Phantoms

mountain valley.
    “My ears feel like they’re stuffed full of cotton,” Lisa said, yawning to equalize the pressure.
    They rounded a sharp bend, and Jenny slowed the car. Ahead lay a long, up-sloping straightaway, and the county lane became Skyline Road, the main street of Snowfield.
    Lisa peered intently through the streaked windshield, studying the town with obvious delight. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be!”
    “What did you expect?”
    “Oh, you know, lots of ugly little motels with neon signs, too many gas stations, that sort of thing. But this place is really, really neat!”
    “We have strict building codes,” Jenny said. “Neon isn’t acceptable. Plastic signs aren’t allowed. No garish colors, no coffee shops shaped like coffee pots.”
    “It’s super,” Lisa said, gawking as they drove slowly into town.
    Exterior advertising was restricted to rustic wooden signs bearing each store’s name and line of business. The architecture was somewhat eclectic—Norwegian, Swiss, Bavarian, Alpine French, Alpine-Italian—but every building was designed in one mountain-country style or another, making liberal use of stone, slate, bricks, wood, exposed beams and timbers, mullioned windows, stained and leaded glass. The private homes along the upper end of Skyline Road were also graced by flower-filled window boxes, balconies, and front porches with ornate railings.
    “Really pretty,” Lisa said as they drove up the long hill toward the ski lifts at the high end of the town. “But is it always this quiet?”
    “Oh, no,” Jenny said. “During the winter, the place really comes alive and…”
    She left the sentence unfinished as she realized that the town was not merely quiet. It looked dead .
    On any other mild Sunday afternoon in September, at least a few residents would have been strolling along the cobblestone sidewalks and sitting on the porches and balconies that overlooked Skyline Road. Winter was coming, and these last days of good weather were to be treasured. But today, as afternoon faded into evening, the sidewalks, balconies, and porches were deserted. Even in those shops and houses where there were lights burning, there was no sign of life. Jenny’s Trans Am was the only moving car on the long street.
    She braked for a stop sign at the first intersection. St. Moritz Way crossed Skyline Road, extending three blocks east and four blocks west. She looked in both directions, but she could see no one.
    The next block of Skyline Road was deserted, too. So was the block after that.
    “Odd,” Jenny said.
    “There must be a terrific show on TV,” Lisa said.
    “I guess there must be.”
    They passed the Mountainview Restaurant at the corner of Vail Lane and Skyline. The lights were on inside and most of the interior was visible through the big corner windows, but there was no one to be seen. Mountainview was a popular gathering place for locals both in the winter and during the off season, and it was unusual for the restaurant to be completely deserted at this time of day. There weren’t even any waitresses in there.
    Lisa already seemed to have lost interest in the uncanny stillness, even though she had noticed it first. She was again gawking at and delighting in the quaint architecture.
    But Jenny couldn’t believe that everyone was huddled in front of TV sets, as Lisa had suggested. Frowning, perplexed, she looked at every window as she drove farther up the hill. She didn’t see a single indication of life.
    Snowfield was six blocks long from top to bottom of its sloping main street, and Jenny’s house was in the middle of the uppermost block, on the west side of the street, near the foot of the ski lifts. It was a two-story, stone and timber chalet with three dormer windows along the street side of the attic. The many-angled, slate roof was a mottled gray-blue-black. The house was set back twenty feet from the cobblestone sidewalk, behind a waist-high evergreen hedge. By one corner of the porch stood a sign that read JENNIFER PAIGE, M.D., it also listed her office hours.
    Jenny parked the Trans Am in the short driveway.
    “What a pretty house!” Lisa said.
    It was the first house Jenny had ever owned; she loved it and was proud of it. The mere sight of the house warmed and relaxed her, and for a moment she forgot about the strange quietude that blanketed Snowfield. “Well, it’s somewhat small, especially since half of the downstairs is given over to my office and