Phantoms (19 page)

“It doesn’t matter. I’m a deputy, policeman, cop—whatever you like. Except you think I don’t really look the part.”

“Oh, you look the part all right,” Lisa said. “Especially when you scowl. But you don’t
seem
like a cop.”

“What do I seem like to you?”

“Let me think.” She took an immediate interest in this game, for it diverted her mind from the nightmare around her. “Maybe you seem like . . . a young minister.”

“Me?
”

“Well, in the pulpit, you’d be just fantastic delivering a fire-and-brimstone sermon. And I can see you sitting in a parsonage, an encouraging smile on your face, listening to people’s problems.”

“Me, a minister,” he said, clearly astonished. “With that imagination of yours, you should be a writer when you grow up.”

“I think I should be a doctor like Jenny. A doctor can do so much good.” She paused. “You know why you don’t seem like a cop? It’s because I can’t picture you using
that.
” She pointed at his revolver. “I can’t picture you shooting someone. Not even if he deserved it.”

She was startled by the expression that came over Gordy Brogan’s face. He was visibly shocked.

Before she could ask what was wrong, the lights flickered.

She looked up.

The lights flickered again. And again.

She glanced at the front windows. Outside, the streetlights were blinking, too.

No, she thought. No, please, God, not again. Don’t throw us into darkness again; please,
please!

The lights went out.

Bryce Hammond had spoken to the night-duty officer manning the emergency line at the CBW Civilian Defense Unit at Dugway, Utah. He hadn’t needed to give many details before he’d been patched through to General Galen Copperfield’s home number. Copperfield had listened, but he hadn’t said much. Bryce wanted to know whether it seemed at all likely that a chemical or biological agent had caused Snowfield’s agony and obliteration. Copperfield said, “Yes.” But that was all he
would
say. He warned Bryce that they were speaking on an unsecured telephone line, and he made vague but stem references to classified information and security clearances. When he’d heard all of the essentials but only a few details, he cut Bryce off rather curtly and suggested they discuss the rest of it when they met face to face. “I’ve heard enough to be convinced that my organization should be involved.” He promised to send a field lab and a team of investigators into Snowfield by dawn or shortly thereafter.

Bryce was putting down the receiver when the lights flickered, dimmed, flickered, wavered—and went out.

He fumbled for the flashlight on the desk in front of him, found it, and switched it on.

Upon returning to the substation a while ago, they had located two additional, long-handled police flashlights. Gordy had taken one; Dr. Paige had taken the other. Now, both of those lights flicked on simultaneously, carving long bright wounds in the darkness.

They had discussed a plan of action, a routine to follow if the lights went off again. Now, as planned, everyone moved to the center of the room, away from the doors and windows, and clustered together in a circle, facing outward, their backs turned to one another, reducing their vulnerability.

No one said much of anything. They were all listening intently.

Lisa Paige stood to the left of Bryce, her slender shoulders hunched, her head tucked down.

Tal Whitman stood at Bryce’s right. His teeth were bared in a silent snarl as he studied the darkness beyond the sweeping scythe of the flashlight beam.

Tal and Bryce were holding revolvers.

The three of them faced the rear half of the room, while the other four—Dr. Paige, Gordy, Frank, and Stu—faced the front.

Bryce played the beam of his flashlight over everything, for even the shadowy outlines of the most mundane objects suddenly seemed threatening. But nothing hid or moved among the familiar pieces of furniture and equipment.

Silence.

Set in the back wall, toward the right-hand corner of the room, were two doors. One led to the corridor that served the three holding cells. They had searched that part of the building earlier; the cells, the interrogation room, and the two bathrooms that occupied that half of the ground floor were all deserted. The other door led to stairs that went up to the deputy’s apartment; those rooms, too, were unoccupied. Nevertheless, Bryce repeatedly brought the beam of light back to the half-open doors; he was uneasy about them.

In the darkness, something thumped softly.

