Phantoms

deliver a brief statement, promised that a few questions would be permitted later, and introduced the speaker, and stepped out of the way.
    When everyone got a good, clear look at Timothy Flyte, they couldn’t conceal a sudden attack of skepticism. It swept the crowd; Corello saw it in their faces: a very visible apprehension that Flyte was hoaxing them. Indeed, Flyte appeared to be a tad maniacal. His white hair was frizzed out from his head, as if he had just stuck a finger in an electric socket. His eyes were wide, both with fear and with an effort to stave off fatigue, and his face had the dissipated look of a wino’s grizzled visage. He needed a shave. His clothes were rumpled, wrinkled; they hung like shapeless bags. He reminded Corello of one of those street corner fanatics declaring the imminence of Armageddon.
    Earlier in the day, on the telephone from London, Burt Sandler, the editor from Wintergreen and Wyle, had prepared Corello for the possibility that Flyte would make a negative impression on the newsmen, but Sandler needn’t have worried. The newsmen grew restless as Flyte cleared his throat half a dozen times, loudly, into the microphone, but when he began to speak at last, they were enthralled within a minute. He told them about the Roanoke Island colony, about vanishing Mayan civilizations, about mysterious depletions of marine populations, about an army that disappeared in 1711. The crowd grew hushed. Corello relaxed.
    Flyte told them about the Eskimo village of Anjikuni, five hundred miles northwest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost at Churchill. On a snowy afternoon in November of 1930, a French-Canadian trapper and trader, Joe LaBelle, stopped at Anjikuni—only to discover that everyone who lived there had disappeared. All belongings, including precious hunting rifles, had been left behind. Meals had been left half-eaten. The dogsleds (but no dogs) were still there, which meant there was no way the entire village could have moved overland to another location. The settlement was, as LaBelle put it later, “as eerie as a graveyard in the very dead of night.” LaBelle hastened to the Mounted Police Station at Churchill, and a major investigation was launched, but nothing was ever found of the Anjikunians.
    As the reporters took notes and aimed tape recorder microphones at Flyte, he told them about his much-maligned theory: the ancient enemy. There were gasps of surprise, incredulous expressions, but no noisy questioning or blatantly expressed disbelief.
    The instant Flyte finished making his prepared statement, Sal Corello reneged on his promise of a question-and-answer session. He took Flyte by the arm and hustled him through a door behind the makeshift platform on which the microphones stood.
    The newsmen howled with indignation at this betrayal. They rushed the platform, trying to follow Flyte.
    Corello and the professor entered a service corridor where several airport security men were waiting. One of the guards slammed and locked the door behind them, cutting off the reporters, who howled even louder than before.
    “This way,” a security man said.
    “The chopper’s here,” another said.
    They hurried along a maze of hallways, down a flight of concrete stairs, through a metal fire door, and outside, onto a windswept expanse of tarmac, where a sleek, blue helicopter waited. It was a plush, well-appointed, executive craft, a Bell JetRanger II.
    “It’s the governor’s chopper,” Corello told Flyte.
    “The governor?” Flyte said. “He’s here?”
    “No. But he’s put his helicopter at your disposal.”
    As they climbed through the door, into the comfortable passengers’ compartment, the rotors began to churn overhead.
     
    Forehead pressed to the cool window, Timothy Flyte watched San Francisco fall away into the night.
    He was excited. Before the plane had landed, he had felt dopey and bedraggled; not any more. He was alert and eager to learn more about what was happening in Snowfield.
    The JetRanger had a high cruising speed for a helicopter, and the trip to Santa Mira took less than two hours. Corello—a clever, fast-talking, amusing man—helped Timothy prepare another statement for the media people who were waiting for them. The journey passed quickly.
    They touched down with a thump in the middle of the fenced parking lot behind the county sheriff’s headquarters. Corello opened the door of the passengers’ compartment even before the chopper’s rotors