Phantoms

eyes.
    She was certain that those hollow sockets could still see her. They sucked at her with their emptiness.
    His grin had not faded.
    “Little pussy,” he said.
    She screamed her silent scream.
    “Little pussy. Kiss me, little pussy.”
    Somehow, dark as midnight, those bone-rimmed sockets still held a glimmer of malevolent awareness.
    “Kiss me.”
    No!
    Let me die, she prayed. God, please let me die first.
    “I want to suck on your juicy tongue,” Wargle said urgently, bursting into a giggle.
    He reached for her.
    She pressed hard against the unyielding wall.
    Wargle touched her cheek.
    She flinched and tried to pull away.
    His fingertips trailed lightly down her cheek.
    His hand was icy and slick.
    She heard a thin, dry, eerie groan—“ Uh-uh-uh-uh-uhhhhhhh ”—and realized that she was listening to herself.
    She smelled something strange, acrid. His breath? The stale breath of a dead man, expelled from rotting lungs? Did the walking dead breathe? The stench was faint but unbearable. She gagged.
    He lowered his face toward hers.
    She stared into his eaten-away eyes, into the swarming blackness beyond, and it was like peering through two peepholes into the deepest chambers of Hell. His hand tightened on her throat.
    He said, “Give us—”
    She heaved in a hot breath.
    “—a little kiss.”
    She heaved out another scream.
    This time the scream wasn’t silent. This time she pealed forth a sound that seemed loud enough to shatter the mirrors and to crack the ceramic tile.
    As Wargle’s dead, eyeless face slowly, slowly descended toward her, as she heard her scream echoing off the walls, the whirlpool of hysteria in which she’d been spinning became, now, a whirlpool of darkness, and she was drawn down into oblivion.
     

Chapter 20
    Bodysnatchers
     
    In the lobby of the Hilltop Inn, on a rust-colored sofa, against that wall which was farthest from the restrooms, Jennifer Paige sat beside her sister, holding the girl.
    Bryce squatted in front of the sofa, holding Lisa’s hand, which he couldn’t seem to make warm again no matter how firmly he pressed and rubbed it.
    Except for the guards on duty, everyone had gathered behind Bryce, in a semicircle around the front of the sofa.
    Lisa looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken, guarded, haunted. Her face was as white as the tile floor in the ladies’ room, where they had found her unconscious.
    “Stu Wargle is dead,” Bryce assured her yet again.
    “He wanted me t-t-to… kiss him,” the girl repeated, clinging resolutely to her bizarre story.
    “There was no one in the restroom but you,” Bryce said. “Just you, Lisa.”
    “He was there ,” the girl insisted.
    “We came running as soon as you screamed. We found you alone—”
    “He was there.”
    “—on the floor, in the corner, out cold.”
    “He was there.”
    “His body is in the utility room,” Bryce said, gently squeezing her hand. “We put it there earlier. You remember, don’t you?”
    “Is it still there?” the girl asked. “Maybe you’d better look.”
    Bryce met Jenny’s eyes. She nodded. Remembering that anything was possible tonight, Bryce got to his feet, letting go of the girl’s hand. He turned toward the utility room.
    “Tal?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Come with me.”
    Tal drew his revolver.
    Pulling his own sidearm from his holster, Bryce said, “The rest of you stay back.”
    With Tal at his side, Bryce crossed the lobby to the utility room door and paused in front of it.
    “I don’t think she’s the kind of kid who makes up wild stories,” Tal said.
    “I know she’s not.”
    Bryce thought about how Paul Henderson’s corpse had vanished from the substation. Damn it, though, that had been very different from this. Paul’s body had been accessible, unguarded. But no one could have gotten to Wargle’s corpse—and it couldn’t have gotten up and walked away of its own accord—without being seen by one of the three deputies posted in the lobby. Yet no one and nothing had been seen.
    Bryce moved to the left of the door and motioned Tal over to the right of it.
    They listened for several seconds. The inn was silent. There was no sound from within the utility room.
    Keeping his body out of the doorway, Bryce leaned forward and reached across the door, took hold of the knob, turned it slowly and silently until it had gone as far as it would go. He hesitated. He glanced over at Tal, who indicated his own readiness. Bryce took a deep breath, threw the door