Poltergeist II - The Other Side (6 page)

Taylor’s eyes closed. Trance engulfed him.

The old man continued: “Taylor, you are to die . . .”

Taylor’s spirit flew into the fire, into the smoke . . .

“Taylor, you are to pass first through a Canyon of Shadows . . .”

Carol Anne floated through a canyon of shadows. This part of her dream was recurrent, and it was the only part she ever remembered—because it was the part she liked. And she liked it even though she knew it was supposed to be scary . . . because this was the place where Sceädu lived.

He was the shadow-creature. He couldn’t be distinguished from the background—the bottomless pits, the congealed gray boulders, the darkling bends of space—except by his movement, which was furtive, full of mean stealth. His intent was grim: to engulf any passing spirit, to feed on its life force; and once a spirit was engulfed, there was no escape. Eternal darkness—life within Sceädu—was the fate.

There was but one defense, and that was to jump
through
his shadow form in the moment before he was to consume your spirit. Most froze in fear at that moment and this succumbed to his darkness.

Carol Anne thought it was a game, though. She tracked Sceädu around his own shadowy domain, surprising him from behind and leaping through him before he was even aware of her presence.

Once through him, Carol Anne entered another plane. On this plane Sceädu still existed, but his nature was different: here he was a shadow-sprite who didn’t stalk but ran, elusive as shadow in a sunny fog. When she wanted to return to the original Shadow Land—to get home—it would be necessary to chase this elfen Sceädu, to find him, and to jump through him again. Much harder to do in this dimension—a place of mists and wandering souls and that bright, bright light that hurt Carol Anne’s eyes and made it hard to see.

This was the place that scared Carol Anne. The place she never remembered in the morning.

Once here, she could never understand why she’d come, which scared her even more. Tonight she huddled in the chill vapors, watching the pitiable faces of the wretched spirits that floated all around her. If she stayed long enough, they would come closer and closer, never quite touching her, but desperately wanting to. She backed away—away from the light, away from the weeping forms that gravitated toward her, away to someplace she hoped she could corner Sceädu so she could dive back through him to the other side and home again—and she backed into Henry Kane.

She jumped and spun around and stood shivering, watching him. As before, he wore a black, wide-brimmed hat, a loose black preacher’s coat, a black string tie over a frayed cotton shirt. He hummed his sorrowful melody, smiling his gaunt smile, and reached out to touch her. She backed away a step. His hand seemed unearthly cold, and even though he and she didn’t actually touch, her teeth began to chatter.

“Come child,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. Come along with Reverend Kane.”

She shook her head no.

“It was I who kept you from getting lost this morning at the shopping plaza. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head no.

“Come, then, put your hand on my heart—you can feel how pure it is.”

He took a step toward her; she took a step back.

“Touch my heart,” he repeated, his smile mellowing to entreaty. “Then I’ll know you trust me, and we can be friends.”

He pulled open his jacket, exposing the thin white shirt that covered the left side of his chest. A gesture of vulnerability.

She shook her head no.

“Please,” he beckoned. “Don’t reject me. I’m opening myself up to you.” His voice was soft, vaguely Southern, in a register high enough to suggest imbalance.

She trembled, looked around for escape, but her feet would not move.

He loosened his tie, began slowly to unbutton his shirt. “Let me lay myself open to your touch,” he pleaded, pulling his shirt open.

Beneath his shirt, there was no skin—only glistening ribs, shreds of rotting muscle, oozing veins enclosing a dark red heart that beat, slapped against the ribcage, and gray-pink lungs that dripped like sodden sponges.

Carol Anne gagged. She’d never seen the insides of a person; it was a horror. But she couldn’t move.

“Touch my heart,” he beseeched her. “Here, let me make it easy for you.”

He grabbed his left third rib and, with a wrenching crack, tore it out of his chest wall and threw it away. Blood seeped from the ragged end of his breastbone; the pumping heart seemed to push itself against the space made by the absent rib, as if it were trying to squeeze through between the second and fourth ribs, as if it were straining on a leash to attack Carol Anne.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think; she could only stare.

“Let me make it easier for you,” he whispered, and grabbed his fourth rib.

