Killdozer! Read Online Free PDF

regarded me piteously. “What do you mean?”
    “Why, I was going to rub your nose in those wires myself.”
    She rolled over and sat up. Her face was scared and defiant, and not terribly apologetic. I hadn’t expected any of that except the fear. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said softly. “Don’t say I didn’t try and try to keep you from taking me to those places. Don’t say I didn’t try to tell you about it even before we were married.”
    “My mistake for shutting you up. Go on—you have the floor.”
    “What do you expect me to say? I’m sorry?”
    “Babe, that doesn’t begin to cover it.” I went over to her. My gums hurt, the way my jaw was clenched, driving the teeth into them. “I want the whole story. I want to know why you are such a lousy little blabbermouth, and how you got the dirt you threw around all night.”
    “Sit down,” she said coolly, “or you’ll get a seizure and fall down.”
    Her eyes were very wide, and that dark something in them that had chilled me on the day we met was there. I crossed the room and sat. She began to talk in a low voice.
    “I was possessed last night, Eddie. Not once, but time and time again. Oh, you’re so stupid sometimes! I knew this was going to happen—I knew it, but you had to be so bullheaded and—oh, Ican’t blame it on you, except for not trying to understand. I’ll try once more. You can take it or leave it, Eddie. I’ve known this was coming; I know just what to say. Funny, isn’t it?
    “Remember what I told you about the entity that is conceived of suspicion and born of guilt? It’s a wicked little
poltergeist
—an almost solid embodiment of hate. And I’m a susceptible. Eddie, I can’t be in the same room with any two people who bear suspicion and the corresponding sense of guilt! And the world is full of those people—you can’t avoid them. Everyone has dozens upon dozens of petty hates and prejudices. Let me give you an example. Suppose you have a racial hatred of, say, Tibetans. You and I are sitting here, and a Tibetan walks in. Now, you know him. He has a very fine mind, or he has done you a favor, or he is a friend of a good friend of yours. You talk for a half hour, politely, and everything’s all right. In your heart, though, you’re saying, ‘I hate your yellow hide, you sniveling filth.’ Everything will still be all right as long as he is unconscious of it. But once let this thought flicker into his mind—‘He dislikes me because of my race’—and then and there the
poltergeist
is born. The room is full of it, charged with it. It has body and power of its own, completely independent of you or the Tibetan. I am a susceptible. The entity approaches me. I try to avoid it. I make bright remarks. I move around the room, busy myself with some flowers, a book, anything, but it’s no use. I can’t escape it. I can’t fight it away or close my ego to it. Suddenly it has me, completely. I am part of it. It directs me, drives me. Its whole purpose is one hate. It wants to drag your dislike and his suspicion into the light. I am its instrument now. My control is only strong enough to temper the words that burn at my lips. So instead of screaming out ‘He hates you, because he hates all of your yellow kind!’ I move closer to the man. I stop near him, and say out of the corner of my mouth, ‘You’d better go soon. He doesn’t like Tibetans and I don’t know how long he can keep on being polite.’ Once it’s said, the
poltergeist
is nullified. The hatred between you is open, no longer secret, and secret hate is the very essence of a
poltergeist
. It dissipates, and I am free; but the damage is done. The most that I can do is to apologize, make a joke of it, say I was trying to be funny. I won’t be believed, because my statement,rotten as it was, was true in its very essence and can’t be denied. But if I should be believed in my apology, then the seeds of hatred and suspicion are left, and the entity