Phantoms Read online

  “But why?” Gordy asked exasperatedly. “What’s it get out of all this? What’s it want?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Bryce said. “How come everyone’s all of a sudden saying ‘it’? Last time I took an informal survey, seems to me the general consensus was that only a pack of psychopathic killers could’ve done this. Maniacs. People.”

  They regarded one another with uneasiness. No one was eager to say what was on his mind. Unthinkable things were now thinkable. They were things that reasonable people could not easily put into words.

  The wind gusted out of the darkness, and the obeisant trees bent reverently.

  The streetlamps flickered.

  Everyone jumped, startled by the lights’ inconstancy. Tal put his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. But the lights did not go out.

  They listened to the cemeterial town. The only sound was the whisper of the wind-stirred trees, which was like the last long exhalation of breath before the grave, an extended dying sigh.

  Jake is dead, Tal thought. Wargle is right for once. Jake is dead and maybe the rest of us are, too, only we don’t know it yet.

  To Frank Autry, Bryce said, “Frank, why’d you say ‘it’ instead of ‘they’ or something else?”

  Frank glanced at Tal, seeking support, but Tal wasn’t sure why he, himself, had said “it.” Frank cleared his throat. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked at Bryce. He shrugged. “Well, sir, I guess maybe I said ‘it’ because ... well ... a soldier, a human adversary, would have blown us away right there in the market when he had the opportunity, all of us at once, in the darkness.”

  “So you think—what?—that this adversary isn’t human?”

  “Maybe it could be some kind of... animal.”

  “Animal? Is that really what you think?”

  Frank looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “No, sir.”

  “What do you think?” Bryce asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know what to think,” Frank said in frustration. “I’m military-trained, as you know. A military man doesn’t like to plunge blindly into any situation. He likes to plan his strategy carefully. But good, sound strategic planning depends on a reliable body of experience. What happened in comparable battles in other wars? What have other men done in similar circumstances? Did they succeed or fail? But this time there just aren’t any comparable battles; there’s no experience to draw upon. This is so strange, I’m going to go right on thinking of the enemy as a faceless, neutral ‘it.’”

  Turning to Dr. Paige, Bryce said, “What about you? Why did you use the word ‘it’?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe because Officer Autry used it.”

  “But you were the one who advanced the theory about a mutant strain of rabies that could create a pack of homicidal maniacs. Are you ruling that out now?”

  She frowned. “No. We can’t rule out anything at this point. But, Sheriff, I never meant that that was the only possible theory.”

  “Do you have any others?”

  “No.”

  Bryce looked at Tal. “What about you?”

  Tal felt every bit as uncomfortable as Frank had looked. “Well, I guess I used ‘it’ because I can’t accept the homicidal-maniac theory any more.”

  Bryce’s heavy eyelids lifted higher than usual. “Oh? Why not?”

  “Because of what happened at the Candleglow Inn,” Tal said. “When we came downstairs and found that hand on the table in the lobby, holding the eyebrow pencil we’d been looking for ... well ... that just didn’t seem like something a homicidal nut case would do. We’ve all been cops long enough to’ve dealt with our share of unbalanced people. Have any of you ever encountered one of those types who had a sense of humor? Even an ugly, twisted sense of humor? They’re humorless people. They’ve lost the ability to laugh at anything, which is probably part of the reason they’re crazy. So when I saw that hand on the lobby table it just didn’t seem to fit. I agree with Frank; for now I’m going to think of our enemy as a faceless ‘it.’”

  “Why won’t any of you admit what you’re feeling?” Lisa Paige said softly. She was fourteen, an adolescent, on her way to being a lovely young lady, but she gazed at each of them with the unselfconscious directness of a child. “Somehow, deep down inside where it really counts, we all know it wasn’t people who did these things. It’s something really awful—Jeez, just feel it out there—something strange and disgusting. Whatever it is, we all feel it. We’re all scared of it. So we’re all trying hard not to admit it’s there.”

  Only Bryce returned the girl’s stare; he studied her thoughtfully. The others looked away from Lisa. They didn’t want to meet one another’s eyes, either.

  We don’t want to look inside ourselves, Tal thought, and that’s exactly what the girl’s telling us to do. We don’t want to look inward and find primitive superstition. We’re all civilized, reasonably well-educated adults, and adults aren’t supposed to believe in the boogeyman.

  “Lisa’s right,” Bryce said. “The only way we’re going to solve this one—maybe the only way we’re going to avoid becoming victims ourselves—is to keep our minds open and let our imaginations have free rein.”

