Phantoms Read online

  Abruptly, the street began caving in. It made a tortured sound, and pieces broke loose along the fracture lines. Slabs tumbled into the emptiness below. Too much emptiness: it sounded as if things were falling into a chasm, not just a drain. Then the entire hoved-up section collapsed with a thunderous roar, and Jenny found herself at the brink.

  She lay belly-down, head lifted, waiting for something to rise up from the depths, dreading to see what form the shape-changer would assume this time.

  But it didn’t come. Nothing rose out of the hole.

  The pit was ten feet across, at least fifty feet long. On the far side, Bryce and Lisa were trying to get to their feet. Jenny almost cried out in happiness at the sight of them. They were alive!

  Then she saw Timothy. His legs were pinned under a massive hunk of concrete. Worse than that—he was trapped on a precarious piece of roadbed that thrust over the rim of the hole, with no support beneath it. At any moment, it might crack loose and fall into the pit, taking him with it.

  Jenny edged forward a few inches and stared into the hole. It was at least thirty feet deep, probably a lot deeper in places; she couldn’t gauge it accurately because there were many shadows along its fifty-foot length. Apparently, the ancient enemy hadn’t merely surged up from the storm drains; it had risen from some previously stable, limestone caves far below the solid ground on which the street was built.

  But what degree of phenomenal strength, what unthinkably huge size must it possess in order to shift not only the street but the natural rock formations below? And where had it gone?

  The pit appeared untenanted, but Jenny knew it must be down there somewhere, in the deeper regions, in the subterranean warrens, hiding from the Biosan spray, waiting, listening.

  She looked up and saw Bryce making his way toward Flyte.

  A crisp, cracking noise split the air. Flyte’s concrete perch shifted. It was going to break loose and tumble into the chasm.

  Bryce saw the danger. He clambered over a tilted slab of pavement, trying to reach Flyte in time.

  Jenny didn’t think he’d make it.

  Then the pavement under her groaned, trembled, and she realized that she, too, was on treacherous territory. She started to get up. Beneath her, the concrete snapped with a bomb blast of sound.

  41

  Lucifer

  The shadows on the cave walls were ever-changing; so was the shadow-maker. In the moon-strange glow of the gas lantern, the creature was like a column of dense smoke, writhing, formless, blood-dark.

  Although Kale wanted to believe it was only smoke, he knew better. Ectoplasm. That’s what it must be. The other-worldly stuff of which demons, ghosts, and spirits were said to be composed.

  Kale had never believed in ghosts. The concept of life after death was a crutch for weaker men, not for Fletcher Kale. But now...

  Gene Terr sat on the floor, staring at the apparition. His one gold earring glittered.

  Kale stood with his back pressed to a cool limestone wall. He felt as if he were fused to the rock.

  The repellent, sulphurous odor still hung on the dank air.

  To Kale’s left, a man came through the opening from the first room of the underground retreat. No; not a man. It was one of the Jake Johnson-look-alikes. The one that had called him a baby killer.

  Kale made a small, desperate sound.

  This was the demonic version of Johnson whose skull was half-stripped of flesh. One wet, lidless eye peered out of a bony socket, glaring malevolently at Kale. Then the demon turned toward the oozing monstrosity in the center of the chamber. It walked to the column of roiling slime, spread its arms, embraced the gelatinous flesh—and simply melted into it.

  Kale stared uncomprehendingly.

  Another Jake Johnson entered. The one that lacked flesh along his flank. Beyond the exposed rib cage, the bloody heart throbbed; the lungs expanded; yet, somehow, the organs didn’t spill through the gaps between the ribs. Such a thing was impossible. Except that this was an apparition, a Hell-born presence that had swarmed up from the Pit—just smell the sulphur, the scent of Satan!—and therefore anything was possible.

  Kale believed now.

  The only alternative to belief was madness.

  One by one, the remaining four Johnson look-alikes entered, glanced at Kale, then were absorbed by the oozing, rippling slime.

  The Coleman lantern made a soft, continuous hissing.

  The jellied flesh of the netherworld visitor began to sprout black, terrible wings.

  The hissing of the lantern echoed sibilantly off the stone walls.

  The half-formed wings degenerated into the column of slime from which they had sprung. Insectile limbs started to take shape.

  Finally, Gene Terr spoke. He might have been in a trance—except that there was a lively sparkle in his eyes. “We come up here, me and some of my guys, two or maybe three times a year. You know? What it is ... this here’s a perfect place for a fuck an’ waste party. Nobody to hear nothin’. Nobody to see. You know?”

