Poltergeist

by James Kahn

  Martha laughed joyfully. “You old con artist. If only you were fifty years younger.”

  “Let me give you some advice.” Dr. Farrow lowered his voice intimately. “Secret a few of those gems. Come out of this thing with something in your pocket. The National Inquisitor pays more for scandal-mongering what we bust our rumps investigating—and for what?” He pounded the table with his fist.

  “For what do they scandal-monger? Or for what do we investigate? I would say the money, and the glory, respectively—although we both tell ourselves it’s for the Truth.” Now it was Farrow’s turn to laugh.

  Lesh began folding the trinkets in a napkin, when one of them caught Farrows eye. He stopped her, reaching for it. “This is interesting.” He picked up a thin, wiry clip—it looked like a dog muzzle for a miniature poodle. “Did this materialize with everything else?”

  “Yes, I picked it up myself. Why?”

  He turned it over, inspected it closely. “It’s a staple—a clamp for the jaw.”

  “Not something you’d wear to the masquerade ball.”

  “No, but you would wear it to your own funeral. It’s a mortician’s trick. It prevents the mouth from suddenly dropping open when the body is in repose. It discourages a great deal of embarrassment, and . . . fainting.”

  “Well, it just about had the opposite effect when it showed up last night.”

  Farrow narrowed his gaze. “Where in the house did these pieces teleport?”

  “In the living room—in living color. If only the cameras had been aimed . . .”

  “So it was right where all your gadgets were stationed? TVs and cathode ray tubes, and all the other gizmos?”

  “Yes. What are you getting at?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It just brings me back to discussions we’ve had in the past, relating these phenomena to electromagnetic waves of various kinds. Here you tell me you tracked these people because Tangina was receiving waves of some kind—you should go see her, by the way; she had a bad spell this morning—then you tell me you could actually see and hear this vanishing child on an unused UHF channel. Then you tell me you found a bilocation point, the point where these things actually manifested, in a room that must have been dense with all kinds of electromagnetic radiation of varying frequencies. Who knows, maybe these things appeared right at the confluence of the emissions from the color TVs.” Dr. Farrow smiled warmly at Martha. “Anyway, that’s my parting shot.”

  They touched hands briefly. “Well,” Martha said. She stood up. “You’re right, I must see Tangina—thank you for watching her for me. And then I must sleep for two hours, and then I absolutely promised the Freelings I would be back before dark. So.” She kissed him on the cheek and arched her eyebrows in mock melodrama. “May the Force be with us.”

  “I hear you had a little incident this morning,” Dr. Lesh said with some concern. “A vasovagal episode, the intern tells me—he said he thought you probably stood up too fast after having been in bed so many hours.”

  Tangina merely looked at Martha’s eyes, without answering.

  “Well?” Lesh pressed. “Is that what happened?”

  “What do you think?” Tangina finally spoke. It was the same question Lesh had asked Farrow an hour earlier.

  “I’m asking you,” insisted Martha.

  Tangina closed her eyes. A tear overflowed one corner. “Is there no antidote for my malady?”

  “You were in contact again, then? With the child?”

  “You can’t understand; it’s not your fault, you just can’t. The pain of seeing things I wish I’d never seen—getting in strangle holds with other people’s monsters. I don’t choose my visions, you know—they choose me. And once I know a thing, I can never un-know it. It’s like paradise lost for me—God, I envy you your blindness.”

  “The little girl—is she all right?”

  Tangina sighed. “Yes. Yes. For the time being.”

  Lesh could see the strain on the woman’s face. “It was . . . we had quite a night in Cuesta Verde, too,” she said. “We saw the creatures of whom you spoke—in your dream. The shadow, the flame-man, the tree-thing.”

  Tangina twisted her head. “You saw them? Fantabel and Sceädu? Where?”

  “In the living room of the house.” Lesh shook her head, hardly believing her own memory. “They were . . .”

  “Ah, how they have become bold,” Tangina marveled, “to have come so audaciously into our plane—such impudence must have been incited. They are all touched by the heat of the Beast. I have no doubt.”

