Phantoms

The street was a patchwork of ten thousand shadows; there were too many dark places to watch.

The siren wailed, and the bell rang, and now the lights began to flash again — hid,)use lights, shop lights, streetlights on and off, on and off so rapidly that they created a strobelike effect. Skyline Road flickered; the buildings seemed to jump toward the street, then fall back, then jump forward; the shadows danced jerkily.

Jenny turned in a complete circle, the revolver thrust out in front of her.

If something was approaching under cover of the stroboscopic light show, she couldn't see it.

She thought: What if, when the sheriff arrives, he finds two severed heads in the middle of the street? Mine and Lisa's.

The church bell was louder than ever, and it banged away continuously, madly.

The siren swelled into a teeth-jarring, bone-piercing screech. It seemed a miracle that windows didn't shatter.

Lisa had her hands over her ears.

Jenny's gun hand was shaking. She couldn't keep it steady.

Then, as abruptly as the pandemonium had begun, it ceased. The siren died. The church bell stopped. The lights stayed on.

Jenny scanned the street, waiting for something more to happen, something worse.

But nothing happened.

Again, the town was as tranquil as a graveyard.

A wind sprang out of nowhere and caused the trees to sway, as if responding to ethereal music beyond the range of human hearing.

Lisa shook herself out of a daze and said, “It was almost as if… as if they were trying to scare us… teasing us.”

“Teasing,” Jenny said, “Yes, that's exactly what it was like.”

“Playing with us.”

“Like a cat with mice,” Jenny said softly.

They stood in the middle of the silent street, afraid to go back to the bench in front of the town jail, lest their movement should start the siren and the bell again.

Suddenly, they heard a low grumbling. For an instant, Jenny's stomach tightened. She raised the gun once more, although she could see nothing at which to shoot. Then she recognized the sound: automobile engines laboring up the steep mountain road.

She turned and looked down the street. The gamble of engines grew louder. A car appeared around the curve, at the bottom of town.

Flashing red roof lights. A police car. Two police cars.

“My God,” Lisa said.

Jenny quickly led her sister to the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the substation.

The two white and green patrol cars came slowly up the deserted street and angled to the curb in front of the wooden bench. The two engines were cut off simultaneously. Snowfield's deathlike hush took possession of the night once more.

A rather handsome black man in a deputy's uniform got out of the first car, letting his door stand open. He looked at Jenny and Lisa but didn't immediately speak. His attention was captured by the preternaturally silent, unpeopled street.

A second man got out of the front seat of the same vehicle. He had unruly, sandy hair. His eyelids were so heavy that he looked as if he were about to fall asleep. He was dressed in civilian clothing — gray slacks, a pale blue shirt, a dark blue nylon jacket — but there was a badge pinned to the jacket.

Four other men got out of the cruisers. All six newcomers stood there for a long moment without speaking, eyes moving over the quiet stores and houses.

In that strange, suspended bubble of time, Jenny had an icy premonition that she didn't want to believe. She was certain she knew—that not all of them would leave this place alive.

Chapter 11 Exploring

Bryce knelt on one knee beside the body of Paul Henderson.

The other seven — his own men, Dr. Paige, and Lisa — crowded into the reception area, outside the wooden railing, in the Snowfield substation. They were quiet in the presence of Death.

Paul Henderson had been a good man with decent instincts. His death was a terrible waste. Bryce said, “Dr. Paige?”

She crouched down at the other side of the corpse. “Yes?”

“You didn't move the body?”

“I didn't even touch it, Sheriff.”

“There was no blood?”

“Just as you see it now. No blood.”

“The wound might be in his back,” Bryce said.

“Even if it was, there'd still be some blood on the floor.”

“Maybe.” He stared into her striking eyes-green flecked with gold. “Ordinarily, I wouldn't disturb a body until the coroner had seen it. But this is an extraordinary situation. I'll have to turn this man over.”

“I don't know if it's safe to touch him.”

“Someone has to do it,” Bryce said.

Dr. Paige stood up, and everyone moved back a couple of steps. Bryce put a hand to Henderson's purple- black, distorted face. “The skin is still slightly warm,” he said in surprise.

Dr. Paige said, “I don't think they've been dead very long.”

“But a body doesn't discolor and bloat in just a couple of hours,” Tal Whitman said.

“These bodies did,” the doctor said.

Bryce rolled the corpse over, exposing the back. No wound.

Hoping to find an unnatural depression in the skull, Bryce thrust his fingers into the dead man's thick hair, testing the bone. If the deputy had been struck hard on the back of the head… But that wasn't the case, either. The skull was intact.

Bryce got to his feet. “Doctor, these two decapitations you mentioned… I guess we'd better have a look at those.”

“Do you think one of your men could stay here with my sister?”

“I understand your feelings,” Bryce said, “But I don't really think it would be wise for me to split up my men. Maybe there isn't any safety in numbers; then on the other hand, maybe there is.”

“It's okay,” Lisa assured Jenny, “I don't want to be left behind, anyway.”

She was a spunky kid. Both she and her older sister intrigued Bryce Hammond. They were pale, and their eyes were alive with dervish shadows of shock and honor — but they were coping a great deal better than most people would have in this bizarre, waking nightmare.

The Paiges led the entire group out of the substation and down the street to the bakery.

Bryce found it difficult to believe that Snowfield had been a normal, bustling village only a short while ago. The town felt as dry and burnt-out and dead as an ancient lost city in a far desert, off in a corner of the world where even the wind often forgot to go. The hush that cloaked the town seemed a silence of countless years, of decades, of centuries, a silence of unimaginably long epochs piled on epochs.

Shortly after arriving in Snowfield, Bryce had used an electric bullhorn to call for a response from the silent houses. Now it seemed foolish ever to have expected an answer.

They entered Liebermann's Bakery through the front door and went into the kitchen at the rear of the building.

On the butcher's-block table, two severed hands gripped the handles of a rolling pin.

Two severed heads peered through two oven doors.