor, padded out of the room and down the hall to the top of the stairs. Her eyes were open, but without expression—they could as easily have been looking inward as out. Her small legs took her carefully down the steps in the darkness, past the front door, into the living room where her father slumped in his chair.

  The television filled the room with its characteristic glow, almost blue, almost white; its long continuous sigh awaiting the morning’s transmissions. Carol Anne acted as if she didn’t see her slumbering father. She walked past him without changing the direction of her gaze, walked up to the eye of the television, stared into its depths, touched its face with her tiny hand.

  “Hello,” she whispered. “Who are you?”

  Upstairs, Diane sat bolt upright. She was suddenly cold, and wide awake. Steve wasn’t beside her. She got up quickly, threw a robe on, closed the window, ran downstairs. As soon as she entered, Steve woke up, spilling his papers to the floor. They looked at each other, and then at Carol Anne.

  The little girl’s nose was pressed to the static-filled tube; her gaze tracked the dancing lights as if they were runes flashing a secret message: for her eyes only.

  “Where are you?” she sang. “Come closer, I want to see you.”

  Diane stared bleakly at her daughter, and shivered.

  Cuesta Verde Estates was located sixty-seven miles northeast of San Clemente, and spanned over three hundred acres of real estate. Of course, it wasn’t all developed yet—it was still a young community—but it was a sound community; it would grow.

  Steve Freeling was a major force in that growth. His family had been the first to move into Cuesta Verde, when Robbie was just an infant. The first to move in, the first to plant grass. The land had been barren at the beginning, miles of rolling hills, mostly scrubland. They piped water in, though, planted bushes and saplings, set down roots. Envisioned shopping centers. Real suburban pioneers.

  Steve was also the Number One salesman of the entire development. It was easy for him—he believed in this place, believed in this life. He had a home, on a piece of land; he had a family, a job, a future. A vision. He was content with all the world.

  Here was his vision—it surrounded him like a sweet dream on this November Sunday afternoon, as it did every Sunday:

  Emerson, the neighbor, was mowing his lawn; Emerson’s wife, Elaine, lay supine, glistening on their sun deck, rubbing the cellulite from her thighs with coconut oil; Delaney, the neighbor on the other side, was positioning his chair in preparation for watching the Rams wipe the Raiders all over the tube on the front porch; three teens played Frisbee in the middle of the street, as Steve’s golden retriever, E. Buzz, chased the flying saucer from hand to hand; barbecue smoke filtered across the sun; and the bright air smelled crisp.

  Steve took this all in at a glance, unconsciously, as he cut back his roses—Sunday was the day he tended the garden—and felt a tremendous sense of well-being. He knew who he was, what life was about. He had it all down.

  At thirty-seven, he was a large, handsome man—strapping, even—though he’d begun to develop a well-fed American paunch, and his hairline was higher than he might have liked. He had a bad knee from playing college ball. Only the week before, his doctor had told him his diet was simply terrible. Steve had replied that was no surprise, so was Diane’s cooking; whereupon Diane had kicked him under the table with jocular but unexpected vehemence—inadvertently in the bad knee. He’d been limping for a week now, with sometimes theatric exaggeration in Diane’s presence—but that was only a tease, and she knew it. For Steve was the gentlest of men; he loved his family dearly.

  Diane glimpsed him now from the bedroom window as she straightened up in there. She called out to him not to trim the roses back too much, but he didn’t hear her because of the noise from Emerson’s lawnmower; she decided it wasn’t worth yelling louder. So she paused, just to watch him a moment, then returned to the business at hand.

  Where Steve was big, Diane was slight.
Wispy auburn hair, delicate fingers—even her arms seemed fragile. Yet she was by far the feistier of the two. In an instant, her pixie face could flush with blood, her eyes focused with will and fire—and then nothing could dissuade her from her purpose. Steve never tried to stand up to this force.

  She finished up in the bedroom and moved into the kids’ room, humming softly to herself. Robbie’s eighth birthday party was this afternoon; she had to get the whole house ready for the onslaught. She made the beds, shuffled most of the toys off the middle of the floor, sat Robbie’s big stuffed clown doll up in his rocking chair, put away the clothes, went to feed the parakeet . . . and found the bird dead on the bottom of its cage.

