Poltergeist II - The Other Side by James Kahn Page A

his finger, to see what he might look like without the hardware, when for no apparent reason the door from the bathroom to his bedroom slammed shut.
    Couldn’t have been the wind; he knew he’d closed the windows. Couldn’t have been Carol Anne; she was downstairs.
    He suddenly wished he had his Louisville Slugger Hopi Snake Priest baseball bat with him, but it was in his bedroom, and the door to that room was now closed, as was the door to the hall.
    He felt something in his mouth. He looked into the mirror again.
    His braces were coming alive.
    Alive and writhing.
    And before he could move, he watched them send steely tendrils from his teeth out of his mouth, to spread onto his face—clutching his jaws together.
    He gasped in horror, tried to scream, but all that came out was a muted squeal.
    He tried to open the door to the hall, but it wouldn’t open.
    He tried to open his mouth, but it was clamped even more tightly shut.
    He looked in the mirror again. The braces were wrapping around the back of his head like iron roots.
    He ripped at them, tore his nails, screamed a muffled scream.
    Steve and Diane heard it.
    Anguished beyond expression, they raced up the stairs, down the hall to the closed bathroom door—to Robbie’s shrill whining.
    “We’re coming, Robbie!” shouted Diane.
    Steve tried the door. It wouldn’t open.
    “Steven!” Diane wailed.
    He slammed his shoulder into the door. And again. And again.
    Diane lent her weight to it. Robbie’s screams were getting softer.
    Steve was shaking from the exertion, but he pushed his body still harder against the wood. He would not lose his son the way he’d almost lost his daughter—by God, he would not.
    And once more, harder . . . and the door splintered open, tumbling Steve and Diane into the bathroom.
    What they saw momentarily stopped them, for it was even more bizarre than it was horrible.
    For there was Robbie, pinned to the ceiling, nearly strangulating and completely enmeshed by a mass of curling, twisting wires. Like a crawling vine of braces.
    One of his eyes was still visible through the tangle—wild, gaping—and one arm was still free. He reached down toward his stunned parents, but was caught short as a tentacle of wires tightened around his throat.
    Steve lunged for his son’s outstretched hand, but the meshwork latched onto the man’s wrist, bodily lifting him from the floor. It felt electric where it touched his skin, but also putrid and somehow . . . muscular. He’d never been grabbed by anything so strong.
    “Get Taylor!” he shouted to Diane. If nothing else, the Indian was big—bigger than Steve—and clearly quite strong. Maybe the two of them, pulling . . .
    Diane ran to the top of the stairs and called down frantically. “Taylor! Help us! For God’s sake, hurry! Please!!”
    No response. She ran down the stairs—far enough to see down. What she saw was Taylor sitting calmly, stoically, in the den, unmoving, with Carol Anne in his lap. Carol Anne was whimpering. Taylor seemed to be ignoring both the girl’s cries and Diane’s pleas.
    Diane raced back up to the bathroom to find Steve and Robbie both inextricably entwined in the filamentous net, as if some alien spider had rolled them into its web.
    Not only that; cobralike, a cable of wires was beginning to grope toward the electrical outlet.
    At that moment the handles blew off the faucets, sending geysers of water over the family, the room, and the maniac braces, drenching everything, making electrical conductivity immediate, certain, and lethal.
    “Taylor!” screamed Diane. But then it was too late.
    The thing shoved one of its frayed prongs into the outlet.
    There was a flurry of sparks—blue, white, yellow—and a shock wave that seemed to shake the room, shake the air, shake their bones to the marrow and deeper.
    And then it was gone—the wire mesh, the writhing tentacles—and the three of them were lying soaking wet on the floor.
    There was a moment of demented