Phantoms

Chapter 17

The Hour Before Midnight Tal, Gordy, Frank, and Lisa sat in red leatherette armchairs in a corner of the lobby of the Hilltop Inn. The inn had been closed since the end of the past skiing season, and they had removed the dusty white drop cloths from the chairs before collapsing into them, numb with shock. The oval coffee table was still covered by a dropcloth; they stared at that shrouded object, unable to look at one another.

At the far end of the room, Bryce and Jenny were standing over the body of Stu Wargle, which lay on a long, low sideboard against the wall. No one in the armchairs could bring himself to look over that way.

Staring at the covered coffee table, Tal said, "I shot the damned thing.

I hit it. I know I did.”

" We all saw it take the buckshot," Frank agreed.

"So why wasn't it blown apart?" Tal demanded." Hit dead on by a blast from a 20-gauge. It should've been torn to pieces, damn it.”

"Guns aren't going to save us," Lisa said.

In a distant, haunted voice, Gordy said, "It could've been any of us.

That thing could've gotten me. I was right behind Stu. If he had ducked or jumped out of the way…”

"No," Lisa said." No. It wanted Officer Wargle. Nobody else. Just Officer Wargle.”

Tal stared at the girl." What do you mean?”

Her flesh had taken paleness from her bones." Officer Wargle refused to admit he'd seen it when it was battering against the window. He insisted it was just a bird.”

..So?”

"So it wanted him. Him especially," she said." To teach him a lesson.

But mostly to teach us a lesson.”

"It couldn't have heard what Stu said.”

"It did. It heard.”

"But it couldn't have understood.”

"It did.”

"I think you're crediting it with too much intelligence," Tal said." It was big, yes, and like nothing any of us has ever seen before. But it was still only an insect. A moth. Right?”

The girl said nothing.

"It's not omniscient, Tal said, trying to convince himself more than anyone else." It's not all-seeing, all-hearing, all knowing.”

The girl stared silently at the covered coffee table.

Suppressing nausea, Jenny examined Wargle's hideous wound. The lobby lights were not quite bright enough, so she used a flashlight to inspect the edges of the injury and to peer into the skull. The center of the dead man's demolished face was eaten away clear to the bone; all the skin, flesh, and cartilage were gone. Even the bone itself appeared to be partially dissolved in places, pitted, as if it had been splashed with acid. The eyes were gone. There was, however, normal flesh on all sides of the wound; smooth untouched flesh lay along both sides of the face, from the outer points of the jawbones to the cheekbones, and there was unmarked skin from the midpoint of the chin on down, and from the midpoint of the forehead on up. It was as if some torture artist had designed a frame of healthy skin to set off the gruesome exhibition of bone on display in the center of the face.

Having seen enough, Jenny switched off the flashlight. Earlier, they had covered the body with a dropcloth from one of the chairs. Now Jenny drew the sheet over the dead man's face, relieved to be covering that skeletal grin.

"Well?" Bryce asked.

"No teeth marks," she said.

"Would a thing like that have teeth?”

"I know it had a mouth, a small chitinous beak. I saw its mandibles working when it bashed itself against the substation windows.”

"Yeah. I saw them, too.”

"A mouth)ike that would mark the flesh. There'd be slashes.

Bite marks. Indications of chewing and tearing.”

"But there were none?”

"No. The flesh doesn't look as if it was ripped off. It seems to've been… dissolved. Along the edges of the wound, the remaining flesh is even sort of cauterized, as if it has been scared by something.”

"You think that… that insect… secreted an acid?”

She nodded.

"And dissolved Stu Wargle's face?”

"And sucked up the liquefied flesh," she said.

"Oh, Jesus.”

"Yes.”

Bryce was as pale as an untinted deathmask, and his freckles seemed, by contrast, to burn and shimmer on his face." That explains how it could've done so much damage in only a few seconds.”

Jenny tried not to think of the bony face peering out of the flesh-like a monstrous visage that had removed a mask of normality.

"I think the blood is gone," she said." All of it.”

"What?”

"Was the body lying in a pool of blood?”

"No.”

"There's no blood on the uniform, either.”

"I noticed that.”

"There should be blood. He should've spouted like a fountain. The eye sockets should be pooled with it. But there's not a drop.”

Bryce wiped one hand across his face. He wiped so hard, in fact, that some color rose in his cheeks.

"Take a look at his neck," she said. The jugular.”

He didn't move toward the corpse.

She said, "And look at the insides of his arms and the backs of his hands. There's no blueness of veins anywhere, no tracery.”

"Collapsed blood vessels?”

"Yeah. I think all the blood is drained out of him.”

Bryce took a deep breath. He said, "I killed him. I'm responsible. We should have waited for reinforcements before leaving the substation-just like you said.”

"No, no. You were right. It was no safer there than in the street.”

" But he died in the sum.”

"Reinforcements wouldn't have made a bit of difference.

The way that damned thing dropped out of the sky… hell, not even an army could've stopped it. Too quick. Too surprising.”

Bleakness had taken up tenancy in his eyes. He felt his responsibility far too keenly. He was going to insist on blaming himself for his officer's death.

Reluctantly, she said, "There's worse.”

"What?”

"His brain…”

Bryce waited. Then he said, "What? What about his brain?”

"Gone.

