Phantoms

began to acquire a human form. Bryce was shocked to see Gordy Brogan coalescing in front of him. Before the phantom was entirely realized, while the body was still lumpy and half detailed, and although the face wasn’t finished, the mouth nevertheless opened and the replica of Gordy spoke, though not with Gordy’s voice. It was Stu Wargle’s voice, instead, a supremely disconcerting touch.
    “Go to the lab,” it said, its mouth only half formed, yet speaking with perfect clarity. “I will show you everything you want to see, Dr. Flyte. You are my Matthew. My Luke. Go to the lab. Go to the lab.”
    The unfinished image of Gordy Brogan dissolved almost as if it had been composed of smoke.
    The extruded man-size lump of gnarled tissue flowed back into the larger bulk behind it.
    The entire pulsating, heaving mass began to surge back through the umbilical that led up the wall and into the heating duct.
    How much more of it lies there within the walls of the inn? Bryce wondered uneasily. How much more of it waits down in the storm drains? How large is the god Proteus?
    As the thing oozed away from them, oddly shaped orifices opened all over it, none bigger than a human mouth, a dozen of them, two dozen, and noises issued forth: the chirruping of birds, the cries of sea gulls, the buzzing of bees, snarling, hissing, child-sweet laughter, distant singing, the hooting of an owl, the maracalike warning of a rattlesnake. Those noises, all ringing out simultaneously, blended into an unpleasant, irritating, decidedly ominous chorus.
    Then the shape-changer was gone back through the wall vent. Only Frank’s severed head and the bent grille from the heating duct remained as proof that something Hell-born had been here.
    According to the electric wall clock, the time was 3:44.
    The night was nearly gone.
    How long until dawn? Bryce wondered. An hour and a half? An hour and forty minutes or more?
    He supposed it didn’t matter.
    He didn’t expect to live to see the sunrise, anyway.
     

Chapter 37
    Ego
     
    The door of the second lab stood wide open. The lights were on. The computer screens glowed. Everything was ready for them.
    Jenny had been trying to hold to the belief that they could still somehow resist, that they still had a chance, however small, of influencing the course of events. Now that fragile, cherished belief was blown away. They were powerless. They would do only what it wanted, go only where it allowed.
    The six of them crowded inside the lab.
    “Now what?” Lisa asked.
    “We wait,” Jenny said.
    Flyte, Sara, and Lisa sat down at the three bright video display terminals. Jenny and Bryce leaned against a counter, and Tal stood by the open door, looking out.
    Fog foamed past the door.
    We wait , Jenny had told Lisa. But waiting wasn’t easy. Each second was an ordeal of tense and morbid expectations.
    Where would death come from next?
    And in what fantastic form?
    And to whom would it come this time?
    At last Bryce said, “Dr. Flyte, if these prehistoric creatures have survived for millions of years in underground lakes and fivers, irk the deepest sea trenches… or wherever… and if they surface to feed… then why aren’t mass disappearances more common?”
    Flyte pulled at his chin with one thin, long-fingered hand and said, “Because it seldom encounters human beings.”
    “But why seldom?”
    “I doubt that more than a handful of these beasts have survived. There may have been a climatic change that killed off most and drove the few remaining into a subterranean and suboceanic existence.”
    “Nevertheless, even a few of them—”
    “A rare few,” Flyte stressed, “scattered over the earth. And perhaps they feed only infrequently. Consider the boa constrictor, for example. That snake takes nourishment only once every few weeks. So perhaps this thing feeds irregularly, as seldom as once every several months or even once every couple of years. Its metabolism is so utterly different from ours that almost anything may be possible.”
    “Could its life cycle include periods of hibernation,” Sara asked, “lasting not just a season or two, but years at a time?”
    “Yes, yes,” Flyte said, nodding. “Very good. Very good, indeed. That would also help explain why the thing only infrequently encounters men. And let me remind you that mankind inhabits less than one percent of the planet’s surface. Even if the ancient enemy did feed with some frequency, it would hardly ever run up against