“What was that?” Wargle asked.

“It came from over this way,” Gordy said.

“No, from over this way,” Lisa Paige said.

“Quiet!” Bryce said sharply.

It was the sound of a padded blow. Like a dropped pillow striking the floor.

Bryce swept his light rapidly back and forth.

Tal tracked the beam with his revolver.

Bryce thought: What do we do if the lights are out for the rest of the night? What do we do when the flashlight batteries finally go dead? What happens then?

He had not been afraid of darkness since he’d been a small child. Now he remembered what it was like.

Louder. But not closer.

“The windows!” Frank said.

Bryce swung around, probing with his flashlight.

Three bright beams found the front windows at the same time, transforming the mullioned squares of glass into mirrors that hid whatever lay beyond them.

“Turn your lights toward the floor or ceiling,” Bryce said.

One beam swung up, two down.

The backsplash of light revealed the windows, but it didn’t turn them into reflective silver surfaces.

Something struck a window, rattled a loose pane, and rebounded into the night. Bryce had an impression of wings.

“What was it?”

“—bird—”

“—not a bird of any kind I ever—”

“—something—”

“—awful—”

It returned, battering itself against the glass with greater determination than before:
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!

Lisa screamed.

Frank Autry gasped, and Stu Wargle said, “Holy shit!”

Gordy made a strangled, wordless sound.

Staring at the window, Bryce felt as if he had lurched through the curtain of reality, into a place of nightmare and illusion.

With the streetlamps extinguished, Skyline Road was dark except for the luminous moonfall; however, the thing at the window was vaguely illuminated.

Even vague illumination of that fluttering monstrosity was too much. What Bryce saw on the other side of the glass—what he
thought
he saw in the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of light, shadow, and shimmering moonlight—was something out of a fever dream. It had a three- or four-foot wingspan. An insectile head. Short, quivering antennae. Small, pointed, and ceaselessly working mandibles. A segmented body. The body was suspended between the pale gray wings and was approximately the size and shape of two footballs placed end to end; it, too, was gray, the same shade as the wings—a moldy, sickly gray—and fuzzy and moist-looking. Bryce glimpsed eyes, as well: huge, ink-black, multifaceted, protuberant lenses that caught the light, refracting and reflecting it, gleaming darkly and hungrily.

If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, the thing at the window was a moth as large as an eagle. Which was madness.

It bashed itself against the windows with new fury, in a frenzy now, its pale wings beating so fast that it became a blur. It moved along the dark panes, repeatedly rebounding into the night, then returning, trying feverishly to crash through the window.
Thumpthumpthumpthump.
But it didn’t have the strength to smash its way inside. Furthermore, it didn’t have a carapace; its body was entirely soft, and in spite of its incredible size and formidable appearance, it was incapable of cracking the glass.

Then it was gone.

The lights came on.

It’s like a damned stage play, Bryce thought.

When they realized that the thing at the window wasn’t going to return, they all moved, by unspoken consent, to the front of the room. They went through the gate in the railing, into the public area, to the windows, gazing out in stunned silence.

Skyline Road was unchanged.

The night was empty.

Nothing moved.

 

 

Bryce sat down in the creaking chair at Paul Henderson’s desk. The others gathered around.

“So,” Bryce said.

“So,” Tal said.

They looked at one another. They fidgeted.

“Any ideas?” Bryce asked.

No one said anything.

“Any theories about what it might have been?”

“Gross,” Lisa said, and shuddered.

“It was that, all right,” Dr. Paige said, putting a comforting hand on her younger sister’s shoulder.

Bryce was impressed with the doctor’s emotional strength and resiliency. She seemed to be taking every shock that Snowfield threw at her. Indeed, she seemed to be holding up better than his own men. Hers was the only gaze that didn’t slide away when he met it; she returned his stare forthrightly.

This, he thought, is a special woman.

“Impossible,” Frank Autry said. “That’s what it was. Just plain impossible.”

