Poltergeist II - The Other Side

by James Kahn

  She saw Taylor a few more times after that. He visited her at the Sundown Hotel, made some magic for her, helped her regain a little of her equilibrium.

  Digging started up again, with new directors and assistant directors; but Tangina was able to finagle a position as an unpaid consultant. And because she was more obsessive about the excavation than anyone else, she ended up making a number of directorial decisions.

  They found the core.

  Taylor confirmed it.

  But the Beast had apparently penetrated City Hall, and suddenly, the next morning, the order came down: the excavation had to cease; the site was to be filled in forthwith, by city edict. Health violations were cited—never mind the fact that no one lived there anymore.

  Soon after that, Tangina got the call from Diane, asking about Taylor’s trustworthiness. It would have been funny had it not been so sad, for Tangina was the one who could not trust herself. She should have gone to Steve and Diane: the core was exposed; the spirits were out; Carol Anne was in danger of falling to the rantings of the Beast once more—Taylor had explained all this—but Tangina had not been able to bring herself to go the Freelings’ aid again. She was too lost in her own fear.

  So Taylor had gone.

  But this fact sat on Tangina’s chest like a weight, keeping her once more from sleeping, from eating, from looking at herself in the mirror, until finally she knew she had to go herself, if—as the old Mexican woman had warned—she ever wanted to take control of her own life.

  So she went. She took a bus to Phoenix, went to the Freeling house, knocked. No answer. Knocked and knocked and knocked, until at last a terrified Diane answered the door.

  “Tangina!” she exclaimed.

  “Sorry to come unannounced, sweetie,” said Tangina, “but I need to speak with you.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” whispered Diane.

  “I’m glad you’re glad,” said Tangina, pressed by her own flagging spirit, by the demon’s hand in City Hall, by the proximity of the Beast to Carol Anne. “Because we’re running out of time.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Are you feeling strong?” asked the dwarf.

  Diane nodded.

  “Good. Come on. I’ve got somethin’ to show you.”

  They sat on the living room sofa, and without further preliminary—as if they’d last seen each other the day before—they began going over a packet of photos Tangina had brought.

  “This is . . . the lot our house used to be on,” said Diane, looking at the first picture. It was barren, an empty space full of dust devils.

  “Yes, it is,” said Tangina. She showed Diane the next shot.

  “And this is . . . excavation around where the house used to be?”

  “Yes, below the old cemetery,” said Tangina. “It leads to what seems to be a tomb, with many bodies, directly below your house.” She turned to the next picture—the bodies. Skeletons, mummies, piled one on the other inside some great cavern. Anguish emanated from the photograph.

  “Who are they?” Diane spoke softly.

  “The researchers investigating the site have only the vaguest guesses about who these people were. There are no marked graves.” She paused to let Diane absorb the photo, to let her spirit register the scene. Then she continued. “There are, however, records of a religious sect that mysteriously disappeared . . .”

  “What happened?” said Diane. Her breathing quickened; her palms got sweaty.

  “Their spiritual leader was a medium who led his followers out to California in the early eighteen hundreds to start a utopian society. They disappeared near Cuesta Verde in the eighteen-forties and were believed massacred by Indians.”

  Diane shook her head vehemently, upset, distracted. “No—not massacred,” she whispered.

  Tangina smiled without pleasure.

  Taylor drove up past Flagstaff, into Navajo territory again. The sun was high, bleaching everything shadowless, making the sandy buttes and mesas look almost two-dimensional.

  “Beautiful scenery, huh?” Steve said admiringly. He’d been anxious at first, driving to who-knows-where with this who-knows-what kind of Indian. Anxious about leaving Diane alone, too. But something about this landscape calmed him, brought him peace. Something about the simplicity of the rock, the earth tones, the spareness of it all.

  “This is the crucible,” said Taylor, reading Steve’s face. “The crucible of the soul of the world.”

  Steve nodded. “Where we going?”

  “To my prayer-lodge,” said Taylor. “Over beyond that rimrock. My kiva, where I take power and seek Ways. It is a sacred place.”

