Phantoms Read online

  Scrape. Tick. Clatter.

  The sounds 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 arachnoid legs. A monstrous claw with saw-toothed edges flashed into the light, immediately into darkness again. And there: the febrile, quivering, 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 who’re 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 turned 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 the 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 Yamaguchi 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.

  35

  Pandemonium

  Sal Corello, the publicity agent who had been hired to meet Timothy Flyte at San Francisco International Airport, was a small yet hard-muscled man with corn-yellow hair and purple-blue eyes. He looked like a leading man. If he had been six feet two instead of just five feet one, his face might have been as famous as Robert Redford’s. However, his intelligence, wit, and aggressive charm compensated for his lack of height. He knew how to get what he wanted for himself and for his clients.

  Usually, Corello could even make reporters behave so well that you might mistake them for civilized people; but not tonight. This story was too big and much too hot. Corello had never seen anything like it: Hundreds of reporters and curious civilians rushed at Flyte the instant they saw him, pulling and tugging at the professor, shoving microphones in his face, blinding him with batteries of camera lights, and frantically shouting questions. “Dr. Flyte...” “Professor Flyte ...” “... Flyte!” Flyte, Flyte, Flyte-Flyte-Flyte, FlyteFlyteFlyte-Flyte ... The questions were reduced to meaningless gabble by the roar of competing voices. Sal Corello’s ears hurt. The professor looked bewildered, then scared. Corello took the old man’s arm and held it tightly and led him through the surging flock, turning himself into a small but highly effective battering ram. By the time they reached the small platform that Corello and airport security officers had set up at one end of the passengers’ lounge, Professor Flyte looked as if he might expire of fright.

  Corello took the microphone and quickly silenced the throng. He urged them to let Flyte deliver a brief statement, promised that a few questions would be permitted later, introduced the speaker, and stepped out of the way.

  When everyone got a good, clear look at Timothy Flyte, they couldn’t conceal a sudden attack of skepticism. It swept the crowd; Corello saw it in their faces: a very visible apprehension that Flyte was hoaxing them. Indeed, Flyte appeared to be a tad maniacal. His white hair was frizzed out from his head, as if he had just stuck a finger in an electric socket. His eyes were wide, both with fear and with an effort to stave off fatigue, and his face had the dissipated look of a wino’s grizzled visage. He needed a shave. His clothes were rumpled, wrinkled; they hung like shapeless bags. He reminded Corello of one of those street corner fanatics declaring the imminence of Armageddon.

  Earlier in the day, on the telephone from London, Burt Sandler, the editor from Wintergreen and Wyle, had prepared Corello for the possibility that Flyte would make a negative impression on the press, but Sandler needn’t have worried. The journalists grew restless as Flyte cleared his throat half a dozen times, loudly, into the microphone, but when he began to speak at last, they were enthralled within a minute. He told them about the Roanoke Island colony, about vanishing Mayan civilizations, about mysterious depletions of marine populations, about an army that disappeared in 1711. The crowd grew hushed. Corello relaxed.

  Flyte told them about the Eskimo village
of Anjikuni, five hundred miles northwest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost at Churchill. On a snowy afternoon in November of 1930, a French-Canadian trapper and trader, Joe LaBelle, stopped at Anjikuni—only to discover that everyone who lived there had disappeared. All belongings, including precious hunting rifles, had been left behind. Meals had been left half-eaten. The dogsleds (but no dogs) were still there, which meant there was no way the entire village could have moved overland to another location. The settlement was, as LaBelle put it later, “as eerie as a graveyard in the very dead of night.” LaBelle hastened to the Mounted Police Station at Churchill, and a major investigation was launched, but no trace was ever found of the Anjikunians.

  As the reporters took notes and aimed tape recorder microphones at Flyte, he told them about his much-maligned theory: the ancient enemy. There were gasps of surprise, incredulous expressions, but no noisy questioning or blatantly expressed disbelief.

  The instant Flyte finished reading his prepared statement, Sal Corello reneged on his promise of a question-and-answer session. He took Flyte by the arm and hustled him through a door behind the makeshift platform on which the microphones stood.

