Phantoms

didn’t affect me as strongly as you said it did you. But it was definitely… strange.”
    “Good,” Lisa said. “I’m glad you don’t think we’re just hysterical women.”
    “Considering what you’ve been through, you two are about as un hysterical as you could get.”
    “Well,” the girl said, “Jenny’s a doctor, and I think maybe I’d like to be a doctor someday, and doctors simply can’t afford to get hysterical.”
    She was a cute kid—although Bryce couldn’t help noticing that her older sister was even better looking. Both the girl and the doctor had the same lovely shade of auburn hair; it was the dark red-brown of well-polished cherry wood, thick and lustrous. Both of them had the same golden skin, too. But because Dr. Paige’s features were more mature than Lisa’s, they were also more interesting and appealing to Bryce. Her eyes were a shade greener than her sister’s, too.
    Bryce said, “Dr. Paige, I’d like to see that house where the bodies were barricaded in the den.”
    “Yeah,” Tal said. “The locked room murders.”
    “That’s the Oxley place over on Vail.” She led them down the street toward the corner of Vail Lane and Skyline Road.
    The dry shuffle of their footsteps was the only sound, and it made Bryce think of desert places again, of scarabs swarming busily across stacks of ancient, papyrus scrolls in desert tombs.
    Rounding the corner onto Vail Lane, Dr. Paige halted and said, “Tom and Karen Oxley live… uh… lived two blocks farther along here.”
    Bryce studied the street. He said, “Instead of walking straight to the Oxleys’, let’s have a look in all the houses and shops between here and there—at least on this side of the street. I think it’s safe to split up into two squads, four to a group. We won’t be going off entirely in different directions. We’ll be close enough to help each other if there’s trouble. Dr. Paige, Lisa—you stay with Tal and me. Frank, you’re in charge of the second team.”
    Frank nodded.
    “The four of you stick together,” Bryce warned them. “And I mean together . Each of you remain within sight of the other three at all times. Understood?”
    “Yes, Sheriff,” Frank Autry said.
    “Okay, you four have a look in the first building past the restaurant here, and we’ll take the place next door to that. We’ll hopscotch our way along the street and compare notes at the end of the block. If you come across something really interesting, something more than just additional bodies, come get me. If you need help, fire two or three rounds. We’ll hear the gunshots even if we’re inside another building. And you listen for gunfire from us.”
    “May I make a suggestion?” Dr. Paige asked.
    “Sure,” Bryce said.
    To Frank Autry, she said, “If you come across any bodies that show signs of hemorrhaging from the eyes, ears, nose, or mouth, let me know at once. Or any indications of vomiting or diarrhea.”
    “Because those things might indicate disease?” Bryce asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “Or poisoning.”
    “But we’ve ruled that out, haven’t we?” Gordy Brogan asked.
    Jake Johnson, looking older than his fifty-seven years, said, “It wasn’t a disease that cut off those people’s heads.”
    “I’ve been thinking about that,” Dr. Paige said. “What if this is a disease or a chemical toxin that we’ve never encountered before—a mutant strain of rabies, say—that kills some people but merely drives others stark raving mad? What if the mutilations were done by those who were driven into a savage madness?”
    “Is such a thing likely?” Tal Whitman asked.
    “No. But then again, maybe not impossible. Besides, who’s to say what’s likely or unlikely any more? Is it likely that this would have happened to Snowfield in the first place?”
    Frank Autry tugged at his mustache and said, “But if there are packs of rabid maniacs roaming around out there… where are they?”
    Everyone looked at the quiet street. At the deepest pools of shadow spilling over lawns and sidewalks and parked cars. At unlighted attic windows. At dark basement windows.
    “Hiding,” Wargle said.
    “Waiting,” Gordy Brogan said.
    “No, that doesn’t make sense,” Bryce said. “Rabid maniacs just wouldn’t hide and wait and plan . They’d charge us.”
    “Anyway,” Lisa said quietly, “it isn’t rabid people. It’s something a lot stranger.”
    “She’s probably right,” Dr. Paige said.
    “Which