  “I agree,” Dr. Paige said.

  Gordy Brogan shook his head. “But what are we supposed to think, then? Anything? I mean, aren’t there any limits? Are we supposed to start worrying about ghosts and ghouls and werewolves and ... and vampires? There’s got to be some things we can rule out.”

  “Of course,” Bryce said patiently. “Gordy, no one’s saying we’re dealing with ghosts and werewolves. But we’ve got to realize that we’re dealing with the unknown. That’s all. The unknown.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Stu Wargle said sullenly. “The unknown, my ass. When it’s all said and done, what we’ll find is that it’s the work of some pervert, some stinkin’ scumbag pretty much like all the stinkin’ scumbags we’ve dealt with before.”

  Frank said, “Wargle, your kind of thinking is exactly what’ll cause us to overlook important evidence. And it’s also the kind of thinking that’ll get us killed.”

  “You just wait,” Wargle told them. “You’ll find out I’m right.” He spat on the sidewalk, hooked his thumbs in his gun belt, and tried to give the impression that he was the only levelheaded man in the group.

  Tal Whitman saw through the macho posturing; he saw terror in Wargle, too. Though he was one of the most insensitive men Tal had ever known, Stu was not unaware of the primitive response of which Lisa Paige had spoken. Whether he admitted it or not, he clearly felt the same bone-deep chill that shivered through all of them.

  Frank Autry also saw that Wargle’s imperturbability was a pose. In a tone of exaggerated, insincere admiration, Frank said, “Stu, by your fine example, you fortify us. You inspire us. What would we do without you?”

  “Without me,” Wargle said sourly, “you’d go right down the old toilet, Frank.”

  With mock dismay, Frank looked around at Tal, Gordy, and Bryce. “Does that sound like a swelled head?”

  “Sure does. But don’t blame Stu. In his case,” Tal said, “a swelled head is just a result of Nature’s frenzied efforts to fill a vacuum.”

  It was a small joke, but the laugh it elicited was large. Although Stu enjoyed wielding the needle, he despised being on the pricking end of it; yet even he managed to dredge up a smile.

  Tal knew they were not laughing at the joke as much as they were laughing at Death, laughing in its skeletal face.

  But when the laughter faded, the night was still dark.

  The town was still unnaturally silent.

  Jake Johnson was still missing.

  And it was still out there.

  Dr. Paige turned to Bryce Hammond and said, “Are you ready to take a look at the Oxley house?”

  Bryce shook his head. “Not right now. I don’t think it’s wise for us to do any more exploring until we get some reinforcements. I’m not going to lose another man. Not if I can help it.”
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  Tal saw anguish pass through Bryce’s eyes at the mention of Jake.

  He thought: Bryce, my friend, you always take too much of the responsibility when something goes wrong, just like you’re always too quick to share the credit for successes that have been entirely yours.

  “Let’s go back to the substation,” Bryce said. “We’ve got to plan our moves carefully, and I’ve got calls to make.”

  They returned along the route by which they had come. Stu Wargle, still determined to prove his fearlessness, insisted on being the rear guard this time, and he swaggered along behind them.

  As they reached Skyline Road, a church bell tolled, startling them. It tolled again, slowly, again, slowly, again ...

  Tal felt the metallic sound reverberating in his teeth.

  They all stopped at the corner, listening to the bell and staring west, toward the other end of Vail Lane. Only a little more than one block away, a brick church tower rose above the other buildings; there was one small light at each corner of the peaked, slate belfry roof.

  “The Catholic church,” Dr. Paige informed them, raising her voice to compete with the bell. “It serves all the towns around here. Our Lady of the Mountains.”

  The pealing of a church bell could be a joyous music. But there was nothing joyous about this one, Tal decided.

  “Who’s ringing it?” Gordy wondered aloud.

  “Maybe nobody’s ringing it,” Frank said. “Maybe it’s hooked up to a mechanical device of some kind; maybe it’s on a timer.”

  In the lighted belfry, the bell swung, casting off a glint of brass along with its one clear note.

  “Does it usually ring this time on a Sunday night?” Bryce asked Dr. Paige.

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not on a timer.”

  A block away, high above the ground, the bell wink-flashed and rang again.

  “So who’s pulling the rope?” Gordy Brogan asked.

  A macabre image crept into Tal Whitman’s mind: Jake Johnson, bruised and bloated and stone-cold dead, standing in the bell-ringer’s chamber at the bottom of the church tower, the rope gripped in his bloodless , hands, dead but demonically animated, dead but nevertheless pulling on the rope, pulling and pulling, dead face turned up, grinning the wide mirthless grin of a corpse, protuberant eyes staring at the bell that swung and clanged under the peaked roof.