There was a sickening crunch as he pulled the fourth rib out and let it drop. His heart flipped around wildly now, jerking against its vascular connections, pushing the opening in the ribcage, getting tugged back.

“There.” Kane smiled. “I couldn’t be more open. But you must meet me halfway. Come, child, it’s so warm. Come, touch my heart.”

She couldn’t stop staring at the thing, all red-black and flopping like a bloated fish.

“Here, now, it wants to be touched so badly.” There was gentle scolding in his voice. “You can see plain as anything how it’s tryin’ to get near you. Just wants to be held, like we all do. Here, I’ll show you.”

Without even wincing, he splintered the remaining ribs out of his left chest, leaving only the heart exposed and pulsating along the underside of the dark, slippery lung.

He looked down. “Ah, getting shy, now, are you?” he said to his heart. So he pulled his lung away as if it were a curtain; then he reached his other hand up, cupping his heart tenderly, like a dying bird, and lifted it out of the chest cavity toward Carol Anne, as far as it would go without tearing from the aorta.

“Here,” he said to Carol Anne. “It’s not so wild now. It just wants to be held. Here, now
—you
can hold it.”

Taylor had his own way of approaching Sceädu in the Canyon of Shadows. He located the creature by sensing disharmony
among
the shadows—the flow of darknesses that moved, wavelike, there—and when he’d found him, he chanted the song of the Shadow Way, restoring the harmony, putting the benighted creature at rest. And when Sceädu was thus nestled in his proper place, Taylor stepped through him to the next plane—the place of mists and souls and the One Light.

He shielded his eyes from the Light but did not falter. He looked closely from face to face until he found the one he sought—the evil one, dressed in black, with eyes like moss. Taylor watched him approach a young, lost girl and try to befoul her spirit with self-mutilation. The girl wavered.

Taylor was about to intervene in this obscenity when he noticed someone else observing the interaction: an old woman, heading toward the Light. She’d stopped in her journey, though, to watch the young girl confront this monster of a man.

Taylor approached the old-woman-spirit. “Do not watch this shameful display,” he told her. “Go into the Light, if that is your journey.”

The old woman’s lip quavered. “She’s my granddaughter,” she said, nodding toward the young girl. “She needs my help.”

“I will help her,” Taylor promised. “But if your journey is into the Light and you do not go, you will wander here in the Dark Canyon forever with the Evil Ones—like
that
thing.” He pointed at Kane, who was now ripping out pieces of his own lung with his teeth and eating them in front of Carol Anne, trying to force her into submission through horror.

Taylor moved between Kane and Carol Anne. “Perhaps it is for me to touch your heart.”

Kane backstepped with a grimace. “You . . .” he growled.

“And you,” Taylor answered flatly. He looked momentarily at Carol Anne. “Be not afraid.” Then he reached into his medicine bag, pulled out an ancient obsidian lance tip, and, quicker than thought, touched it to Kane’s heart.

Kane screamed, making no sound. His heart was punctured where it had been touched. Out poured first vile smoke, then thick matter that curdled in the light, then putrid snakes and newts, all wriggling to get free, tearing the hole open wider as they squirmed away.

Then Kane just diffused into the ether and was gone. When Jess saw this she rested easier and called thanks to Taylor, and she continued her journey into the Light.

Taylor turned to Carol Anne. “Go now,” he said, pointing to where Sceädu still lay, enchanted by Taylor’s song.

Carol Anne stared in wonder a long moment at Taylor; then she scampered over to Sceädu and jumped through.

And the rest of her sleep was dreamless.

Taylor, too, returned to the Upper World. But when he opened his eyes, sitting atop the cold stone obelisk, the wind had died down, the fire was out, the smoke was gone.

And Sing-With-Eagles was nowhere to be seen.

Ten o’clock the next morning, Steve was on the phone to the family lawyer. “No, Diane found it this morning . . . Yeah, in her sleep, very peacefully, the doctor said. No, he just left. Okay, we’ll be in touch. Yes, I will.” He hung up and turned to Diane, who was crying as she did the dishes.

“God, I wish I hadn’t behaved so badly last night,” she said. “I mean, my last words to her were angry.”

“Di . . . she knew you loved her.”

“If I only had one more day . . .” She turned from the sink to wipe her hands, angry at herself.

The kids were standing in the doorway, listening.

