Poltergeist (16 page)

The previous manifestations were wondrous, to be sure, but so bizarre, so essentially unnameable, as to be more hallucinatory than not, in the minds of the observers. Already, Lesh was wondering to herself: Did that just happen? Was it real?

But this woman—this was simply a truth. She was here. And the gravity of her sheer presence was overpowering.

She walked—or rather, wafted—among them, now. The scintillations around her moved wherever she moved, testing the air, drifting away from time to time, then returning to her. After-images—except that they were fore-images—preceded the woman each time she glided somewhere, as if she were somehow being led by her own flow.

Her ectoplasmic arms stretched out, periodically, into long, thin tendrils that reached across the room to test various objects, to palpate, to sense, and then withdraw back to her sides. She was constantly extending herself in that way, in fact—sometimes actually dissolving momentarily, to reconstitute a second later with a swirling, regathering of smoke.

So real, so haunting. They all watched her gauzy form move from chair to camera to curtain, and not a one of them didn’t hope to be so touched. Each felt thrilled, enthralled, and not a little struck by magic.

Motionless, they stood, as the woman wandered. Then, as they watched, she paused: the ephemeral blue-green mist that formed her seemed to congeal; her head enlarged, her eyes grew blacker; lips pulled back in demon snarl; arms rose up—and, as they watched, it seemed that something beastly welled within her, started to emerge. Chill fear settled in their hearts.

The room got colder. Everyone turned in different directions to see what was happening, when all of a sudden every light bulb in the place came on. The lights grew brighter each second, quickly reaching an intensity that was blinding, impossible to bear. Everyone in the room covered their eyes. Marty was screaming again. Electrical smoke filled the air; sparks crackled. The whine of audio feedback rose rapidly to overload volume.

“Smells like a short!” Steve cried out.

“It’s going to explode!”

The frequency of the feedback reached a horrendously high pitch, intensely loud, until, cathartically, an enormous BOOM rolled through the house; the misty spirit, along with all the glimmering lights, got vehemently sucked up into the bilocation point, and once more all was quiet, all was dark. The episode was over.

Dr. Lesh broke the silence. “Roll the tape back.” Her voice was tense, controlled.

Ryan hit the rewind switches on the VTRs as the others felt themselves for signs of injury, and slowly collected around the monitors. Marty sat where he was, naked on the floor, hyperventilating, but otherwise appearing well and unharmed.

“I think it recorded,” Ryan muttered, as he fiddled with various switches and buttons. “I think we got one on tape. Yes. Yes! We got it recorded!”

The two monitors played back their videotapes simultaneously—one a visible spectrum, one a special lens that had captured part of the infrared range and played it back on thermographic tape.

Everyone watched the monitors closely. Neither tape demonstrated the flame-creature, the shadow-thing, or the tree-being. They just weren’t there. Neither was the turquoise mist, nor the vapor, nor the smoke. What
was
there, though, was miraculous. What was there, was people.

Sheer, diaphanous forms, walking slowly down the stairs. At the same speed, and in the same places that the mist had gone, so these ghost-people walked. And in the center of each chest, a light glowed—in the same positions as the lights had been flashing and glowing in the mist, when the thing had first oozed its way downstairs.

All kinds of people walked this vapor trail. An old man, bent and weary. A little girl—not Carol Anne—looked around as if she were lost, as if she didn’t even see the old man. Aimlessly, she wandered around the living room.

All at once, four more manifestations appeared on the screen. Large, grisly men, dressed in burlap coats, floppy hats, and riding boots, huddled in one corner, facing away from the camera. A woman walked on-screen, dressed like a flapper of the twenties. She moved this way and that, as if looking for a door, tears streaming down her face.

Several more people appeared now: an infant, crunched up in a ball and screaming silently; two bloody toughs, repeatedly stabbing each other with knives; an old woman in a wedding dress.

People of all ages and descriptions floated dreamily across the picture tube. Lost, directionless, these sad spectres followed the same path as the smoky ectoplasm had done earlier. Restless ghosts.

The same images played on the infrared monitor, though they registered in wildly different colors on the screen, recording temperatures as well as wavelengths. They were cold, these phantasms.

Rarely did a manifestation make contact with any other—they didn’t even seem to be aware that the others existed. Some even stared directly at the camera, without showing evidence that they knew it was there. A young man approached the lens, and evaporated.

