Dean Koontz: Phantoms

On close inspection, the dark, mottled skin did not appear to be the result of tissue deterioration. Jenny couldn't locate any certain, visible signs of ongoing decomposition: no lesions, no blistering, no weeping pustules. Because they were composed of comparatively soft tissue, a corpse's eyes usually bore evidence of physical degeneration before most other parts of the body. But Hilda Beck's eyes-wide open, staring-were perfect specimens. The whites of her eyes were clear, neither yellowish nor discolored by burst blood vessels. The irises were clear as well; there were not even milky, postmortem cataracts to obscure the warm, blue color.

In life, there had usually been merriment and kindness in Hilda's eyes.

She had been sixty-two, a gray-haired woman with a sweet face and a grandmotherly way about herself. She spoke with a slight German accent and had a surprisingly lovely singing voice. She had often sung while cleaning house or cooking, and she had found ' joy in the most simple things.

Jenny was stricken by a sharp pang of grief as she realized how very much she would miss Hilda. She closed her eyes for a moment, unable to look at the corpse. She collected herself, suppressed her tears.

Finally, when she had reestablished her professional detachment, she opened her eyes and went on with the examination.

The longer she looked at the body, the more the skin seemed bruised. The coloration was indicative of severe bruising: black, blue, and a deep sour yellow, the colors blending in and out of one another. But this was unlike any contusion Jenny had ever seen. As far as she could tell, it was universal; not even one square inch of visible skin was free of it. She carefully took hold of one sleeve of the dead woman's housedress and pulled it up the swollen arm as far as it would easily slide.

Under the sleeve, the skin was also dark, and Jenny suspected that — the entire body was covered with an incredible series of contiguous bruises.

She looked again at Mrs. Beck's face. Every last centimeter of skin was contusive. Sometimes, a victim of a serious auto accident sustained injuries that left him with bruises over most of his face, but such a severe condition was always accompanied by worse trauma, such as a broken nose, split lips, a broken jaw… How could Mrs. Beck have acquired bruises as grotesque as these without also suffering other, more serious injuries?

"Jenny?" Lisa said." Why're you taking so long?”

"I'll only be a minute. You stay there.”

So… perhaps the contusions that covered Mrs. Beck's body were not the result of externally administered blows. Was it possible that the discoloration of the skin was caused, instead, by internal pressure, by the swelling of subcutaneous tissue?

That swelling was, after all, vividly present. But surely, in order to have caused such thorough bruising, the swelling would have had to have taken place suddenly, with incredible violence. Which didn't make sense, damn it. Living tissue couldn't swell that fast. Abrupt swelling was symptomatic of certain allergies, of course; one of the worst was severe allergic reaction to penicillin. But Jenny was not aware of anything that could cause critical swelling with such suddenness that hideously ugly, universal bruising resulted.

And even if the swelling wasn't simply classic postmortem bloat-which she was sure it wasn't-and even if it was the cause of the bruising, what in the name of God had caused the swelling in the first place? She had ruled out allergic reaction.

If a poison was responsible, it was an extremely exotic variety. But where would Hilda have come into contact with an exotic poison? She had no enemies. The very idea of murder was absurd. And whereas a child might be expected to put a strange substance into his mouth to see if it tasted good, Hilda wouldn't do anything so foolish. No, not poison.

Disease?

If it was disease, bacterial or viral, it was not like anything that Jenny had been taught to recognize. And what if it proved to be contagious?

"Jenny?" Lisa called.

Relieved that she hadn't touched the body directly, wishing that she hadn't even touched the sleeve of the housedress, Jenny lurched to her feet, swayed, and stepped back from the corpse.

A chill rippled through her.

For the first time, she noticed what lay on the cutting board beside the sink. There were four large potatoes, a head of cabbage, a bag of carrots, a long knife, and a vegetable peeler.

Hilda had been preparing a meal when she had dropped dead.

Just like that. Bang. Apparently, she hadn't been ill, hadn't had any warning. Such a sudden death sure as hell wasn't indicative of disease.

What disease resulted in death without first progressing through ever more debilitating stages of illness, discomfort, and physical deterioration? None. None that was known to modern medicine.

"Jenny, can we get out of here?" Lisa asked.

"Ssssshhh! In a minute. Let me think," Jenny said, leaning against the island, looking down at the dead woman.

In the back of her mind, a vague and frightening thought had been stirring: plague. The plague-bubonic and other forms-was not a stranger to parts of California and the Southwest. In recent years, a couple of dozen cases had been reported; however, it was rare that anyone died of the plague these days, for it could be cured by the administration of streptomycin, chlorainphenicol, or any of the tetracyclines. Some strains of the plague were characterized by the appearance of petebhiae; these were small, purplish, hemorrhagic spots on the skin. In extreme cases, the petechiae became almost black and spread until large areas of the body were afflicted by them; in the Middle Ages, it had been known, simply, as the Black Death. But could petechiae arise in such abundance that the victim's body would turn as completely dark as Hilda's?

Besides, Hilda had died suddenly, while cooking, without first suffering fever, encontinence-which ruled out the plagt!e. And which, in fact, ruled out every other known infectious disease, too.

Yet there were no blatant signs of violence. No bleeding gunshot wounds. No stab wounds. No indications that the housekeeper had been beaten or strangled.

Jenny stepped around the body and went to the counter by the sink. She touched the head of cabbage and was startled to find that it was still chilled. It hadn't been here on the cutting board any longer than an hour or so.

She turned away from the counter and looked down at Hilda again, but with even greater dread than before.

The woman had died within the past hour. The body might even still be warm to the touch.

But what had killed her?

Jenny was no closer to an answer now than she had been before she'd examined the body. And although disease didn't seem to be the culprit here, she couldn't rule it out. The possibility of contagion, though remote, was frightening.

Hiding her concern from Liza, Jenny said, "Come on, honey.

I can use the phone in my office.”

"I'm feeling better now," Lisa said, but she got up at once, obviously eager to go.

Jenny put an arm around the girl, and they left the kitchen.

An unearthly quiet filled the house. The silence was so deep that the whisper of their footsteps on the hall carpet was thunderous by contrast.

Despite overhead fluorescent lights, Jenny's office wasn't a stark, impersonal room like those that many physicians preferred these days.

Instead, it was an old-fashioned, country doctor's office, rather like a Norman Rockwell painting in the Saturday Evening Post. Bookshelves were overflowing with books and medical journals. There were six antique wooden filing cabinets that Jenny had gotten for a good price at an auction. The walls were hung with diplomas, anatomy charts, and two large watercolor studies of Snowfield. Beside the locked drug cabinet, there was a scale, and beside the scale, on a small table, was a box of inexpensive toys-little plastic cars, tiny soldiers, miniature dolls-and packs of sugarless chewing gum that were dispensed as rewards-or bribes-to children who didn't cry during examinations.