Poltergeist II - The Other Side (10 page)

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 free. 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.”

“Doesn’t he know he’s dead.” Diane demanded.

“But he isn’t,” said Taylor.

“But you just said—”

“Nothing truly dies, the way you understand it.” He searched for words, for ways of explaining multiple existences to these kind people, who believed in only five senses. “As a caterpillar becomes a butterfly,” he spoke slowly, “death transforms us into another state of being. This man—he was evil in life, and his soul remains evil because he chooses not to see the Light and pass on to a different consciousness.”

Steve was lost. He just wanted some marching orders. “How do we fight back?” he said.

“An old woman lived here until a short time ago. She has passed on into the Light now.”

“My mother,” whispered Diane.

“I would offer my sympathies,” Taylor said warmly, “but what does the caterpillar know of the butterfly? No matter—when she was here, her spirit was protecting your child. With her . . . aura. Now that she has gone beyond the Light, the Beast is emboldened—he feels safe in entering our world again. To try to make the child his own.”

“How do we fight back?” Steve repeated. He didn’t want theology; he wanted strategy.

Taylor’s massive shoulders slumped an inch. “Until we learn how to defeat him, we do not let him win.”

“Some plan,” scoffed Steve, not without bitterness.

Diane turned it around on Steve. “Some attitude,” she leveled at his unhelpful cynicism.

“Don’t give me that!” he snapped at her.

Taylor interrupted strongly. “Do not betray each other now,” he warned. “This is the vapor of the Beast washing within you like a tide. It is
he,
speaking
through
you. His spirit is evil but very wise—do not fool yourself that evil is ignorant. He knows that your strength is your love, and he hates you for that, because he knows not love, nor has he been touched by love for two hundred years or more. His spirit swells on hate. He has been trying to pull this family apart, and he will continue to try.” He looked from Steve to Diane. “If he succeeds, he will capture Carol Anne . . . and destroy your spirit.”

The next morning Carol Anne and Robbie were playing on the front lawn when they heard the melody. It was an oddly pitched man’s voice, at once lazy and intense, singing an old spiritual they’d never heard before. “He is in His Holy Temple,” the voice sang. Or maybe Carol Anne
had
heard it before; she wasn’t sure.

They looked up to see the man singing it as he walked nonchalantly along the front of the house. The man, too, looked familiar.

He was thin and wore a black, wide-brimmed hat, a black coat, black lace-up boots. He looked like a preacher.

Very deliberately, he turned up the Freelings’ driveway.

The moment he did so, E. Buzz, who’d been sleeping on the front porch, woke up and began to bark. It started raining, though the sky remained cloudless.

Henry Kane sang louder: “He is in His Holy Temple . . .” He approached Carol Anne on the grass as the dog growled angrily.

Robbie ran up onto the porch. “Come on, Carol Anne!” he called. He knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know what.

Carol Anne didn’t move. It was raining on her, but she seemed frozen to the spot, just staring at the gaunt preacher man who walked slowly closer.

Robbie shouted louder. “Carol Anne, is something wrong? Huh? It’s
raining
Carol Anne, come on!”

Suddenly it burst out of her—a cry for help: “Mom! Dad!”

E. Buzz bared his fangs in fear. Steve and Diane ran out onto the porch, and their appearance seemed to break the spell Carol Anne was under—she bolted for the house just before the man reached her, and hugged her mom around the legs.

The man continued his leisurely pace up the drive, now whistling his hypnotic tune. He smiled, oblivious to the rain pouring down.

Diane felt goosebumps on her arm. She quickly ushered the children inside the house, then stood with them just behind the screen door. Steve remained out on the porch, watching the man with the measured gait come forward until they were face to face.

“Can I help you?” said Steve. He felt himself sweating—this guy gave him a bad feeling.

Diane stared out from behind the screen. “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she said.

“That is possible,” said Kane. “I get around.” He seemed to radiate a magnetic kind of energy, but his voice made Diane weak, almost nauseated—it was too high or something; and his eyes reminded her of damp moss. He said, “I love getting around. Love talking to people—even on a rainy day.” He patted E. Buzz on the head as a gesture of friendship, but the dog jumped and yelped and ran away.

The man’s fingernails came up full of dog hair, with a singed odor about them. “Dog’s shedding,” he mentioned conversationally. Then he saw Carol Anne half hiding behind her mother and the screen door. “Hi,” he said kindly.

“Hi,” Carol Anne choked out; but she was just as jumpy as the dog. She had no memory of this man’s face, but her body registered its clear recollection.