“Hell, what’s the matter with you people?” Wargle asked. He screwed up his meaty face. “It was only a bird. That’s all it was out there. Just a goddamned bird.”

“Like hell it was,” Frank said.

“Just a lousy bird,” Wargle insisted. When the others disagreed, he said, “The bad light and all them shadows out there sort of give you a false impression. You didn’t see what you all think you seen

“And what do
you
think we saw?” Tal asked him.

Wargle’s face became flushed.

“Did we see the same thing you saw, the thing you don’t want to believe?” Tal pressed. “A moth? Did you see one goddamned big, ugly impossible moth?”

Wargle looked down at his shoes. “I seen a bird. Just a bird.”

Bryce realized that Wargle was so utterly lacking in imagination that the man couldn’t encompass the possibility of the impossible, not even when he had witnessed it with his own eyes.

“Where did it come from?” Bryce asked.

No one had any ideas.

“What did it want?” he asked.

“It wanted
us,
” Lisa said.

Everyone seemed to agree with that assessment.

“But the thing at the window wasn’t what got Jake,” Frank said. “It was weak, lightweight. It couldn’t carry off a grown man.”

“Then what got Jake?” Gordy asked.

“Something bigger,” Frank said. “Something a whole lot stronger and meaner.”

Bryce decided that, after all, the time had come to tell them about the things he had heard—and sensed—on the telephone, between his calls to Governor Retlock and General Copperfield: the silent presence; the forlorn cries of sea gulls; the warning sound of a rattlesnake; worst of all, the agonizing and despairing screams of men, women, and children. He hadn’t intended to mention any of that until morning, until the arrival of daylight and reinforcements. But they might spot something important that he had missed, some scrap, some clue that would be of help. Besides, now that they had all seen the thing at the window, the phone incident was, by comparison, no longer very shocking.

The others listened to Bryce, and this new information had a negative effect on their demeanor.

“What kind of degenerate would tape-record the screams of his victims?” Gordy asked.

Tal Whitman shook his head. “It could be something else. It could be that . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, maybe none of you wants to hear this right now.”

“Since you’ve started it, finish it,” Bryce insisted.

“Well,” Tal said, “what if it wasn’t a recording you heard? I mean, we know people have disappeared from Snowfield. In fact as far as we’ve seen, more have vanished than died. So . . . what if the missing are being held somewhere? As hostages? Maybe the screams were coming from people who were still alive, who were being tortured and maybe killed right
then
, right then while you were on the phone, listening.”

Remembering those terrible screams, Bryce felt his marrow slowly freezing.

“Whether it was tape-recorded or not,” Frank Autry said, “it’s probably a mistake to think in terms of hostages.”

“Yes,” Dr. Paige said. “If Mr. Autry means that we’ve got to be careful not to narrow our thinking to conventional situations, then I wholeheartedly agree. This just doesn’t feel like a hostage drama. Something damned peculiar is happening here, something that no one’s ever encountered before, so let’s not start backsliding just because we’d be more comfortable with cozy, familiar explanations. Besides, if we’re dealing with terrorists, how does that fit with the thing we saw at the window? It doesn’t.”

Bryce nodded. “You’re right. But I don’t believe Tal meant that people were being held for conventional motives.”

“No, no,” Tal said. “It doesn’t have to be terrorists or kidnappers. Even if people are being held hostage, that doesn’t necessarily mean
other people
are holding them. I’m even willing to consider that they’re being held by something that isn’t human. How’s
that
for remaining open-minded? Maybe
it
is holding them, the
it
that none of us can define. Maybe it’s holding them just to prolong the pleasure it takes from snuffing the life out of them. Maybe it’s holding them just to tease us with their screams, the way it teased Bryce on the phone. Hell, if we’re dealing with something truly extraordinary, truly unhuman, its reasons for holding hostages—if it
is
holding any—are bound to be incomprehensible.”