Phantoms

was a prehistoric creature, something millions of years old that had somehow dropped through a time warp into the storm drains. But that was crazy. He felt a silvery, high-pitched, lunatic giggle coming over him, and he knew he would be lost if he gave voice to it. The beast tore away most of his decontamination suit. It was on him now, pressing hard, a cold and disgustingly slick thing that seemed to pulse and somehow to change when it touched him. Billy, gasping and weeping, suddenly remembered an illustration in an old catechism text. A drawing of a demon. That was what this was. Like the drawing. Yes, exactly like it. The horns. The dark, forked tongue. The red eyes. A demon risen from Hell. And then he thought: No, no; that’s crazy, too! And all the while that those thoughts raced through his mind, the ravenous creature stripped him and pulled his helmet almost completely apart. In the unrelieved darkness, he sensed its snout pressing through the halves of the broken helmet, toward his face, sniffing. He felt its tongue fluttering against his mouth and nose. He smelled a vague but repellent odor, like nothing he had ever smelled before. The beast gouged at his belly and thighs, and then he felt a strange and brutally painful fire eating into him; acid fire. He writhed, twisted, bucked, strained—all to no avail. Billy heard himself cry out in terror and pain and confusion: “It’s the Devil, it’s the Devil!” He realized he had been shouting and screaming things almost continuously, from the moment he had been dragged off the ladder. Now, unable to speak as the flameless fire burned his lungs to ash and churned into his throat, he prayed in a silent singsong chant, warding off fear and death and the terrible feeling of smallness and worthlessness that had come over to him: Mary, Mother of God, Mary, hear my plea… hear my plea, Mary, pray for me… pray, pray for me, Mary, Mother of God, Mary, intercede for me and—
    His question had been answered.
    He knew what had happened to Sergeant Harker.
     
    Galen Copperfield was an outdoorsman, and he knew a great deal about the wildlife of North America. One of the creatures he found most interesting was the trap-door spider. It was a clever engineer, constructing a deep, tubular nest in the ground with a hinged lid at the top. The lid blended so perfectly with the soil in which it was set that wandered across it, unaware of the danger below, were instantly snatched into the nest, dragged down, and devoured. The suddenness of it was horrifying and fascinating. One instant, the prey was there, standing atop the trap-door, and the next instant it was gone, as if it had never been.
    Corporal Velazquez’s disappearance was as sudden as if he had stepped upon the lid of a trap-door spider’s lair.
    Gone.
    Copperfield’s men were already edgy about Harker’s disappearance and were frightened by the nightmarish howling that ceased just before Velazquez was dragged down. When the corporal was taken, they all stumbled back across the street, afraid that something was about to launch itself out of the manhole.
    Copperfield, in the act of reaching for Velazquez when he was snatched, jumped back. Then froze. Indecisive. That was not like him. He had never before been indecisive in a crisis.
    Velazquez was screaming through the suit-to-suit radio.
    Breaking the ice that locked his joints, Copperfield went to the manhole and looked down. Peake’s flashlight lay on the floor of the drain. But there was nothing else. No sign of Velazquez.
    Copperfield hesitated.
    The Corporal continued to scream.
    Send other men down after the poor bastard?
    No. It would be a suicide mission. Remember Harker. Cut the losses here, now.
    But, good God, the screaming was terrible. Not as awful as Harker’s. Those had been screams born of excruciating pain. These were screams of mortal terror. Not as bad, perhaps, but bad enough. As bad as anything Copperfield had heard on the battlefield.
    There were words among the screams, spat out in explosive gasps. The corporal was making a desperate, babbling attempt to explain to those aboveground—and maybe to himself—just what he was seeing.
    “… lizard…”
    “… bug…”
    “… dragon…”
    “… prehistoric…”
    “… demon…”
    And finally, with both physical pain and anguish of the soul in his voice, the corporal cried out, “It’s the Devil, it’s the Devil!”
    After that, the screams were every bit as bad as