  At last Jeeter looked away from the creature and met Kale’s eyes.

  Kale said, “What the hell’s a... a fuck and waste party?”

  “Oh, every couple months, sometimes more often, a chick shows up and wants to join the Chrome, wants to be somebody’s old lady, you know, doesn’t care whose, or maybe she’ll settle for bein’ an all-purpose bitch that all the guys can hack at when they want a little variety in their pussy. You know?” Jeeter sat with his legs crossed in a yoga position. His hands lay unmoving in his lap. He looked like an evil Buddha. “Sometimes, one of us happens to be lookin’ for a new main squeeze, or maybe the chick is really cool, so we make room for her. But it don’t happen like that very often. Most of the time we tell them to beat it.”

  In the center of the cave, the insectile legs melted back into the oozing column of muck. Dozens of hands began to form, the fingers opening like petals of strange blossoms.

  Jeeter said, “But then once in a while, a chick shows up, and she’s damned good-lookin’, but we don’t happen to need or want her with us, and what we want instead is to have fun with her. Or maybe we see a kid who’s run away from home, you know, sweet sixteen, some hitchhiker, and we pick her up, no matter whether she wants to come along or not. We give her some nose candy or hash, get her feelin’ good, then we bring her up here where it’s real remote, and what we do is we fuck her brains out for a couple days, turn her inside out, and then when none of us can get it up any more, we waste her in really interestin’ ways.”

  The demonic presence in the center of the room changed yet again. The multitude of hands melted away. A score of mouths opened along the dark length of it, every one filled with razor-edged fangs.

  Gene Terr glanced at this latest manifestation but didn’t seem frightened. In fact, Jeeter smiled at it.

  “Waste them?” Kale said. “You kill them?”

  “Yeah,” Jeeter said. “In interestin’ ways. We bury ’em around here, too. Who’s ever gonna find the bodies in the middle of nowhere like this? It’s always a kick. Thrills. Until Sunday. Sunday afternoon late, we was out there in the grass by the cabin, drinkin’ and gangin’ a chick, and all of a sudden Jake Johnson comes out of the woods, bare-assed, like he figured on fuckin’ the bitch, too. At first I thought we’d have some fun with him. I figured, well, we’ll waste him when we waste the girl, get rid of the witness, you know, but before we can grab him, another Jake comes out of the woods, then a third—”

  “Just like what happened to me,” Kale said.

  “—and another one and another. We shot ’em, hit ’em square in the chest, in the face, but they didn’t go down, didn’t even pause, just kept comin’. So Little Willie, one of my main men, rushes the nearest one and uses a knife, but it doesn’t do no good. Instead, that Johnson grabs Willie, and he can’t break loose, and then all of a sudden like... well ... Johnson isn’t Johnson any more. He’s just this thing, this bloody-lookin’ thing without no shape at all. The
thing eats Willie ... eats into him like ... well, hell, it just sort of dissolves Willie, man. And the thing gets bigger, and then it turns into the craziest damn big wolf—”

  “Jesus,” Kale said.

  “—biggest wolf you ever saw, and then the other Jakes turn into other things, like big lizards with the nastiest jaws, but one of them wasn’t a lizard or a wolf but somethin’ I just can’t describe, and they all come after us. We can’t get to our bi. man, ’cause these things are between us and them, and so they kill a couple more of my guys, and then they start to herd us up the hill.”

  “Toward the caves,” Kale said. “That’s what they did to me.”

  “We never even knew about these caves,” Terr said. “So we get in here, way in here in the dark, and the things start killin’ more of us, man, killin’ us in the dark—”

  The fang-filled mouths vanished.

  “—and there’s all this screamin’, you know, and I couldn’t see where I was, so I crawled into a corner to hide, hoped they wouldn’t smell me out, though I figured for sure they would.”

  The blood-streaked tissue pulsed, rippled.

  “—and after a while the screamin’ stops. Everyone’s dead. It’s real quiet ... and then I hear somethin’ movin’ around.”

  Kale was listening to Terr but staring at the column of slime. A different kind of mouth appeared, a sucker, like you might see on an exotic fish. It sucked greedily at the air, as if seeking flesh.

  Kale shuddered. Terr smiled.

  Other sucker-mouths began to form all over the creature.