  “Oh, Tweetie, poor little twit,” she addressed the small creature, half scolding, half sad. She reached into the cage, pulled the bird out, carried it into the bathroom, and held it ceremoniously over the open toilet. “Just like the Vikings, Tweetie—carried out to sea.”

  “What are you doing to Tweetie?” Carol Anne asked curiously. She stood in the doorway, watching her mother.

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t see you there. C’mere.”

  Carol Anne joined her mother at the toilet. Diane had special love for her youngest—the child was wise beyond her years, and had a naive fearlessness about life that was enviable.

  “Honey, Tweetie’s dead. He died this morning.”

  “What does that mean, Mommy?”

  “It means . . . he’s sort of sleeping, like this. Only he’ll never wake up.”

  “Like Grampa?”

  “Uh huh, just like Grampa.”

  “Then shouldn’t we bury him? I don’t think he likes the water.”

  Diane smiled. “Let’s bury him in the backyard. Then you can go visit him when you miss him.”

  Carol Anne thought that seemed like a pretty good plan. Her mother helped her find a cigar box full of buttons, which they emptied, then put Tweetie inside, and marched single file out to the backyard in almost formal procession. They decided near the night-blooming jasmine would be best, so it would smell nice for Tweetie. Carol Anne also put half a Twinkie in the box in case he got hungry, and covered him with one of her socks in case it got cold, and included a Polaroid of the whole family, in case Tweetie woke up and got lonely.

  “I know you said they don’t wake up,” Carol Anne said with considered seriousness, almost with secrecy, “but maybe he will.”

  “Maybe so,” Diane agreed. She looked at her child with unmodified love, and kissed her on the forehead.

  They took turns digging the soft black earth with Carol Anne’s beach shovel. When they reached a depth of one foot, they lowered the cigar box, then covered it over.

  Robbie watched this ritual from the top of the old oak tree that gnarled outside his bedroom window. It was one of the few old trees in the whole area, but wouldn’t be getting much older—it was almost dead. Twisted, black, and massive, with only a few green branches still growing near the top. Steve kept meaning to cut it down, but never found the time. Meanwhile, Robbie had appropriated it for his own use, and, as with any self-respecting seven-year-old, that use involved a lot of climbing.

  He’d in fact developed a rather complex relationship with the giant oak. It told him secrets about the earth; he told it about his adventures with pirates. It contained a hidden door to an underground city at times. At other times, it was a great monster god from Jupiter, with wild flame-blackened arms, waiting to be released from its spell, and only Robbie knew the words to free it. It almost always heard Robbie’s thoughts; sometimes the thoughts made the tree angry; sometimes they laughed together.

  Occasionally—as now—the tree was the living mast of an alien ship that sailed slowly beneath the ground. Robbie sat balanced in the crow’s-nest of the highest branches, viewing the journey ahead, the dramas below.

  In the front yard he could see his father puttering in a father-way. That was good. Out back, Mom and Carol Anne were burying a box near the far corner. He would ask Carol Anne about it later—they were probably making an offering to the plant-people, or maybe hiding something they didn’t want Dad to see, or maybe the box was a treasure. He’d ask Carol Anne later.

  Down on the porch, he watched his big sister, Dana, sitting on the floor with two of her girl friends, looking at the pictures in a fan magazine and giggling and whispering and making hand gestures of the sort he knew they shouldn’t be making. He couldn’t understand what they found so interesting in those magazines; it just made Dana mad when he asked.

  Over on the next block, he saw Bill Moone set off a cherry bomb in Murphy’s garbage can, and run behind the fence. Everything stopped for a moment at the explosion, then resumed its measured pace. Murphy came running out, but only shook his head and went back inside.

  Bill Moone would be coming to Robbie’s party later that afternoon—they could laugh secretly about this one together: the baffled expression on old Murphy’s face, the great way a cherry bomb in a trash can sounded just like an M-80 . . . and only Bill and Robbie would know that Bill had done it. Robbie smiled like an astronaut with all systems Go.

  Three blocks away, at the top of the nearest hill, two kids started a skateboard race—in slow motion, at that distance. Robbie lifted his eyes a fraction and peered beyond them, to the horizon. Dark clouds obscured the sky. They looked cold.

