Poltergeist II - The Other Side by James Kahn

the mirror.
    But when he turned back to the looking glass, the faces were gone.
    He opened his mouth at his own reflection, grimacing at his braces, picking at them here and there, his face inches from the glass. That’s when he saw, in the mirror, the bony, rotting hand come up behind him and grab for his shoulder.
    He yelled as he whirled . . . and Carol Anne jumped back; it was only she standing behind him.
    “Don’t do that, jerko!” he snapped at her. She was really being a royal pain.
    “I didn’t do anything, tinsel-teeth!” she retorted. She was still scared from his turning on her so fast. “Anyway, Mom says you’re supposed to hurry up.”
    Robbie just gave her a look, so she left again and went downstairs.
    Downstairs it was like a sleepover—pillows and blankets on the floor, paper plates on the furniture.
    Taylor wanted them all to sleep down here; Carol Anne was glad.
    Diane tucked her in next to the couch, right beside Katrina, and kissed her good night.
    “Good night, sweetheart.”
    “G’night, Mom.”
    “Where’s Robbie?”
    She shrugged with supreme disinterest. “He’s still playing up in the bathroom. Says he’s coming.” She decided to do Robbie a favor and not tell Mom about him wanting to be called Iron Jaw. “Kiss Katrina, too.” Diane kissed the doll good night. “Good night, girls.”
    “Taylor says Katrina is really Kachina, and that’s why she’ll protect me, because Kachina is a spirit from the sky, and I have my own special one, and this is her.”
    “Honey, I’m sure Taylor means well, and I know this is your special doll, but just don’t get carried away, okay?”
    “Carried away?” Carol Anne looked worried.
    “No . . . no . . . that was a bad choice of words. What I mean is . . . Katrina’s a nice name, but that’s all.”
    “ Kachina , Mom. This is her.”
    “This is she,” Diane corrected.
    “Yeah!” Carol Anne was glad her mother finally got it
    Steve entered from the garden, bottle in hand, staring at Taylor, who still sat in the middle of the yard, watching the heavens.
    Diane yelled upstairs. “Robbie—brush - your - teeth -and- get - down - here in - five - minutes—it’s - time - for - bed - and - I’m - not - going - to - say - it again!”
    “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” he shouted back from his room, as if to say it should have been obvious to anyone but a certified mother that he was on the very verge of the way down.
    Suddenly Carol Anne sat up, looked at her toy phone as if it had just rung, and picked up the receiver.
    Diane looked at her suspiciously. “Now don’t you start, young lady, just because your brother . . .”
    Carol Anne wasn’t listening to her mother, though. She was listening to the phone. “Okay,” she said tentatively into the mouthpiece, then held the receiver out at arms’s length toward her father. “Dad . . .” she began.
    Steve turned toward her.
    Diane turned toward her.
    In the backyard, Taylor turned toward her—for he’d heard something, too.
    Carol Anne looked at her father with a scared and curious tilt of the head. “It’s for you,” she said.
    Steve smiled and took the phone from her, eager to play a brief child’s game with his daughter before bedtime. “Hello . . .” he said gaily.
    There was a moment of silence, and then a voice blasted out so loudly—from the phone, from the very substance of the house—that a neighbor two doors down glanced out his window and hoped this wasn’t the beginning of a raucous party.
    It was no party, though.
    The voice bellowed: “I . . . am . . . not . . . dead!”

CHAPTER 4
    Steve slammed the phone down on its hook; Carol Anne began to cry; and Diane held her, comforted her. Taylor, in the garden, chanted.
    Only Robbie didn’t hear the voice. He was up in the bathroom, with the door to the hallway shut. And the voice didn’t want to be heard in the bathroom.
    Robbie was staring in the mirror, fiddling with his braces, trying to cover them with