Diane tried to get herself under control. “Gramma passed away last night . . .” she began.

“She died?” said Robbie, startled.

Carol Anne felt the knowledge of this strike her like a slap in the face; her regret was edged somehow with fear.

Diane started crying again.

“Kids,” said Steve, “your mom needs some hugs.”

And they all wrapped arms around one another, crying and comforting and not comprehending the vast, heartless mystery of death.

That afternoon Diane walked through her mother’s garden, looking for meaning in memory.

She remembered herself as a small girl in the same garden, helping Jess plant the first flowers: the same rose bush that blossomed beside her now. Jess had hugged her then, and she remembered thinking: I will never be happier.

She sniffed a yellow rose, closed her eyes; the memory engulfed her, brought tears again as the wind rose and dropped petals in her hair. They felt like her mother’s fingertips, touching her delicately. Almost as if Jess was right there again.

“Mom,” Diane whispered; and the wind picked up, dropping more petals. “There are so many things . . . so many things I wish I’d told you . . . You always made me feel so safe . . .” Her mother’s presence completely encircled her, lifting her out of time and mind to a place of eternal unity. “Mom, I love you so much.”

And suddenly the wind settled, and Jess’s presence was gone.

“I wish you were here now.” Diane looked up at the sky, then to the ground. “Good-bye, Mom.”

She wiped away her tears, took a deep breath. There was no meaning in memory, but there was love.

Steve, who’d been watching her from the patio, stepped forward and hugged her. “We’ll make it,” he whispered. “I love you.”

Carol Anne came running out of the house, wearing her ballerina costume, holding out two silver wings. “Mom, can you put these on me so I’ll be a ballerina with wings?” she asked.

She took the wings lovingly from her daughter and spoke with a bit of Jess’s inflection. “Darlin’, you can be anything you want to be.”

That night it rained. Great charcoal clouds of rain, detonated by lightning that was eerily silent. The drops fell slowly at first, as if they were testing the house, waiting for a response. There was no response, though; for the first night in many years, Jess’s vital spirit no longer inhabited the place.

The rain came down harder.

A harsh wind rose up, too, driving the rain sideways—under the eaves, under the flashing. Under the lip of the skylight in Carol Anne’s and Robbie’s room.

The rain dripped from this unsealed corner of skylight to the floor of the kids’ room. To the toy phone on the floor. Making the toy bell on the toy phone go
ding.

For just the briefest moment, all the clectrical toys in the bedroom winked on: the magic castle night-light, the Lava Lamp, the Talk-a-Dolly, the Speed-King race car—the miniature robot even walked two steps toward Robbie, then stopped. As if, for an instant, they were alive.

Rain
ping
ed the phone again, and Carol Anne opened her eyes. She got out of bed quietly, sat on the floor by the phone, picked up the receiver.

It was Gramma’s voice on the other end.

“Hi, Gramma,” said Carol Anne. “Do you have wings now? My ballerina costume does. Gramma . . .” she started to go on, but when Gramma spoke back, it was in a slightly different voice.

“Gramma, you sound funny,” said Carol Anne. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay,” said the voice, but it definitely wasn’t Gramma now. “I’m okay because I can see you. Just like I saw you last night, when you saw me.”

“Who are you?” said Carol Anne. She didn’t like the voice. It was high and silky sweet.

“I’m the man of your dreams, child. Remember me?”

“No, uh-uh . . . I don’t remember . . .” And she didn’t, by the grace of God.

Robbie opened his eyes.

“Yes, she’s my guardian angel,” Carol Anne said into the phone. “What?” She looked at the receiver queerly, saying, “Okay, I’ll get her.” She picked her doll up off the floor and held the receiver to its ear; then she took the phone back from the doll.

The voice said to Carol Anne, “Katrina’s a nice doll. Would you like me to turn
you
into a nice little doll like Katrina?”

“How’d you know Katrina’s name?” said Carol Anne.

“I know everything,” said Kane. “Because I’m smaaaaart.”

“Oh . . .”

But before she could respond further, there was a snapping of electrical discharges all over the room as a smoky substance exuded from the mouthpiece of the toy phone. Carol Ann dropped it. Robbie sat up in bed, fear pulling his face tight.