  “The Beast?” Lesh saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head quickly, but it was nothing.

  “Twice, now,” Tangina continued, “in my journeys to the dream lands, I have encountered this great evil near the child. It is not the lord of this dimension, but it holds great sway, all the same. Great power. This morning I saw it—almost clearly. It was chasing the little girl. It manifested itself to me in different forms, so that in my weakened condition I would lose my way from fear. We escaped, this time, the child and I. But the Beast remains strong. He exerts great will over all the pitiable beings of that universe. He is a thing of horror.”

  Lesh remembered the phantom woman decending the stairs, holding court—remembered the way she’d begun to transform, become nearly transmogrified into something hideous. Something beastly.

  “Twice, now, I’ve almost seen this thing,” Tangina went on. “The third time, I will have him.”

  “What are you saying?” Lesh became concerned.

  “I must try again.” Tangina spoke on a falling note, hoarse with weariness and regret.

  “Tangina, please.” Lesh tried to be a friend. “You look simply awful. You have been sleep deprived to the limit by these trances, and I am as much to blame as you. Do you understand? You must get some rest.”

  “Do you understand? I can get no rest until this—situation—is resolved.”

  Lesh stared at Tangina sadly. “I’m going back tonight. I hope . . . if we can understand this thing . . . we can solve your dilemma as well as theirs.”

  “There is no understanding it.” Tangina rocked her head from side to side. “It just is. I know that now. And there is no help for me.”

  “Nothing just is, but that it can be understood—if not why it is, then certainly how.”

  “That’s all right, Dr. Lesh—you keep your faith in your what, and I’ll keep my faith in mine.”

  Lesh’s mouth twisted, almost bitterly. “And now you sound as skeptical and closed to my beliefs as the priests of my science were to you this afternoon.”

  “Ah. So your committee meeting went poorly. Dr. Farrow told me he was going—he predicted the outcome. He must he clairvoyant.”

  Lesh extended her hand, held Tangina’s on the bed. “Please, try to get some rest tonight. We’re doing what we can.” She stood to leave.

  Tangina raised her arm. “Wait,” she whispered. “The Beast—it covets the child.”

  Lesh shivered involuntarily. She tried to smile, but could only manage a pulled sort of grimace. “I’m going to sleep now, myself. I’ll see you in the morning.” She walked out.

  “The Beast,” Tangina muttered, “would work its will.”

  Quietly, Tangina removed the I.V. from her arm, taped the puncture site, dressed, and slipped from her room. She walked down the hall, past the nurses’ station, to the doctors’ conference room. There she found Dr. Berman sitting, as she knew she would, talking to a medical student.

  She addressed the student first. “Would you excuse us, please?” The flustered youngster left; Tangina closed the door behind him.

  “Where the hell’s your I.V.?” demanded Berman as she sat down. “You shouldn’t even be out of bed. Let alone dressed.”

  “Hello! And how are you?” she said brightly.

  “Being nice is no excuse,” he scolded. “Now, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just saying . . . hello,” she smiled.
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br />   “Meaning what?” He turned a jaundiced eye on her.

  “Well, aren’t you suspicious.” Tangina tried to sound insulted, but failed. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for . . . calling me back this morning.”

  “Calling you back?”

  “Yes. You know, sometimes, if no one is calling, it’s hard to come back.”

  Dr. Berman scratched his head. “I have the feeling you’re talking about altered states again.”

  “It’s hard to know, from time to time, exactly which is the altered state, and which the referent state.”

  “Sounds like my sophomore year in college.”

  She laughed with a shake of the head. “Well. You may joke. Still, there are times—critical moments in the migrations of a spirit through the void—when it can go either way. Back to now, or out to never. At those moments, landmarks are crucial—the memory of a touch, a familiar scent. In this trial of mine, you were my landfall. Your spirit cried out for me to come back, and to you I came. The candle that is you. For this, I thank you.”