The spirit-woman entered the screen. Where twenty lights had encircled her before, now were twenty souls, faint attendant spirits who accompanied their ghostly mistress like a ghostly court. The spirit-woman moved among her minions, queenly, graciously aloof; even on tape, a dazzling spectre.

Almost whimsically, she stared out of the monitor; floated closer, filled the picture; paused; came closer, still, until the whole screen darkened, turned black. The murky image of the woman shifted shape within the darkness, horribly transformed: two bright glowing spots appeared, then pulled back: they were eyes. Eyes in the center of a lightless, shapeless head—shapeless, but vile. Gradually the head resolved itself until it could be dimly seen, though still the shape was difficult to gauge. For it was the grinning face of rank chaos, horror incarnate. Madness embodied.

And beyond it, in the background, its shadow: the shadow of the Beast.

Marty held his breath as he stared at the image, for this was the thing he briefly had become.

Diane grabbed Robbie, covered his eyes, and screamed—continuously, uncontrollably: a sound from the bottom of the pit.

Steve stepped in forcibly between Diane and the monitor, preventing her from seeing that from which she could not look away.

“That thing is in there with my baby!” Diane wailed. “That thing! That thing!”

Dr. Lesh continued staring at the screen, an expression of total despair on her face. “My God,” she whispered to herself. “There are hundreds.”

Steve wrapped his strong arms around Diane, enfolding her, until her screams became sobs, and finally subsided into muffled chokes. Gently, he stroked the back of her head. Then he stooped to pick up Robbie, standing beside him, and included the boy in the tight, long embrace.

Lesh and her assistants looked on in silence. The tape ended. All was quiet.

For a minute, nobody moved. Then Dr. Lesh roused herself, crossed over to the videotape recorders, removed the tapes, put them in her briefcase. And locked it.

A brilliant morning sun blazed through the kitchen window, falling in parallelogram patches over the linoleum floor. The day was already warm; the night was gone.

Robbie walked into the kitchen with a big sigh, all dressed in clean clothes, his hair still wet from combing. “I’m ready,” he called.

“Tell Gramma to call the very second you walk in,” Diane instructed him, as she wiped her hands dry on the dish towel.

“Taxi’s here,” Steve shouted from the hall.

Diane squatted down and straightened Robbie’s collar. “Now don’t be scared of the taxi man; he’s a friend of Daddy’s and mine.”

“I’m eight years old, gimme a break.” Robbie was getting a little annoyed about all this fussing. Ghosts were one thing—a taxi ride to his grandmother’s, he could handle.

“That’s what I like to hear,” boomed Steve, entering from the hallway. “Let’s move out! You’re about to have yourself a real adventure.”

“I don’t need no more adventure. I need to get some sleep.”

They walked together to the front door. There Robbie picked up a small, eight-year-old-sized suitcase in one hand, and, in the other, a leash with E. Buzz on the end of it.

Robbie exited the doorway. Steve moved to follow, to help with the bag, but the boy waved him off. “I can do it myself. ’Bye.”

“ ’Bye, sweetheart,” Diane called from the entrance way. “Call us.” She held on to her tears as child and dog climbed into the taxi. E. Buzz barked. The cab pulled away from the curb.

Steve went into the living room to talk to Ryan. Diane went back into the kitchen. Sitting at the table was Dr. Lesh, sorting through the collection of trinkets and paraphernalia that had materialized in mid-air the evening before. Brooches, stickpins, cameos, hair combs, brass buttons, cuff links, teeth, bones, coins, and lockets. Like fossilized remains, they gave intimations of long-dead lives. Physical shadows of the past.

“This cameo,” said Dr. Lesh, holding it up to the light, “one hundred years old.”

Diane sat down beside her, and began sifting through some of the jewelry, “Some haul, huh?” She gestured upstairs: “Maybe they’re afraid we’ll sue them, and this is their idea of an out-of-court settlement.”

Lesh held up a twist-o-flex digital wristwatch. “And this enigma . . . not more than a couple of years old. And not your husband’s?”

“He said it wasn’t.”

“I’ve heard about jewelry or perfume disappearing from a vanity in one room, later to reappear in another, but . . . but this doesn’t fit into any construct I’ve ever experienced, or heard of.”

