Phantoms

content had evaporated. The remains were dry, hard, burnt, blistered, and unidentifiable. The stainless-steel pots were ruined; they had turned bluish-black both inside and out. The plastic handles of the pots had softened and partially melted. The entire house reeked with the most acrid, nauseating stench Jenny had ever encountered.
    Bryce switched off the burners. “It’s a miracle the whole place wasn’t set on fire.”
    “It probably would’ve been if that were a gas stove,” Jenny said.
    Above the three pots, there was a stainless-steel range hood with an exhaust fan. When the food had burned, the hood had contained the short-lived flash of flames and had prevented the fire from spreading to the surrounding cabinetry.
    Outside again, everyone (except Major Arkham in his decontamination suit) took deep breaths of the clean mountain air. They needed a couple of minutes to purge their lungs of the vile stuff they had breathed inside that house.
    Then, next door, they found the first body of the day. It was John Farley, who owned the Mountain Tavern, which was open only during the ski season. He was in his forties. He had been a striking man, with salt-and pepper hair, a large nose, and a wide mouth that had frequently curved into an immensely engaging smile. Now he was bloated and bruised, his eyes bulging out of his skull, his clothes bursting at the seams as his body swelled.
    Farley was sitting at the breakfast table, at one end of his big kitchen. On a plate before him was a meal of cheese-filled ravioli and meatballs. There was also a glass of red wine. On the table, beside the plate, there was an open magazine. Farley was sitting up straight in his chair. One hand lay palm-up in his lap. His other arm was on the table, and in that hand was clenched a crust of bread. Farley’s mouth was partly open, and there was a bite of bread trapped between his teeth. He had perished in the act of chewing; his jaw muscles had never even relaxed.
    “Good God,” Tal said, “he didn’t have time to spit the stuff out or swallow it. Death must’ve been instantaneous.”
    “And he didn’t see it coming, either,” Bryce said. “Look at his face. There’s no expression of honor or surprise or shock as there is with most of the others.”
    Staring at the dead man’s clenched jaws, Jenny said, “What I don’t understand is why death doesn’t bring any relaxation of the muscles whatsoever. It’s weird.”
     
    In Our Lady of the Mountains Church, sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, which were composed predominantly of blues and greens. Hundreds of irregularly shaped patches of royal blue, sky blue, turquoise, aquamarine, emerald green, and many other shades dripped across the polished wooden pews, puddled in the aisles, and shimmered on the walls.
    It’s like being underwater, Gordy Brogan thought as he followed Frank Autry into the strangely and beautifully illuminated nave.
    Just beyond the narthex, a stream of crimson light splashed across the white marble font that contained the holy water. It was the crimson of Christ’s blood. The sun pierced a stained glass image of Christ’s bleeding heart and sprayed sanguineous rays upon the water that glistened in the pale marble bowl.
    Of the five men in the search team, only Gordy was a Catholic. He moistened two fingers in the holy water, crossed himself, and genuflected.
    The church was solemn, silent, still.
    The air was softened by a pleasant trace of incense.
    In the pews, there were no worshipers. At first it appeared as if the church was deserted.
    Then Gordy looked more closely at the altar and gasped.
    Frank saw it, too. “Oh, my God.”
    The chancel was cloaked in more shadows than was the rest of the church, which was why the men hadn’t immediately noticed the hideous—and sacrilegious—thing above the altar. The altar candles had burned down all the way and had gone out.
    However, as the men in the search team progressed hesitantly down the center aisle, they got a clearer and clearer view of the life-size crucifix that rose up from the center of the altar, along the rear wall of the chancel. It was a wooden cross, with an exquisitely detailed, hand-painted, glazed plaster figure of Christ fixed to it. At the moment, much of the godly image was obscured by another body that hung in front of it. A real body, not another plaster corpus. It was the priest in his robes; he was nailed to the cross.
    Two altarboys knelt on the floor