  Storm coming in.

  Diane had things pretty much ready for the party by a couple of hours later—crêpe paper hung, tail-less donkey on the wall, favors on the dining room table, virgin cake as a centerpiece. Dana and her friends were recruited to do some of the decorating. The request was met initially with grand protestations from Dana; her girl friends acquiesced easily, however (it wasn’t their brother’s party, after all), so Dana could do little but look martyred and hang crêpe.

  Robbie got ready early—showered, hair combed, clothes neat—so he could devote the extra time to getting things just right: the right toys available, the rest cached away. He had an urgent whispered conference with his mother explaining that Carol Anne would be allowed to join the party only if it could be assured she wouldn’t follow Bill Moone around all the time, bothering him. Diane gave her assurance.

  Before too long the party guests started arriving—some alone, some dropped off by a parent; all cleaned and brushed and bearing brightly wrapped gifts. Several parents stayed: a couple of moms to help Diane orchestrate the chaos; a few dads to watch the football game in the den.

  The game was well into the first quarter by the time the party was underway, though, so some disgruntled fathers were forced to miss one or two key plays during the shuttling of the revelers. Jim Shaw’s father was the last to arrive, carrying two cartons of Michelob Lite and a giant bag of Nacho Doritos.

  “What’d I miss?” Shaw demanded, pulling a beer from the brown paper bag.

  “Sshh!”

  “Haden fumbled!”

  “Sacked!”

  “Oakland’s bringing out Bahr.”

  “Three more! Jesus! I was ahead on points when I left home, now I’m pushing.”

  “Sshhhh!”

  In the next room, the volume of the birthday celebration was rising exponentially. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and clothespin-in-the-bottle established the proper tone of frenzied giddiness, but it wasn’t until musical chairs that the first tears came—Carol Anne’s, when she lost her seat to Robbie in the third go-around.

  Diane decided that meant a critical mass of excitement was being reached, and activity needed to be somewhat diffused. So she started everyone off on the Treasure Hunt. Each person received his own special secret clue, and was turned loose—anywhere on the ground floor, inside or out, Dad’s den excluded. Lots of little treasures, one big prize. They all oohed and aahed as the clues were passed out, and the hunt was on.

  Carol Anne couldn’t read the clues, so she was made Mom’s Special Helper in the kitchen, for which she got her own Special Prize—a Lady Doctor Kit, complete with stethoscope, tongue depressor,
thermometer, hat, and note pad. She spent the next fifteen minutes listening to the hearts of Diane and the other moms, while the furtive skittering of pint-sized treasure-seekers could be heard all over the nether regions of the house, punctuated by an occasional squeal of discovery.

  Carol Anne soon became bored, though, so she meandered unobtrusively into the den, where the other party was going on, and sat in Steve’s lap.

  “Daddy, wanna hear my dream?”

  “Not now, sweetheart, Daddy’s busy watching the game.”

  “What’s Haden think he’s doin’?” raged Shaw.

  “Gettin’ creamed is what.”

  It sounded pretty boring to Carol Anne, so she left, wearing her stethoscope, and headed upstairs to see if Dana wanted to play.

  In the den, the game started getting really exciting.

  “Look at that Dennard run!” Steve marveled.

  “Lester Hayes! Fuckin’ Lester Hayes is there! He’s there! He’s . . .”

  Out of nowhere, the channel changed, all by itself, to “Mister Rogers.” The fans jumped up in shock and dismay.

  Steve ran over to the back window and screamed out: “Tuthill—you asshole!”

  “Turn it back! Quick!” begged Shaw in baffled outrage.

  “Sorry, guys,” Steve muttered, returning to the set. “When my neighbor uses his remote . . . he’s on my same frequency.” He manually turned the channel changer back to football.

  Diane stepped in sternly. “Okay, which asshole’s talking like that in front of twenty kids?”

  They gave her deferential attention with one eye, keeping the other on the game.

  “But Tuthill—” Steve began to protest. Diane stalked out, her point made.

  A second later, Mister Rogers was singing again. Everyone groaned. Shaw actually wrung his hands. Steve walked resolutely over to the window, pointed his remote control box, and fired.

  From across the yard, a distant voice roared angrily. “Don’t start, Freeling!”