Phantoms Read online

  in front of him. Before the phantom was entirely realized, while the body was still lumpy and half detailed, and although the face wasn’t finished, the mouth nevertheless opened and the replica of Gordy spoke, though not with Gordy’s voice. It was Stu Wargle’s voice, instead, a supremely disconcerting touch.

  “Go to the lab,” it said, its mouth only half formed, yet speaking with perfect clarity. “I will show you everything you want to see, Dr. Flyte. You are my Matthew. My Luke. Go to the lab. Go to the lab.”

  The unfinished image of Gordy Brogan dissolved almost as if it had been composed of smoke.

  The extruded man-size lump of gnarled tissue flowed back into the larger bulk behind it.

  The entire pulsating, heaving mass began to surge back through the umbilical that led up the wall and into the heating duct.

  How much more of it lies there within the walls of the inn? Bryce wondered uneasily. How much more of it waits down in the storm drains? How large is the god Proteus?

  As the thing oozed away from them, oddly shaped orifices opened all over it, none bigger than a human mouth, a dozen of them, two dozen, and noises issued forth: the chirruping of birds, the cries of sea gulls, the buzzing of bees, snarling, hissing, child-sweet laughter, distant singing, the hooting of an owl, the maracalike warning of a rattlesnake. Those noises, all ringing out simultaneously, blended into an unpleasant, irritating, decidedly ominous chorus.

  Then the shape-changer was gone back through the wall vent. Only Frank’s severed head and the bent grille from the heating duct remained as proof that something Hell-born had been here.

  According to the electric wall clock, the time was 3:44.

  The night was nearly gone.

  How long until dawn? Bryce wondered. An hour and a half? An hour and forty minutes or more?

  He supposed it didn’t matter.

  He didn’t expect to live to see the sunrise, anyway.

  37

  Ego

  The door of the second lab stood wide open. The lights were on. The computer screens glowed. Everything was ready for them.

  Jenny had been trying to hold to the belief that they could still somehow resist, that they still had a chance, however small, of influencing the course of events. Now that fragile, cherished belief was blown away. They were powerless. They would do only what it wanted, go only where it allowed.

  The six of them crowded inside the lab.

  “Now what?” Lisa asked.

  “We wait,” Jenny said.

  Flyte, Sara, and Lisa sat down at the three bright video display terminals. Jenny and Bryce leaned against a counter, and Tal stood by the open door, looking out.

  Fog foamed past the door.

  We wait, Jenny had told Lisa. But waiting wasn’t easy. Each second was an ordeal of tense and morbid expectations.

  Where would death come from next?

  And in what fantastic form?

  And to whom would it come this time?

  At last Bryce said, “Dr. Flyte, if these prehistoric creatures have survived for millions of years in underground lakes and rivers, in the deepest sea trenches... or wherever... and if they surface to feed ... then why aren’t mass disappearances more common?”

  Flyte pulled at his chin with one thin, long-fingered hand and said, “Because it seldom encounters human beings.”

  “But why seldom?”

  “I doubt that more than a handful of these beasts have survived. There may have been a climatic change that killed off most and drove the few remaining into a subterranean and suboceanic existence.”

  “Nevertheless, even a few of them—”

  “A rare few,” Flyte stressed, “scattered over the earth. And perhaps they feed only infrequently. Consider the boa constrictor, for example. That snake takes nourishment only once every few weeks. So perhaps this thing feeds irregularly, as seldom as once every several months or even once every couple of years. Its metabolism is so utterly different from ours that almost anything may be possible.”

  “Could its life cycle include periods of hibernation,” Sara asked, “lasting not just a season or two, but years at a time?”

  “Yes, yes,” Flyte said, nodding. “Very good. Very good, indeed. That would also help explain why the thing only infrequently encounters men. And let me remind you that mankind inhabits less than one percent of the planet’s surface. Even if the ancient enemy did feed with some frequency, it would hardly ever run up against us.”

  “And when it did,” Bryce said, “it would very likely encounter us at sea because the largest part of the earth is covered with water.”

  “Exactly,” Flyte said. “And if it seized everyone aboard a ship, there wouldn’t be witnesses, we’d never know about those contacts. The history of the sea is replete with stories of vanished ships and ghost ships from which the crews disappeared.”

  “The Mary Celeste,” Lisa said, glancing at Jenny.

  Jenny remembered when her sister had first mentioned the Mary Celeste. It had been early Sunday evening, when they had gone next door to the Santinis’ house and had found the table set for dinner.

  “The Mary Celeste is a famous case,” Flyte agreed. “But it’s not unique. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of ships have vanished under mysterious circumstances ever since reliable nautical records have been kept. In good weather, in peacetime, with no ‘logical’ explanation. In aggregate, the missing crews must surely number in the tens of thousands.”

  From his post by the open door of the lab, Tal said, “That area of the Caribbean where so many ships have disappeared...”

  “The Bermuda Triangle,” Lisa said quickly.

