Phantoms

Chapter 33

Saying Goodbye The six survivors-Bryce, Tal, Frank, Jenny, Lisa, and Sara stood at the windows in the lobby of the Hilltop Inn. Outside, Skyline Road was still and silent, rendered in stark patterns of night-shadow and streetlamp-glow. The night seemed to tick softly, like a bomb clock.

Jenny was remembering the covered passageway beside Liebermann's Bakery.

Last night, she had thought something was in the rafters of the service tunnel, and Lisa had believed something was crouching along the wall; very likely they had both been right. The shape-changer-or at least a part of it-had been there, slithering soundlessly through the rafters and down the wall. Later, when Bryce had caught a glimpse of something in the drain inside that passage, he had surely seen a dark glob of protoplasm creeping through the pipe, either keeping tabs on them or engaged upon some alien and unfathomable task.

Thinking, also, of the Oxleys in their barricaded den, Jenny said, "The locked-room mysteries suddenly aren't very mysterious any more. That thing could ooze under the door or through a heating duct. The smallest hole or crack would be big enough. As for Harold Ordnay… after he locked himself in the bathroom at the Candle glow Inn, the thing probably got at him through the sink and bathtub drains.”

… The same for the locked cars with victims in them," Frank said." It could surround a car, envelope it, and squeeze in through the vents.”

"If it wanted toTal said, "it could move real quietly.

That's why so many people were caught by surprise. It was behind them, oozing under a door or out of a heating vent, getting bigger and bigger, but they didn't know it was there until it attacked.”

Outside, a thin fog was coming up the street, rising out of the valley below. Misty auras began to form around the streetlights.

"How big do you think it is?" Lisa asked.

No one responded for a moment. Then Bryce said, "Big.

"Maybe the size of a house," Frank said.

"Or as big as this entire inn," Sara said.

"Or even bigger," Tal said." After all, it struck in every part of town, apparently simultaneously. It could be like… like an underground lake, a lake of living tissue, beneath most of Snowfield.”

"Like God," Lisa said.

"Huh?”

"It's everywhere," Lisa said." It sees all and knows all. Just like God.”

"We've got five patrol cars," Frank said." If we split up, take all five cars, and drive out of here at exactly the same time”

"It would stop us," Bryce said.

"Maybe it wouldn't be able to stop all of us. Maybe one car would get through.”

"It stopped a whole town.”

"Well… yeah," Frank said reluctantly.

Jenny said, "Anyway, it's probably listening to us right this minute. It would stop us before we even reached the cars.”

They all looked at the heating ducts near the ceiling. There was nothing to be seen beyond the metal grilles. Nothing but darkness.

They gathered around a table in the dining room of the fortress that was no longer a fortress. They pretended to want coffee because, somehow, sharing coffee gave them a sense of community and normality.

Bryce didn't bother putting a guard on the front doors.

Guards were useless. If it wanted them, it would surely get them.

Beyond the windows, the fog was getting thicker. It pressed against the glass.

They were compelled to talk about what they had seen.

They were all aware that death was coming for them, and they needed to understand why and how they were meant to die.

Death was terrifying, yes; however, senseless death was the worst of all.

Bryce knew about senseless death. A year ago, a runaway truck had taught him everything he needed to know about that subject.

"The moth," Lisa said." Was that like the Airedale, like the thing that… that got Gordy?”

"Yes," Jenny said." The moth was just a phantom, a small piece of the shape-changer.”

To Lisa, Tal said, "When Stu Wargle came after you last night, it wasn't actually him. The shape-changer probably absorbed Wargle's body after we left it in the utility room. Then, later, when it wanted to terrorize you, it assumed his appearance.”

"Apparently," Bryce said, "the damned thing can impersonate anyone or any animal that it's previously fed upon.”

Lisa frowned." But what about the moth? How could it have fed on anything like the moth? Nothing like that exists.”

"Well," Bryce said, "maybe insects that size thrived a long time ago, tens of millions of years ago, back in the age of dinosaurs. Maybe that's when the shape-changer fed on them.”

Lisa's eyes widened." You mean the thing that came out of the manhole might've been millions of years old?”

"Well," Bryce said, "it certainly doesn't conform to the rules of biology as we know them-does it, Dr. Yamaguchi?”

"No," the geneticist said.

"So why shouldn't it also be immortal?”