  “Like a church?” asked Steve.

  Taylor smiled. “The Church of Taylor.”

  They drove in silence again, each bound up in his own thoughts. Steve wondered if Taylor ever used peyote during his religious rites; Taylor wondered if Steve ever looked inside himself. Steve wondered if he should have called the police about Kane; Taylor wondered if he had enough magic to help this man beside him, who believed in nothing. Steve wished he had a beer; Taylor wished he had an eagle claw. And so on.

  The truck bumped for a while over a scrubby plain, curving around a small mesa, until eventually Taylor brought it to a halt in the middle of no possible where and got out. “Let’s walk,” he said.

  They walked.

  Even high desert is desert, and at high noon in August it is emphatically so. They walked; they sweated; they rapidly parched. Steve periodically stumbled over rocks or gopher holes, but he made it a point not to fall behind the silent Indian. Once he started to take off his shirt, but Taylor advised him not to, so as not to lose as much body fluid.

  That’s when Steve realized they had no water. “Hey, how far is this place?” he said.

  Taylor only shrugged, though, and pointed vaguely in the direction they were walking.

  They walked for a long time—long enough for Steve to consider many things about his life: his marriage—long and loving, up and down, now stuck on the shoals of his own loss of self-esteem; his children—a teenage daughter who’d left forever to escape what she called “a totally psycho family,” a loner son who had no friends and looked as if he’d just decided to stop growing at the age of nine, and a fey daughter who had nightmares she couldn’t remember and seemed to be in a world of her own half the time; his wife—the rock of the family, the inner strength . . .

  And himself. Where was his strength? What had happened to his life? Things had been cruising along just fine, everything on schedule, and then whammo, the cosmic banana peel. Why me? he wondered.

  That’s when Taylor put a hand on his sleeve to stop him. That’s when he saw the rattlesnake poised near his left foot.

  “Oh, shit,” said Steve.

  The rattler rattled.

  “Don’t move,” said Taylor. “Give me the eagle feather.”

  “What?” whispered Steve. His throat was dry; he could hardly get the word out.

  “The eagle feather I gave you on the porch,” Taylor said softly but insistently. “Give it to me now.”

  Steve remembered and pulled it from his hip pocket. Taylor took it, and with a slow, rhythmic, wandlike motion, he began to pass it back and forth across the snake’s field of vision.

  Uncertainly at first, and then as if enchanted, the snake’s head started to bob from side to side, following the motion of the feather. Taylor began to chant, bringing the feather still closer. The rattlesnake dropped its head, weaving, under Taylor’s spell. It lolled against a rock. Taylor stooped slowly, picked it up by the neck.

  “Forgive me, brother,” he said, and whacked off its head with one swift blow of a large knife he drew from somewhere.

  The snake’s body dropped to the ground, writhing in the dust. Its head Taylor held close to his own face—its jaws wide open, its fangs dripping—as he inhaled deeply. “With thanks I take from you the Sacred Wind of Life,” he said solemnly.

  Steve just stared in awe. “How . . . how . . .”


  Taylor smiled. “The eagle is the one creature feared by the rattlesnake. I only made this snake think I was an eagle, circling for food, and he followed my wing and then lay still when I would not go away. So mark this well: if you can make your enemy believe you are an eagle, then you are an eagle.”

  He tossed the head far into the desert, then quickly filleted the now sluggish body and draped it over his shoulders. “Will make a fine dinner tonight,” he commented.

  The rattle he cut off and gave to Steve. “Here is the second totem for your medicine bag.” He returned the eagle feather as well.

  Steve took both items, still a bit dazed from the heat and the near danger and the wonder.

  Two totems, he thought, and two lessons: Evil can enter your heart only if you invite it; and you are what you think you are, and what others think you are.

  He couldn’t dwell on these, though—Taylor was already walking again, and Steve had to run to catch up. After another half hour of walking, he was in for another jolt. They were back at the pickup truck, where their journey into the desert had begun.