  Still smiling, Jeeter said, “So I’m there in the dark, and I hear movement, but nothin’ comes at me. Instead, a light comes on. Faint at first, then brighter. It’s one of the Jakes, lightin’ a Coleman. He tells me to come with him. I don’t want to go. He grabs my arm, and his hand’s cold, man. Strong. He won’t let go, makes me come here, where that thing’s pushing up out of the floor, and I never seen anythin’ like that before; never, nowhere. I almost shit. He makes me sit down, lets the lantern with me, then just walks into the oozin’ crud over there, melts into it, and I’m left alone with the thing, which starts right away goin’ through all kinds of changes.”

  It was still going through changes, Kale saw. The suckerlike mouths vanished. Viciously pointed horns formed along the churning flanks of the creature; dozens of horns, barbed and unbarbed, in a variety of textures and colors, rising from the gelatinous mass.

  “So for about a day and a half now,” Terr said, “I’ve been sittin’ here, watchin’ it, except when I doze off or go into the other room for somethin’ to eat. Now and then it talks to me, you know. It seems to know almost everythin’ there is to know about me, things that only my closest brother bikers ever knew. It knows all about the bodies buried up here, and it knows about the Mex bastards we wasted when we took the drug business away from them, and it knows about the cop we chopped to pieces two years ago, and like, see, not even the other cops suspect we had anythin’ to do with that one. This thing here, this beautiful strange thing, it knows all my little secrets, man. And what it doesn’t know about, it asks to hear, and it listens real good. It approves of me, man. I never thought I’d really meet up with it. I always hoped, but I never thought I would. I been worshipin’ it for years, man, and the whole gang used to hold these black masses once a week, but I never thought it would ever really appear to me. We’ve given it sacrifices, even human sacrifices, and chanted all the right chants, but we never were able to conjure up anythin’. So this here’s a miracle.” Jeeter laughed. “I been doin’ its work all my life, man. Prayin’ to it all my life, prayin’ to the Beast. Now here it is. It’s a fuckin’ miracle.”

  Kale didn’t want to understand. “You’ve lost me.”

  Terr stared at him. “No, I haven’t. You know what I’m talkin’ about, man. You know.”

  Kale said nothing.

  “You’ve been thinkin’ this must be a demon, somethin’ from Hell. And it is from Hell, man. But it’s no demon. It’s Him. Him. Lucifer.”

  Among the dozens of sharply pointed horns, small red eyes opened in the tenebrous flesh. A multitude of piercing little eyes glowed crimson with hatred and evil knowledge.

  Terr motioned for Kale to come closer. “He’s allowin’ me to go on livin’ because He knows I’m His true disciple.”

  Kale didn’t move. His heart boomed. It wasn’t fear that loosed the adrenalin in him. Not fear alone. There was another emotion that shook him, overwhelmed him, an emotion he couldn’t quite identify...

  “He let me live,” Jeeter repeated, “because He knows I always do His work. Some of the others... maybe they weren’t as purely devoted to His work as I am, so He destroyed them. But me ... I’m different. He’s lettin’ me live to do His work. Maybe He’ll let me live forever, man.”

  Kale blinked.

  “And he’s lettin’ you live for the same reason, you know,” Jeeter said. “Sure. Must be. Sure. Because you do His work.”

  Kale shook his head. “I’ve never been a ... a Devil worshiper. I never believed.”

  “Don’t matter. You still do His work, and you enjoy it.”

  The red eyes watched Kale.

  “You killed your wife,” Jeeter said.

  Kale nodded dumbly.

  “Man, you even killed your own little baby boy. If that isn’t His work, then what is?”

  None of the shining eyes blinked, and Kale began to identify the emotion surging within him. Elation, awe ... religious rapture.

  “Who knows what else you’ve done over the years,” Jeeter said. “Must’ve done lots of stuff that was His work. Maybe almost everthin’ you ever done was His work. You’re like me, man. You were born to follow Lucifer. You and me ... it’s in our genes. In our genes, man.”

  At last Kale moved away from the wall.

  “That’s it,” Jeeter said. “Come here. Come close to Him.”

  Kale was overwhelmed with emotion. He had always known he was different from other men. Better. Special. He had always known, but he had never expected this. Yet here it was, undeniable proof that he was chosen. A fierce, heart-swelling joy suffused him.

  He knelt beside Jeeter, near the miraculous presence.

  He had arrived at last.

  His moment had come.

  Here, Kale thought, is my destiny.

  42

  The Other Side of Hell

  Beneath Jenny, the concrete roadbed snapped with a sound like a cannon shot.

  Wham!

  She scrambled back but wasn’t fast enough. The pavement shifted and began to drop out from under her.

