Phantoms

sudden urgency, answering the questions that Sara Yamaguchi had posed, as if he felt he didn’t have much time left to explain. “About twenty years ago, it occurred to me that there might be a connection between mass disappearances and the unexplained extinction of certain species in pre-human geological eras. Like the dinosaurs, for instance.”
    The shape-changer pulsed and throbbed, towering almost to the ceiling, filling the entire far end of the room.
    Lisa clung to Jenny.
    A vague but repellent odor laced the air. Slightly sulphurous. Like a draft from Hell.
    “There are a host of theories purporting to explain the demise of the dinosaurs,” Flyte said. “But no single theory answers all the questions. So I wondered… what if the dinosaurs were exterminated by another creature, a natural enemy, that was a superior hunter and fighter? It would have to have been something large. And it would have been something with a very frail skeleton or perhaps with no skeleton whatsoever, for we’ve never found a fossil record of any species that would have given those great saurians a real battle.”
    A shudder passed through the entire bulk of tenebrous, churning slime. Across the oozing mass, dozens of faces began to appear.
    “And what if,” Flyte said, “several of those creatures had survived through millions of years…”
    Human and animal faces arose from the amorphous flesh, shimmered in it.
    “… living in subterranean rivers or lakes…”
    There were faces that had no eyes. Others had no mouths. But then the eyes appeared, blinked open. They were achingly real, penetrating eyes, filled with pain and fear and misery.
    “… or in deep ocean trenches…”
    And mouths cracked into existence on those previously seamless countenances.
    “… thousands of feet below the surface of the sea…”
    Lips formed around the gaping mouths.
    “… preying on marine life…”
    The phantom faces were screaming, yet they made no sounds.
    “… infrequently rising to feed…”
    Cat faces. Dog faces. Prehistoric reptile visages. Ballooning up from the slime.
    “… and even less frequently feeding on human beings…”
    To Jenny, the human faces looked as if they were peering out from the far side of a smoky mirror. None of them ever quite finished taking shape. They had to melt away, for there were countless new faces surging and coalescing beneath them. It was an endlessly flickering shadow show of the lost and the damned.
    Then the faces stopped forming.
    The huge mass was quiescent for a moment, slowly and almost imperceptibly pulsing, but otherwise still.
    Sara Yamaguchi was groaning softly.
    Jenny held Lisa close.
    No one spoke. For several seconds, no one even dared breathe.
    Then, in a new demonstration of its plasticity, the ancient enemy abruptly sprouted a score of tentacles. Some of them were thick, with the suction pads of a squid or an octopus. Others were thin and ropey; some of these were smooth, and some were segmented; they were even more obscene than the fat, moist-looking tentacles. Some of the appendages slid back and forth across the floor, knocking over chairs and pushing tables aside, while others wriggled in the air, like cobras swaying to the music of a snake charmer.
    Then it struck. It moved fast, gushed forward.
    Jenny stumbled back one step. She was at the end of the room.
    The many tentacles snapped toward them, whiplike, cutting the air with a hiss.
    Lisa could no longer keep from looking. She gasped at what she saw.
    In just a fraction of a second, the tentacles grew dramatically.
    A rope of cold, slick, utterly alien flesh fell across the back of Jenny’s hand. It curled around her wrist.
    No!
    With a shudder of relief, she pulled loose. It hadn’t taken much effort to free herself. Evidently, the thing really wasn’t interested in her; not now; not yet.
    She crouched as tentacles lashed the air above her head, and Lisa huddled with her.
    In his haste to get out of the creature’s way, Flyte tripped and fell.
    A tentacle moved toward him.
    Flyte scooted backwards across the floor, came to the wall.
    The tentacle followed, hovered over him, as if it would smash him. Then it moved away. It wasn’t interested in Flyte, either.
    Although the gesture was pointless, Bryce fired his revolver.
    Tal shouted something Jenny couldn’t understand. He moved in front of her and Lisa, between them and the shape-changer.
    After passing over Sara, the thing seized Frank Autry. That was