Poltergeist II - The Other Side (5 page)

“Honey, you were never a hippie.” Diane tried to calm him with quiet patience.

“Huh?” he said, losing the pace of his rhetoric.

“You were
never
out in the streets with ‘the people.’ You always wanted to make money. The only reason you painted your van all those colors and grew your hair long was to impress Cookie Gurnich.”

“Gur
nick
. Cookie Gur
nick.”
His eyes lit up at the memory.

“Miss Free Love.” Now she was losing her patience.

“True.” He nodded, reflecting fondly. “But you know something—”

“I hated you then, Steven.” It made her realize that for all the problems he was having, she loved him now.

“But I always made up with you.” He grinned. “Remember how?”

“Don’t try it now,” she warned. She was still pissed off about Cookie Gurnich.

“Do you remember how?” he goaded.

“No, I don’t.” She did.

“Come on. You do,” he prodded. He tried pulling her off the bed. She resisted.

“Oh, yeah,” she allowed, “you’d sing that stupid song. Don’t toy it, Steven. I still haven’t forgiven you for Cookie Gurnich.”

“Gur
nick
,” he laughed, pulling her up into his arms, slow-dancing as he sang “If I Fell in Love with You” by the Beatles.

Before long she laughed back, even let him dip her. “Is it true Cookie crumbled in your hand?” she asked gaily.

At which point Carol Anne did a rather dramatic little pas de deux into the doorway. “Mom! Dad! I’m a ballerina!”

Steve and Diane stopped their dance in mid-step as Carol Anne’s smile wilted only barely. “Am I interrupting again?” she said, sensing the
dansus interruptus.

“Yes,” Steve and Diane chorused. Steve stood straight and intoned, “You’re late for bed, Miss Ballerina.” Then he raised his arms slowly above his head, flexing and wiggling his fingers, flaring his nostrils, taking one halting step forward.

Carol Anne burst into uncontrollable giggles and raced out of the room. “Not the Tickle Monster!” she screamed.

In a tickle frenzy, the Monster stalked her to her room.

An hour later, the day seemed finally to be winding down. Robbie and Carol Anne were in bed, Steve in the shower, Diane and Jess in the kitchen having coffee, sitting at the table. Jess was absently turning pages in a seed catalogue as Diane perused Carol Anne’s crayon drawings. When she came to the picture of Henry Kane, she repressed a shiver but was unable to stifle an involuntary gag.

Jess felt it and looked up.

Diane said, “I don’t know,” as if Jess had just asked her a question out loud. Jess had only thought the question, though. Diane continued: “I think it’s something she made up in her imagination. It’s just a drawing.” A sense of loathing came over her she couldn’t describe; nor could she bridle the compulsion that seized her next: she tore the picture up. “It’s ugly,” she whispered.

She was horrified with herself—how could she do such a thing as to tear up one of her child’s own creations? This picture was an expression of Carol Anne’s being; it was even an integral part of her therapy to draw such things . . . such ugly things.

But Diane couldn’t help herself. She looked away from her mother.

Jess saw the conflict on Diane’s face but was unsure what it was about. Doubts about Carol Anne, she suspected. “You know,” Jess said gently, “she can see colors with her hands. She has many gifts.”

This thoroughly exasperated Diane. “Mother, please! I don’t want to hear this stuff. Steve doesn’t want to hear it either, and he doesn’t want Carol Anne to hear it most of all. Okay?”

“It’s nothing to be afraid of.” Jess spoke calmly. It was obvious Diane was raw with fear. Of what?

Diane was angry, too. “How do you know what we should be afraid of?” She paused as she thought of Carol Anne crying from another dimension, of demons and visions and corpses bubbling out of the ground and her house being sucked into the void, and Carol Anne’s nightmares and Dana leaving forever. “You weren’t there, were you?” She said it like an accusation. She was near tears.

“Why don’t you tell me?” said Jess. “Maybe it will help.”

“I did tell you.” Trying to cut off further questions.

“Not everything.” Pushing.

“Well, I don’t remember everything.” This was true. She’d forgotten as much as she could.

