Phantoms

we’ll find is that it’s the work of some pervert, some stinkin’ scumbag pretty much like all the stinkin’ scumbags we’ve dealt with before.”
    Frank said, “Wargle, your kind of thinking is exactly what’ll cause us to overlook important evidence. And it’s also the kind of thinking that’ll get us killed.”
    “You just wait,” Wargle told them. “You’ll find out I’m right.” He spat on the sidewalk, hooked his thumbs in his gun belt, and tried to give the impression that he was the only levelheaded man in the group.
    Tal Whitman saw through the macho posturing; he saw terror in Wargle, too. Though he was one of the most insensitive men Tal had ever known, Stu was not unaware of the primitive response of which Lisa Paige had spoken. Whether he admitted it or not, he clearly felt the same bone-deep chill that shivered through all of them.
    Frank Autry also saw that Wargle’s imperturbability was a pose. In a tone of exaggerated, insincere admiration, Frank said, “Stu, by your fine example, you fortify us. You inspire us. What would we do without you?”
    “Without me,” Wargle said sourly, “you’d go right down the old toilet, Frank.”
    With mock dismay, Frank looked around at Tal, Gordy, and Bryce. “Does that sound like a swelled head?”
    “Sure does. But don’t blame Stu. In his case,” Tal said, “a swelled head is just a result of Nature’s frenzied efforts to fill a vacuum.”
    It was a small joke, but the laugh it elicited was large. Although Stu enjoyed wielding the needle, he despised being on the pricking end of it; yet even he managed to dredge up a smile.
    Tal knew they were not laughing at the joke as much as they were laughing at Death, laughing in its skeletal face.
    But when the laughter faded, the night was still dark.
    The town was still unnaturally silent.
    Jake Johnson was still missing.
    And it was still out there.
    Dr. Paige turned to Bryce Hammond and said, “Are you ready to take a look at the Oxley house?”
    Bryce shook his head. “Not right now. I don’t think it’s wise for us to do any more exploring until we get some reinforcements. I’m not going to lose another man. Not if I can help it.”
    Tal saw anguish pass through Bryce’s eyes at the mention of Jake.
    He thought: Bryce, my friend, you always take too much of the responsibility when something goes wrong, just like you’re always too quick to share the credit for successes that have been entirely yours.
    “Let’s go back to the substation,” Bryce said. “We’ve got to plan our moves carefully, and I’ve got calls to make.”
    They returned along the route by which they had come. Stu Wargle, still determined to prove his fearlessness, insisted on being the rear guard this time, and he swaggered along behind them.
    As they reached Skyline Road, a church bell tolled, startling them. It tolled again, slowly, again, slowly, again…
    Tal felt the metallic sound reverberating in his teeth.
    They all stopped at the corner, listening to the bell and staring west, toward the other end of Vail Lane. Only a little more than one block away, a brick church tower rose above the other buildings; there was one small light at each corner of the peaked, slate belfry roof.
    “The Catholic church,” Dr. Paige informed them, raising her voice to compete with the bell. “It serves all the towns around here. Our Lady of the Mountains.”
    The pealing of a church bell could be a joyous music. But there was nothing joyous about this one, Tal decided.
    “Who’s ringing it?” Gordy wondered aloud.
    “Maybe nobody’s ringing it,” Frank said. “Maybe it’s hooked up to a mechanical device of some kind; maybe it’s on a timer.”
    In the lighted belfry, the bell swung, casting off a glint of brass along with its one clear note.
    “Does it usually ring this time on a Sunday night?” Bryce asked Dr. Paige.
    “No.”
    “Then it’s not on a timer.”
    A block away, high above the ground, the bell wink-flashed and rang again.
    “So who’s pulling the rope?” Gordy Brogan asked.
    A macabre image crept into Tal Whitman’s mind: Jake Johnson, bruised and bloated and stone-cold dead, standing in the bell-ringer’s chamber at the bottom of the church tower, the rope gripped in his bloodless hands, dead but demonically animated, dead but nevertheless pulling on the rope, pulling and pulling, dead face turned up, grinning the wide mirthless grin of a corpse, protuberant eyes staring at the bell