Poltergeist

by James Kahn

  Static. Blue-white light, and the hollow hiss of electrons.

  “Carol Anne. Can you tell Mommy hello?”

  Nothing. The air felt dense with vacuum. Diane wanted to crawl out of her skin, or scream. Tangina closed her eyes, began breathing rapidly. Her eyelids fluttered. From far away, she spoke to Diane.

  “Try again.”

  Diane clenched her fists. “Can you say hello to Daddy, baby? Daddy and I miss you so much. So much. We love you so much. Can you say hello?”

  Tangina began sweating. Slowly, she shook her head. “She’s under restraint!”

  Steve and Diane jumped as if stung by the same prod. “What do you mean?” yelled Diane.

  “Who’s restraining her? Tell us what’s going on!”

  Tangina opened her eyes, her face flushed, her lips parched. “There are many arms around her; she thinks it’s safe. Quickly! Who is she more afraid of? You or your husband?”

  Diane shook her head wildly. “She’s afraid of neither.” She almost burst out crying, terrified that this was the wrong answer.

  “Which of you does she answer to first?” Tangina pressed sternly.

  “She’s always gone to Diane,” said Steve. He rubbed his hands on his pants, trying to wipe off the fear.

  “When she’s naughty, who does she hide from?”

  “She’s a well-behaved child,” Steve protested indignantly. “We’ve raised her with manners and . . .”

  “Look, I’m not from the welfare service; I need a quick answer!”

  “Steve decides the punishment,” came Diane’s reply. “The children have always known that . . .”

  “Now wait a minute, Diane, I don’t think that’s fair exactly. I’ve never laid a hand on . . .”

  Tangina waved them quiet impatiently. “Fight about it later! Right now come stand beside me!” It was an urgent whisper.

  Steve obeyed instantly.

  Dr. Lesh watched in utter amazement—she’d never seen anything like this before. Ryan, too, could barely keep his eyes on the instruments.

  Tangina ordered Steve: “Tell Carol Anne to answer!”

  Steve looked around, uncertain where to address his statements.

  “Tell her!” barked Tangina.

  Steve spoke softly, almost politely. “Honey, it’s Daddy. Can you hear me, sweetheart?”

  “I said call her. Loud!”

  “Carol Anne.” Steve talked in his normal speaking voice now. “Carol Anne, it’s Daddy.”

  “Again,” muttered Tangina. Her eyelids were drooping once more, her expression glazing over.

  “It’s Daddy, sweetheart. Answer me.”

  “Be cross with her,” Tangina said.

  “Why?”

  “Be angry with her, or you’ll never see her again!” the psychic commanded.

  Steve spoke more harshly now, aroused, upset. “Carol Anne, this is your father speaking.”

  “Tell her if she doesn’t answer she’s, in big trouble.”

  “Answer me right now, young lady, or you’re in real hot water!”

  “Tell her she’ll get spanked.”

  Steve lowered his voice confidentially. “We never spank the children.”

  Diane screamed in frustration. “Goddamit, Steven, tell her!”

  Steve twisted up his mouth. “If you don’t answer your parents this instant, you’re going to get a real spanking! From both of us!”

  “Swear. Swear!” rasped Tangina.

  “Dammit, Carol Anne! Do you hear me!?”

  From far away, a voice: “Mommy! Mommy, help me!”

  Tangina’s respirations were fast and hard, now. Perspiration beaded her forehead, but she smiled grimly. “She’s away from him!”

  “Away from who?” begged Diane. “That thing we saw? Did that thing have my baby!? Is she all right?”

  Tangina ignored the question. Her eyes were closed, and she puffed like a sprinter. “Diane. Ask her if she sees a light.”

  “Carol Anne! Do you see a light?”

  The small voice in the television grew louder. “Mommy! He’s chasing me!” The edge of terror cut the air. “Mommy!” the voice screamed.

  “Tell her to run to the light!” Tangina ordered urgently.

  Diane looked fearfully at Dr. Lesh. “No!”

  Tangina’s hair was down, now; she was panting laboriously. “He will follow her to it. He’s been following her for weeks. They will all follow her. You must tell her what I say!”