“Try,” whispered Jess.

Diane knew her mother just wanted to help, so she tried. “Well . . . first the parakeet died.” That was how she marked the beginning of that week of terror. Or maybe it was just an omen. But it reminded her of something else. “Then the chairs went funny, and I thought it was kind of exciting . . . but then it started.” She got cold, and her voice got soft. “Carol Anne was gone . . . and then I went . . . I don’t remember anything after that.” This was not true. But she didn’t
want
to remember anything after that.

Yet the memories came—as if she’d taken her finger out of the dike, she was suddenly almost drowned with visions: strange silhouettes of people wandering beneath a ring of light, herded by a creature so vile she could not look, could only try to shun its putrescent odor and clattering teeth as she groped madly for Carol Anne, who was crying, crying . . .

Diane twisted in the kitchen chair.

“Something wrong?” Jess tried to tap into it.

“No,” said Diane flatly. This was just what she wanted to avoid, these waking nightmares. “I really don’t remember anything . . . and I want to go on with my life. All that other stuff—it’s over.” She would make a fortress of herself. She would let nothing in. She would be strong.

Jess wanted to hold her, but she felt the walls going up. “You’ve got to go unafraid into this life,” she urged. “You don’t want to instill fear into that child, who is truly gifted and filled with knowledge. Fear will only snuff it out . . . or pervert it.”

“I don’t
want
her to be gifted!” Diane shouted. She wanted an ordinary child, leading an ordinary life in an ordinary house. When the gods bestowed gifts, the instructions were too often written in madness.

Jess shook her head sadly. “I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”

Diane’s drawbridge was closing, though. “Please, Mom, I don’t want to discuss it anymore. I’m going to bed. Good night.” Cold, the wind around stone walls. Cold and unyielding, she walked from the room.

Jess watched her daughter’s retreat up the stairs and whispered: “I love you. I’ll be there if you want me.”

Midnight. Steve and Diane slept soundly, not quite touching. At the foot of their bed, sleeping crosswise, was Carol Anne, wrapped in a blanket. She’d gotten scared in her own room, so she’d come down there. Clutched in her arms was the guardian angel doll, Katrina, that Gramma Jess had given her for her last birthday.

At five minutes past midnight, Carol Anne opened her eyes.

She didn’t know why; she was just awake. Silently she got up, carrying her doll and blanket out of the room.

Down the hall, past Jess’s room, past the linen closet, toward her own bedroom door . . . suddenly she stopped, turned, and went back to Gramma’s room. She didn’t know why; she just went in.

Gramma Jess was asleep, a look of profound peace on her face. Carol Anne walked to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed the old woman on the cheek. She didn’t know why.

When she went into her own bedroom, Robbie was sleeping, hanging half off the bed, with E. Buzz lying smugly on Robbie’s pillow. Carol Anne was about to get into bed when she heard something and turned her head sharply. E. Buzz awoke at the same moment, staring immediately in the direction Carol Anne was looking: at her pink toy telephone sitting on the floor.

What they’d heard was a voice.

Carol Anne walked over to the phone and sat down. Moonshine through the skylight washed over the plastic, making it look almost luminescent, almost lit from inside.

Carol Anne picked up the receiver. “Yes . . . yes . . . I’ll be good. I love you, too. Good night, Gramma.” Then she hung up, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.

It was not a sleep of rest, though.

There remained thirty minutes to midnight when Taylor reached the top of the obelisk. It was flat, ageless stone, twenty feet across, with sparse brush growing between the cracks. A small fire burned at the center of the plateau in a fire pit kept holy by local shamans, for this was a place of power, very near where the Hopi people were said to have emerged into this world. Nobody else was there, so Taylor sat by the fire to warm himself.

The thunderclouds had passed, leaving the night sky again full of stars. Taylor stared through the fire at the outline of Black Mesa in the near distance, the thick stars rising above it like sparks from the fire, frozen in space and time. Then they seemed to unfreeze—to shift position, fold over on themselves, take on depth and shape within the flames—until suddenly Taylor realized the shape was human: there was a man sitting opposite him on the other side of the fire. It was the man called Sings-With-Eagles.