  The reporters howled with indignation at this betrayal. They rushed the platform, trying to follow Flyte.

  Corello and the professor entered a service corridor where several airport security men were waiting. One of the guards slammed and locked the door behind them, cutting off the reporters, who howled even louder than before.

  “This way,” a security man said.

  “The chopper’s here,” another said.

  They hurried along a maze of hallways, down a flight of concrete stairs, through a metal fire door, and outside, onto a windswept expanse of tarmac, where a sleek, blue helicopter waited. It was a plush, well-appointed, executive craft, a Bell JetRanger.

  “It’s the governor’s chopper,” Corello told Flyte.

  “The governor?” Flyte said. “He’s here?”

  “No. But he’s put his helicopter at your disposal.”

  As they climbed through the door, into the comfortable passengers’ compartment, the rotors began to churn overhead.

  Forehead pressed to the cool window, Timothy Flyte watched San Francisco fall away into the night.

  He was excited. Before the plane had landed, he had felt dopey and bedraggled; not any more. He was alert and eager to learn more about what was happening in Snowfield.

  The JetRanger had a high cruising speed for a helicopter, and the trip to Santa Mira took less than two hours. Corello— a clever, fast-talking, amusing man—helped Timothy prepare another statement for the media people who were waiting for them. The journey passed quickly.

  They touched down with a thump in the middle of the fenced parking lot behind the county sheriff’s headquarters. Corello opened the door of the passengers’ compartment even before the chopper’s rotors had stopped whirling; he plunged out of the craft, turned to the door again, buffeted by the wind from the blades, and lent a hand to Timothy.

  An aggressive contingent of journalists—even more of them than in San Francisco—fitted the alleyway. They were pressed against the chain-link fence, shouting questions, aiming microphones and cameras.

  “We’ll give them a statement later, at our conveinence, Corello told him, shouting in order to be heard above the din. “Right now, the police here are waiting to put you on the phone to the sheriff up in Snowfield.”

  A couple of deputies hustled Timothy and Corello into the building, along the hallway, and into an office where another uniformed man was waiting for them. His name was Charlie Mercer. He was husky, with the bushiest eyebrows that Timothy had ever seen—and the briskly efficient manner of a first-rate executive secretary.

  Timothy was escorted to the chair behind the desk.

  Mercer dialed a number in Snowfield, making the connection with Sheriff Hammond. The call was put on a conference speaker, so that Timothy didn’t have to hold a receiver, and so that everyone in the room could hear both sides of the conversation.

  Hammond delivered the first shocker as soon as he and Timothy had exchanged greetings: “Dr. Flyte, we’ve seen the ancient enemy. Or at least I guess it’s the thing you had in mind. A massive ... amoeboid thing. A shape-changer that can mimic anything.”

  Timothy’s hands were shaking; he gripped the arms of his chair. “My God.”

  “Is that your ancient enemy?” Hammond asked.

  “Yes. A survivor from another era. Millions of years old.”

  “You can tell us more when you get here,” Hammond said. “If I can persuade you to come.”

  Timothy only heard half of what the sheriff was saying. He was thinking of the ancient enemy. He had written about it; he had truly believed in it; yet, somehow, he had not been prepared to actually have his theory confirmed. It rocked him.

  Hammond told him about the hideous death of a deputy named Gordy Brogan.

  Besides Timothy himself, only Sal Corello looked stunned and horrified by Hammond’s story. Mercer and the others had evidently heard all about it hours ago.

  “You’ve seen it and lived?” Timothy said, amazed.

  “It had to leave some of us alive,” Hammond said, “so that we’d try to convince you to come. It has guaranteed your safe conduct.”

  Timothy chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip.

  Hammond said, “Dr. Flyte? Are you still there?”

  “What? Oh ... yes. Yes, I’m still here. What do you mean by saying it guaranteed my safe passage?”

  Hammond told him an astonishing story about communication with the ancient enemy by way of a computer.

  As the sheriff talked, Timothy broke into a sweat. He saw a box of Kleenex on one comer of the desk in front of him; he grabbed a handful of tissues and mopped his face.