  “Yeah,” Tal said. “Could that be...?”

  “The work of a shape-changer?” Flyte said. “Yes. Possibly. Over the years, there have been a few mysterious depletions of fish populations in that area, too, so the ancient enemy theory is applicable.”

  Data flashed up on the video displays: I SEND YOU A SPIDER.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Flyte asked.

  Sara tapped the keys: CLARIFY.

  The same message repeated: I SEND YOU A SPIDER.

  CLARIFY.

  LOOK AROUND YOU.

  Jenny saw it first. It was poised on the work surface to the left of the VDT that Sara was using. A black spider. Not as big as a tarantula, but much bigger than an ordinary spider.

  It curled into a lump, retracting its long legs. It changed. First, it shimmered dully. The black coloration was replaced by the familiar gray-maroon-red of the shape-changer. The spider form melted away. The lump of amorphous flesh assumed another, longer shape: It became a cockroach, a hideously ugly, unrealistically large cockroach. And then a small mouse, with twitching whiskers.

  New words appeared on the video displays.

  HERE IS THE TISSUE SAMPLE THAT YOU REQUESTED, DR. FLYTE.

  “It’s so damned cooperative all of a sudden,” Tal said. “Because it knows that nothing we find out about it will help us destroy it,” Bryce said morosely.

  “There must be a way,” Lisa insisted. “We can’t lose hope. We just can’t.”

  Jenny stared in wonder as the mouse dissolved into a wad of shapeless tissue.

  THIS IS MY SACRED BODY, WHICH I GIVE UNTO THEE, it told them, continuing to mock them with religious references.

  The lump rippled and churned within itself, formed minute concavities and convexities, nodules and holes. It was unable to remain entirely still, just as the larger mass, which had killed Frank Autry, had seemed unable or unwilling to remain motionless for even a second.

  BEHOLD THE MIRACLE OF MY FLESH, FOR IT IS ONLY IN ME THAT THOU CANST ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY. NOT IN GOD. NOT IN CHRIST. ONLY IN ME.

  “I see what you mean about it taking pleasure in mockery and ridicule,” Flyte said.

  The screen blinked. A new message flashed up:

  YOU MAY TOUCH IT.

  Blink.

  YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED IF YOU TOUCH IT.

  No one m
oved toward the quivering wad of strange flesh.

  TAKE SAMPLES FOR YOUR TESTS. DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WISH.

  Blink.

  I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND ME.

  Blink.

  I WANT YOU TO KNOW THE WONDERS OF ME.

  “It isn’t only self-aware; it appears to possess a well-developed ego, too,” Flyte said.

  Finally, hesitantly, Sara Yamaguchi reached out, put the tip of one finger against the small glob of protoplasm.

  “It’s not warm like our flesh. Cool. Cool and a little ...greasy.”

  The small piece of the shape-changer quivered agitatedly.

  Sara quickly pulled her hand away. “I’ll need to section it.”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said. “We’ll need one or two thin cross-sections for light microscopy.”

  “And another one for the electron miscroscope,” Sara said. “And a larger piece for analysis of the chemical and mineral composition.”

  Through the computer, the ancient enemy encouraged them.

  PROCEED, PROCEED, PROCEED, PROCEED PROCEED PROCEED PROCEED

  38

  A Fighting Chance

  Tendrils of fog slipped through the open door, into the lab.

  Sara was seated at a work counter, hunched over a microscope. “Incredible,” she said softly.

  Jenny was seated at another microscope, beside Sara, examining another slide of the shape-changer’s tissue. “I’ve never seen cellular structure like this.”

  “It’s impossible... yet here it is,” Sara said.

  Bryce stood behind Jenny. He was eager for her to let him have a look at the slide. It wouldn’t mean much to him, of course. He wouldn’t know the difference between normal and abnormal cellular structure. Nevertheless, he had to have a look at it.

  Although Dr. Flyte was a scientist, he wasn’t a biologist; cell structure would mean little more to him than it would to Bryce. Yet he, too, was eager to take a peek. He hung over Sara’s shoulder, waiting. Tal and Lisa remained nearby, equally anxious to get a look at the Devil on a glass slide.

  Still peering intently into the microscope, Sara said, “Most of the tissue is without cell structure.”

  “The same with this sample,” Jenny said.

  “But all organic matter must have cell structure,” Sara said. “Cell structure is virtually a definition of organic matter, a requisite of all living tissue, plant or animal.”

  “Most of this stuff looks inorganic to me,” Jenny said, “but of course it can’t be.”

  Bryce said, “Yeah. We know all too well how alive it is.”

  “I do see cells here and there,” Jenny said. “Not many; a few.”

  “A few in this sample, too,” Sara said. “But each cell appears to exist independently of the others.”

  “They’re widely separated, all right,” Jenny said. “They’re just sort of swimming in a sea of undifferentiated matter.”

  “Very flexible cell walls,” Sara said. “A trifurcated nucleus. That’s odd. And it occupies about half the interior cell space.”