  Lesh was totally wrapped up in the scene, and trusted Tangina implicitly by this time. “Tell her. Go ahead, Diane, tell her as Tangina says.”

  The cry burst from her like gas under pressure. “Run, Carol Anne, run! Run for the light! Run as fast as you can!”

  “Mommy! Where are you?”

  “I’m here, baby; I’m here!” Diane’s nose and eyes were running; her voice was thick.

  “Tell her you’re in the light!” Tangina was getting hoarse.

  “No, that’s a lie!” Diane choked.

  “You can’t choose between life and death when we’re dealing with what is in between!” Tangina barked. “Tell her, before it’s too late!!”

  “Run to the light, Carol Anne!” Diane screamed. “Mommy is in the light! I’m here in the light, baby; come to me!”

  “Tell her again. Hurry. Tell her you’re waiting for her.”

  Diane was almost strangling on sobs of impotence, frustration, anger, deceit. “Mommy is in the light waiting for you, baby! Please, come to Mommy!” She cried and cried, then wheeled harshly on Tangina and whispered savagely: “I hate you for this!”

  Tangina winced, but didn’t reply. Instead, she spoke to the group. “Quick, upstairs, everyone! And bring everything.”

  The five of them raced up the steps to the second-floor landing. Everyone crowded around the door to the kids’ room. Tangina turned to them, her breathing hoarse.

  “Clear your minds. It knows what scares you. It has from the beginning. Don’t give it any help. It knows too much already. Now . . . open the door.”

  Without hesitation, Steve put the key in the lock and turned it. The door swung open easily. Inside, it was like a storm at sea.

  A wall of wind and sound blasted through the door—the sounds of moaning and raving, a cacophony of madness and nonsense. The wind, a living blizzard. It made the whole house reverberate.

  Tangina crawled in against the gale—but it was not only a storm of wind and tormented noise she braved. Light, too, poured from the room.

  Once inside, she was able to stand, for the wind was slightly less violent than it had been directly in front of the door. Even so, she had to squint against the swirling dust and particulate matter . . . and against the light.

  The light emanated from the closet—so bright, it was impossible to look into, brighter than the sun, than ten suns exploding. Blue-yellow shards of light stabbed at her face, burned her skin, spilled into the thick atmosphere of the room.

  She screamed out into the hall: “Ryan! Get downstairs! Wait by the target!” He couldn’t hear her at first, over the din. She yelled louder—her voice was beginning to give out—and he ran downstairs.

  Steve crawled into the room next, and stood beside Tangina. Even standing two feet away, she had to yell to be heard. “Steven! Give me the tennis ball marked number one! Diane! Stay in the hall and relay messages to Ryan! Tell him to stand under the circle of string!”

  Diane shouted the message downstairs. Ryan shouted up that he was in position. Lesh remained with Diane.

  Tangina closed her eyes and tossed the tennis ball into the furnace light of the closet. The raging wind bellowed, and tried to hurl her to the floor. She held onto Steve’s arm.

  “Ask Ryan if he sees anything!” shouted Tangina. Diane relayed the question.

  “Nothing!” Ryan yelled back.

  Tangina put her mouth to Steve’s ear. “Throw number two into the closet as hard as you can!”

  Steve crawled as close to the closet as he
dared, aimed into the light through closed eyes, and sent his meanest fast-ball zinging into the hole.

  Downstairs, Ryan sat staring intensely at the hanging circle of string. Suddenly there was a popping flash of light, and a tennis ball hit him on the head. He picked it up off the floor and examined it. Number two.

  “Tennis ball number two!” he shouted. “Came right out of the fuckin’ air!”

  Diane shouted the news into the blizzard. Tangina indicated to Steve to repeat the performance with number three, which he did, with all his strength.

  A moment later, tennis ball number three fell out of another mid-air flash, and Ryan called up the information.

  Diane screamed it into the bedroom: “Three came back! Number Three is back, too!”

  Tangina grinned, tight lipped, into the typhoon. “Now! Tie the red ribbon at the center of the rope! Hurry!”

  Frantically, Steve began performing his instructed task. Once again Tangina closed her eyes. She hyperventilated, became rigid, slumped to the floor, left her body.

