Page:Weird Tales volume 42 number 04.djvu/85

, a white face, wide-eyed in terror. It was the face of Eliza Blaine! Breaking my gaze from this onlooker's, I turned in amazement to the girl across the checkerboard. Her face was utterly alien, an abominable satyr's mask, looking in cool, sardonic amusement at its counterpart's features pressed so fearfully against the windowpane.

I think that I did the right thing at last. I ran to the outer ell door and threw it open upon the courtyard. Switching on the outdoor light, I saw the courtyard was empty and the impress of no footprints were in the garden plot under the window. I turned back at once to find Oliver Orne just catching the fainting Eliza.

I think I did right, I say, because if I had turned and slapped the face or shaken the shoulders of the creature across the checkerboard from me, there'd be danger of psychic trauma for Eliza, with negative results as far as the poltergeist went.

June 12, 1949—This morning I visited Chadwick, telling him what appears here. His advice to me was:

"Your best bet is to find some action which will fit all the various theories about poltergeists, since you are concerned with sure counteraction rather than theorizing. You must apply this action when the poltergeist is dominant, and in such a way that Eliza is done neither bodily nor mental harm. You must surprise the poltergeist, confronting him as strongly as possible at the moment of his greatest aggression. And you must do so with something as opposite in all respects as possible."

I agreed and we concocted, rejected and sorted over a number of possible plans. Finally we hit upon two or three schemes which seem more substantial, if they can be worked out.

DO not propose to report on them now, as they may never be tested. Since one of them involved the services of a skilled dental technician friend, I spent the rest of the day with him in the hospital laboratory.

June 15, 1949—Fortunately no

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