  “There’s another lesson in this, right?” said Steve.

  Taylor only smiled, though, and walked twenty yards over the next rise. Coming up just behind him, Steve saw what seemed to be a round, wooden hut. They approached it together. It consisted of stacks of smooth logs, tightly packed, sealed with clay mortar, in the shape of a dome, with a large square hole at its cap. Taylor scrambled to the top, then helped Steve up.

  Taylor pointed east. “Beyond that rock is the place called Where We Emerged—the place where my people emerged from the Fourth World into this, the Fifth World.”

  He climbed through the hole at the top of the dome, then fifteen feet down a wood and thong ladder to a hard dirt floor, where he dropped the dead snake by his side. Steve followed.

  It was a great round room, mostly underground, with the same log and mortar wall that extended above ground to create the dome at the top. It was cool, even with the hot sun pouring in the open skylight.

  “Nice place,” said Steve. He wasn’t sure what you were supposed to say to an Indian about his personal church.

  “I was taught, in its construction, by the Ant People,” Taylor replied, as if by explanation.

  “The Ant People.” Steve nodded.

  Taylor motioned him to sit on a mound of earth against one wall covered by a Navajo blanket; then he went over to an adobe fire pit at the center of the room, stoked it with branches, and set to starting a small fire.

  Steve looked around. There was a deer skull beside him, still sprouting antlers. And placed carefully across the floor were various familiar and unfamiliar objects: some mountain lion claws, assorted crystals, dried herbs, carved figurines, a kachina mask, a long ceremonial pipe, a few stone beads.

  Taylor got the fire started, sat on the ground opposite Steve, and began to chant. The room filled slowly with smoke as he did so, and then with heat. Both men took their shirts off.

  Steve wondered what the guys would say if they could see him now—half-naked, half praying to a war god to help him chase the ghosts out of his house. He half stifled a laugh.

  Taylor stopped chanting. “This funny?” he said.

  “Well . . .” Steve didn’t want to offend the man, but the two of them sweating around a pile of steaming rocks was too reminiscent to suppress. “Maybe we could install a sauna like this in our garage, and open a health . . .” Taylor was not laughing. Steve sighed. “No . . . no . . . not funny.”

  Taylor did smile, though, in sympathy for this lost man—for are we not all lost? “Sense of humor is good,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

  Then he clapped his hands, sprinkled something over the fire that made it smoke, and began singing in Hopi once more.

  The smoke twisted strangely into the air, swaying with a seeming will of its own, as if there were life to it, a spirit life that moved to the rhythms of Taylor’s atonal droning, until it began to congeal, to shape itself . . .

  And suddenly it was the image of the Beast.

  A human face, yet inhuman, full of torment and hatred.

  Steve was paralyzed by this vision. His own mocking laughter echoed hollowly in his brain. He remembered this face from four years ago, when it had lunged out of the closet at him.

  It lunged now. Swooped down at him with a howling screech . . . and then dissipated.

  Taylor brought the ceremonial pipe over. “The entity reveals himself to you, his enemy,” he said somberly. “Now you have seen each other and there will be no mistakes.”

  “Mistakes? Mistakes about what?” Steve trembled, shaken.

  “Take the pipe. Now.”

  Steve did as he was told, putting one end of the long pipe into his mouth as Taylor held the other end and blew. Smoke poured into Steve’s mouth—he gagged, swallowed, and inhaled.

  Taylor continued. “First we must ask forgiveness of this thing, before we kill it.” He looked to heaven. “Smoke, make him one with power and knowledge.”

  Steve turned pale with the fear of power and knowledge.

  Tangina was showing Diane more pictures. “Here is a photo of those people—a group portrait, taken just at the start of their journey.”

  Diane looked away. She’d found her visions terribly disturbing; she wanted no more of it.