  When the sheriff finished, the professor drew a deep breath and spoke in a strained voice. “I never anticipated ... I mean ... well, it never occurred to me that ...”

  “What’s wrong?” Hammond asked.

  Timothy cleared his throat. “It never occurred to me that the ancient enemy would possess human-level intelligence.”

  “I suspect it may even be a superior intelligence,” Hammond said.

  “But I always thought of it as just a dumb animal, of distinctly limited self-awareness.”

  “It’s not.”

  “That makes it a lot more dangerous. My God. A lot more dangerous.”

  “Will you come up here?” Hammond asked.

  “I hadn’t intended to come any closer than I am now,” Timothy said. “But if it’s intelligent ... and if it’s offering me safe passage ...”

  On the telephone, a child’s voice piped up, the sweet voice of a young boy, perhaps five or six years old: “Please, please, please come play with me, Dr. Flyte. Please. We’ll have lots of fun. Please?”

  And then, before Timothy could respond, there came a woman’s soft and musical voice: “Yes, dear Dr. Flyte, by all means, do come pay us a visit. You’re more than welcome. No one will harm you.”

  Finally, the voice of an old man came over the line, warm and tender: “You have so much to learn about me, Dr. Flyte. So much wisdom to acquire. Please come and begin your studies. The offer of safe passage is sincere.”

  Silence.

  Confused, Timothy said, “Hello? Hello? Who’s this?”

  “I’m still here,” Hammond answered.

  The other voices did not return.

  “Just me now,” Hammond said.

  Timothy said, “But who were those people?”

  “They’re not actually people. They’re just phantoms. Mimicry. Don’t you get it? In three different voices, it just offered you safe passage again. The ancient enemy, Doctor.”

  Timothy looked at the other four men in the room. They were all staring intently at the black conference box from which Hammond’s voice—and the voices of the creature—had issued.

  Clutching a wad of already sodden paper tissues in one hand
, Timothy wiped his sweat-slick face again. “I’ll come.”

  Now, everyone in the room looked at him.

  On the telephone, Sheriff Hammond said, “Doctor, there’s no good reason to believe that it’ll keep its promise. Once you’re here, you may very well be a dead man, too.”

  “But if it’s intelligent ...”

  “That doesn’t mean it plays fair,” Hammond said. “In fact, all of us up here are certain of one thing: This creature is the very essence of evil. Evil, Dr. Flyte. Would you trust in the Devil’s promise?”

  The child’s voice came on the line again, still lilting and sweet: “If you come, Dr. Flyte, I’ll not only spare you, but these six people who’re trapped here. I’ll let them go if you come play with me. But if you don’t come, I’ll take these pigs. I’ll crush them. I’ll squeeze the blood and shit out of them, squeeze them into pulp, and use them up.”

  Those words were spoken in light, innocent, childlike tones—which somehow made them far more frightening than if they had been shouted in a basso profundo rage.

  Timothy’s heart was pounding.

  “That settles it,” he said. “I’ll come. I have no choice.”

  “Don’t come on our account,” Hammond said. “It might spare you because it calls you its Saint Matthew, its Mark, its Luke and John. But it sure as hell won’t spare us, no matter what it says.”

  “I’ll come,” Timothy insisted.

  Hammond hesitated. Then: “Very well. I’ll have one of my men drive you to the Snowfield roadblock. From there, you’ll have to come alone. I can’t risk another man. Do you drive?”

  “Yes, sir,” Timothy said. “You provide the car, and I’ll get there by myself.”

  The line went dead.

  “Hello?” Timothy said. “Sheriff?”

  No answer.

  “Are you there? Sheriff Hammond?”

  Nothing.

  It had cut them off.

  Timothy looked up at Sal Corello, Charlie Mercer, and the two men whose names he didn’t know.

  They were all staring at him as if he were already dead and lying in a casket.

  But if I die in Snowfield, if the shape-changer takes me, he thought, there’ll be no casket. No grave. No everlasting peace.

  “I’ll drive you as far as the roadblock,” Charlie Mercer said. “I’ll drive you myself.”

  Timothy nodded.

  It was time to go.