Phantoms

pit appeared untenanted, but Jenny knew it must be down there somewhere, in the deeper regions, in the subterranean warrens, hiding from the Biosan spray, waiting, listening.
    She looked up and saw Bryce making his way toward Flyte.
    A crisp, cracking noise split the air. Flyte’s concrete perch shifted. It was going to break loose and tumble into the chasm.
    Bryce saw the danger. He clambered over a tilted slab of pavement, trying to reach Flyte in time.
    Jenny didn’t think he’d make it.
    Then the pavement under her groaned, trembled, and she realized that she, too, was on treacherous territory. She started to get up. Beneath her, the concrete snapped with a bomb blast of sound.
     

Chapter 41
    Lucifer
     
    The shadows on the cave walls were ever-changing; so was the shadow-maker. In the moon-strange glow of the gas lantern, the creature was like a column of dense smoke, writhing, formless, blood-dark.
    Although Kale wanted to believe it was only smoke, he knew better. Ectoplasm. That’s what it must be. The otherworldly stuff of which demons, ghosts, and spirits were said to be composed.
    Kale had never believed in ghosts. The concept of life after death was a crutch for weaker men, not for Fletcher Kale. But now…
    Gene Terr sat on the floor, staring at the apparition. His one gold earring glittered.
    Kale stood with his back pressed to a cool limestone wall. He felt as if he were fused to the rock.
    The repellent, sulphurous odor still hung on the dank air.
    To Kale’s left, a man came through the opening from the first room of the underground retreat. No; not a man. It was one of the Jake Johnson look-alikes. The one that had called him a baby killer.
    Kale made a small, desperate sound.
    This was the demonic version of Johnson whose skull was half-stripped of flesh. One wet, lidless eye peered out of a bony socket, glaring malevolently at Kale. Then the demon turned toward the oozing monstrosity in the center of the chamber. It walked to the column of roiling slime, spread its arms, embraced the gelatinous flesh—and simply melted into it.
    Kale stared uncomprehendingly.
    Another Jake Johnson entered. The one that lacked flesh along his flank. Beyond the exposed rib cage, the bloody heart throbbed; the lungs expanded; yet, somehow, the organs didn’t spill through the gaps between the ribs. Such a thing was impossible. Except that this was an apparition, a Hell-born presence that had swarmed up from the Pit—just smell the sulphur, the scent of Satan!—and therefore anything was possible.
    Kale believed now.
    The only alternative to belief was madness.
    One by one, the remaining four Johnson look-alikes entered, glanced at Kale, then were absorbed by the oozing, rippling slime.
    The Coleman lantern made a soft, continuous hissing.
    The jellied flesh of the netherworld visitor began to sprout black, terrible wings.
    The hissing of the lantern echoed sibilantly off the stone walls.
    The half-formed wings degenerated into the column of slime from which they had sprung. Insectile limbs started to take shape.
    Finally, Gene Terr spoke. He might have been in a trance—except that there was a lively sparkle in his eyes. “We come up here, me and some of my guys, two or maybe three times a year. You know? What it is… this here’s a perfect place for a fuck an’ waste party. Nobody to hear nothin’. Nobody to see. You know?”
    At last Jeeter looked away from the creature and met Kale’s eyes.
    Kale said, “What the hell’s a… a fuck and waste party?”
    “Oh, every couple months, sometimes more often, a chick shows up and wants to join the Chrome, wants to be somebody’s old lady, you know, doesn’t care whose, or maybe she’ll settle for bein’ an all-purpose bitch that all the guys can hack at when they want a little variety in their pussy. You know?” Jeeter sat with his legs crossed in a yoga position. His hands lay unmoving in his lap. He looked like an evil Buddha. “Sometimes, one of us happens to be lookin’ for a new main squeeze, or maybe the chick is really foxy, so we make room for her. But it don’t happen like that very often. Most of the time we tell them to beat it.”
    In the center of the cave, the insectile legs melted back into the oozing column of muck. Dozens of hands began to form, the fingers opening like petals of strange blossoms.
    Jeeter said, “But then once in a while, a chick shows up, and she’s damned good-lookin’, but we don’t happen to need or