  Dr. Berman looked supremely embarrassed. “No one’s ever called me a candle before . . .” He started to try to make a joke out of it, but stopped.

  Tangina walked over to his chair. He sitting, she standing, they were of a height. “Now,” she said, “I want you to kiss me.”

  He sat back in acute bewilderment. No patient had ever said such a thing under similar, or any other, circumstances. He had absolutely no response ready. “I . . . I . . . uh . . .”

  “Stop being ridiculous.” She almost took umbrage. “I don’t mean anything carnal. Just something . . . warm. Human.” She softened. “The breath of affection, to cup in my hands.”

  He didn’t know what to say. “I have bad breath . . .”

  She leaned forward. They both closed their eyes. Their lips met: touched, paused; paused, parted.

  She stepped back. “Good-bye,” she said simply.

  “You sound almost as if you were saying goodbye,” he replied.

  She turned and left.

  In the corridor she ran into Louise Dreyer, the volunteer.

  “Louise, I’m so glad you’re here. I was just going to go look for you.”

  “Miss Barrons . . .”

  “Please come with me.” Tangina led the woman down to her room, sat her in a chair. “Now. I haven’t much time or energy to give you, but I didn’t really want to put you off to this morning . . . and I don’t know if I’ll be back this way again. So please . . .”

  “Oh, no, no . . .”

  “Yes. Please. Tell me what you need, and perhaps I can help you, even just a little, right now.”

  Louise screwed up her resolve, took a deep breath. “All right. It’s my brother, Andrew. He vanished five years ago, and I just know he’s alive, and if you could just let me give you something of his to feel, and take a reading, and tell me even just what area of the country he’s living in, just any lead that would help us locate him, I’d be so grateful, I could give you whatever we . . .”

  Tangina stopped her with a raised hand. “Sshh.” She placed her palm on Louise’s head, closed her own eyes, went into a light trance. Louise remained absolutely silent.

  Tangina opened her eyes again a minute later. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t get any feeling for him—I don’t know where he might be.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “But leave your address for me at the front desk, Louise. And if I ever run across Andrew, or news of him, during my . . . travels . . . I’ll be certain to try to reach you.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss Barrons.” Louise was profuse. “Yes, I’ll leave all the information you need.” She almost ran from the room.

  Tangina sighed. Andrew was dead, that much was clear. Louise knew it, too, whether consciously or not. Tangina hadn’t received any vivid picture of the circumstances of that knowledge, but she didn’t want a clearer picture. She wished Louise well. She breathed deeply a few times. She hoped she didn’t run into Andrew.

  She walked out into the hall again, up the first stairwell she found, up to the fifth floor. Five North. She walked to the nursing station.

  “Is Julie here?”

  One of the nurses looked up. “Down the hall, passing meds.”

  Tangina walked halfway down the hall, and stopped. Julie stood at the medication cart with her back to the psychic, counting pills into paper cups. Willow-thin, blond, a little stooped. Tangina studied her aura.

  At last, she walked up to the young woman. “Excuse me . . .”

  Julie turned. “Yes? Oh. Yes?” She was a bit surprised.

  “Excuse me, I’m rarely this forward, but I’m about to go on an extended trip . . . and I thought I’d like to say . . .”

  “Yes?” The young nurse looked intensely curious.

  “You . . . have a lovely aura. I . . . that’s all. God bless you, dear.”

  Tangina turned and exited quickly by the far stairs, leaving a bemused Julie recounting her pills.

  So much for final farewells. Time now for the final grim event. She descended six floors to the basement. She didn’t exactly know the hospital layout, she wasn’t sure just where she was, but she knew she was in the basement, and this was where most hospitals kept the place she was seeking. The morgue.

  For it wasn’t the child she was after anymore; now, it was the Beast she must lure.

  She walked up one hall and down the next, some dark, some lit with sickly fluorescence. She passed labs, locker rooms, lecture halls, slide libraries. Finally she came to a door marked PATHOLOGY: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE. She knew what that meant. Gently, she cracked the door and went in.

