Phantoms

field lab’s electric power cables disappeared.
    Abruptly, something rose out of that hole, came from the storm drain below the street, rose and rose into the twilight, shuddering, smashing up into the air with tremendous power, a dark and pulsating mass, like a flood of sewage, except that it was not a fluid but a jellied substance that formed itself into a column almost as wide as the hole from which it continued to extrude itself in an obscene, rhythmic gush. It grew and grew: four feet high, six feet, eight…
    Something struck Tal in the back. He jumped, tried to turn, and realized that he had only collided with the wall of the inn. He hadn’t been aware he’d been backing away from the towering thing that had soared out of the manhole.
    He saw now that the pulsing, rippling column was another body of freeform protoplasm like the Airedale that had become a timber wolf; however, this thing was considerably larger than the first creature. Immense. Tal wondered how much of it was still hidden below the street, and he had a hunch that the storm drain was filled with it, that what they were seeing here was only a small portion of the beast.
    When it reached a height of ten feet, it stopped rising and began to change. The upper half of the column broadened into a hood, a mantle, so that the thing now resembled the head of a cobra. Then more of the amorphous flesh flowed out of the oozing, glistening, shifting column and poured into the hood, so that the hood rapidly grew wider, wider, until it was not a hood at all any more; now it was a pair of gigantic wings, dark and membranous, like a bat’s wings, sprouting out of the central (and still shapeless) trunk. And then the body segment between the wings began to acquire a texture—coarse, overlapping scales—and small legs and clawed feet began to form. It was becoming a winged serpent.
    The wings flapped.
    The sound was like a whip cracking.
    Tal pressed back against the wall.
     
    The wings flapped.
    Lisa’s grip on Jenny tightened.
    Jenny held the girl close, but her eyes, mind, and imagination were fixed upon the monstrous thing that had risen out of the storm drain. It flexed and throbbed and writhed in the twilight and seemed like nothing so much as a shadow that had come to life.
    The wings flapped again.
    Jenny felt a cold, wing-stirred breeze.
    This new phantom looked as if it would detach itself from whatever additional protoplasm lay within the storm drain. Jenny expected it to leap into the darkening air and soar away—or come straight at them.
    Her heart thumped; slammed.
    She knew escape was impossible. Any movement she made would only draw unwanted attention from it . There was no point wasting energy in flight. There was nowhere to hide from a thing like this.
    More streetlamps came on, and shadows slunk in with ghostly stealth.
    Jenny watched in awe as a serpent’s head took shape at the top of the ten-foot-high column of mottled tissue. A pair of hate-filled green eyes swelled out of the shapeless flesh; it was like viewing time-lapse photography of the growth of two malignant tumors. Cloudy eyes, obviously blind, milky green ovals; they quickly 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, forming 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 first 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