Phantoms

that!”
    “Wargle, you never cease to amaze me.”
    “What’s eating you?” Wargle asked.
    “Nothing. Forget it.”
    Wargle belched. “Well, I don’t believe they’re all dead.”
    Another problem with Stu Wargle was that he didn’t have any imagination.
    “What a lot of crap. And me lined up with a hot number.”
    Frank Autry, on the other hand, had a very good imagination. Perhaps too good. As he drove higher into the mountains, as he passed a sign that read SNOWFIELD—3 MILES, his imagination was humming like a well-lubricated machine. He had the disturbing feeling—Premonition? Hunch?—that they were driving straight into Hell.
     
    * * *
     
    The firehouse siren screamed.
    The church bell tolled faster, faster.
    A deafening cacophony clattered through the town.
    “Jenny!” Lisa shouted.
    “Keep your eyes open! Look for movement!”
    The street was a patchwork of ten thousand shadows; there were too many dark places to watch.
    The siren wailed, and the bell rang, and now the lights began to flash again—house lights, shop lights, streetlights—on and off, on and off so rapidly that they created a strobelike effect. Skyline Road flickered; the buildings seemed to jump toward the street, then fall back, then jump forward; the shadows danced jerkily.
    Jenny turned in a complete circle, the revolver thrust out in front of her.
    If something was approaching under cover of the stroboscopic light show, she couldn’t see it.
    She thought: What if, when the sheriff arrives, he finds two severed heads in the middle of the street? Mine and Lisa’s.
    The church bell was louder than ever, and it banged away continuously, madly.
    The siren swelled into a teeth-jarring, bone-piercing screech. It seemed a miracle that windows didn’t shatter.
    Lisa had her hands over her ears.
    Jenny’s gun hand was shaking. She couldn’t keep it steady.
    Then, as abruptly as the pandemonium had begun, it ceased. The siren died. The church bell stopped. The lights stayed on.
    Jenny scanned the street, waiting for something more to happen, something worse.
    But nothing happened.
    Again, the town was as tranquil as a graveyard.
    A wind sprang out of nowhere and caused the trees to sway, as if responding to ethereal music beyond the range of human hearing.
    Lisa shook herself out of a daze and said, “It was almost as if… as if they were trying to scare us… teasing us.”
    “Teasing,” Jenny said. “Yes, that’s exactly what it was like.”
    “Playing with us.”
    “Like a cat with mice,” Jenny said softly.
    They stood in the middle of the silent street, afraid to go back to the bench in front of the town jail, lest their movement should start the siren and the bell again.
    Suddenly, they heard a low grumbling. For an instant, Jenny’s stomach tightened. She raised the gun once more, although she could see nothing at which to shoot. Then she recognized the sound: automobile engines laboring up the steep mountain road.
    She turned and looked down the street. The gamble of engines grew louder. A car appeared around the curve, at the bottom of town.
    Flashing red roof lights. A police car. Two police cars.
    “Thank God,” Lisa said.
    Jenny quickly led her sister to the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the substation.
    The two white and green patrol cars came slowly up the deserted street and angled to the curb in front of the wooden bench. The two engines were cut off simultaneously. Snowfield’s deathlike hush took possession of the night once more.
    A rather handsome black man in a deputy’s uniform got out of the first car, letting his door stand open. He looked at Jenny and Lisa but didn’t immediately speak. His attention was captured by the preternaturally silent, unpeopled street.
    A second man got out of the front seat of the same vehicle. He had unruly, sandy hair. His eyelids were so heavy that he looked as if he were about to fall asleep. He was dressed in civilian clothing—gray slacks, a pale blue shirt, a dark blue nylon jacket—but there was a badge pinned to the jacket.
    Four other men got out of the cruisers. All six newcomers stood there for a long moment without speaking, eyes moving over the quiet stores and houses.
    In that strange, suspended bubble of time, Jenny had an icy premonition that she didn’t want to believe. She was certain—she sensed; she knew —that not all of them would leave this place alive.
     

Chapter 11
    Exploring
     
    Bryce knelt on one knee beside the body of