  “Please look at it,” Tangina went on. “Tell me what you feel. I know this is hard for you, dear—it’s hard for me, too. Harder than you can imagine. These pictures fill my dreams. I’ve hardly slept in more than . . .” She stopped. She hadn’t come here to commiserate. “I need your verification,” she went on more slowly, “on something I feel. You see, I don’t fully trust my instincts anymore.”

  There was something so pitiable about this last statement that Diane had to look at her. She did look drawn, and a bit lost. The unhappy medium.

  Tangina placed the photo in Diane’s hand. “Hold this, child. Tell me what you feel.”

  Diane stared at the old tintype before her, but in half a second she was reeling at what she saw there. “My God,” she whispered. “It’s him. I’ve seen him.”

  She pointed to the man standing in the back row of the 150-year-old photograph. A sallow man in a black hat, chill even at this distance.

  Henry Kane.

  “Where have you seen him?” Tangina pushed gently.

  “Here. At the mall. At our door.” She stopped her hand from shaking. She had to be strong. “Who is he?”

  “Please, Diane—tell me what you feel. Just tell me what you feel.” She needed the pure feelings of this strong woman to lean on.

  Diane felt only at a loss, though. “What do you want me to do?”

  Tangina was intentionally vague. She didn’t want to influence, with her own distorted perceptions, what Diane might otherwise see clearly. “I’ve consulted others,” she hinted. “They told me things, but they said you would know more.”

  “I don’t know anything!” Diane shouted, beginning to panic.

  “Yes, you do, Diane. You traveled into that astral dimension that few people have ever traveled to incarnate. Your daughter is highly clairvoyant, as was your mother.” She paused to let the impact of all this settle in for a moment—Carol Anne’s special abilities, their battle in the astral plane years before. “As you are clairvoyant as well, I suspect, though you try to repress it or deny it. But we can’t afford to repress it anymore, Diane, painful as it is. And I know far more of its pain than you do. Now, for God’s sake, Diane—for the sake of all of our souls—tell me what you feel!”

  Gingerly, Diane placed her hand on the photo and closed her eyes.

  The vision came:

  The dark cavern, full of corpses, only now the skeletal remains grew flesh, regained vital organs, glistening, and then skin covered the flesh; and they began to move. They looked up, up into a flickering light, writhed in agony toward the light, coughing, gasping, clawing for air, and the faces were clear: they were the people in the
photograph, the group portrait. Only now there was no hope in their expressions, only anguish, desperation, as the light on their faces was slowly eclipsed.

  “It’s him,” choked Diane, barely able to breathe, “the preacher. These people follow him in death as they did in life.”

  “Yes,” said Tangina, “yes, go on.”

  “Many people . . . it’s dark . . . terrible . . . frightening—”

  Diane’s eyes shot open, the trance broken. She couldn’t witness any more.

  Tangina touched Diane’s arm. “Rest easy, child. That was a good start. See, when you brought Carol Anne back to this world, his followers became restless, for they had tasted the light of her being—her life force.”

  Diane suddenly realized, and it was like the bottom falling out. “Now he wants her back,” she whispered.

  “This person is no longer human,” Tangina said, expressing more dismay than she’d intended. “He is the Beast.”

  Steve became one with the smoke. He rose through the top hatch of the kiva, rose above the arid mesa, filtered between puffy white clouds, rose to black space, where the sun was just another star. He swirled through clouds of interstellar gas, became ignited by comet tails, froze to crystalline lace work against the heavy metal of wandering meteors.

  He dissolved into deep space beyond the stars at the edge of the universe, on to a place where values like good and evil have no meaning; and here he saw, once more, the smoke of the Beast that hunted him.

  Their smokes turned around each other in helical embrace, mingled, then repelled, then floated there, sensing each other, unmoving, waiting.

  And their power was equal. Steve could feel it, and so could the Other.

  Steve’s essence did not want; his spirit could match anything the Beast devised

  He was strong, and infinitely in tune with the fabric of the universe.

  And if he could, at some deep level, remember this moment of parity—of power—he could win any contest.

  He swirled like a dancer, becoming the melody that wove through him, the melody of the Hopi chant . . .