And her spirit knew.

Diane finally remembered something. “I saw you at the mall.”

The man smiled joyously. “Sure you did!” Like he was honored to be recalled. “I remember your little angel here.” He beamed graciously at them all. “Let me introduce myself. Henry Kane.” He extended his hand.

Carol Anne whimpered and hugged Diane closer. Steve kept his hand to himself—it was sweating so much, he didn’t really want to touch the guy. “We’ve had enough of door-to-door salesmen,” he began, and broke off. He was feeling a little sick himself.

Besides, he didn’t owe this guy any explanations or apologies. He just felt as if he wanted to lie down. He moved to the screen door and opened it; Kane followed him, coming up onto the porch, in out of the rain.

As Steve stood at the threshold, Kane spoke again.
“Reverend
Kane. What I sell is free. And Kane is able.” He smiled generously.

Steve stood just inside the house, the screen door open; Kane was on the porch outside, facing him. “Mind if I come in and talk to you about it?” he purred to Steve as he pulled the door open a little wider.

Steve heard Carol Anne behind him say, “Mom, I don’t feel good,” and on impulse he pulled the screen door shut, leaving Kane outside on the porch. Steve was not the most sensitive man on the planet, but he could hear when his own daughter was scared.

He looked at Kane across the screen. “Let’s talk from here,” he said quietly.

Diane felt Carol Anne’s forehead. “Come on, honey, I want to take your temperature,” she said. Then: “You come, too, Robbie.” She eyed Kane suspiciously once more, then hurried the kids away, feeling chilled despite the warm day.

Steve, on the other hand, was sweating more and more. Yellow spots swam across his peripheral visual field; he felt actually quite faint.

Kane smiled again, this time with an air of confidentiality, of things unspoken that must be spoken between men. “I am glad we’re able to talk with your family out of the way, because I believe you have a problem here.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve took the challenge, but his conviction was thready.

“Yes,” said Kane with sincerity. “I believe there’s an Indian living here with you.”

“Taylor?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Is that what he calls himself now?” Kane wagged his head like a disappointed schoolteacher. Then, more concerned: “You are in danger.”

“What do you mean?” said Steve. He
did
feel in danger. Maybe this yo-yo knew what he was talking about.

Kane became righteous. “I am with an organization whose concern is families like yours—families in crisis who are preyed upon by charlatans with fake magic.” His eyes widened and deepened, his nostrils flared in outrage. “I don’t expect you to believe me right now”—his manner calmed to something more beatific—“but please let me come in and talk to you.”

Kane reached for the door.

Steve held it closed. “This is getting crazy,” he muttered.

Kane entreated. “Will you please, brother, open your heart? Open your heart and let me in . . .” His voice was becoming hypnotic.

Steve felt his eyes getting heavy.

“Open your mind and heart to what I am saying,” Kane droned on. “Please, that man is
dangerous.”
His voice rose at the end, with unexpected volume and feeling.

The change jolted Steve alert. “How do you know that?” he said.

Kane smiled thinly. “Because I’m smaaaaart . . .”

At that moment Diane, standing at the bedroom bureau looking for a thermometer, had a vision: Everything went black; she was suddenly in a blackened chamber, and then there was candlelight, and a multitude of desperate faces and hands reaching toward her, faces weeping, wailing, twisted with grief; and a man beside her, in a black coat and with eyes of moss, was saying, “Believe me, children, because I’m smaaaaart . . .”

And then the vision was gone. Diane’s knees became rubbery, though, and she sat down hard at her bedroom vanity, sweating, shaking. Perhaps she should take her
own
temperature; she was feeling a little feverish.

And then it came again. A different vision: She stood at a cave mouth, looking out at a vast, bleached desert landscape. A hundred people were walking there, in a straggly line, wearing early-nineteenth-century clothes, walking and stumbling and parching under the desert sun. And at the head of the line, riding the only horse among them, was Henry Kane.

Again the vision dissipated, and Diane sat alone in her bedroom once more, trembling and afraid.

Downstairs, only a moment had passed; Kane was still speaking. “This Indian—his real name is Ben Lagou.” The name came with difficulty to his tongue; he hated to utter it. “I can see he has a hold on this family. Who do your wife and children turn to with their problems? They turn to him, don’t they? They don’t trust you anymore. I can help. Now, can I please come in and speak to you?”

His voice and his argument were compelling. He spoke openly of things Steve half suspected; he implied knowledge of much more.