Poltergeist

Wayne cleared his throat and started to speak, but Dale Stahlqvist cut him off. "Good afternoon, Celia," he started, giving Wayne a sharp glare. "Are you with us?”

The table bulged upward in the middle, deforming like a balloon filling with air. Its metal-shod feet dug at the carpet and the flowers slid off onto the rug. I felt my own knot of Grey tighten in my chest and the air in the booth tasted metallic.

Terry looked up from his display of monitoring instruments. He sounded worried. "I'm seeing a static charge building up. And the temperature in the séance room is dropping.”

"What?" Tuckman demanded. "How much?”

"Five degrees in one minute," he said, shaking his head and staring back down at the panel. "Most of my electrical monitors are acting up. I'm guessing magnetic interference. . ”

"It was clear during the tests," Quinton stated. "It's not the new equipment—that's working fine.”

A thunderclap cracked the air of the experiment room.

The participants looked nervous, shooting glances at one another from the corners of their eyes. I could see the hazy yellow wad of energy was now streaked with sudden jagged welts of red. As I stared, the haze seemed to pull into pieces and draw back together, then apart, drifting from the center of the table toward the participants. The largest clouds of energy moved toward Ken, Ana, Ian, and Cara, fired with red and yellow flashes. Smaller balls like heat lightning twitched in the direction of Wayne, Patricia, and Dale.

"Celia?" Dale asked in a nervous voice.

"Maybe it's Mark…" Patricia suggested.

The table quivered, as if gathering itself.

"Nonsense—" Cara snapped.

The table sprang upward and fell back, digging its feet into the carpet. It jerked and shuddered, writhing under their fingertips like an animal in pain. Patricia yipped as it trampled her foot.

Hot light flared over the table in pure white fury and I felt a sympathetic bum along my limbs. The table spun under its brilliant Grey canopy, rising on one leg and striking Cara and Ian hard in the ribs. Cara dropped to her knees as the table knocked into Ian a second time before coming back down. Ian staggered backward, holding his side as the rest stared around.

"The pressure—" Terry started.

The stereo erupted in a burst of uncoordinated noise as the table rushed toward the glass divider, rising off the floor with a sudden bump. Alarms squealed and pinged in the observation room.

"No!" Terry shouted at his instruments. "It can't do that!”

"There's nothing wrong with the device," Quinton said, poking the monitors with his meter, but his face was pale. "But it's getting awfully hot—”

The table crashed into the glass, gouging a hole as big as a beach ball. Icy air gushed through the breach, dragging a stink of smoke and acid into the booth. I gagged on it and bent my body around a sudden punch of discomfort as the table thudded back to the floor. Unobstructed by glass, I could now see the four large power masses hovering over Cara, Ian, Ana, and Ken. Ken's Grey walls and Ian's prismatic flashes had vanished as if burned away. The four miniature storms of energy tore at the table in pulses of red and yellow.

Shouts broke out in the séance room. The table, cloaked in throbbing, paranormal fire, lurched into Ken, ramming him against the wall below the shattered window. Ana shrieked as the table attacked him again and again. Ken flailed and disappeared below our view, the hot red and yellow energy still hovering over him like a carrion bird on the thermals.

A bright orange flash struck the stereo and it blared a jumbled cacophony of swing music, chopping up "Jumpin' at the Woodside" with "In the Mood" and "Sing, Sing, Sing.”

"Stop it!" Tuckman demanded, jumping up and blocking all exit from the observation room. Terry and I stared over his shoulder toward the pandemonium, appalled.

"I'm not doing anything!" Terry shouted.

"The meters are flipping out. There's something really nasty in there," Quinton snapped. "Where's the damned fire extinguisher?”

I couldn't keep track of which angry knot of energy had done what anymore. The room was thick with the dizzying strobe and strain of Grey forces, a rising tsunami of fury and panic. A cataract of books rushed up from the bookshelves and pelted down on the people in the room. Something red snatched at Patricia's head and she shouted in pain. A spangle of blood and the bright shape of her earring arced to the floor.

Under the boiling storm of Grey, the table lurched again, scrabbling its feet against the floor like a bull and jerking toward the corner beside the door. Ana was in its path, half crouched on the floor, covering her head with her arms. Nearby, Dale had flattened himself over Cara. Ian, Ken, and Wayne had all vanished onto the floor near the broken observation room window.

On the video monitor, there was no violent storm of light, only the strange movement of shadows from the swinging chandelier. I could see Wayne patting at Ken's legs, his voice steaming in the room's unca

I looked back through the broken window. Trailing red and yellow streamers, the table charged toward Ana. She dodged, jumping over the Stahlqvists and Ian, and ran up onto the couch, still covering her head with her arms as if she were being bombarded by an invisible flight of ravens.

The table jerked forward, changing direction and tipping toward the sofa cushions. Ana bounded across the upholstery, her feet skimming over the back, to leap off the arm of the sofa nearest the door as the table crashed down onto the couch.

Wayne ran to catch her, scooping her from the air with a ropy arm. He wrenched at the door handle. It came away in his hand.

The table bounced and wheeled on its edge, sweeping toward the door.

Beside me, Quinton and Terry began beating at the monitor board with their jackets as smoke erupted from below. "Get out! The panel's catching fire!”

Dale Stahlqvist snatched at a leg of the rolling table, pulling it away from his wife and Ana. Red and yellow light strobed in the room, lending a disjointed, horror-film aspect to the scene. Patricia picked up a wooden chair and began to beat at the rogue table, screaming at it as blood ran down her neck.

I needed a closer look at Celia. In the confusion, I bolted toward the observation room door as the board full of Christmas lights in the séance room exploded, raining colored glass and sparks over Ana, Cara, and Wayne. The stereo let out a final tortured howl and fell silent as both rooms blacked out.

I heard the whoosh of a fire extinguisher behind me as I rushed into the hall. The séance room door crashed open, flooding the hall with Celia's hot glow and tangled lines. Wayne, Ana, and Cara rushed out as I skidded into the sudden fire and knives of the poltergeist.

A tornado of fury twisted around me, pulling and tearing at me with murderous power. Crystal planes, glittering like ice sheets, cut kaleidoscopic slices of time, flaying me with instants of memory— flashes of lives and shattered jumbles of faces. . and the odor of gun-smoke and salt wrack. The sensation of foulness pushed against me and I reeled forward, desperate to escape it.

Then I was through it and the séance sitters were milling, hysterical and gabbling, into the hall around me. Acrid smoke and the smell of the extinguisher's chemicals flooded from the rooms on a raft of chill. But I still had the other smell in my nose—the stink that had clung under the scent of superglue at Mark's apartment. The odor of the poltergeist.

Turning, I saw the hot swirl of Celia's shape collapse, spiraling away like water down a drain and leaving only dim, frayed threads like a spiderweb spun between the participants. I shuddered. It was a force—an entity—capable of great destruction, and the feel and smell of it only confirmed the sickening idea that had been growing in my mind for a while. I had passed through the thing that had killed Mark Lupoldi.