Phantoms

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 exists .”
    “Well,” Bryce said, “maybe insects that size thrived a long time ago, tens of millions of years ago, back in the age of dinosaurs. Maybe that’s when the shape-changer fed on them.”
    Lisa’s eyes widened. “You mean the thing that came out of the manhole might’ve been millions of years old?”
    “Well,” Bryce said, “it certainly doesn’t conform to the rules of biology as we know them—does it, Dr. Yamaguchi?”
    “No,” the geneticist said.
    “So why shouldn’t it also be immortal?”
    Jenny looked dubious.
    Bryce said, “You have an objection?”
    “To the possibility that it’s immortal? Or the next thing to immortal? No. I’ll accept that. It might be something out of the Mesozoic, all right, something so self-renewing that it’s virtually immortal. But how does the winged serpent fit? I find it damned hard to believe that anything like that has ever existed. If the shape-changer becomes only those things it has previously ingested, then how could it become something like the winged serpent?”
    “There’ve been animals like that,” Frank said. “Pterodactyls were winged reptiles.”
    “Reptiles, yes,” Jenny said. “But not serpents. Pterodactyls were the ancestors of birds. But that thing was clearly a serpent, which is very different. It looked like something out of a fairy tale.”
    “No,” Tal said. “It was straight out of voodoo.”
    Bryce turned to Tal surprised. “Voodoo? What would you know about voodoo?”
    Tal didn’t seem to be able to look at Bryce, and he spoke with evident reluctance. “In Harlem, when I was a kid, there was this enormous fat lady, Agatha Peabody, in our apartment building, and she was a boko . That’s a sort of witch who uses voodoo for immoral or evil purposes. She sold charms and spells, helped people strike back at their enemies, that sort of thing. All nonsense. But to a kid, it seemed exciting and spooky. Mrs. Peabody ran an open apartment, with clients and hangers-on going in and out all day and night. For a few months I spent a lot of time there, listening and watching. And there were quite a few books on the black arts. In a couple of them, I saw drawings of Haitian and African versions of Satan, voodoo and juju devils. One of them was a giant, winged serpent. Black, with bat wings. And terrible green eyes. It was exactly like the thing we saw tonight.”
    In the street, beyond the windows, the fog was very thick now. It churned sluggishly through the diffused glow of the streetlamps.
    Lisa said, “Is it really the Devil? A demon? Something from Hell?”
    “No,” Jenny said. “That’s just a… pose.”
    “But then why does it take the shape of the Devil?” Lisa asked. “And why does it call itself the names of demons?”
    “I figure the Satanic mumbo-jumbo is just something that amuses it,” Frank said. “One more way to tease us and demoralize us.”
    Jenny nodded. “I suspect it isn’t limited to the forms of its victims. It can assume the shape of anything it has absorbed and anything it can imagine. So if one of the victims was somebody familiar with voodoo, then that’s where it got the idea of becoming a winged serpent.”
    That thought startled Bryce. “Do you mean it not only absorbs and incorporates the flesh of its