  “What’s that mean?” Bryce asked. “Is it important?”

  “I don’t know if it’s important or not,” Sara said, leaning away from the microscope and scowling. “I just don’t know what to make of it.”

  On all three computer screens, a question flashed up: DID YOU NOT EXPECT THE FLESH OF SATAN TO BE MYSTERIOUS?

  The shape-changer had sent them a mouse-size sample of its flesh, but thus far not all of it had been needed for the various tests. Half remained in a petri dish on the counter.

  It quivered gelatinously.

  It became a spider again and circled the dish restlessly.

  It became a cockroach and darted back and forth for a while.

  It became a slug.

  A cricket.

  A green beetle with a lacy red pattern on its shell.

  Bryce and Dr. Flyte were seated in front of the microscopes now, while Lisa and Tal waited their turn.

  Jenny and Sara stood in front of a VDT, where a computer-enhanced representation of an electron microscope autoscan was underway. Sara had directed the system to zero in and fix upon the nucleus in one of the shape-changer’s widely scattered cells.

  “Any ideas?” Jenny asked.

  Sara nodded but didn’t look away from the screen. “At this point, I can only make an educated guess. But I’d say the undifferentiated matter, which is clearly the bulk of the creature, is the stuff that can imprint any cell structure it wants; it’s the tissue that mimics. It can form itself into dog cells, rabbit cells, human cells... But when the creature is at rest, that tissue has no cellular structure of its own. As for the few scattered cells we see ... well, they must somehow control the amorphous tissue. The cells give the orders; they produce enzymes or chemical signals which tell the unstructured tissue what it should become.”

  “So those scattered cells would remain unchanged at all times, regardless of what form the creature took.”

  “Yes. So it would seem. If the shape-changer became a dog, for instance, and if we took a sample of the dog’s tissue, we’d see dog cells. But here and there, spread throughout the sample, we’d come across these flexible cells with their trifurcated nuclei, and we’d have proof that it wasn’t really a dog at all.”

  “So does this tell us anything that’ll help us save ourselves?” Jenny asked.

  “Not that I can see.”

  In the petri dish, the scrap of amorphous flesh had assumed the identity of a spider once again. Then the spider dissolved, and there were dozens of tiny ants, swarming across the floor of the dish and across one another. The ants rejoined to form a single creature—a worm. The worm wriggled for a moment and became a very large sow bug. The sow bug became a beetle. The pace of the changes seemed to be speeding up.

  “What about a brain?” Jenny wondered aloud.

  Sara said, “What do you mean?”

  “The thing must have a center of intellect. Surely, its memory, knowledge, reasoning abilities aren’t stored in those scattered cells.”

  “You’re probably right,” Sara said. “Somewhere in the creature, there’s most likely an organ that’s analogous to the human brain. Not the same as our brain, of course. Very, very different. But with similar functions. It probably controls the cells we’ve seen, and they in turn control the formless protoplasm.”

  With growing excitement, Jenny said, “The brain cells would have at least one important thing in common with the scattered cells in the amorphous tissue: They would never change form themselves.”

  “That’s most likely true. It’s hard to imagine how memory, logical function, and intelligence could be stored in any tissue that didn’t have a relatively rigid, permanent cell structure.”

  “So the brain would be vulnerable,” Jenny said.

  Hope crept into Sara’s eyes.

  Jenny said, “If the brain’s not amorphous tissue, then it can’t repair itself when it’s damaged. Punch a hole in it, and the hole will stay there. The brain will be permanently damaged. If it’s damaged extensively enough, it won’t be able to control the amorphous tissue that forms its body, and the body will die, too.”

  Sara stared at her. “Jenny, I think maybe you’ve got something.”

  Bryce said, “If we could locate the brain and fire a few shots into it, we’d stop the thing. But how do we locate it? Something tells me the shape-changer keeps its brain well protected, hidden far away from us, underground.”

  Jenny’s excitement faded. Bryce was right. The brain might be its weak spot, but they’d have no opportunity to test that theory.

  Sara pored over the results of the mineral and chemical analyses of the tissue sample.

  “An extremely varied list of hydrocarbons,” she said. “And some of them are more than trace elements. A very high hydrocarbon content.”

  “Carbons are a basic element of all living tissue,” Jenny said. “What’s different about this?”

  “Degree,” Sara said. “The
re’s such an abundance of carbon in such various forms...”

  “Does that help us somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said thoughtfully. She riffled through the print-out, looking at the rest of the data.

  Sow bug.

  Grasshopper.

  Caterpillar.

  Beetle. Ants. Caterpillar. Sow bug.

  Spider, earwig, cockroach, centipede, spider.

  Beetle-worm-spider-snail-earwig.

  Lisa stared at the lump of tissue in the petri dish. It was going through a rapid series of changes, much faster than before, faster and faster by the minute.

  Something was wrong.

  “Petrolatum,” Sara said.