Jenny looked dubious.

Bryce said, "You have an objection?”

"To the possibility that it's immortal" Or the next thing to immortal?

No. I'll accept that. It might be something out of the Mesozoic, all right, something so self-renewing that it's virtually immortal. But how does the winged serpent fit? I find it damned hard to believe that anything like that has ever existed. If the shape-changer becomes only those things it has previously ingested, then how could it become something like the winged serpent?”

"There've been animals like that," Frank said." Pterodactyls were winged reptiles.”

"Reptiles, yes," Jenny said." But not serpents. Pterodactyls were the ancestors of birds. But that thing was clearly a serpent, which is very different. It looked like something out of a fairy tale.”

"No," Tal said." It was straight out of voodoo.”

Bryce turned toTal surprised." Voodoo? What would you know about voodoo?”

Tal didn't seem to be able to look at Bryce, and he spoke with evident reluctance." In Harlem, when I was a kid, there was this enormous fat lady, Agatha Peabody, in our apartment building, and she was a boko.

That's a sort of witch who uses voodoo for immoral or evil purposes. She sold charms and,spells, helped people strike back at their enemies, that sort of thing. All nonsense. But to a kid, it seemed exciting and spooky.

Mrs. Peabody ran an open apartment, with clients and hangers-on going in and out all day and night. For a few months I spent a lot of time there, listening and watching. And there were quite a few books on the black arts, In a couple of them, I saw drawings of Haitian and African versions of Satan, voodoo and juju devils. One of them was a giant, winged serpent. Black, with bat wings. And terrible green eyes. It was exactly like the thing we saw tonight.”

In the street, beyond the windows, the fog was very thick now. It churned sluggishly through the diffused glow of the streetlamps.

Lisa said, "Is it really the Devil? A demon? Something from Hell?”

"No," Jenny said." That's just a… pose.”

"But then why does it take the shape of the Devil?" Lisa asked." And why does it call itself the names of demons?”

"I figure the Satanic mumbo-jumbo is just something that amuses it,”

Frank said." One more way to tease us and demoralize us.”

Jenny nodded."suspect it isn't limited to the forms of its victims. It can assume the shape of anything it has absorbed and anything it can imagine. So if one of the victims was somebody familiar with voodoo, then that's where it got the idea of becoming a winged serpent.”

That thought startled Bryce." Do you mean it not only absorbs and incorporates the flesh of its victims but their knowledge and memories as well?”

" It sure looks that way," Jenny said.

"Biologically, that's not unheard of," Sara Yamaguchi said, combing her long black hair with both hands and nervously tucking it behind her delicate ears." For instance… If you put a certain kind of flatworm through a maze often enough, with food at one end, eventually it'll learn to negotiate the maze more quickly than it did at first. Then, if you grind it up and feed it to another flatworm, the new worm will negotiate the maze quickly, too, even though it's never been put through the test before. Somehow, it ate the knowledge and experience of its cousin when it ate the flesh.”

"Which is how the shape-changer knows about Timothy Flyte," Jenny said." Harold Ordnay knew about Flyte, so now it knows about him, too.”

"But how in the name of God did Flyte know about it?”

Tal asked.

Bryce shrugged." That's a question only Flyte can answer.”

"Why didn't it take Lisa last night in the restroom? For that matter, why hasn't it taken all of us?”

.,It's just toying with us.”

"Having fun. A sick kind of fun.”

"There's that. But I think it's also kept us alive so we could tell Flyte what we've seen and lure him here.”

"It wants us to pass along the offer of safe conduct to Flyte.

"We're just bait.”

"Yes.”

"And when we've served our purpose..

"Yes.

Something thumped solidly against the outside of the inn.

The windows rattled, and the building seemed to shake.

Bryce stood so fast that he knocked over his chair.

Another crash. Harder, louder. Then a scraping noise.

Bryce listened intently, trying to get a fix on the sound. It seemed to be coming from the north wall of the building. It started at ground level but swiftly began to move up, away from them.

A clattering-rattling sound. A bony sound. Like the skeletons of long-dead men clawing their way out of a sepulcher.

"Something big," Frank said." Pulling itself up the side of the inn.”

… time shape-changer," Lisa said.

"But not in its jellied form," Sara said." In its natural state, it would just flow up the wall silently.”

