Phantoms

victims but their knowledge and memories as well? ”
    “It sure looks that way,” Jenny said.
    “Biologically, that’s not unheard of,” Sara Yamaguchi said, combing her long black hair with both hands and nervously tucking it behind her delicate ears. “For instance… If you put a certain kind of flatworm through a maze often enough, with food at one end, eventually it’ll learn to negotiate the maze more quickly than it did at first. Then, if you grind it up and feed it to another flatworm, the new worm will negotiate the maze quickly, too, even though it’s never been put through the test before. Somehow, it ate the knowledge and experience of its cousin when it ate the flesh.”
    “Which is how the shape-changer knows about Timothy Flyte,” Jenny said. “Harold Ordnay knew about Flyte, so now it knows about him, too.”
    “But how in the name of God did Flyte know about it ?” Tal asked.
    Bryce shrugged. “That’s a question only Flyte can answer.”
     
    “Why didn’t it take Lisa last night in the restroom? For that matter, why hasn’t it taken all of us?”
    “It’s just toying with us.”
    “Having fun. A sick kind of fun.”
    “There’s that. But I think it’s also kept us alive so we could tell Flyte what we’ve seen and lure him here.”
    “It wants us to pass along the offer of safe conduct to Flyte.”
    “We’re just bait.”
    “Yes.”
    “And when we’ve served our purpose…”
    “Yes.”
     
    * * *
     
    Something thumped solidly against the outside of the inn. The windows rattled, and the building seemed to shake.
    Bryce stood so fast that he knocked over his chair.
    Another crash. Harder, louder. Then a scraping noise.
    Bryce listened intently, trying to get a fix on the sound. It seemed to be coming from the north wall of the building. It started at ground level but swiftly began to move up, away from them.
    A clattering-rattling sound. A bony sound. Like the skeletons of long-dead men clawing their way out of a sepulcher.
    “Something big,” Frank said. “Pulling itself up the side of the inn.”
    “The shape-changer,” Lisa said.
    “But not in its jellied form,” Sara said. “In its natural state, it would just flow up the wall silently.”
    They all stared at the ceiling, listening, waiting.
    What phantom form has it assumed this time? Bryce wondered.
    Scrape. Tick. Clatter.
    The sound of death.
    Bryce’s hand was colder than the butt of his revolver.
    The six of them went to the window and looked out. The fog swirled everywhere.
    Then, down the street, almost a block away, at the penumbra of a sodium-vapor lamp, something moved. Half-seen. A menacing shadow, distorted by the fog. Bryce got an impression of a crab as large as a car. He glimpsed arachnoid legs. A monstrous claw with saw-toothed edges flashed into the light, immediately into darkness again. And there: the febrile, quivering, seeking length of antennae. Then the thing scuttled off into the night again.
    “That’s what’s climbing the building,” Tal said. “Another damned crab thing like that one. Something straight out of an alky’s DTs.”
    They heard it reach the roof. Its chitinous limbs tapped and scraped across the slate shingles.
    “What’s it up to?” Lisa asked worriedly. “Why’s it pretending to be what it isn’t?”
    “Maybe it just enjoys mimicry,” Bryce said. “You know… the same way some tropical birds like to imitate sounds just for the pleasure of it, just to hear themselves.”
    The noises on the roof stopped.
    The six waited.
    The night seemed to be crouched like a wild thing, studying its prey, timing its attack.
     
    They were too restless to sit down. They continued to stand by the windows.
    Outside, only the fog moved.
    Sara Yamaguchi said, “The universal bruising is understandable now. The shape-changer enfolded its victims, squeezed them. So the bruising came from a brutal, sustained, universally applied pressure. That’s how they suffocated, too—wrapped up inside the shape-changer, totally encapsulated in it.”
    “I wonder,” Jenny said, “if maybe it produces its preservative while squeezing its victims.”
    “Yes, probably,” Sara said. “That’s why there’s no visible point of injection in either body we studied. The preservative is most likely applied to every square inch of the body, squeezed into every pore. Sort of an osmotic application.”
    Jenny thought of Hilda Beck, her housekeeper, the first victim she and Lisa had