"Gone?”

"His cranium is empty. Utterly empty.”

"How can you possibly know that without opening”

She held out the flashlight, interrupting him: "Take this and shine it into the eye sockets.”

He made no move to act upon her suggestion. His eyes were not hooded now. They were wide, startled.

She noticed that she couldn't hold the flashlight steady. Her hand was shaking violently.

He noticed, too. He took the flash away from her and put it down on the sideboard, next to the shrouded corpse. He took both of her hands and held them in his own large, leathery, cupped hands; he warmed them.

She said, "There's nothing beyond the eye sockets, nothing at all, nothing, nothing whatsoever, except the back of his skull.”

Bryce rubbed her hands soothingly.

"Just a damp, reamed-out cavity," she said. As she spoke, her voice rose and cracked: "It ate through his face, right through his eyes, probably about as fast as he could blink, for God's sake, ate into his mouth and took his tongue out by the roots, stripped the gums away from his teeth, then ate up through the roof of his mouth, Jesus, just consumed his brain, consumed all of the blood in his body, too, probably just sucked it up and out of him and”

"Easy, easy," Bryce said.

But the words rattle-clanked out of her as if they were links in a chain that bound her to an albatross: 'consumed all of that in no more than ten or twelve seconds, which is impossible, damn it to hell, plain impossible! It devoured-do you understand? — devoured pounds and pounds and pounds of tissue-the brain alone weighs six or seven pounds-devoured all of that in ten or twelve seconds!”

She stood gasping, hands trapped in his.

He led her to a sofa that lay under a dusty white drape.

They sat side by side.

Across the room, none of the others was looking this way.

Jenny was glad for that. She didn't want Lisa to see her in this condition.

Bryce put a hand on her shoulder. He spoke to her in a low, reassuring voice.

She gradually grew calmer. Not less disturbed. Not less afraid. Just calmer.

"Better?" Bryce asked.

"As my sister says-I guess I flaked out on you, huh?”

"Not at all. Are you kidding or what? I couldn't even take the flashlight from you and look in those eyes like you wanted me to. You're the one who had the nerve to examine him.”

"Well, thanks for getting me back together. You sure know how to knit up raveled nerves.”

"Me? I didn't do anything.”

"You sure have a comforting way of doing nothing.”

They sat in silence, thinking of things they didn't want to think about.

Then he said, "That thing…”

She waited.

He said, "Where'd it come from? "Hell?”

"Any other suggestions?”

Jenny shrugged." M Mesozoic era?" she saW half-jokingly.

"When was that?”

"M age of dinosaurs.”

His blue eyes flickered with interest." Did moths like that exist back then?”

"I don't know," she admitted.

"I can sort of picture it soaring around prehistoric swamps.”

"Yeah. Preying on small animals, bothering a Tyrannosaurus rex about the same way our own tiny summer moths bother US.”

"But if it's from the Mesozoic, where's it been hiding for the last hundred million years?" he asked.

More seconds, ticking.

"Could it be… something from a genetic engineering lab?" she wondered." An experiment in recombinant DNA?”

"Have they gone that far? Can they produce whole new species? I only know what I read in the papers, but I thought they were years away from that sort of thing. They're still working with bacteria.”

"You're probably right," she said." But still…”

"Yeah. Nothing's impossible because the moth is here.”

After another silence, she said, "And what else is crawling or flying around out there?”

"You're thinking about what happened to Jake Johnson?”

"Yeah. What took him? Not the moth. Even as deadly as it is, it couldn't kill him silently, and it couldn't carry him away." She sighed." You know, at first I wouldn't try to leave town because I was afraid we'd spread an epidemic. Now I wouldn't try to leave because I know we wouldn't make it out alive. We'd be stopped.”

"No, no. I'm sure we could get you out," Bryce said." If we can prove there's no disease-related aspect to this, if General Copperfield's people can rule that out, then, of course, you and Lisa will be taken to safety right away.”

She shook her head." No. There's something out there, Bryce, something more cunning and a whole lot more formidable than the moth, and it doesn't want us to leave. It wants to play with us before it kills us.

It won't let any of us go, so we'd damned well better find it and figure out how to deal with it before it gets tired of the game.”

In both rooms of the Hilltop Inn's large restaurant, chairs were stacked upside-down atop the tables, all covered with green plastic dropcloths.

In the first room, Bryce and the others removed the plastic sheeting, took the chairs off the tables, and began to prepare the place to serve as a cafeteria.

In the second room, the furniture had to be moved out to make way for the mattresses that would later be brought down from upstairs. They had only just begun emptying that part of the restaurant when they heard the faint but unmistakable sound of automobile engines.

Bryce went to the French windows. He looked left, down the hill, toward the foot of Skyline Road. Three county squad cars were coming up the street, red beacons flashing.

" They're here," Bryce told the others.

He had been thinking of the reinforcements as a reassuringly formidable replenishment of their own decimated contingent.

Now he realized that ten more men were hardly better than one more.

Jenny Paige had been right when she'd said that Stu Wargle's life probably wouldn't have been saved by waiting for reinforcements before leaving the substation.

All the lights in the Hilltop Inn and all the lights along the main street flickered. Dimmed. Went out. But they came back on after only a second of darkness.

It was 11: 15, Sunday night, counting down toward the witching hour.