He was an old man. A Hopi. He wore a white bandanna around his forehead to hold his long white hair back. His shirt was midnight blue, his beadwork desert red. His fetishes were spread out on the ground before him. He carried a tom-tom.

He took some powder from a deerskin bag and sprinkled it over the fire. Sparks flew up to the sky with a rush, seeming not to stop until they found a new place in the heavens.

He sang in the language of his people: “We ask this place of power to bring forth the knowledge of smoke.” The sparks became as comets, trailing into deep space. “May the smoke teach us and guide us.”

“Thank you for coming here, Sings-With-Eagles,” said Taylor, also in Hopi. “I have much need of your wisdom.”

“I am sorry to be late,” said the old man, “but I could not locate a babysitter, and my wife ran away again.”

After a suitable pause, Taylor said, “I would go to the Dark Canyon, in the land of Moski, where the Dead forever walk.”

The old man’s eyes filled with laughing stars. “To get to the Land of the Dead is but a short journey from here, Wanderer. You have only to walk ten paces in any direction and fall, with grace or without, to the foot of this mesa.”

Taylor smiled. “I would go, Grandfather—but I would also return.”

“Ah,” said Sings-With-Eagles. “A more difficult journey. And the Dark Canyon is where the Evil Ones dwell—they are fearful to gaze upon, yet you must not look away, for then you will become lost there forever. The Dark Land is filled with spirits who feared to look on the Evil Ones and thus lost sight of the Way to the Upper World.”

“The Navajo say, ‘Never shut your eyes in fear, lest ye go blind—for the Masked Dancers, the Yei, in the moment your eyes are closed, will snatch them out.’ ”

The old man smiled. “The Navajo cannot have lived so long near the Hopi without learning
something.”
He nodded. Then he reached around behind himself and picked up an ornately tooled spear. “Great evil is coming,” he continued. “An ancient evil, one you know well. But now it is coming after another—after a child and, I think, her family. You can use this family, though—and if you use them with care, you may defeat the Evil One.”

He handed the spear to Taylor and went on. “This weapon has been held by many hands in many battles, many lands. It was used by Spider Grandmother in the Fourth World to destroy the monsters of that place before our people emerged here. It was used by my grandfather against Carson, before the Long Walk . . .”

“Your grandfather was
defeated
by Carson,” Taylor protested.

“Because the spear was not used with care,” instructed the old shaman. “It must not be used in anger or vengeance, but with thought and truth. It has powers from another world, but it can only be an extention of the spirit that wields it. If the spirit is small . . .” Sings-With-Eagles shrugged, as if the results were self-evident.

“And this spear can be of use in the Dark Land?”

Sings-With-Eagles did not answer directly. “The door to the Lower World is attended by Masauwu, Guardian of the Land of the Dead. It is to him we must first sing.”

And Sings-With-Eagles sang. It was a ceremony Taylor knew, but the old man knew it better, he blended with his music, and his music blended with the patterns of the universe in such a way as to achieve complete harmony, a perfect weaving of spirit, such that he
was
the knowledge he sought.

Taylor stared deeply into the fire as the chant mixed with the smoke and flame. Sparks swirled there again, creating patterns and shapes of dark color, occult meaning. Taylor let himself merge further into the spirit of the fire.

The smoke began to curl upward like a serpent, then twist and hover directly above Taylor, as if it would strike him.

Sings-With-Eagles spoke. “It is frightening, but do not fear.” He motioned Taylor to rise.

Taylor rose into the smoke. It billowed over him, snaking around his body like a second skin. Taylor inhaled, his arms upraised. The smoke entered his mouth and nostrils as if it were a living thing, fleeing into the warmth of his great chest.

Sings-With-Eagles chanted. “Smoke . . . make him one with power and knowledge.” The fire burned brighter. The old man nodded, responding to the spirits that guided him. “Taylor, you are to enter this Lower World through your dreams . . .”