Phantoms

cleared, and the elongated black pupils became visible, and the eyes glared down at Jenny and the men with malevolent intent. A foot-wide, slitted mouth sprang open; a row of sharp white fangs grew from the black gums.

Jenny thought of the demonic names that had glowed on the video display terminals, the Hell-born names the thing had given itself. The mass of amorphous flesh, foaling itself into a winged serpent, was like a demon summoned from beyond.

The phantom wolf, which incorporated the substance of Gordy Brogan, approached the base of the towering serpent. It brushed against the column of pulsing flesh — and simply melted into it. In less than a blink of an eye, the two creatures became as one.

Evidently, the Just shape-changer wasn't a separate individual. It was now, and perhaps always had been, part of the gargantuan creature that moved within the storm drains, under the streets. Apparently, that massive mother-body could detach pieces of itself and dispatch them on tasks of their own — such as the attack on Gordy Brogan — and then recall them at will.

The wings flapped, and the whole town reverberated with the sound. Then they began to melt back into the central column, and the column grew thicker as it absorbed that tissue. The serpent's face dissolved, too. It had grown tired of this performance. The legs and three-toed feet and vicious talons withdrew into the column, until there was nothing left but a churning, oozing mass of darkly mottled tissue, as before. For several seconds, it posed in the gloomy dusk, a vision of evil, then began to shrink down into the drains under it, down through the manhole.

Soon it was gone.

Lisa had stopped screaming. She was gasping for air and crying.

Some of the others were nearly as shaken as the girl. They looked at one another, but none of them spoke.

Bryce looked as if he had been clubbed.

At last he said, “Come on. Let's get back to the inn before it gets any darker.”

There was no guard at the front entrance of the inn.

“Trouble,” Tal said.

Bryce nodded. He stepped through the double doors with caution and almost put his foot on a gun. It was lying on the floor.

The lobby was deserted.

“Damn,” Frank Autry said.

They searched the place, room by room. No one in the cafeteria. No one in the makeshift dormitory. The kitchen was deserted, too. Not a shot had been fired. No one had cried out.

No one had escaped, either.

Ten more deputies were gone.

Outside, night had fallen.

Chapter 34 Saying Goodbye

The six survivors — Bryce, Tal, Frank, Jenny, Lisa, and Sara stood at the windows in the lobby of the Hilltop Inn. Outside, Skyline Road was still and silent, rendered in stark patterns of night-shadow and streetlamp-glow. The night seemed to tick softly, like a bomb clock.

Jenny was remembering the covered passageway beside Liebermann's Bakery. Last night, she had thought something was in the rafters of the service tunnel, and Lisa had believed something was crouching along the wall; very likely they had both been right. The shape-changer — or at least a part of it — had been there, slithering soundlessly through the rafters and down the wall. Later, when Bryce had caught a glimpse of something in the drain inside that passage, he had surely seen a dark glob of protoplasm creeping through the pipe, either keeping tabs on them or engaged upon some alien and unfathomable task.

Thinking, also, of the Oxleys in their barricaded den, Jenny said, “The locked-room mysteries suddenly aren't very mysterious any more. That thing could ooze under the door or through a heating duct. The smallest hole or crack would be big enough. As for Harold Ordnay… after he locked himself in the bathroom at the Candle glow Inn, the thing probably got at him through the sink and bathtub drains.”

“The same for the locked cars with victims in them,” Frank said, “It could surround a car, envelope it, and squeeze in through the vents.”

“If it wanted to,” Tal said, “it could move real quietly. That's why so many people were caught by surprise. It was behind them, oozing under a door or out of a heating vent, getting bigger and bigger, but they didn't know it was there until it attacked.”

Outside, a thin fog was coming up the street, rising out of the valley below. Misty auras began to form around the streetlights.

“How big do you think it is?” Lisa asked.

No one responded for a moment. Then Bryce said, “Big.”

“Maybe the size of a house,” Frank said.

“Or as big as this entire inn,” Sara said.

“Or even bigger,” Tal said, “After all, it struck in every part of town, apparently simultaneously. It could be like… like an underground lake, a lake of living tissue, beneath most of Snowfield.”

“Like God,” Lisa said.

“Huh?”

“It's everywhere,” Lisa said, “It sees all and knows all. Just like God.”

“We've got five patrol cars,” Frank said, “If we split up, take all five cars, and drive out of here at exactly the same time”

“It would stop us,” Bryce said.

“Maybe it wouldn't be able to stop all of us. Maybe one car would get through.”

“It stopped a whole town.”

“Well… yeah,” Frank said reluctantly.

Jenny said, “Anyway, it's probably listening to us right this minute. It would stop us before we even reached the cars.”

They all looked at the heating ducts near the ceiling. There was nothing to be seen beyond the metal grilles. Nothing but darkness.

They gathered around a table in the dining room of the fortress that was no longer a fortress. They pretended to want coffee because, somehow, sharing coffee gave them a sense of community and normality.

Bryce didn't bother putting a guard on the front doors. Guards were useless. If it wanted them, it would surely get them.

Beyond the windows, the fog was getting thicker. It pressed against the glass.

They were compelled to talk about what they had seen. They were all aware that death was coming for them, and they needed to understand why and how they were meant to die. Death was terrifying, yes; however, senseless death was the worst of all.

Bryce knew about senseless death. A year ago, a runaway truck had taught him everything he needed to know about that subject.

“The moth,” Lisa said, “Was that like the Airedale, like the thing that… that got Gordy?”

“Yes,” Jenny said, “The moth was just a phantom, a small piece of the shape-changer.”

To Lisa, Tal said, “When Stu Wargle came after you last night, it wasn't actually him. The shape-changer probably absorbed Wargle's body after we left it in the utility room. Then, later, when it wanted to terrorize you, it assumed his appearance.”

“Apparently,” Bryce said, “the damned thing can impersonate anyone or any animal that it's previously fed upon.”

Lisa frowned. “But what about the moth? How could it have fed on anything like the moth? Nothing like that