  She was going into the pit, Christ, no, if she wasn’t killed by the fall then it would come out of hiding and get her, drag her down, out of sight; it would devour her before anyone could attempt to save her—

  Tal Whitman grabbed her ankles and held on. She was dangling in the pit, head down. The concrete tumbled into the hole and landed with a crash. The pavement under Tal’s feet shook, started to give way, and he almost lost his grip on Jenny. Then he moved back, hauling her with him, away from the crumbling brink. When she was on solid ground once more, he helped her stand.

  Even though she knew it wasn’t biologically possible for her heart to rise into her throat, she swallowed it anyway.

  “My God,” she said breathlessly, “thank you! Tal, if you hadn’t—”

  “All in a day’s work,” he said, although he had nearly followed her into the spider’s trap.

  Just a cakewalk, Jenny thought, remembering the story about Tal that she had heard from Bryce.

  She saw that Timothy Flyte, on the far side of the pit, wasn’t going to be as fortunate as she had been. Bryce wasn’t going to reach him in time.

  The pavement beneath Flyte gave way. An eight-foot-long, four-foot-wide slab descended into the pit, carrying the archaeologist with it. It didn’t crash to the bottom as the concrete had done on Jenny’s side. Over there, the pit had a sloped wall, and the slab
scooted down, slid thirty feet to the base, and came to rest against other rubble.

  Flyte was still alive. He was screaming in pain.

  “We’ve got to get him out of there fast,” Jenny said.

  “No use even trying,” Tal said.

  “But—”

  “Look!”

  It came for Flyte. It exploded out of one of the tunnels that pocked the floor of the pit and apparently led down into deep caverns. A massive pseudopod of amorphous protoplasm rose ten feet into the air, quivered, dropped to the ground, broke free of the mother-body hiding below, and formed itself into an obscenely fat black spider the size of a pony. It was only ten or twelve feet from Timothy Flyte, and it clambered through the shattered blocks of pavement, heading toward him with murderous intent.

  Sprawled helplessly on the concrete sled that had brought him into the pit, Timothy saw the spider coming. His pain was washed away by a wave of terror.

  The black spindly legs found easy purchase in the angled ruins, and the thing progressed far more swiftly than a man would have done. There were thousands of bristling, wirelike black hairs on those brittle legs. The bulbous belly was smooth, glossy, pale.

  Ten feet away. Eight feet.

  It was making a blood-freezing sound, half-squeal, half-hiss.

  Six feet. Four.

  It stopped in front of Timothy. He found himself looking up into a pair of huge mandibles, sharp-edged chitinous jaws.

  The door between madness and sanity began to open in his mind.

  Suddenly, a milky rain fell across Timothy. For an instant he thought the spider was squirting venom at him. Then he realized it was Biosan-4. They were standing above, on the rim of the pit, pointing their sprayers down.

  The fluid spattered over the spider, too. White spots began to speckle its black body.

  Bryce’s sprayer had been damaged by a chunk of debris. He couldn’t get a drop of fluid from it.

  Cursing, he unbuckled the harness and shrugged out of it, dropping the tank on the street. While Tal and Jenny shot Biosan down from the other side of the pit, Bryce hurried to the gutter and collected the two spare cannisters of bacteria-rich solution. They had rolled across the pavement, away from the erupting concrete, and had come to rest against the curb. Each cannister had a handle, and Bryce clutched both of them. They were heavy. He rushed back to the brink of the pit, hesitated, then plunged over the side, down the slope, all the way to the bottom. Somehow, he managed to stay on his feet, and he kept a firm grip on both cannisters.

  He didn’t go to Flyte. Jenny and Tal were doing all that could be done to destroy the spider. Instead, Bryce wound through and clambered over the rubble, heading toward the hole out of which the shape-changer had dispatched this latest phantom.

  Timothy Flyte watched in horror as the spider, looming over him, metamorphosed into an enormous hound. It wasn’t merely a dog; it was a Hellhound with a face that was partly canine and partly human. Its coat (where it wasn’t spattered with Biosan) was far blacker than the spider, and its big paws had barbed claws, and its teeth were as large as Timothy’s fingers. Its breath stank of sulphur and of something worse.

  Lesions began to appear on the hound as the bacteria ate into the amorphous flesh, and hope sparked in Timothy.

  Looking down at him, the hound spoke in a voice like gravel rolling on a tin chute: “I thought you were my Matthew, but you were my Judas.”

  The mammoth jaws opened.

  Timothy screamed.

  Even as the thing succumbed to the degenerative effects of the bacteria, it snapped its teeth together and savagely bit his face.