  The room she found herself in was the pathology museum. Shelf upon shelf lined the walls, floor to ceiling. Each shelf was filled with bottles, each bottle filled with liquid; in each bottle, something floated: a cancerous hand, a head sliced in planes like a loaf of bread, a mutant embryo, a diseased kidney. A museum of human pathology. Tangina flared her nostrils—if she couldn’t find a place to hide in the morgue, this place would do nicely. Empty, dark, quiet, deathly; a proper place for her task.

  She ambled across the floor to another door, this one frosted white glass, upon which were stenciled the letters POST-MORTEM. Beyond the glass were bright lights, and the sound of clackering instruments.

  She approached the door, pushed it open an inch, and peeked in. Four men in white coats stood around a single corpse lying pale upon a steel table. They joked, spoke of football and sex. Two of them ate sandwiches. A third took a scalpel and began to flay open the belly of the cadaver.

  Tangina let the door ease shut. A good place, in there, but too crowded. It would have to be in here, her seance. She would have to call the Beast to her here.

  She looked all around until she found just the right spot—a niche formed by a semicircle of bottles piled in one corner: a brain, with eyes attached; a malformed fetus; a gouty foot; a heart, showing entrance and exit wounds; a face eaten by tumor. The catalogue was endless. Tangina curled up in the niche. She stared deeply into a spot of light reflected in the curved glass of one of the beakers. Her breathing grew quick and shallow. Her eyes began to glaze.

  “Come to me, Beast,” was the last thing she consciously remembered thinking. “We have much to discuss, you and I.”

  She dissociated. The phantoms of the morgue and museum surrounded her—decapitated spirit-forms, ghastly and gray; scabrous, emaciated, tormented, unwhole.

  “Beast, come.” Tangina communicated through the ether. “See what I am made of.”

  A demon tried to lock onto her from out of nowhere—a test, perhaps—or perhaps it sought her vitality. It made a clackering noise, and it hurt, but Tangina had known worse demons and let it pass through her.

  “See, Beast,” she called, “I have no fear to die. Other things I fear, but not to quit this sleepless life of mine; nor do I fear you. I know you, Beast.”
>
  Tangina rose higher, into black space, above the other spaces. She couldn’t soar here, though—this domain was viscous. A diminishing place. It was akin to a plane she’d passed through before—she knew she could cross from here to the sphere of shadows, and from there to the Beast’s domain. But she didn’t want to go there now. She wanted the Beast to come to her.

  She didn’t think drawing him here would be too difficult. This was the type of spirit-world he rejoiced in. A phantom without a face rose beside her. A hand—twitching, crushed and severed at the wrist—grabbed at her neck, but she batted it away easily. Rotting entrails flowed behind her, caught her foot, began to enwrap her. She pulled them away, but they left a film upon her, a foul and mucoid odor.

  “Beast!” she called out. “Come!”

  But he did not come.

  She flowed in paceless turnings, trying to approach his lair tangentially, to catch him unaware. This way took her through a universe of yellow webs—a sticky, clinging lattice that enclosed her quickly in a smothering cocoon. She chewed her way out—chewed an air hole, at least—and freed her fingers enough to pull herself thread by thread across the yellow matrix.

  Eventually, the lattice turned into a foam of sorts, more slick than sticky, and then into a froth, or lather, in which Tangina foundered, gasping, under a moaning storm. Raging ages passed. At last, the storm abated; Tangina rose above the foam into a clear and icy calm.

  She took her bearings. Far ahead, a ruby sun revolved around its indigo twin. Liquid fire gushed between the two at their closest point; amethyst ice crystals cracked and tinkled as they drew apart. Rainbow spirits lived in the diffraction patterns, spiraling in orbits of intricate design. Creatures of light, Tangina trusted them. She called to them her plight; they answered in color-song; they gave her direction.

  She moved beyond the sibling stars, into an empyrean of concentric, gaseous rings. Careful not to touch any ring, she tunneled through the core, exiting into a shimmering atmosphere, spotty with mists. It was here, for the first time, she saw the woman.