Phantoms

Dean R. Koontz Phantoms

Dedication

This book is dedicated to

The one who is always there,

The one who always cares

The one who always understands,

The one like whom there is no other:

Gerda

My wife and my best friend.

PART ONE VICTIMS

Fear came upon me, and trembling

- The book of Job, 4:14

The civilized human spirit… cannot

Get rid of a feeling of the uncanny

- Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann

Chapter 1 The Town Jail

The scream was distant and brief. A woman's scream.

Deputy Paul Henderson looked up from his copy of Time. He cocked his head, listening.

Motes of dust drifted lazily in a bright shaft of sunlight that pierced one of the mullioned windows. The thin, red second hand of the wall clock swept soundlessly around the dial.

The only noise was the creak of Henderson's office chair as he shifted his weight in it.

Through the large front windows, he could see a portion of Snowfield's main street, Skyline Road, which was perfectly still and peaceful in the golden afternoon sunshine. Only the trees moved, leaves aflutter in a soft wind.

After listening intently for several seconds, Henderson was not sure he had actually heard anything.

Imagination, he told himself. Just wishful thinking.

He almost would have preferred that someone had screamed. He was restless.

During the off season, from April through September, he was the only full-time sheriff's deputy assigned to the Snowfield substation, and the duty was dull. In the winter, when the town was host to several thousand skiers, there were drunks to be dealt with, fistfights to be broken up, and room burglaries to be investigated at the inns, lodges, and motels where the skiers stayed. But now, in early September, only the Candle glow Inn, one lodge, and two small motels were open, and the natives were quiet, and Henderson — who was just twenty-four years old and concluding his first year as a deputy — was bored.

He sighed, looked down at the magazine that lay on his desk — and heard another scream. As before, it was distant and brief, but this time it sounded like a man's voice. It wasn't merely a shriek of excitement or even a cry of alarm; it was the sound of terror.

Frowning, Henderson got up and headed toward the door, adjusting the holstered revolver on his right hip. He stepped through the swinging gate in the railing that separated the public area from the bull pen, and he was halfway to the door when he heard movement in the office behind him.

That was impossible. He had been alone in the office all day, and there hadn't been any prisoners in the three holding cells since early last week. The rear door was locked, and that was the only other way into the jail.

When he turned, however, he discovered that he wasn't alone any more. And suddenly he wasn't the least bit bored.

Chapter 2 Coming Home

During the twilight hour of that Sunday in early September, the mountains were painted in only two colors: green and blue. The forests — pine, fir, spruce — looked as if they had been fashioned from the same felt covered billiard tables. Cool, blue shadows lay everywhere, growing larger and deeper and darker by the minute.

Behind the wheel of her Pontiac Trans Am, Jennifer Paige smiled, buoyed by the beauty of the mountains and by a sense of homecoming. This was where she belonged.

She turned the Trans Am off the double-lane state road, onto the county-maintained, two-lane blacktop that twisted and climbed four miles through the pass to Snowfield.

In the passenger seat, her fourteen-year-old sister, Lisa, said, “I love it up here.”

“So do I.”

“When will we get some snow?”

“Another month, maybe sooner.”

The trees crowded close to the roadway. The Trans Am moved into a long tunnel by overhanging boughs, and Jenny switched on the headlights.

“I've never seen snow, except in pictures,” Lisa said.

“By next spring, you'd be sick of it.”

“Never. Not me. I've always dreamed about living in snow country, like you.”

Jenny glanced at the girl. Even for sisters, they looked remarkably alike: the same green eyes, the same auburn hair, the same high cheekbones.

“Will you teach me to ski?” Lisa asked.

“Well, honey, once the skiers come to town, there'll be the usual broken bones, sprained ankles, wrenched backs, torn ligaments… I'll be pretty busy then.”

“Oh,” Lisa said, unable to conceal her disappointment.

“Besides, why learn from me when you can take lessons from a real pro?”