Poltergeist Read Online Free

touch now, really, but those connections were enough so that when they bumped into each other at functions like this one, they felt gratefully friendly. And even, oddly enough, intimate, in a way people are when they don’t know each other very well.
    “Diane!”
    “Doris, hi! Thank God, a friendly face. Can you believe that idiot up on the podium?”
    “They lay a hand on my kid, I’m gonna get my .32 that Larry bought me, and waste ’em. That’s what.”
    “I mean, these are supposed to be educated people. Educators! Don’t they know children respond better to positive reinforcement than negative? I mean, my God, you show a kid love, and he’ll behave ten times more than if you whack him,” Diane said.
    “Ah, what do these turkeys know about raising kids?”
    “Not a damn thing, obviously. But how you doin’?”
    “Can’t complain—oh, I could, but what good would it do? Am I right? You bet I am. But anyway, I’m going back to school. Did I tell you that?”
    “No! That’s terrific. You know, I’ve been thinking of doing that, maybe not necessarily going for my degree, but like extension courses—now that Carol Anne’s in school . . .”
    “Your youngest in kindergarten already? Well, I’ll be. She was such a cutie pie. How is she?”
    “Well . . .” Diane let the vaguest cloud thicken her voice. “She started sleepwalking a few weeks ago.”
    “No lie!” exclaimed Doris, wolfing down a chocolate doughnut. “Somnambulism! Poor baby. What are you doing for her?”
    “Well . . . I took her in to the school psychologist. They, you know, gave her a couple tests, and said she was fine. Said she’d outgrow it.” Diane sipped her coffee uncertainly.
    “Honey, I don’t want to worry you—and I’m sure your little girl is just fine—but these school psychologists are like school nurses. About all they can do is take a temperature wrong. This speaker here tonight—he was a school psychologist. If I was you, I’d get a second opinion.”
    “Why? What do you think it could be?”
    “Hell, I don’t know, I’m no specialist. Look, probably it is nothing; she will outgrow it—all I know is, you need a specialist for everything these days. For your left eye, for your big toe. Carol Anne’s got somnambulism, she needs a somnambulism specialist. Am I right?”
    “Where in the world would I find one of those?”
    Doris beamed. “It just so happens, my cousin Bernice’s sister-in-law has a little boy who had—guess—somnambulism. And they took him to this incredible specialist; they couldn’t stop talking about this guy. They said the kid was cured. This was probably, oh, less than a year ago. So I’ll get the number tomorrow and give you a call.”
    “Would you?”
    “Would I? You gotta getta specialist, Diane. Am I right? You bet I am.”

    Thunder rumbled over the distance, came closer, rattled the windows. Robbie and Carol Anne looked up from their respective vantage points in the bedroom—he on his bed, gluing a new model rocket ship together—birthday booty—she on the floor playing with a train—and looked down again. Carol Anne just thought it was the sky coughing, but Robbie didn’t like the thunder at all. He feared the tree was angry. And then just as he thought that thought, a stark flash of lightning illuminated the yard, and he could see the old oak clearly just outside his window: its silhouette bent ominously in the wind, its branches scraping the windowpane like claws scrabbling on porcelain. Once more, thunder shook the house.
    “I think it’s watching us,” whispered Carol Anne. She wasn’t afraid, only commenting.
    “It is not,” Robbie crabbed at his sister. She said the dumbest things sometimes. He didn’t look out the window.
    Diane walked in. “Okay, you two, time for bed. Both brush your teeth?”
    They nodded.
    “Under the covers, then, and get to sleep.”
    “How can anybody sleep with all that noise?” Robbie insisted. “I think we should . .