“Has anything, lately?”

“No, I suppose not.” Lesh smiled. She’d grown tremendously fond of, and impressed with, this family during the brief time she’d shared their ordeal. Diane, in particular, seemed so strong to Lesh—refusing to abandon her baby in the face of this insanity, permitting her emotions to have full rein, yet not letting them paralyze or totally inundate her. And now, just the next morning: wearing a clean, yellow dress, Diane was bright and fresh, and even sarcastic.

Steve entered the kitchen. “Okay, gang, what’s for breakfast?”

Dr. Lesh stood, took off her glasses, smoothed out her dress. “Well, I’m off.” She put the artifacts into a bag. “I’ll take these back to the lab, along with the tapes. I’ve got to look in on Tangina, to see how she’s doing . . . Then, I’ve just been on the phone, setting up a Human Research Committee meeting for this afternoon—I’ll present all the evidence; we’ll see if anyone has any suggestions . . .” She paused, had a second thought, then went on a shade more tentatively. “I’ll have to display these, you know.”

Steve smiled grimly. “Just please not on ‘Sixty Minutes.’ ”

“Or . . . ‘That’s Incredible’?” added Diane.

Martha laughed. “Not even on ‘Upstairs, Downstairs.’ ” She began walking toward the door. “I’m leaving Ryan here with you—I’ll return tonight. Marty won’t be coming back, did you know?”

“Yeah, he told me that after he watched his face fall off last night, he decided to get a day job.” Steve chuckled.

“He told me it was the worst acid flashback he’d ever had,” Diane commiserated. “Poor kid.”

“Well, in any case, he’s promised not to talk about this for several weeks. After that, we’re all on our own.”

The front doorbell rang just then. “I’ll get it,” said Steve. It made him feel somehow relieved, this doorbell. It was such a normal, familiar, suburban sound: people were out there, playing golf, driving to the store, ringing doorbells—doing the things that people do. Hearing the bell somehow made him part of all that again.

With a light foot, he crossed the hall and opened the front door. Instantly he felt uncomfortable. Standing there was Frank Teague, briefcase in hand.

“Morning, Steve.”

“Morning, Frank.” Of all the people Steve didn’t want to see, Frank topped the list—Teague was not only suspicious by nature, he had rather distinct ideas about what constituted appropriate behavior among employees. And Steve just didn’t feel as if he was being on his best behavior.

“Missed you at the office the last couple days, Steve. Nothing wrong, is there?”

“No, no, no. Everything’s fine. Fine.”

“The fellows were worried, you know, after you called in sick, so I took it upon myself to . . .” He stepped a little closer, to scrutinize Steve’s appearance. “Jesus, Steve, you look like shit. Aren’t you feeling any better?”

Steve felt like nothing so much as a schoolboy caught playing hooky. “Well . . . now you mention it, I am still a little weak . . . this particular strain of flu’s not so easy to get rid of. I swear, the minute you’re back on your feet . . . it, uh . . . it’s back with you.”

Teague peered past Steve into the living room. All the equipment was still up: cables, tracking across the floor. Three television monitors could be seen, tuned to static. Steve saw Teague eyeing the disarray, and subtly shifted his weight so as to block his boss’s view.

Teague moved, too, not so inconspicuously trying to get a glimpse around Steve’s other side. “Looks like your cable is out, there,” he offered.

“Cable? Yes, the cable. Yes. We’ve had no TV for several days.”

“Well, we should look into that. Any other houses on the block dark?” Suspicion clouded his voice.

“Uh, no, no . . . just us. Just us.”

At the far end of the living room, the upright piano slid four feet, gently bumping into the couch, emitting a sustained, discordant vibration. Teague didn’t see it, but the noise made him furrow his brow. Steve immediately stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Instantly, the porch light came on, then increased in intensity to such a level it was dazzling, even in the full daylight. Steve laughed nervously.

Teague squinted at the bulb. “Looks like you’ve got a
number
of electrical problems in the house, here. What’s that you got screwed in there, a three-hundred-watt bulb? You afraid of prowlers—in this neighborhood? Or you just trying to attract every insect in Cuesta Verde?” he laughed.

Steve laughed.

“Well?” Teague prodded after a moment.