  Tal shuddered.

  “Maybe we should go over to the church and see who’s there,” Frank said.

  “No,” Bryce said instantly. “That’s what it wants us to do. It wants us to come have a look. It wants us to go inside the church, and then it’ll turn out the lights again ...”

  Tal noticed that Bryce, too, was now using the pronoun “it.”

  “Yeah,” Lisa Paige said. “It’s over there right this minute, waiting for us.”

  Even Stu Wargle wasn’t prepared to encourage them to visit the church tonight.

  In the open belfry, the visible bell swung, splintering off another shard of brassy light, swung, gleamed, swung, winked, as if it were flashing out a semaphoric message of hypnotic power at the same time that it issued its monotonous clang: You are growing drowsy, even drowsier, sleepy, sleepy... you are deep asleep, in a trance ... you are under my power... you will come to the church... you will come now, come, come, come to the church and see the wonderful surprise that awaits you here... come... come ...

  Bryce shook himself as if casting off a dream. He said, “If it wants us to come to the church, that’s a good reason not to go. No more exploring until daylight.”

  They all turned away from Vail Lane and went north on Skyline Road, past the Mountainview Restaurant, toward the substation.

  They had gone perhaps twenty feet when the church bell stopped tolling.

  Once more, the uncanny silence poured like viscous fluid through the town, coating everything.

  When they reached the substation, they discovered that Paul Henderson’s corpse was gone. It seemed as if the dead deputy had simply gotten up and walked away. Like Lazarus.

  14

  Containment

  Bryce was sitting at the desk that had belonged to Paul Henderson. He had pushed aside the open issue of Time that Paul apparently had been reading when Snowfield had been wiped out. A yellow sheet of note paper lay on the blotter, filled with Bryce’s economical handwriting.

  Around him, the six others were busily carrying out tasks that he had assigned to them. A wartime atmosphere prevailed in the stationhouse. Their grim determination to survive had caused a fragile but steadily strengthening camaraderie to spring up among them. There was even guarded optimism, perhaps based on the observation that they were still alive while so many others were dead.

  Bryce quickly scanned the list he had made, trying to determine if he had overlooked anything. Finally, he pulled the telephone to him. He got a dial tone immediately, and he was grateful for it, considering Jennifer Paige’s difficulties in that regard.

  He hesitated before placing the first call. A sense of the immense importance of the moment weighed heavily on him. The savage obliteration of Snowfield’s entire population was like nothing that had ever happened before. Within hours, journalists would be coming to Santa Mira County by the scores, by the hundreds, from all over the world. By morning, the Snowfield story would have pushed all other news off the front pages. CBS, ABC, and NBC would all be interrupting regularly scheduled broadcasts for updates and bulletins throughout the duration of the crisis. The media coverage would be intense. Until the world knew whether or not some mutated germ had a role in the events here, hundreds of millions of people would wait breathlessly, wondering if their own death notices had been issued in Snowfield. Even if disease were ruled out, the world’s attention wouldn’t be diverted from Snowfield until the mystery had been explained. The pressure to find a solution was going to be unbearable.

  On a personal level, Bryce’s own life would be forever changed. He was in charge of the police contingent; therefore, he would be featured in all the news stories. That prospect appalled him. He wasn’t the kind of sheriff who liked to grand-stand. He preferred to keep a low profile.

  But he couldn’t just walk away from Snowfield now.

  He dialed the emergency number at his own offices in Santa Mira, by-passing the switchboard operator. The desk sergeant on duty was Charlie Mercer, a good man who could be counted on to do precisely what he was told to do.

  Charlie answered the phone halfway through the second ring. “Sheriff’s Department.” He had a flat, nasal voice.

  “Charlie, this is Bryce Hammond.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve been wondering what’s happening up there.”

  Bryce succinctly outlined the situation in Snowfield.

  “Good God!” Charlie said. “Jake’s dead, too?”

  “We don’t know for sure that he’s dead. We can hope not. Now listen, Charlie, there are a lot of things we’ve got to do in the next couple of hours, and it would be easier for all of us if we could maintain secrecy until we’ve established our base here and secured the perimeters. Containment, Charlie. That’s the key word. Snowfield has to be sealed off tight, and that’ll be a lot easier to accomplish if we can do it before the reporters start tramping through the mountains. I know I can count on you to keep your mouth shut, but there are a few of the men ...”