They all stared at the ceiling, listening, waiting.

What phantom form has it assumed this time? Bryce wondered.

Scrape. Tick. Clatter.

The sound of death.

Bryce's hand was colder than the butt of his revolver.

The six of them went to the window and looked out. The fog swirled everywhere.

Then, down the street, almost a block away, at the penumbra of a sodium-vapor lamp, something moved. Half-seen. A menacing shadow, distorted by the fog. Bryce got an impression of a crab as large as a car. He glimpsed arachnid legs. A monstrous claw with saw-toothed edges flashed into the light, immediately into darkness again. And there: the febrile, qulyering, seeking length of antennae. Then the thing scuttled off into the night again.

"That's what's climbing the building," Tal said." Another damned crab thing like that one. Something straight out of an alky's DTs.”

They heard it reach the roof. Its chitinous limbs tapped and scraped across the slate shingles.

"What's it up to?" Lisa asked worriedly." Why's it pretending to be what it isn't?”

"Maybe it just enjoys mimicry," Bryce said." You know… the same way some tropical birds like to imitate sounds just for the pleasure of it, just to hear themselves.”

The noises on the roof stopped.

The six waited.

The night seemed to be crouched like a wild thing, studying its prey, timing its attack.

They were too restless to sit down. They continued to stand by the windows.

Outside, only the fog moved.

Sara Yamaguchi said, "The universal bruising is understandable now. The shape-changer enfolded its victims, squeezed them. So the bruising came from a brutal, sustained, universally applied pressure. That's how they suffocated, too-wrapped up inside the shape-changer, totally encapsulated in it.”

"I wonder," Jenny said, "if maybe it produces its preservative while squeezing its victims.”

"Yes, probably," Sara said." That's why there's no visible point of injection in either body we studied. The preservative is most likely applied to every square inch of the body, squeezed into every pore. Sort of an osmotic application.”

Jenny thought of Hilda Beck, her housekeeper, the first victim she and Lisa had found.

She shuddered.

"The water," Jenny said.

"What?" Bryce said.

"Those pools of distilled water we found. The shape-changer expelled that water.”

"How do you figure?”

"The human body is mostly water. So after the thing absorbed its victims, after it used every milligram of mineral content, every vitamin, every usable calorie, it expelled what it didn't need: excess amounts of absolutely pure water. Those pools and puddles we found were all the remains we'll ever have of the hundreds whore missing. No bodies. No bones.

Just water… which has already evaporated.”

The noises on the roof did not resume; silence reigned. The phantom crab was gone.

In the dark, in the fog, in the sodium-yellow light of the streetlamps, nothing moved.

They moved away from the windows at last and went back to the table.

"Can the damned thing be killed?" Frank wondered.

"We know for sure that bullets won't do the job," Tal said.

"Fire?" Lisa said.

"The soldiers had firebombs they'd made," Sara reminded them." But the shape-changer evidently struck so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that no one had time to grab the bottles and light the fuses.”

"Besides," Bryce said, "fire most likely won't do the trick.

If the shape-changer caught fire, it could just… well… detach itself from that part of it that was aflame and move the bulk of itself to a safe place.”

"Explosives are probably useless, too," Jenny said." I have a hunch that, if you blew the thing into a thousand pieces, you'd wind up with a thousand smaller shape-changers, and they'd all flow together again, unharmed.”

"So can the thing be killed or not?" Frank asked again.

They were silent, considering.

Then Bryce said, "No. Not so far as I can see.”

"But then what can we do?”

"I don't know," Bryce said." I just don't know.”

Frank Autry phoned his wife, Ruth, and spoke with her for nearly half an hour. Tal called a few friends on the other telephone. Later, Sara Yatnaguchi tied up one of the lines for almost an hour. Jenny called several people, including her aunt in Newport Beach, to whom Lisa talked, as well. Bryce spoke with several men at headquarters in Santa Mira, deputies with whom he had worked for years and with whom he shared a bond of brotherhood; he spoke with his parents in Glendale and with Ellen's father in Spokane.

All six survivors were upbeat in their conversations. They talked about whipping this thing, about leaving Snowfield soon.

However, Bryce knew that they were all just putting the best possible face on a bad situation. He knew these weren't ordinary phone calls; in spite of their optimistic tone, these calls had only one grim purpose; the six survivors were saying goodbye.