  She had discovered a new way back after her struggle with gHalâ. Quite by accident. He’d expelled her violently, and she’d floated very briefly in inky isolation, and then suddenly dropped with a warm wind through an unseen window . . . into her body. Many ways in, and many ways out, for those with sight.

  She found the way quickly, now—it was an oscillating membrane of gill-like flaps—and entered directly into the void she sought. Black, first, becoming black-red. That was disturbing. It had never been anything but black or clear before.

  Gradually, all around her was red light. Apparitions floated by in the deathly quiet: old men, children, weeping dreamers, weeping dreams. Tangina hovered below the stream, sensing her way, avoiding the smell of gHalâ, seeking the light. She peered between the mists, around corners created by warps in the ether, inside tunnels tracking to other planes . . . there. She saw it. Under a distortion in the void, a buckling of the ether-substance that formed a well, so it was almost impossible to see unless you were right on top of it. The light.

  Phantoms maundered in the middle distance. Tangina hovered nearer the light. There. She saw her standing, quivering, near the mouth of the spectral opening: the girl. She was beginning to stray into the well.

  With a terrible jolt, Tangina shot back through the membranous gill-slits—and wrenched her self back to herself. Into the storming bedroom again. At the moment of recorporation, the wind rolled her body across the floor, toward the closet. Steve reached out and grabbed her at the last second, just before she was sucked into the blinding closet door.

  Tangina shouted at the top of her voice. “The girl is just at the mouth of the corridor! Tell her to stop! Tell her not to move into the light!”

  “Carol Anne!” screamed Diane. “Listen to me. Do not go into the light! Stop where you are. Turn away from it! Don’t look at it!”

  Tangina sat up. “Where is the rope?” she yelled.

  Steve handed it to her, but she only shook her head. “I’m not strong enough! You’ll have to do it!”

  “Do what?”

  “Throw one end into the light! Throw it in hard! It has to make it through!”

  Steve nodded understanding, though certainly not with any degree of comprehension. He took one end of the rope, coiled it into a knot at the end to give it some weight, pulled a few yards of at up behind him to give himself some slack, and stepped up against the blasting light of the closet door. With both hands, he heaved the knot into the pit, utilizing every muscle he could muster.

  An instant later there was a flash in the living room, and the end of the rope dropped into Ryan’s hands. “Got it!” he yelled.

  Tangina clenched her teeth. With Steve at her back, she paid out the rope into the closet until the red ribbon was just at the door.

  “Tell him to take up the slack downstairs. Tell him to pull gently and yell when he sees the ribbon.”

  As this message was relayed from Steve to Diane to Ryan, Tangina took the lipstick, and began marking off inches on the rope, starting with the red ribbon tied to its midpoint. In a minute, Ryan started pulling. When Tangina felt the rope go taut at her end, she methodically fed it into the closet, one inch at a time. First the ribbon disappeared, then mark after red mark, into the vibrant light.

  It wasn’t long before they could hear Ryan’s excited call, above the booming wind. “It’s through! It’s through! I see the flag!”

  Instantly Tangina stopped feeding rope into the pit. She squinted at the last lipstick calibration peeking around the door jamb. “Only thirty-six inches wide. Not much room in there. Diane! Dr. Lesh! Come in here!”

  The two rattled women entered the room on hands and knees, then stood.

  “Martha! May I call you Martha? I want you to go downstairs and take the rope with Ryan. I want you to pull with him, when I say, as hard and fast as you can. But only when I say!”

  Martha ran out without another word, ran downstairs to join Ryan.

  Tangina looked grimly at Diane. “My dear—you must enter the closet!”

  A look of raw horror paled Diane’s face in the wash of the yellow-blue light.

  “You must do this!” Tangina went on. “She will only come to you! This is your test! But you must do it right now! We’ll tie the rope around you!”

  An especially violent gust of wind centered directly on Diane, ramming her into the wall. Steve began tying the rope around his own waist, but Tangina stopped him. “This is for her to do! Besides, I need you to hold the rope!”

  Diane crawled back to them, a little dazed, but unhurt. She took the rope and wrapped it around her waist. Steve tied it in place with two clove hitches. They faced each other in the blazing storm.