  “Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “We can hold it close to the vest for a couple of hours.”

  “All right. First thing I want is twelve more men. Two more on the roadblock at the Snowfield turnoff. Ten here with me. Wherever you can, select single men without families.”

  “It really looks that bad?”

  “It really does. And better select men who don’t have relatives in Snowfield. Another thing: They’ll have to bring a couple of days’ worth of drinking water and food. I don’t want them consuming anything in Snowfield until we know for sure that the stuff is safe here.”

  “Right.”

  “Every man shoul
d bring his sidearm, a riot gun, and tear gas.”

  “Got it.”

  “This’ll leave you shorthanded, and it’ll get worse when the media people start pouring in. You’ll have to call in some of the auxiliary deputies for directing traffic and crowd control. Now, Charlie, you know this part of the county pretty well—don’t you?”

  “I was born and raised in Pineville.”

  “That’s what I thought. I’ve been looking at the county map, and so far as I can see, there are only two passable routes into Snowfield. First, there’s the highway, which we’ve already blockaded.” He swiveled on his chair and stared at the huge, framed map on the wall.

  “Then there’s an old fire trail that leads about two-thirds of the way up the other side of the mountain. Where the fire trail leaves off, an established wilderness trail seems to pick up. It’s just a footpath from that point, but from the way it looks on the map, it comes out smack-dab at the top of the longest ski-run on this side of the mountain, up here above Snowfield.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “I’ve backpacked through that neck of the woods. It’s officially the Old Mount Greentree Wilderness Trail. Or as we locals used to call it—the Muscle Liniment Highway.”

  “We’ll have to station a couple of men at the bottom of the fire trail and turn back anyone who tries to come in that way.”

  “It would take one hell of a determined reporter to try it.”

  “We can’t take chances. Are you aware of any other route that isn’t on the map?”

  “Nope,” Charlie said. “Otherwise, you’d have to come into Snowfield straight overland, making your own trail every damned step of the way. That is wilderness out there; it’s not just a playground for weekend campers, by God. No experienced backpacker would try to come overland. That’d be plain stupid.”

  “All right. Something else I need is a phone number from the files. Remember that law enforcement seiminar I went to in Chicago ... oh ... about sixteen months ago. One of the speakers was an army man. Copperfield, I think. General Copperfield.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “The Army Medical Corps’ CBW Division.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I think they call Copperfield’s office the Civilian Defense Unit. Hold on.” Charlie was off the line less than a minute. He came back with the number, read it to Bryce. “That’s out in Dugway, Utah. Jesus, do you think this could be something that’d bring those boys running? That’s scary.”

  “Real scary,” Bryce agreed. “A couple of other things. I want you to run down a name-for me. Timothy Flyte.” Bryce spelled it. “No description. No known address. Find out if he’s wanted anywhere. Check with the FBI, too. Then find out all you can about a Mr. and Mrs. Harold Ordnay of San Francisco.” He gave Charlie the address that had been in the Candleglow Inn’s guest register. “One more thing. When those new men come up here, have them bring some plastic body hags from the county morgue.”

  “How many?”

  “To start with ... two hundred.”

  “Uh ... two ... hundred?”

  “We might need a great many more than that before we’re through. We might have to borrow from other counties. Better check into that. A lot of people seem just to’ve disappeared, but their bodies may still turn up. There were about five hundred people living here. We could possibly need that many body bags.”

  And maybe even more than five hundred, Bryce thought. Because we might need a few bags for ourselves, too.

  Although Charlie had listened attentively when Bryce told him that the entire town had been wiped out, and although there was no doubt that he believed Bryce, he obviously hadn’t fully, emotionally comprehended the awful dimensions of the disaster until he’d heard the request for two hundred body bags. An image of all those corpses, sealed in opaque plastic, stacked atop one another in Snowfield’s streets—that was what had finally pierced him.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Charlie Mercer said.

  While Bryce Hammond was on the telephone with Charlie Mercer, Frank and Stu started to dismantle the police-band radio that stood against the back wall of the room. Bryce had told them to find out what was wrong with the set, for there weren’t any visible signs of damage.

  The front plate was fastened down by ten tightly turned screws. Frank worked them loose one at a time.

  As usual, Stu wasn’t much help. He kept glancing around at Dr. Paige, who was at the other end of the room, working with Tal Whitman on another project.

  “She’s sure a sweet piece of meat,” Stu said, casting a covetous look at the doctor and picking his nose at the same time.