  “I love you!” screamed Diane.

  “I love you!” Steve roared.

  They kissed, the wind roiling all about. Then Steve took the end of the rope.

  Diane moved toward the closet, threw a last look over her shoulder. “Don’t let go, you guys!”

  “Never!”

  In the next second, the light swallowed her up.

  Tangina helped Steve feed in more rope until the calibrations passed the eighteen-inch mark, indicating that Diane was just at the center of the infinite void.

  Downstairs, Lesh and Ryan took up the foot-and-a-half more slack that rolled out, then stood there, holding the rope taut, tensely waiting, almost afraid to breathe.

  Likewise, Steve stood, legs set. Tangina yelled to him. “I’m going to join them now—to send my spirit—to guide them! There is still great danger! Timing is of the essence! Do nothing unless I tell you! Do not try to help me! Don’t even listen to me unless I address you! Do you understand?”

  “How will I know when Diane’s got her?”

  “I will know.”

  Tangina lay down on the floor. Her breathing became irregular; she began to perspire. The wind howled like a wounded beast.

  Tangina stiffened, convulsed, lay still. In her mind, all sound and light melted away. Across the filmy diaphragm, into the limbo place.

  Into the void. A dull red glow permeated this zone of nothing. All the lost souls ranged about. Beyond them, the brilliant, burning light. Beside the light, Tangina could see Diane, the rope around her waist, going nowhere, coming from nowhere. Standing alone in the silent, directionless wind.

  Wraiths floated by, without time or purpose. Some passed near Diane; none took any notice. Some wept, some smiled, many had no expression, some bled. A few ran, fumbling, distracted. One, not far from the light, was Carol Anne.

  And not far from Carol Anne, the shadow of the Beast darkened the mist.

  Tangina fought to keep focused, to maintain harmony within her self, to stay centered, in balance. Boldly, she called out. “Cross over, children. You are all welcome. All welcome. Go into the light. There is peace in the light.”

  Nothing happened initially. Tangina repeated her directive several times. Then, slowly, the atmosphere seemed to shimmer,
like ripples on a pond. Like ripples on a pond, the vagrant apparitions began to order their movement—subtly, at first, almost imperceptibly, then unmistakably: they drifted toward Carol Anne. Toward Carol Anne, and the light.

  “Cross over, children.” Tangina’s thought took on power. “Enter the light.”

  Carol Anne, among the many, felt the pull, let her tired spirit accept the gentle tugging of the luminescent well behind her.

  But then a somber dimness descended, an obscure anger. It was the Beast, beginning to rage.

  It saw its minions disappearing into the light, and loosed a grisly scream into the silence. The noise alone was enough to scatter hundreds of the pitiable shapes. Others, the Beast assaulted, threw back, tore into wispy fragments.

  Still, some continued to seep into the light—and these the Beast didn’t stop, for it feared the light too much itself to go very close. In its wild spasms from one ghost to the next, it momentarily lost track of Carol Anne. With a silent gasp, Diane saw her child approaching the light—to reach it, Carol Anne would pass within a few feet of where Diane stood. Desperately, the anguished woman extended her arms.

  “Cross over, children,” Tangina’s message resounded. The confused spirits regrouped, pressed in again. Again the Beast screamed its ghoulish scream.

  Then it saw Tangina, hovering above the light now. The Beast foamed and hissed and railed. It approached her, but she was so near the light, it paused, held its clawed hand before its eyes, stepped carefully closer. He hated the light, but crazed violence made him bold.

  He approached: Tangina above the light, Diane beside it, Carol Anne floating in a daze like a mote of dust passing through the dense beam’s cone. And the others all around, masses of weeping spectres, dancing in the light, crossing in front of each other, rushing, floating . . . Diane stretching her hands out, straining . . .

  “Cross over, children!” Tangina’s call pealed like chimes. “All are welcome! Go into the light! There is peace in the light!”

  The Waiting Woman floated by, surrounded by her attendant throng. She paused, directly above the spectral flare.

  Tangina called to her. “The light! There is the light! You can go. That is the way. Be free. You can escape. Your Intended rests on the other side. You can rest with him there, forever. You can go!”